Two Worlds

 My Rating: 7/10
Gamespot User Rating: 6.9/10

This game has some very mixed reviews, some people claiming it's one of the best RPGs ever, some people claiming it's complete and utter garbage. Well, both are true, it all depends on what you're looking for in a game.

Lets start with the bad points. The cutscenes (there aren't very many) aren't that great. The voice acting is complete garbage and includes the protagonist singing the most off key version of "it's raining, it's pouring the old man is snorting". Some of the models for the people have shoulders so broad that they look completely unnatural (this coming from a guy with broad shoulders). The main story line isn't that good at all, most twists and turns you see coming miles away. Nothing positive ever happens in this game, ever, even down to the protagonist's banter, he's always bitching about something. Almost no quests have a happy ending, or even the possibility of one (which, in some ways can also be a positive point.) and finally the name has absolutely no relevance to the game that I can figure out.

Now for a more detailed look at the strong points of the game, the reason this game is worth recommending.

***CAUTION, SPOILERS AHEAD!***
 If you are sick of quests always having a happy ending or enjoy other people's tourment you will love the side quests. Almost no quests have a happy ending, a good example being: I started a quest chain with a necromancer, the last quest you have to get an item for him. You go back, and a stranger asks you for the item, depending on your answer he either decides he wants to kill you or he tells you the Necromancer was imprisoned and you get no quest reward at all. Another example: You have to go to an outpost that was attacked to find someones brother and see if he's okay, the survivor you find is not his brother and you have to break the news that his brother is dead. One final example: Some people moved out of the starting town to found a new town, they haven't heard from them for a while so you go check it out, the entire town was slaughtered by snow orcs.

***SPOILER ZONE ENDS HERE***

The graphics are quite decent, nothing fancy, but the best thing I have to say about the graphics is that they work beautifully with Nvidia 3D, I'm not normally a 3D gamer, but I couldn't play Two Worlds while it wasn't in 3D it works that well. Render distance is awesome in this game, which might be one of the reasons it's so good in 3D.

 The world is very large, has quite a good population of enemies and has tons of side quests, caves and small villages as well as a few major cities. There are a few different environments in the game such as a glacial winter area, a wooded area, a jungle area and more, adding much needed diversity to the terrain. Two Worlds is an open world game, just like an Elder Scrolls game, you can go anywhere on the map you want if the terrain allows it except for this one city in the far north which is completely inaccessable ever. There is even a nice teleporter system to act as a fast travel and (after finishing a quest in the same quest chain that unlocks the teleporters) you get an item which is essentially a personal portable teleporter, you place it, teleport out, teleport back and pick it up again.

The character development system is decent but isn't for everyone. When you go up a level you get attribute points and skill points to put into any skills you have unlocked. Eventually it is possible to have them all unlocked at max points.

There is a great variety of spells, all of which have modifiers to make them more powerful. Spells, like items are stackable, so you can get a level 200 poison bolt if you kill a lot of necromancers. The problem with poison spells in this game is they do absolutely no initial damage and take forever to actually get your target down in health as it doesn't seem to stack other than how much total damage will be dealt.

Equipment upgrading is a little bit overpowered. To upgrade an item, all you need is one of the same item, drag one onto the other and you willl get a higher level of the same item with better stats. The downside to this is you end up having equipment that's very dated (and there is a good amount of equipment in the game) but what's available isn't as good unless it's upgraded multiple times. Adding elemental damage is also overpowered, you get these stones (which are fairly common) and drag them onto the item to give it the damage type of the stone, with no end to the amount of times you can add damage, the only restriction being that each item can only have one elemental damage type. Still, it gets to the point of where you're just killing everything no problem. 

The game also has alchemy, you can make potions or traps. Two Worlds also lets you create permanent effect potions to get permanent stat boosts making you even more overpowered.

I don't really know whether this is good or bad, it all depends on what you're looking for but enemies do not respawn or scale to level. Despite this fact there were more than enough enemies in the game world to keep me satisfied.

First time I tried to play this game I really couldn't get into it. Played it again and loved it, I've beaten the game twice. I would recommend it if you can get past the flaws.