I've been in need of a fun, open world WRPG for months. Two Worlds 2 was on sale at Kmart for $40 so I decided to pick it up and form my own opinions about this incredibly divisive game.
So let's get to it, but first please keeping in mind that I've played the game for roughly 4-5 hours.
First off--the voice acting is awful. It's bad. Really bad. The protagonist is especially offensive because he cannot--nay, he will not--get excited about ANYTHING. And he insists on speaking through his throat, mumbling & bumbling his way through conversations much in the same way a 68 year old Harrison Ford does. At one point in the game I ran into a thug, and I swear to god it sounded like it was probably the sound engineers mother tucking her chin in, pushing her chest out and grunting to sound like a burly man.
Initially the melee combat has consisted of wack-wack-wacking my opponents as I mash the buttons. The temperamental "auto" targeting tries to do its job, but it's usually no help. It's kind of a mess. Ranged combat seems to be ok, and if leveled up correctly could probably be great. I havent messed around with the spell casting/magic crafting but it looks pretty cool and unique.
The inventory system is a mess. There is no way (that I'm aware of) to sort your items, which gets to be more tedious as you collected stuff. TW2 actually has a fairly robust crafting system and you do collect a ton of stuff from all over. That coupled with the fact that you have the ability to tear down items for their essential parts (iron, leather, etc) in your inventory to cannibalize and augment existing items, or even craft new ones.
The first hour of the game is drab, tedious and practically a waste of time. I seriously considered turning the thing off and counting my loses. But once the world opened up I found myself pushing forward to see what was around the corner. I mean despite all these flaws I began to push forward to see what's next.
Reality Pump, the developers, really do love their graphical effects and are so not ashamed to prove it. Every road I roamed seemed to lead to into horizon blinding me with god rays. I don't think I've ever seen a game abuse HDR, bloom and DoF (depth of field) quite like this game. The character models vary from This-Is-My-First-3D-Render to average, but are never really good. The animations are janky, at times uncomfortable to watch and rarely amusing.
And yet despite all the bad, once I got past the first hour and the game opened itself up, for whatever reason I couldn't stop playing. I began to see past the flaws and noticed a bit of charm.
As I leveled up, my character gained the ability to dual-wield weapons and learn effective combat moves. The combat went from a flailing atrocity to something doable. The environments have varied enough to keep me interested, and admittedly have made me stop in my tracks a few times. Those sun-drenched visuals have their moments where they create spectacular vistas. The sense of discovery is there, and has it's way of pulling down unexplored paths. The lock picking mini-game is actually kinda fun, and definitely above the ME2 and oblivion's. There is a ton of loot to be had, and with the fast travel system is easy enough to sell off. The crafting system is effective and rewarding to use.
Also there are things I haven't done yet: Finding and riding a mount, sailing, magic crafting and spell use, gambling, mulitplayer and probably more that I'm not even aware exists.
Wrap that all up together and the game has turned into something that's getting more and more fun to play. I think part of the sway is thanks to me desire to play an open world WRPG, and it's began to scratch that inch. But really a player shouldn't be expected to tread through as much as you have to do in Two Worlds 2 to find something enjoyable.
I'll continue to report back on how things go, but honestly I'm looking forward to getting home later today and playing. That's gotta mean something...
So let's get to it, but first please keeping in mind that I've played the game for roughly 4-5 hours.
First off--the voice acting is awful. It's bad. Really bad. The protagonist is especially offensive because he cannot--nay, he will not--get excited about ANYTHING. And he insists on speaking through his throat, mumbling & bumbling his way through conversations much in the same way a 68 year old Harrison Ford does. At one point in the game I ran into a thug, and I swear to god it sounded like it was probably the sound engineers mother tucking her chin in, pushing her chest out and grunting to sound like a burly man.
Initially the melee combat has consisted of wack-wack-wacking my opponents as I mash the buttons. The temperamental "auto" targeting tries to do its job, but it's usually no help. It's kind of a mess. Ranged combat seems to be ok, and if leveled up correctly could probably be great. I havent messed around with the spell casting/magic crafting but it looks pretty cool and unique.
The inventory system is a mess. There is no way (that I'm aware of) to sort your items, which gets to be more tedious as you collected stuff. TW2 actually has a fairly robust crafting system and you do collect a ton of stuff from all over. That coupled with the fact that you have the ability to tear down items for their essential parts (iron, leather, etc) in your inventory to cannibalize and augment existing items, or even craft new ones.
The first hour of the game is drab, tedious and practically a waste of time. I seriously considered turning the thing off and counting my loses. But once the world opened up I found myself pushing forward to see what was around the corner. I mean despite all these flaws I began to push forward to see what's next.
Reality Pump, the developers, really do love their graphical effects and are so not ashamed to prove it. Every road I roamed seemed to lead to into horizon blinding me with god rays. I don't think I've ever seen a game abuse HDR, bloom and DoF (depth of field) quite like this game. The character models vary from This-Is-My-First-3D-Render to average, but are never really good. The animations are janky, at times uncomfortable to watch and rarely amusing.
And yet despite all the bad, once I got past the first hour and the game opened itself up, for whatever reason I couldn't stop playing. I began to see past the flaws and noticed a bit of charm.
As I leveled up, my character gained the ability to dual-wield weapons and learn effective combat moves. The combat went from a flailing atrocity to something doable. The environments have varied enough to keep me interested, and admittedly have made me stop in my tracks a few times. Those sun-drenched visuals have their moments where they create spectacular vistas. The sense of discovery is there, and has it's way of pulling down unexplored paths. The lock picking mini-game is actually kinda fun, and definitely above the ME2 and oblivion's. There is a ton of loot to be had, and with the fast travel system is easy enough to sell off. The crafting system is effective and rewarding to use.
Also there are things I haven't done yet: Finding and riding a mount, sailing, magic crafting and spell use, gambling, mulitplayer and probably more that I'm not even aware exists.
Wrap that all up together and the game has turned into something that's getting more and more fun to play. I think part of the sway is thanks to me desire to play an open world WRPG, and it's began to scratch that inch. But really a player shouldn't be expected to tread through as much as you have to do in Two Worlds 2 to find something enjoyable.
I'll continue to report back on how things go, but honestly I'm looking forward to getting home later today and playing. That's gotta mean something...
)
