Codex Throwdown: Why Two Worlds Fucking Rocks

[jaylittle]

That's right. I just said it. "Two Worlds" fucking rocks. I saw this game on GoG for $10 the other day and after a lot of hemming and hawing (a bit more than was appropriate for such a small purchase in retrospect) I decided to buy it. One of the interesting things about the game is how controversial it was here on the Codex. Some people loved it and some people hated it. The feeling on the GoG reviews and forums seems to much the same.

Then I read some of the reviews out there. Everybody called it an Oblivion clone. Well I hated that fucking game (though I did finish it). So I certainly don't want to play a clone of it. Eventually despite my misgivings I said, "Its just ten bucks, fuck it".

Long story short: 8 hours of recorded playtime later and dozens of deaths and I can't wait to get back into it. This game is just fun. Yeah the voice acting isn't going to win any awards but I would think that on a site in which the Wizardry, Gold Box and earlier Ultimas are praised, people could learn to let a little cheap voice acting go. If you don't like it, turn it the hell off. So far I've found the game to be relatively engaging. Combat is fun and the magic is somewhat interesting. It seems clear that weapon/armor stacking is generally the best way of keeping your items up and that AOE spells with enough stacking will be hideously overpowered, but that is fine by me. After all what good is a role playing game in which you can't feel like a demi-god by the time you are done? Not being able to do that was after all one of the things I hated most about Oblivion.

With that having been said, I have a few additional thoughts on the game:

1) Fighting from horseback is a nice change of pace from Oblivion. I can't imagine why that feature was not implemented by Bethesda in Oblivion.

2) This game is huge. It looks like there are several regions and I've barely scratched the surface of the first one after 8 hours and ~24 levels.

3) Every time I think I have become the ultimate bad ass, I run into some monster that makes me think otherwise. My current arch nemesis seem to be the cyclops. I can kill them with enough hits (2k normally, 10k+ on crits) but I have to be careful as one blow from them will destroy me. It's nice to see a game that rises to the challenge without using bullshit like level scaling.

4) Controlling the horse sometimes works extremely well and other times.... not so much. It can be very painful. But I'm starting to get the hang of it I think.

5) Load times on this game rock. Everything loads nearly instantaneously. This is a wonderful change of pace from games like Oblivion or Gothic 3.

6) Loot Loot Loot. In the style of Torchlight and Diablo, this game has loot out the ass. I'm always upgrading or changing up when it comes to my equipment.

7) Stability. In the 8 hours of recorded playtime, I've had just one crash to the desktop. And given that at the start I was getting killed left and right, that probably amounts to about 10 to 12 hours of actual playtime. So given the metric set by modern games, Two Worlds is refreshingly stable. Combine this with the autosave system (by default saves every 5 minutes), you probably aren't going to lose a whole lot if it does happen to crash in any event.

8) Monsters. So far I've been pretty impressed with the variety of monsters. There always seems to be something new wandering about out there.

9) Villages. With the exception that the game has VERY FEW women and from what I've seen NO CHILDREN in it, the world and the cities really do feel alive. The people are walking around and doing this and that. It kind of reminds me of when I first played Gothic and I was so impressed that each person had their routine rather than in it's contemporary Morrowind with at the time just had everybody pretty much doing the same thing all the time.

10) Fun. The game is just fun as shit. Beyond what I've outlined above, I really have no idea why. Whatever the reason is, the only thing I want of it is more more more.

Anyway - let's have a throwdown. Everybody who talked shit about this game, drag your lazy cunt asses in here and defend yourselves. Because as far as I can tell, you are all 100% completely full of shit.

 

[Nickless]

1) Fighting from horseback is a nice change of pace from Oblivion. I can't imagine why that feature was not implemented by Bethesda in Oblivion.

Being a former hyped Bethesda forum lurker in the lead up to Oblivion, I recall them saying that it was due to the expense of having to program new animations with their amazing graphics system.

As for this game, what's the story like?

 

[jaylittle]

Well so far the story is pretty cliche. Basically the Orcs once worshiped an evil God. This God was killed an entombed years and years ago in a secret location that only a few people knew how to access. And apparently you and your sister are descendants of those people. Your sister has been kidnapped and the people holding her want your assistance in helping free their God. Of course there is some sort of curse that binds the ability to do this solely to your blood line.

If we were playing RPG Mad Libs, you could probably turn that into storyline of the original Gothic without too much effort Still the game is reasonably engaging and there are a variety of side quests. One of the side quests involved a Necromancer who asked me to fetch a hangman's rope from "Gallows Hill". Once you obtain the rope, he gives you a doll and asks you to visit two smugglers in a cave. Upon entering the cave, the smugglers immediately died. When you return to the Necromancer he tells you that he was testing a way to kill anybody just by getting in their vicinity and all you need is a used hangman's rope and a personal possession of the person. So I decided to let him live. At which point he tells me that his next target is the current Lord of the realm. He asks me to retrieve another hangman rope. When I returned, guards were stationed at his home and they stopped me and asked, "Have you found the rope?"

Sensing something was up, I played dumb. Come to find out that the Necromancer was caught and hung for treason (how ironic). The only thing the guards knew about his accomplice is that he had been sent to fetch another hangman's rope.

So there are some decent story lines. There are a number of factions in the game as well and you maintain a reputation with each one. There seem to be a lot of faction specific issues and quests you can work with as well.

 

[Zeus]

Two Worlds is cool. I haven't played all that much of it myself, but from the looks of things, it's a fun game. I showed it to a friend of mine and my brother, and they both wound up playing it for weeks. And that friend of mine doesn't play many CRPGs. (He hadn't even played Oblivion, so he wasn't playing it because it was an "Oblivion clone.") He just got hooked on all the crazy stuff you can do, like lead an army of summoned creatures into a town and watch the ensuing slaughter.

I compare Two Worlds to a really fun Italian swords and sandals movie from the 80s. Sure, it's cheesy, the (dubbed) voice acting is horrible, and the production values can't match titles released years before. That being said, it's a heck of a lot of fun and anyone who can be entertained without needing a huge budget and a lot of polish should check it out.

 

[Hory]

Anyway - let's have a throwdown. Everybody who talked shit about this game, drag your lazy cunt asses in here and defend yourselves. Because as far as I can tell, you are all 100% completely full of shit.

What's there to defend? If kiting, whacking and looting ad infinitum is your idea of fun, go ahead. Let me know when you're man enough to face humans in action games and maybe we'll have a throwdown then.

 

[jaylittle]

That's pretty weak Hory. I mean I expected something with at least a bit more of substance than that. I'm guessing your problem here is that fun is something that you just are not looking for in a game, right? Of course to each his own. Far be it from me to intrude upon your misery

 

[Nickless]

I might give this a look someday, when I get a PC made in the current century.

 

[Micmu]

Does someone need a copy?? Box, map and everything intact.

I still got mine ... one of the worst games I ever actually bought thanks to some stupid impulse (or something). Only Dungeon Lords was my (significantly) worse purchase, I think.

 

[Donkey Balls]

Modded Oblivion or fan-patched Gothic 3 is much more enjoyable than this POS.

 

[Micmu]

My heart breaks saying this, but you are correct......

 

[King Crispy]

I enjoyed Two Worlds for about the first week that I played it. It's one of those games that seems too good to be true when you first fire it up, create your character and set off in the world.

It didn't hold up for me, however, because of its "look and feel", for lack of a better term. I don't like the slow-motion jogging, I don't like the awkward combat system, and, to be honest, I didn't like the extreme difficulty I faced. I know that sounds a bit pathetic, but just like with Gothic or Risen, one false move in these kinds of games can easily result in a real beatdown. You almost have to enter certain areas using trial-and-error to figure out the one path that doesn't aggro everything in sight.

I does quite a few things well, though, and I really should consider giving it another go despite my personal gripes. I'll probably wait until Two Worlds II (awkward title, much?), instead.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Modded Oblivion or fan-patched Gothic 3 is much more enjoyable than this POS.

 

[jaylittle]

Modded Oblivion or fan-patched Gothic 3 is much more enjoyable than this POS.

In true Codex style I guess there is only one response for that:

Fag.

 

[Sarvis]

I actually wrote up a review for another forum a few years ago. My overall opinion was that it could be fun, but had a lot of flaws that kept it from actually being good. Here's the long version:



Two Worlds seems to try emulating Oblivion or Morrowind, with a healthy dose of Diablo thrown in for good measure. It succeeds on some levels, misses the mark on others, and utterly fails a couple for good measure.

It does feature a wide open world, plenty of side quests, places to explore and a handy horse to help you get around and store your hordes of Diablo style loot. You'll probably spend most of the game on side quests; both due to a somewhat short main plot and the need for experience necessitated by no level scaling. That said, there actually seem to be more side quests than in Oblivion and they were more interesting in general; with missions such as tracking down AWOL soldiers being betrayed by their C/O or being tasked with finding documentation of crimes a certain group is committing. Through these quests there are several opportunities to choose sides, betray people and make profit.

It features a somewhat novel equipment system, which lets you combine like items to make them more powerful and share their enchantments. Weapons come with their own enchantments, but you can also add specific damage types (e.g. fire, spirit) to the weapon with special stones you find or create through alchemy.

You'll almost never purposely create enchantment stones with alchemy though, as there are far better things you can do with. You can make your standard alchemy potions, but that isn't the interesting part. You'll find minerals, plants and animal parts throughout the game which can actually be used to create permanent potions. So you can take that shiny diamond you find, and boil it down into a +10% Lightning damage stone... or you can wait until you find 9 of them and boil them down into +500 permanent protection from fire, lightning, and cold.

That pretty much covers the good, so here's the not-quite-so-good.

While quests give you options and you can betray the various factions, doing so creates no negative consequences for you. Your reputation with the faction goes to 0, which is essentially unknown, when they should be quite angry with you. The quest rewards are also pretty underwhelming. Everyone just gives you money which, as in most of these games, becomes nearly worthless around the halfway mark. You do get experience and sometimes free skill points though, which is always nice.

The large, wide open world also suffers from a bit of blandness. The environments look nice enough, but your hundredth encounter with bandits will make you wonder how any trade succeeds. The dozens of caves are all so similar, and lacking in interesting prizes, that you start to wonder why you bother. There are even locations on the map with absolutely nothing in them of interest. You might find a burned out cabin, but instead of this being the start of some side quest or giving interesting story information it's just a spot on the map. It feels like they added these to make more locations for the "Visited All Locations" achievement. There are two really nice caves I found, which make the cut by being filled with powerful enemies which drop permanent effect alchemy ingredients.

Alchemy has problems as well, actually. Yes, it is great fun making permanent effect potions to trick yourself out, however there is a slight lack of balance in the items you find. You will fight hordes of ghouls throughout the game, which all drop +1 willpower items. Late in the game you will fight swarms of enemies that drop +10 vitality items. You will NOT fight hordes of enemies which drop strength or dexterity items. To be fair you really need that vitality, as many enemies towards the end could kill you in two hits otherwise and… well, time for the combat system paragraph.

The combat system is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a good combat system. It’s actually very Diablo-esque in that you just keep clicking the attack button. There are combos, but they consist of simply clicking attack repeatedly until the combo ends. Effectively combos are there to ensure you take a break from attacking so the enemies get a chance, as after the fourth or fifth swing most combos end. Blocking is passive and doesn’t happen while you are attacking, meaning it is essentially useless because you always want to be attacking. There is an active dodge, which you’ll need against those big two-shot enemies I mentioned earlier, but again combat basically devolves into tap attack 5 times then dodge, repeat. Worse yet, those bigger enemies have a ton of hit points so you’ll be hacking at them for quite a while in that lovely repeating pattern.

The skill system should have livened up combat a bit, but it is essentially broken. Several skills are completely useless, such as swim and parry. Swim because there is no point in the game at which you need to, and parry because you don’t block while attacking. Most of the “Active” skills are just useless most of the time, as there is some limiting condition on every one that governs its usage. Dirty Trick, for example, is only useful against enemies without shields while Stunning Blow, which has the same basic effects, can only be used against un-helmeted enemies while you are using a blunt weapon. You will want one of those skills, as they help you bring down the biggest, toughest enemies faster but for general usage… just keep tapping attack.

Again you face similar blandness problems with their equipment system. The premise of combining equipment into new and more powerful forms is interesting, but in practice it just means you use the same equipment for long periods of time while getting marginal upgrades to it. Eventually you start finding the next level of items, and start the process over again. Worse yet there are more balance issues here. Swords are useless until you near the end of the game, because they are simply weaker than other weapon choices. Spears are the absolute best in the beginning because they have good damage and a wide reach so you can take down groups of enemies. Axes are better towards the middle because mid-level axes have the best damage. (One of the reasons dirty trick is probably the best Active Skill is that it doesn’t depend on what weapon you are using.)

Armor actually has even worse problems. After a certain point all the armor you find starts interfering with your skills. Every suit of platemail prevents you from using archery, dual wielding or swimming. Most boots prevent swimming and most gauntlets prevent archery and dual wielding. So if you invested in those skills they become useless for the last 1/3 of the game. Unless you are willing to sacrifice a few thousand points of armor, or are lucky enough to find a robe with a stronger protection enchantment.

Then there’s the inventory screen. The game was written to be played on the PC, and that really, really shows here. Holding the analog stick moves between each item, with a slight pause. However since items are different sizes, you might not go to the item you intended and having to try navigating back down, then back over. Worse yet you have a limited inventory space, by both weight and volume. So while 4 flowers are weightless, they take up as much room as a suit of platemail. Your horse has unlimited volume, but by the end of the game I could hold more weight than he could.

Regardless of those issues, your horse is the primary storage for the game. There are several horses you can ride, including undead horses and some kind of lizard horse the orcs use. The problem is your horse will die at the slightest provocation. Flea bite? Dead. Strong breeze? Dead. Ok, it isn’t quite that bad, however there is a long delay while dismounting and if an enemy attacks you at that time your horse will die. As I progressed through the game this caused more trouble than actual combat. You can fight from the horse, and get a damage bonus based on your horse riding skill, but this is pretty clumsy due to the mediocre horse controls. The horse doesn’t take damage from melee attacks if you ride it, but he will die to arrows which also makes it unsafe to try fighting on a horse.

In the end I definitely enjoyed the game, but it became a matter of working around its flaws. Running through the quests, exploring and the Diablo-style loot collection kept me hooked but all the issues I mentioned just detracted from it too much for me to really think of it as a good game.

 

[jaylittle]

It didn't hold up for me, however, because of its "look and feel", for lack of a better term. I don't like the slow-motion jogging, I don't like the awkward combat system, and, to be honest, I didn't like the extreme difficulty I faced. I know that sounds a bit pathetic, but just like with Gothic or Risen, one false move in these kinds of games can easily result in a real beatdown. You almost have to enter certain areas using trial-and-error to figure out the one path that doesn't aggro everything in sight.

True. Though it's not as difficult as Gothic II. My last play through of NOTR was derailed by one of those big field bugs killing low level me for the thousandth time in a row, so I can identify. And yeah there are a lot of beatdown situations in the game. What I've found is that in the event things get nasty, pull out a nasty AOE spell, stand next to a Magic Source and fire away nonstop. Fair is fair. I myself found that the game got a lot more fair once I got a horse. Fighting enemies from horseback offers additional protection and boosts your damage. Once I got the horse (by performing a rather simple low level quest for the Brotherhood), I was able to go places and kill things that would've been impossible on foot.

The fact is that in the RPG genre, most games present an unreasonable level of difficulty especially at low levels. Take any first level Gold Box game as an example. Take Gothic 2 NOTR. Hell even Baldur's Gate has some real nasty encounters at lower levels. Let's not even talk about BG2: ToB at the higher levels. If you don't begin every battle with a Timestop, you can just kiss it goodbye. And god forbid somebody mention the steaming pile of shit that is Gothic 3 with a combat system so broken that dozens of patches and work by the community still hasn't really fixed it.

At least in this game, the wolves and boars stop presenting a real fatal threat at some point. Add to that the fact that when it comes to real threats, a combination of stats and strategy seems to work best. For instance fighting a Grizzly face to face is suicide. Fighting a grizzly by take a few swipes and jumping back as he prepares to strike is a good tactic though.

Of course a lot of this depends upon what type of RPG player you are. Its like what somebody was saying in another thread about "player skill vs. character skill". In traditional RPGs such as Wizardry, Bards Tale, Goldbox or even JRPGs like Final Fantasy one tells the character to do something and they do it. Whereas in games like Two Worlds it's just not that simple any more. A lot of the angst I see here is in regards to people struggling with that kind of change. Telling my character to attack the enemy isn't enough. One has to be actively involved with the action in an effort to insure that it will be successful.

I does quite a few things well, though, and I really should consider giving it another go despite my personal gripes. I'll probably wait until Two Worlds II (awkward title, much?), instead.

++

For ten bucks, can you really go wrong? Personally I'm looking forward to the sequel due to be released in September. I guess we will see whether or not I still feel the same way in a couple weeks though, eh?

 

[jaylittle]

I actually wrote up a review for another forum a few years ago. My overall opinion was that it could be fun, but had a lot of flaws that kept it from actually being good. Here's the long version:

Have you played a fully patched version? My impression based on my reading prior to purchasing is that a lot of the issues with things like the horse were solved after the fact via patches. The horse can still be difficult to control but fighting from the horse proved to be very very advantageous.

What you say about the one hit kills is interesting though. I was kind of hoping to get to the point where a Grizzly and Cyclops couldn't lay me out with a single shot...

 

[crufty]

a lot of these negatives don't seem so bad

 

[Donkey Balls]

Seriously, man, it's like Oblivion, but with shitty production values and no mods, why would you want to waste your time on it, geez.

 

[jaylittle]

I'll take that with a grain of salt seeing that it is coming from a guy with a "Mass Effect" avatar. Lol.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Seriously, man, it's like Oblivion, but with shitty production values and no mods, why would you want to waste your time on it, geez.

because it has tons and tons of shitty items, diablo 2 style.
something about having loot thrown at you around every corner makes people turn of their brains.

 

[madbringer]

Jaylittle, i'm going to take you up on your word and borrow this game from my mate. I've been looking for a sandboxy game to fuck around with, might as well go with this, especially since the system reqs don't look excessive (my rig is shit).

I'm particularly enticed by the prospect of playing an Oblivionesque game WITHOUT level scaling. That alone will probably make the experience several hundred times more satisfying.

 

[Mortmal]

Lets put things into context, you got it for 10$ on gog long after its release and quite a few hefty patches, i got it for 50$ at release day it was a technical mess.You had little to no expectation , i was expecting something better than oblivion wich wasnt that high an expectation either.
I can understand you enjoy this if you are starved and need a new game to play, every girl looks pretty when you are out of jail, but i need more than a wack a mole . The loot system made you invulnerable almost immediately just combine armors and weapons junk and voila you become a god! too lazy to do it ?t cast one wall of fire, a pure clickfest with less diversity than diablo.
You arent creating any character unlike oblivion , you are forced to play one with a cheesy background, you never have to make any choices . All i remember of the combats was wandering aimlessly by feet , cause the horse was stopping everywhere, one shooting everything, dragon included.
Poorly animated models, terrible voice acting , cliche , boring story, i dont remember anything positive about the game.Two worlds manage to sum up everything i hate about video games today, a 3D engine with bloom,, action and nothing else: zero depth.

 

[Volourn]

This game is fuckin' awesome. Fuck all the fuckin' haters.

 

[Haba]

I wouldn't call it "awesome" but it was enjoyable (something that Oblivion wasn't). Plenty of flaws, but the small details in the world and it's quests kinda made up for them. I actually liked exploring in Two Worlds, for some odd reason.

 

[nomask7]

Seriously, man, it's like Oblivion, but with shitty production values and no mods, why would you want to waste your time on it, geez.

because it has tons and tons of shitty items, diablo 2 style.
something about having loot thrown at you around every corner makes people turn of their brains.

This is a CRPG forum, and so doesn't really have much to do with brains or with people with brains.

So you enjoy playing silly story games more than reading Virgil or Nabokov. Are you dumb or what?