Two Worlds review.

It would be very easy for me to write a scathing review of Two Worlds, dismissing it as a lacklusture oblivion clone. To do so, however, would be to ignore its many charms and innovations that help make it an enjoyable 40 hour RPG, albeit a 40 hour RPG with a fair few issues. I may as well start by explaining these issues as your tolerance of them will pretty much determine whether you should buy the game.

The first of these flaws is apparent pretty much as soon as you begin: The combat is rubbish. Killing enemies is a matter of hammering the left mouse button as fast as you can and hoping you don't get hit. A block function is conspicuous by its absence, replaced by "dodge", which causes your character to hop backwards, avoiding an enemy attack. This function is, however, too cumbersome to use frequently and this gives rise to the tactic of heal killing. When you die in Two Worlds you respawn at a resurrection point, which also heals you if you go near it. These points are so plentiful that combat becomes a matter of luring the enemies to the point, where you will be constantly healed, and then mashing the left mouse button.

These healing points, however, also encapsulate what is good about Two Worlds. On all difficulty settings but "hard" your dying has no adverse affect on your character. He loses no experience, no items, nothing. It makes Two Worlds much more accessible than other RPGs, you won't be punished for getting yourself into tough situations, of which there are many thanks to the crazy agro system and fairly punishing difficulty that means you'll always be fighting/getting killed by 5 or more monsters at once. One of the more amusing tactics to deal with this is to run round and round so the six wolves, four bandits and two bears following you all hit each other and start fighting amongst themselves, allowing you to retreat and watch from a safe distance.

The surprising honesty with which combat is approached means that if you get in the way of a weapon you're going to get hit, no matter who it was intended for, the same applying to arrows. It all implies that there is a strong physics engine behind the game, as does the compulsory installation of the PhysX drivers. This, however seems sadly not to be true. While enemies do become ragdolls on death the rest of the world seems devoid of any physics at all, with objects glued to tables and characters/horses struggling to navigate the terrain.

The wide variety of issues certainly have the potential to be game running for some people and if you're expecting Two Worlds to be the next Oblivion you'll probably be disappointed. 'tis no matter though, for if you've got this far I'm going to assume you can live with the above and are ready to move on to what is so good about Two Worlds. The delicious apple pie (of +2 apples) after the bland casserole of problems above. Also: Yum, apple pie.

And yet, it's hard to pin down any one feature that makes Two Worlds so enjoyable, despite its flaws. The whole game just seems to have had a lot of love put into it, apparent by the manual that has 32 pages of general information about the world before it gets to how to play it. It's a lot more… personal than the like of Oblivion, which are often polished to the point of being soulless. It also has a lot more humour than other RPGS, whether intentional or not.

Another strong point of Two Worlds is the graphics. While the game suffers from an incredibly close draw distance for buildings it has some amazing vistas and dense foliage, with some of the nicest trees I’ve seen in any RPG. There are also some really nice weapon models, textured surprisingly intricately for a game that doesn’t demand that much from your PC.

Not only are Two Worlds’ weapons pretty- they are also very copious. Even at early levels you’re bombarded by a constant stream of new items, each shinier and with more skill modifiers and attributes than the last. It’s the most capitalistic RPG I know of and by level 10 your character will be decked out like a spoilt 22 year old after a London shopping trip, with rings on every finger, an inventory full of hats and shoes and a mind full of armour sets and where to find matching trousers for your chainmail top.

Of course such items are of little use unless you can show off to friends and Two Worlds has this covered with the option to play online multiplayer in standard deathmatches or the far more interesting “RPG” mode, where you create a persistent character and level him up by fighting foes and doing quests co-operatively by friends in slices of the world map. This mode is slightly let down by the WoWness of the quests, with objectives ranging from “kill these wild animals” to “find this mirror, which is guarded by wild animals” but it’s still a blast and capable of eating up hours of time, even with the lag inevitably introduced by only allowing listen servers.

So, yeah, Two Worlds really is a game of juxtapositions, like a Trabant: Eastern European, rubbish, yet still charming enough to draw loyal fans. You’ll either find yourself hating the game due to it’s flaws or loving it for the feeling love that has gone into everything, from the gently swaying trees to the way the grass becomes charred when fire spells hit it. So, this is for you, hardened RPG players, used to seeing a myriad of bugs infesting your latest purchase. However for those whose first introduction to the RPG world was Oblivion Two Worlds might not be the best choice. Try the demo first.

I give the game 75%. Flawed yet charming+2