Just finished the game.
A very mixed bag it is.
Note: for some reason I got a bit carried away with boring, badly sorted and probably typo-infested list here, better jump to the concluding paragraph at the end
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PROS:
The engine.
On a medium rig, settings on max, I had zero crashes, no slowdowns, loading times 1-2s long. Physics stuff worked unusually well. Really, this one´s a keeper.
Diverse character development.
There´s just a lot to play with when it comes to utilizing player´s character.
Skills are varied and mostly useful and there isn´t too many of skill points available, thus player is forced to specialize to some extent.
Crafting and alchemy have enough depth to make utilizing collected loot interesting, spellmaking is a category on its own, rewarding experimentation and offering a good variety of spells. I´d prefer not to be able to perform alchemy and crafting everywhere, but given how these systems work, it´s probably better the way it is. Also, unless I´m mistaken, alchemy lacks possibility to make permanent stat boost potions from some rarer ingredients which is a pity as it would make exploration/looting more rewarding.
Ambient life.
For once, cities are actually full of people (sometimes maybe even too full, though), wilderness has good amount of non-hostile animals like birds, rats, fireflies, fish and I like that grass reacts to player running through it. Also, some enemies like groms and varns have their routines like sitting at the fireplace, patrolling or even fishing. People sleep during nightime, as do some hostiles.
Player´s movement.
Not too slow, ability to sprint, speed dependent on whether going uphill or downhill.
Music.
Nothing truly memorable, but well serving as an atmosphere enhancement, and nothing embarrassingly epic/heroic.
GUI.
The main GUI showing minimap, health, enemy health etc. is non-intrusive and well-arranged.
Bugs.
There were not many in my game. Besides enemies being sometimes largely unresponsive (rhinos especially) and one bugged out side quest, it´s been a smooth ride.
SOMEWHERE BETWEENS:
Sound effects.
I´d prefer a few more of the ambient ones to be in, combat sounds lack a bit of punch as do monster ones, some interface sounds are quite intrusive.
Minigame-y stuff.
There´s quite a variety of it and variety is, eh, good.
I think horse riding works well for races, but for exploration it´s kinda hassle-y.
On its own, sailing is a well implemented nifty and rather atmospheric addition.
Lockpicking is engaging enough, but due to leveled locks and the amount of them, it gets old after a while, max lockpicking skill isn´t necessary at all, bashing works well, but it seems unlocking by a spell can destroy chest´s content too and that isn´t cool.
Dice are boring and serve no purpose other than allowing save/reload exploits.
Playing instrument á la guitar hero … well, why not I guess, playing the drum was quite a fun way to earn a shitload of cash.
Responsiveness of townsfolk.
Guards react to unsheathed weapon, people notice trying to break-in house or loot their chest. I kinda like that people react when player trips over them, but the fact it can make guards go hostile is quite silly and it almost makes running through towns a minigame. People don´t react to taking items which are not in chests.
Stealth.
It´s good it´s there and there are few places where it comes in handy, but overall its usability is rather limited. Interior design doesn´t support sneaking much, it´s almost always easier to just run, pick pocketing and sneak kills don´t work if characters perform some animation and points in sneaking didn´t seem to make a difference when trying to loot chests unnoticed. Though I haven´t used them much, traps and oculi seemed like nice additions. Variety is there, that´s for sure.
Visuals.
This would easily belong to pros as the game looks mostly really great, at least in exteriors, but the terrible implementation of barely customizable screen
effects brings it down. With HDR on, the blur is excessive, with HDR off the game is too bright, lack of AA makes grass headache inducing etc. I was able tweak it via console to a bearable state, but still had to tweak brightness quite often.
Definitely needs to be patched.
Animations are quite sloppy, but not too distracting.
Voice acting.
Mostly very mediocre, but as with the animations, nothing too distracting.
Main hero is a second grade crossover between JC Denton and Geralt probably supposed to sound cool, but to me he sounds just unremarkable.
AI and enemy variety.
Well, it´s an hack´n´slash-y action game, so nothing fancy here, but at least enemy behavior generally isn´t completely stupid, some enemies have distinct combat patterns and defense stances and pulling tactic mostly doesn´t work on packs.
The amount of enemy types is good, but the game is somewhat lacking in variety of attacks they can perform. I´d prefer more status inducing effects and more importantly, there are no enemies who utilize game´s spellcasting system properly.
Variety of enemy resistances is a plus.
Challenge.
I´ve played on hard and though not steadily, it was maintained till the end, but not without verisimilitude issues. At the first main island I could easily stumble upon an enemy which would kick my ass in one hit, which was great. Later, I was able to one hit kill almost everything there which made me worried about next chapters, but for the second chapter the game upped enemy strength significantly enough so that my ass could still be kicked from time to time.
That was the case for last two chapters as well. In a lot of cases it didn´t make much sense, but gameplay-wise this plateau system worked quite well and forced me to pay a bit more attention to resources.
ALMOST CONS:
UI.
Inventory icons are too big, items quite illogically organized, choosing upgrade stones in crafting menu can take ages if player has a lot of them, there seem to be no way to stack items in shopping screen and unless I´ve missed something, looting enemies is always automatic, unless player is about to cross the carry limit. For such a complex system, I think spellmaking interface was handled well.
Main quest.
It´s serviceable, there are some interesting moments, but overall it feels disjointed, writing is mediocre at best and there´s very little in terms of player´s choices.
Side quests.
Well, there´s quite a lot of them and some have rather interesting or funny stories attached to them. However, most of them boil down to the mundane fed/ex/eliminate process, rarely offer any kind of choice other than refusing and what´s worse, (and this ties to exploration I´ll mention later) a lot of them are utilized in a very non open ended manner, aka areas tied to them are closed/empty till player accepts the quest.
Loot.
Unless it´s quest related, loot is always non-unique and leveled and while it may not seem so at first, there isn´t much variety of it either. It´s still useful for crafting and supports ranger/warrior/spellslinger stereotypes quite well, but I didn´t find this aspect much exciting after some time.
The fact that usage is level restricted doesn´t help here either.
Humor.
Various (pop) culture references fell largely flat on me and most felt like a trying-too-hard stuff.
World design.
Ok, those screen effect aside, the game looks great. What I think is quite close to suckage is the world´s topology. Tutorial island is great in this aspect, designed in a fine Gothic tradition. Then it goes quite a downhill however.
A lot of wilderness is very corridorized by unclimbable mountains, which makes it feel artificially constructed and non open ended, the only really open ended area is eastern side of savannah island, but while it fares good on realism front, it´s mostly flat with only few landmarks of interest.
Towns are lively and visually well conceived, but very unmemorable design-wise, though one town offers some roof action.
Weather.
After the beginning in the tutorial, the game seemed promising in this regard, but unfortunately there are no weather changes in rest of the game, besides some areas being darker, which rids the game of some atmosphere points.
Background lore.
There are some solid in-game writings, but still not enough and there´s very little additional information to be gained from npcs, making the world feel shallow.
Lack of direct control over pc in dialogue/quests.
Main hero mostly speaks autonomously, choices are mostly truncated to accept/decline quest, there´s very little of non-quest related dialogue and quest themselves are rarely solvable in more than one way. Not all quests are choice free, but there´s nothing intricate, maybe besides quests surrounding getting a pass in the first non-tutorial area, and there´s very little of branching and mutually exclusive content.
Instant potion effects.
Takes a bit of excitement out of combat.
No ability to sleep.
No diving.
CONS:
Dungeon design.
Mostly linear corridors, almost zero puzzles, just enemies and few chests, rarely any backstory. Dungeon spellunking simply wasn´t fun for me in this game.
Game length.
Ok, now for a more controversial stuff.
I´ve explored pretty much everything there is and finished almost all of available quests (count was 180, including the tedious 10 labyrinths) and clocked at 40 hours. Since game doesn´t count time in inventory and maybe in minigames too, my conclusion is, it takes 50 hours max to suck exploration/quests dry. Not bad for a game with tighter structure and more elaborate content á la Gothic, but very poor for a kind of game I was expecting Two Worlds 2 to be.
This wouldn´t be bad per se, but given what I´ve read in previews/interviews I feel quite justified in expecting the game to be somewhat close to Oblivion in the amount of content and explorable landmass, just with better game mechanics and less filler dungeons.
For example, I remember a dev claiming their tester being 112 hours in and having only 70% explored, that player can explore all of the landmass freely, etc.
This ties to the other aspect I perceive as a con, which is
Exploration.
Though my expectations based on pre-release info make this probably stronger con than it is on its own, I still think the game fails here nevertheless.
First, player can explore the gameworld only in chunks as the rest is closed till one progresses through the main story. Well, I can live with this.
Second, there´s the corridorization I´ve mentioned earlier, but, well, still not too bad per se.
Third, the game strongly relies on quest markers without offering any additional directions. In a game like New Vegas, where multiple quest solutions are available and there´s a good amount of interesting stuff to be discovered, it´s not as worrisome, in Two Worlds 2 however, it just hampers exploration even further.
Fourth, and that´s where we´re getting to the bad stuff, as I´ve mentioned earlier already, the game locks almost all of areas tied to side quests. Meaning, if player explores on his own, he constantly hits locked dungeons/houses/chests and areas yet to be filled with something. This way the game pretty much discourages the exploration.
Fifth, from the non quest-tied not-locked content which is there to be found, a veeery little of it is interesting. Just few linear dungeons filled with generic mobs and if you´re lucky with few chests containing leveled non-unique loot. Plus few hostile camps. And there´s literally nothing to be discovered via sailing.
For a supposedly free roaming game, this was a major disappointment.
All in all, the game sports great engine, engaging gameplay mechanics, solid visuals and atmosphere, but is mediocre story-wise, repetitive quest-wise and for a supposedly freeroamy adventure, it´s actually very non open ended and exploration isn´t rewarding.
Thanks to its good points I had quite a bit of fun playing through it and don´t regret buying it, but all these mostly very solid mechanics simply deserved to be accompanied with better content and that´s where the devs really need to up their game if I´m to be interested in the franchise further.