Two Worlds is an RPG that came out in 2007. The ambitious claim of this game was that it was the Oblivion killer. Oblivion for the uneducated is the fourth installment of the Elder Scrolls series. Aside from being one of the highest grossing series of all time, the fourth installment is considered to be very good. This game did not manage to kill Oblivion.
Two Worlds is fairly mediocre in most of the things it does. The voice acting is bad, even by 2007 standards. The gameplay feels janky and difficult to understand. The potions system is esoteric, the skill system is just odd. Despite all of the oddities of this series(yes there is a sequel) I still find myself enjoying it.
The combat system is designed interestingly. You just spam left click to attack, and hope that you manage to kill the enemies before they kill you. You throw in the use of magic when you get a good chance to do so, otherwise just spam left click. You can choose to use dual weapons, which is more damage, or a shield to parry. Now you might be thinking that parry means that it’s not just left click, you need to time it. You’d be wrong. The parry has a percentage chance to trigger every time you get hit. Combat is just a numbers game. If your stats and healing items outweigh the enemies stats, you win. Bows do offer slightly more intelligent play, but honestly you’re not going to be able to out run enemies by backpedaling them, so you’re going to have to switch back to melee.
Weapons can be improved by finding gems to socket into them. They add a percentage of the weapons base damage as another damage type. An example is that green gems add poison damage. This is an easy way to add more damage to your character without having to go buy new weapons, or hope the game is on your side when you loot your enemies corpses.
Spells are activated with the number keys, same with all of your skills. Most skills have level and stat requirements to use. Skills can be divided between passive and active. Passives are always on. This includes things like parry and critical strike.
Active skills require you to ini. All spells fall under this category. Oh boy, are there a lot of spells. There are five different trees of magic. Earth, Air, Water, and Fire are the obvious ones. The more unique one is Necromancy, which lets you summon undead to fight for you in order to make combat easier. The variety between the different tiers of spells keeps the player somewhat engaged. From firebolt to Strength of the Gods, no matter what spell the player chooses it will help them on their journey. There are also stances which fall under this tree such as the defensive stance. The defensive halves outgoing damage in exchange for extra defense and parry chance.
Death in this game is unique. In most RPG’s when the player character dies you just reload a save. In Two Worlds however the player resurrects at the nearest Shrine of Mallach.
Alchemy is really interesting, because not only are there temporary effects, there are permanent effects. Most herbs, the first time you eat them, give you a permanent stat boost, and a lot of potions give you even more stats. The player can legitimately run around and seek out large amounts of herbs in order to power level their stats beyond what they would normally be. Is this efficient, no. Does this even really help you much, also no. Is it funny? Yes. The best way to conquer this god awful game is to just go for the funnies.
Take a guess at what the jump button is. Did you say space? Then you’re wrong. Jump is on E, for some odd reason. Hey you, have you ever thought that horses in games aren’t real to life. Have you ever thought that Red Dead Redemption made horses too easy to maneuver? Then good news: the horse in this game is obtuse and turns like a boat. Rather than moving forward when you hold w, instead it increases the speed. The horse does not turn in place and has to be moving if you want to turn either direction. Now you may be wondering, what if my horse gets stuck, and the only way to get out is to run? Then you better start praying that the jank(way to refer to issues present in every game engine) favors you that day. Otherwise, just hop off your horse until it despawns and call it back in. NEVER try to fight enemies on horseback. You’re just going to give yourself a headache trying to hit anything. If you can actually manage to kill anything while on horseback I would be thoroughly surprised.
The attentive reader may remember that I described the gameplay as a numbers game. This sucks. Now maybe some people like getting really high numbers in order to outdo the other enemies’ really high numbers, but I don’t. I prefer when intelligent gameplay can let the player outperform enemies who are far stronger than you. But this just will not happen in this game. If you try to fight someone stronger than you you’re just going to die. Sometimes this is really funny I will admit. For example, one time when I was playing, a bear appeared and I obviously tried to fight it. Then next thing I know my corpse is getting ragdolled and I’m at a shrine of Mallach. That was when I learned the hard way not to fight enemies whose name has red text. Because that means that they’re stronger than you, despite the fact it does not say that anywhere when you start to play the game.
Two Worlds is a confusing game. They certainly made a game, even two of them. But I would not call this the Oblivion killer in any sense of the word. I’m going to give it 10% percent poison damage and ⅗ wolf hearts.
