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.
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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