Two Worlds
September 17,2007 - Two Worlds is a poor man’s Oblivion. For all of the features it has for itself and all of the freedom and gameplay mechanics it offers, not one ever feels original or fresh. Two Worlds is a mess on all ends, with technical issues plaguing every move and gameplay that feels old and dated. It is a wonder how a game that so blatantly rips off Oblivion can be so broken in the process.

Two Worlds is set in the land of Antaloor amidst a battle between man and orc. Aziraal, the orcish god has been captured and imprisoned in a tomb full of treasure. Although the game is set 300 years later, you will soon be caught up in a deadly digging excavation of a tomb said to be that of Aziraal. The story itself is very bland and unsurprising, with nothing to keep you interested for very long. Although there is a good assortment of side characters and off-setting story arches to partake in, most never give any back story or relate to the main theme at all, making many of them completely useless to engage in.

Similar to Oblivion, although done with less features and a blocky userface, players can customize their main fighter. Your character can only be male (sorry female fighters) and there are only several features that make yourself different from the others, such as hair, eye, and skin color. But the character customization is hardly engaging or worth spending time on considering the userface is a terrible, blocky eye sprain to read and most everyone ends up looking the same in the end. The character creation only goes so far into the game as well, as you will literally see yourself roaming around towns as lazy and bland character models make everyone look plain and simple.

Your character has no given class when you begin, but you have the option to assign him to a special class throughout the game. Killing enemies will earn you points, which can be assigned into categories that give you new attributes. Pour points into strength to improve your melee fighting or put points into alchemy to increase your magic, and so on. The system actually works, and it is one of the few features that actually feels solid throughout the entirety of the game. There is even an option to invent new items, which can be gathered by defeating enemies or just exploring the world. By collecting various items you can create potions, brews, and even new weapons and armor. It’s rewarding to be able to make something useful out of ordinary plants, but the chances to make weapons or powerful items are rare and never come into use when you need them the most.

Combat feels dated and broken almost to an extent of hilarity. There is no skill involved when fighting, and due to that fact the game can be incredibly easy or insanely frustrating. Most melee battles will consist of constant button mashing and running away. Since most enemies are always tougher than you no matter how strong you are or how tough your armor is, running away is the only essential way to survive. Enemies also don’t seem to get phased when you strike them with your sword, which leaves you vulnerable in almost every battle. Magic works exactly the same except you can assign certain spells to buttons on the controller, or even use cards to issue magic. But still, it requires no skill except having fast enough fingers to jam on the buttons faster than the enemy. Just be prepared to run in every battle you encounter.

The quests are spread out across the world, and you can pick up as many of them as you can possibly muster at one time. Completing tasks nets you gold to buy items with and experience points to upgrade your character. Most of these quests are nothing more but fetch quests in which to find someone’s lost family member or kill some enemy who is blocking a certain path; to put it plain, everyone in the world is lazy and dumb. Doing side-quests is almost essential to survive in the game considering the difficulty of fighting the easiest of foes, but doing do would get repetitive extremely fast. Many of the quests also lack any originality and there will be numerous times when you will see similar quests that just have new character names and location but the exact same objectives. Sticking to the main story at least gets you involved in your character, but that too is unrewarding and bland as well.

Multiplayer is like a cruel joke by the developers into tricking players into wasting more time by thinking there is any sense of excitement found online with others. It’s quite astounding that playing online with others is more boring and broken than playing by yourself in the main game. Deathmatch requires absolutely no skill at all and it boils down to that has the better connection. If that seems too boring for your liking (but then again if you are playing online in Two Worlds, you are far devoid of fun anyways), you can join up with up to seven players to go on monster hunts in up to five various worlds ripped from the game. It’s nothing to go crazy over, but at least it has more replay value than the rest of multiplayer.

Visually Two Worlds is a broken mess. Framerate drops constantly throughout the game, making both exploration and battling impossible to manage. Usually, if more than two characters appear on screen at the same, the game will lag along trying to keep up. Wandering into any new area causes minutes of loading times and since the world is so incredibly large, this can get annoying extremely fast. Character models all look similar, and as mentioned, you might often or not casually stroll upon clones of NPC characters or even yourself. Enemies also are not as diverse as they should be, with endless armies of orcs, skeletons, and other cliché fantasy foes roaming about.

The sound is equally as bad as the visuals, only with much more goof-ups and disjointed tracks. Sounds never match up to actions being performed, such as swords clashing seconds after you actually hit or enemies screaming after they are dead. While this could be blamed on lousy developing it most likely is due to the framerate problems that constantly plague the game. Characters will also answer all of your questions relatively the same, usually with a “Thanks for helping!” or “You are so mean!” line and almost everyone in the game says the word “hath” once in every line they say.

Two Worlds fails to live up to any of its so-called promises and feels nothing more but a broken and blatant rip-off of Oblivion. The combat is a complete mess to perfect and with constant slowdowns and technical issues there is just nothing that seems to fall into place in the world of Antaloor. If you are a fan of Oblivion and have done everything you possibly can in that game, than pick this up for the nostalgia. Everyone else should just stay clear of this game at all costs.

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