Completed Two Worlds, my thoughts on it..

Maylander

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First of all, I did not complete every single questline. My guess is around 50% of the sidequests + the main quest, however there was no need to complete anything else because by the end of the game I killed everything in one hit. Yes, even the final boss.

This brings me to an important subject in Two Worlds, and freeroaming RPGs in general. Balance issues. At the start of the game, things are relatively challenging. It evolves much like Gothic 3 does - around halfway through the game you'll start to get the upper hand. No more reloads, no more creatures that accidently kill you, no more challenge. I'd say level 30-35 is a rough estimate of when you become near invincible if you wish (if you struggle at this level I can give you a few hints on how to become redicilously powerful). This is a serious issue, as I started out doing mostly sidequests, ignoring the main quest. By the time I decided to get back to the main quest, around level 40 or so, there was no challenge left, hence not much fun either.

At any rate, balance issues aside, let's talk about the various aspects of the game.

The gameworld:
A very large world, slightly bigger than Oblivions. Also a lot more activity going on than in Oblivions world, so exploring is much more fun. You can actually find something worthwhile in caves for example, especially due to the stacking loot (stacking two items of the same kind makes it more powerful). There are four terrain types: Snow, Sand, Forest, Bamboo Forest.

The forest region is, as always, the largest. Lots of cities, towns, quests, caves, ruins all over the place. A lot of fun to be had here, takes many hours to explore and complete.

The desert is rather small, but actually quite fun because this is one of the few places you'll bump into creatures like dragons. Several nice quests here, but it won't take anyone more than a few hours to complete the entire desert region, as it doesn't contain a whole lot. I suggest going there before it's too late - I was already way past level 40 at the time, so it was a bit of an anticlimax when I butchered dragons with a few hits. Try to avoid this if you can, it's not all that fun more than once or twice.

The bamboo forest is possibly my favourite place, probably because there is actually a very large, samurai inspired city here (katanas, the pointy hats, you get the picture). Very nice place, good atmosphere, original setting. As with the desert it will only take a few hours to complete the quests in this region though, so that's a drawback.

The snowy region is absoluttely pointless. Completely without any meaning whatsoever. There is not a single quest, npc, cave, etc. Nothing. I spent several hours just exploring the region, and bumped into a huge amount of polar bears, white wolves and glacier orcs, but nothing else. It's nice to see snow and all that, but really, they should've just expanded the bamboo forest or the desert instead of this place.

All in all, the world has a solid atmosphere and lots of quests. A bit too much focus on the northern part of the world, but since the south is primarily occupied by orcs, it makes sense. It beats Oblivion by a long shot in terms of "feeling", but like others have posted it does not reach Gothic 1 or 2, maybe not even 3.

Gameplay:
Fairly straightforward, nothing unusual. All types of combat works out nicely. The dualwield lovers among you will most likely enjoy dualwielding more in Two Worlds than Gothic 3, as it both looks good and is effective (Gothic 3s dualwield lacked tweaking, and Oblivion has none). One problem with gameplay that I came across was adressing slots on the actionbar. What a pain. The default bar can only take various default skills, the other bars can take others as well, but half the time you end up throwing the item/spell on the ground and not into the bar. A very annoying system, which should've been better since it's been done right so many times.

As usual, magic starts out very weak but end up powerful. The other types of combat will get you through the game without too much trouble.

Mounts work out better than most reports indicate in my opinion, as long as you never leave the road with it. Use mounts (there are tons, you don't have a "private" horse) to get fast between locations, and then jump off when you head into the wilderness. I usually place mounts near the teleporters so I can use them to quickly get from point A to point B.

Questing:
Very well done all in all. Tons of quests all over the place, most with decent rewards (at least in terms of experience). Quite a few different types of quests, all the standard stuff: Kill this guy, delivery quests, investigate the ancient ruins, and so on. Nothing revolutionary, but it works, and it takes longer than usual before it becomes tedious.

Story
They promised an epic story. They did not deliver. As far as freeroaming RPGs go, it's rather good, but it's very far from the likes of Baldur's Gate and similar games. As usual, the ending seems rushed and abrupt, but I've come to expect that.

Factions:
This is probably where the developers missed the most with their hype. There are quite a few factions in the game, and you do gain reputation with them. Yes, it does lead to higher quests and higher rewards, but it doesn't "alter the world". There are two different cases where you can alter anything: The activation of necromancy (I never did this, but you should be able to) and the decision between the rebels and the local lord. The latter decision is almost insignificant. And a small correction to the developers that claim "you'll suddenly see other factions reacting negatively to working with their enemies" - wrong. You can get full reputation with pretty much everyone unless you, for some reason, kill the questgivers or make the choice between the two fighting factions too early. Also, you never actually "join" a faction, you just do quests for them. It's more Oblivion than Gothic 3 I'm afraid.

Music:
Varied. At times it's as good as Gothic 3s soundtrack, but sometimes it makes you go "huh?", especially when the game decides to play overdramatic combat music when it's peaceful, or play a very quiet, relaxing tune to the slaughtering of 20 orcs. The music itself is quite nice, but they need to fix when the game decides to play what.

Sound in general
Decent, could be better. Especially the voiceovers are of variying quality, but overall I can't complain. You get used to the odd accents you hear from time to time. Also they have a rather poor attempt at speaking a more medieval English, but this doesn't work out too well in most cases, it just sounds awkward. Combat sounds are good, altho there is a difference between sound and visuals if you cast spells at creatures far away (it goes BOOM, and then you see it hit afterwards).

Graphics:
Overall I'd say it's slightly beneath Gothic 3, but a little better than Oblivion. Please note that I'm playing on GeForce 8800GTX with a computer to match, so a tweaked Gothic 3 will look amazing, best graphics I've ever seen in an RPG. I'm not really talking about landscapes, Oblivion can hold a candle to Gothic 3 there, but Oblivions absoluttely disgusting facedesign actually distracts me at times. Faces are, in general, rather poor in Two Worlds as well, but it beats Oblivion by quite a bit. It's not ugly enough to distract me at least. A bit annoying that you can't set the view range, as certain things appear out of the blue in some cases.

My overall impression:
A better game than I expected. It can be a bit confusing at times, especially since the questlog is rather poor, so you have to keep track of the hundreds of quests you're on without any good guidance. Other than the balancing issue and the lack of deep NPCs, the game is solid enough. Quite a good experience, and I intend to complete it again shortly, this time I'll do different sidequests than before. There is simply no point in doing all sidequests in one game - you'll be more than powerful enough regardless.

Rating:
To me, Gothic 2 w/NotR is a 9/10, Oblivion is a 7, so I'd probably give this an 8. If this was a review, which it's not, so don't treat it as one.

If anyone has any questions regarding the game or my experiences with it, feel free to ask.
 
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Maylander -> I'm experiencing the same -> too fast too powerful (lvl. 26)

one question: I have sold the silver ring (1. quest) and now I can't see ghosts anymore :(

Can I buy/find one elsewhere ?
 
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The only unique piece of armor I ever encountered was an orc disguise suit you can get an armorsmith to make. All items I used were heavily upgraded, most rank 10-25 or so, that includes rings.

Also, ghosts only appear at night, in most cases not too far from a Taint Shot. If you remove them all it will be far inbetween every ghost, so they might still be around, just less of them.
 
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Wow. It's a bit disappointing you finished so fast - or am I just being unrealistic? If you finished so quickly, is this going to stay around or are people going to be finished with it in a week and move on? Overall, it doesn't sound as good as I had hoped but better than the disaster I feared.

Can you describe the combat, please? I still don't have a solid understanding of how it works.
 
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I finished it about as fast as I did Oblivion, roughly 30 hours. I'd guess around 50 if I had done everything there is to do in the game, which is slightly more than Oblivion, roughly the same as Gothic 3. Two Worlds has a higher replayvalue than Oblivion in my opinion though, so it should last most gamers quite some time.

Combat is rather simple. All walking is WASD, the mouse only controls camera direction and combat. Left click is attack, right click is a designated special attack, such as a spell.

Fighting is pretty straightforward really, it's a clickfest for melee combat (left click, left click, left click, run away and heal a bit, left click, etc), an fps shooter with ranged weapons (similar to Gothic 3, but with a few more special talents and skills to use) and the classic nuke them, run away, nuke them again style spellcasting. The good thing about Two Worlds is that combat looks exceptionally good. Especially the dualwield combo looks amazing. Also, like in Gothic (unlike Oblivion) you will bump into enemies that are a *lot* tougher than you, so it's fun to try and beat the best at an early stage (ogres, cyclopses and similar).

Usually, you fight single, tough monsters or packs of easy ones (2-8 or so, rarely more). The main difficulty with packs is that enemy archers do massive damage, and some of them can actually kill you with one shot if they're lucky. This gets a bit frustrating at times, but with a few reloads it's doable.

Another thing worth noting is that magic scales oddly. If you maximize the various spellcasting schools + have a high willpower, you'll see healing spells capable of healing 25.000 hitpoints.. despite a high level character only having 2000-3000. Luckily, damage spells don't scale that much.
 
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Very interesting. The good thing is, these issues seem to be fixed easily with a patch or two. Guess I should wait awhile.

Nice detailed review, Maylander!
 
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I finished it about as fast as I did Oblivion, roughly 30 hours. I'd guess around 50 if I had done everything there is to do in the game, which is slightly more than Oblivion, roughly the same as Gothic 3.

I'm a little confused by that statement because there's no way you could finish Oblivion in 50 hours if you were doing everything there is to do in the game.


I also don't understand the way item stacking works. For instance, if you have 4 longswords in your inventory instead of 1 then you'll magically do more damage with the longsword you have equipped?? That's the strangest thing I've ever heard, it just doesn't make any logical sense. Why would you start doing more damage with any type of weapon just because you have more of them in your backpack?
 
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Yes, "thank you" Maylander. Very userful review/critique. I'm still on the fence about this one, but you've shed the most light on it I've seen yet.
 
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I'm a little confused by that statement because there's no way you could finish Oblivion in 50 hours if you were doing everything there is to do in the game.

I would say it is possible to do every quest in 50 hours in the plain vanilla version. Although you would certainly be pushing it if you did every daedric shrine and that one where you have to collect all the flowers. You have to remember that you can actually run through most dungeons/oblivion gates in the game without even fighting the monsters except where you are specifically required to kill them all. I would say that it would probably be impossible on a first play through.

I am guessing if he managed to win it in 30 hours on a first play through he will probably be able to do it in significantly less a second time through.
 
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I also don't understand the way item stacking works. For instance, if you have 4 longswords in your inventory instead of 1 then you'll magically do more damage with the longsword you have equipped??

Almost...but not quite. What happens is that weapons and armors have a "type" number associated them (I like to think of this as tracing the item back to a certain blacksmith and/or lot number of materials). You can have several longswords, each with a different type number. However, when you find 2 longswords that happen to share the same type, then you can drag one on top of the other and their stats/abilities will combine to form a more powerful item. For instance if longsword one, type 8 does 30 damage and longsword 2, type 8 does 40 damage, then you can combine them to get a single longsword type 8 that does something like 55 damage (I'm not sure what the exact combination forumla is, but it is not a simple addition. )

That's the strangest thing I've ever heard, it just doesn't make any logical sense. Why would you start doing more damage with any type of weapon just because you have more of them in your backpack?

Yes it is strange, but that's the way it works. Its also one of main culprits for the incrediby out-of-whack game balance that Maylander describes. You can create INSANELY powerful items through stacking.


I am a level 24 archer and have a mega-stacked Longbow that just devastaes thing with one hit.

Some other points that Maylander missed:

1. You cannot sleep in the game. The NPCs all sleep at the proper times, though. You also cannot sit down at chairs stools though the NPCs can do this as well.

2. Outside of the major cities, there is no consequence for being caught stealing. If you are caught, then those around in the village will become temporarily hostile and try to kill you. When this happens you can either take the beating and die or just run away. Choosing to die is not really a big loss because you will just be resurrected at the nearest shrine with no loss to exp/skills/reputation. You can also run away from them and after a while they will give up chace and go back to being non-hostile towards you ( and forget all about the theft).

3. Back on the stealing topic. There seems to be a major bug regarding the awarness of thefts. It seems that no matter how high your "stealth" skill is, if you steal something from a locked chest in a town or village EVERYONE knows about this and goes hostile as described above. This has to be a bug because it really makes devoting points to thievery skills less useful.

4. You can jump on things but there is no climbing. Also, there is no diving so you only swim on the surface of the water. The water surfaces look great but alas there is only the surface to see. There is also no crouching or leaning.

5. There are no physics in the game unless you have one of those Agea Physics Boards.

6. Peformance of the game is very good on my modest (these days). I have a Dell XPS laptop with 2.13 GHz Pentium M, NVidia 6800 "Go" Ultra, and 2 GB ram. I run in 1024x768 will full details except for no AA and HDR almost turned off. In addition, loading/saving time are fast.

7. Game is rock-solid stable. I have had no crashes. You can even Alt+TAB out to windows and return with no ill-effects.

...all I can think of for now.
 
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This seems a little more upbeat than the comments on amazon.de. Maybe I should get it just for the exploration aspect, but I am gonna wait for a few more reviews. Thanks Maylander.
 
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I would say it is possible to do every quest in 50 hours in the plain vanilla version. Although you would certainly be pushing it if you did every daedric shrine and that one where you have to collect all the flowers. You have to remember that you can actually run through most dungeons/oblivion gates in the game without even fighting the monsters except where you are specifically required to kill them all. I would say that it would probably be impossible on a first play through.

I am guessing if he managed to win it in 30 hours on a first play through he will probably be able to do it in significantly less a second time through.

I admit I haven't played very far into Oblivion yet, but most people(including the developers) say it's slightly larger than Morrowind(vanilla). It took me nearly 200 hours to explore most of the map in Morrowind and I never even touched Tribunal or Bloodmoon.

It might be possible to complete the main quest in under 50 hours, but you didn't do every nook and cranny in anywhere near that time.
 
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I hope the developers patch the stacking and leveling issues:

stacking: limit it to 4 stacking times and 4 power upgrades (fire, ice, shock etc) at maximum

leveling: should be slowed -> double the experience points needed for each level
 
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Huh? Where did you get a copy of Two Worlds in North Carolina? I wasn't aware the English version was finished yet.

No comment on this one. Suffice to say that the English version is finished and available in certain European countries in the "Royal Edition" of the game that includes voice/text for ALL supported languages.
 
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Mmm..... what's that smell?

Aye captain, I be smelling pirates in the area.

.....or is that just bull**** I smell?
 
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Nice Review! The more opinions I read, the more it becomes apparent that Zuxxez and Reality Pump made many of the same lamentable design decisions that befell the developers of Gothic 3. And I'm not so much referring to the balancing issues. It's sad that these weren't addressed during testing, but they can, and likely will be fixed by a patch.

The more significant issue (imo) is that, as seems to be the fashion these days, the designers chose quantity over quality. Had they made Antaloor only half the size, but injected each town with life, populated by unique NPCs (rather than countless drones) with colourful stories and interwoven lives, and made the world truly reactive to the player's decisons, perhaps they would have achieved a few of the "revolutionary" concepts they flaunted in their PR campaign. Instead it appears we get 300+ largely fed-ex style quests, a game world that's bigger than Oblivion, an unprecedented number of randomly generated pieces of equipment, and a story that features finding the 5 missing pieces of an ancient artifact.
 
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Huh? Where did you get a copy of Two Worlds in North Carolina? I wasn't aware the English version was finished yet.
I have a date of late June for the US. Hopefully I can get it earlier for review ... I've had occasional luck that way.
 
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I'm going to try and cover everything in one post.

Regarding Oblivion:
I am a powergamer, I won't deny that. I pick up a quest, autotravel to the target, complete the quest. Repeat. Every quest in Oblivion is so short and straightforward it takes very little time to do it. A few minuttes per quest. Remember, Morrowind had no autotravel, compass or complete guide to every quest (the questlog in Oblivion tells you exactly what to do). Exploring and discovering takes time in ES3, but in ES4 there is no such element unless you enjoy finding pointless ruins all over. The only quests that actually took time were the main quest and daedric shrines, and maybe some of the guild quests. I'd say every guild + main quest would take me around 20 hours, another 10 on the daedric shrines, and then 20 to complete the jump-to-target sidequests, due to the high number and low difficulty of them all.

Balancing issue in Two Worlds:
The stacking items make looting more fun. Finding items that stack with your current items gives looting otherwise pointless caves and packs of bandits a new meaning. However, it is unbalanced, yes. I hardly ever replaced my weapon - I went from the original sword to dualwielding axes and finally to a katana at the end. The reason? I chose the weapons that were the easiest to stack to very high amounts, and then added elemental enchants (they stack as well). By the end of the game, my weapon did near 1000 basic damage and 3000 elemental damage. I agree that there should be a cap, but 4 might be a bit too small near the end - I had something like 70 enchants on my weapon, and even though that was overpowered, 4 would not nearly be enough. A bit higher number, 10 for stacks, 25 for enchants, or something like that.

My copy of the game:
It's not out in Norway either, but I know various people that I get gamecopies from on the day of release or even before at times. Germany is a nice place to have friends when games like Gothic and Two Worlds get released.

Another issue that's worth mentioning:
The main character is definetly inspired by Gothic. It's a human male character, with his own voice for talking (like in Gothic) and various amusing remarks. However, he's more annoying than the guy in Gothic, because he's.. stupid. You can max out all schools of magic, become the most powerful archmage in the world, and he'll still go on about not believing in old gods, legends, artifacts and so on. Very often there is a "yes" or "no" option in dialogues, but rarely anything else, so his foolish comments can't be avoided.

If there's anything else I've missed, feel free to ask. :)
 
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So, did the german release come as a multi-language release, or did you play the game in german?
 
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