Two Worlds 2 'Review'

TheMadGamer · September 27, 2011

Motoki said:
I think it's an awesome engine that in my experience ran really smoothly even on a somewhat older system before I did an upgrade. I also had to do almost no fussing, tweaking and whatnot.

I agree. The engine seems quite capable and ran just fine on my PC. It just seemed that some of the more interactive concepts were totally underutilized.

Had this not been the case, the joy of exploration and discovery could have been greatly enhanced.

I keep having this feeling that developing the MMO aspects of the game caused the single player gameworld to be underdevloped and less interesting.

TheMadGamer · September 27, 2011

crpgnut said:
I enjoy killing Varns.

Yes, I often found myself going out of my way just to kill a group of Varns I saw from the corner of my eye. I totally agree.

badmofo said:
Great review! I'm looking forward to giving this another go now that it's been patched, etc. Have they fixed the hero's little girl hands yet?

Thank you! I never noticed the little girl hands but thanks a lot... I probably will never be able to NOT notice it now...

crpgnut · September 27, 2011

The lack of a sort function in the inventory and alchemy sections is a huge oversight. It seems almost impossible to believe that this wasn't caught as part of the QA process.

Pessimeister · September 27, 2011

Bah! It's called reading and clicking. It's not that hard. It certainly never bothered me. But such are the conveniences of modern gaming, I guess.

My patience for inventory management was also steeled by the likes of the fantastic backpack system from the late Ultima's where a minor movement or misappropriated dragging of the mouse could push a gem, lockpick or other desperately needed object behind several others so that it seemingly became lost in the pixellated depths.

It was all part of the fun, for me.

TheMadGamer · September 27, 2011

Pessimeister said:
Bah! It's called reading and clicking. It's not that hard.

Clearly, you lack appreciation for the 'Seinfield Syndrome' I describe. It is all powerful.

Pessimeister said:
My patience for inventory management was also steeled by the likes of the fantastic backpack system from the late Ultima's where a minor movement or misappropriated dragging of the mouse could push a gem, lockpick or other desperately needed object behind several others so that it seemingly became lost in the pixellated depths. It was all part of the fun, for me.

Back in the day, when I finally managed to get a computer able to run U7 at something more than 1 fps, like you, I loved all the tinkering you needed to do… including inventory management.

But not so much anymore. These days I like a UI that let's me focus on playing and not lose momentum searching for some piece of information. Some may call me lazy. I call it Job_wife_kids.

crpgnut · September 27, 2011

I only suffer from two of those afflictions and I agree. The time to tinker with unoptimized UI's is long past for this nut.

Motoki · September 27, 2011

You guys know that you can save potion recipes, right? Like if you combine mushroom and deer meat it gives you the option when you make the potion to save it as a recipe. You can name it whatever you want so say you name it healing potion. There's a scroll in your inventory then called 'Healing potion' and when you click on it, it automatically puts deer meat and mushroom in the pot as long as you have those in your inventory.

It still requires some flipping, but you can also regularly sell reagents or potions that you don't need. Like I don't use magic at all so I brew a bunch of mana potions until I run out of those particular ingredients that make them, then I sell them all next time I am at a shop.

If you manage your inventory and keep it clean then there's not that much flipping you need to do but if you are a packrat then yes you will need to do a lot of flipping. Even when I do start accumulating stuff and being all packrat-like it really doesn't bother me that much. *shrug*

Ovenall · September 29, 2011

The potion system is one of the worst parts of the game, I agree. It's easy to use, but TOO easy. I can whip up healing potions instantly, and I have a crazy amount of them. The problem here isn't the "ease" of doing it, but it makes the game such that you can just keep slamming down potions. In fact, that's how I think they DESIGNED the game to be, which is unfortunate.

I prefer the older style a la Baldur's Gate, where slamming down multiple potions over and over wasn't an option. Made battles feel more strategic, and yes -- more realistic.

rune_74 · October 10, 2011

Hmmm, been playing this for a couple days.

Potion system is indeed to easy.

Dialogue and npc interaction is horrible...they need to hire a writer.

Combat has a fault that in the enemies won't be able to complete an attack if you interupt them(yes there is a mod to fix this)

Gameworld itself is cool, looks really nice..shame on the writing holding the game back, I am playing inspite of it, even oblivion did a better job in this regarde.

I like the weapon break downs and number of quests.

Entertaining game that could have been great.

Nerevarine · October 10, 2011

rune_74 said:
Entertaining game that could have been great.

This sentence sums up my experience with the game so far. It has a decent amount of positive elements and I'm definitely enjoying the game, but I can't help but feel like there is so much more that could have been done better. Some of the design decisions are quite baffling, such as having dungeons that don't really reward you with anything once you clear it (at least that's been my experience so far); this makes exploration somewhat trivial, save for the experience points that are gained. This is just one minor example of something that seems to have gone awry in the development of this game, and I can't help but wonder how much better 2W2 could have been if they had focused only on the single-player portion of the game rather than wasting time on a multiplayer component.

rune_74 · October 10, 2011

It really comes down to the writing to me....everything else I can take...the horrible UI,awkward controls....btw, who oked the deleting of save game files by hovering over the one you want to delete and hit back space? seriously? Sometimes you also accept quest things without even oking it just by talking to an NPC. I was going to write down some of the classic lines they use in conversations, but I haven't got to that...some are just brutal.

Motoki · October 10, 2011

I wonder how much of that is the actual writing though and how much is the acting? I've read comments from Germans who seem to like the dialog in their localisation.

rune_74 · October 10, 2011

I can sort of see that...but man when the character you are talking to shows no emotion on their face it is rather awkward, plus they are staring off over your characters shoulder, never straight at the character.

Like I said the game is fun, everything looks great...character models on humans are not it's strong point.

Motoki · October 11, 2011

rune_74 said:
I can sort of see that…but man when the character you are talking to shows no emotion on their face it is rather awkward, plus they are staring off over your characters shoulder, never straight at the character.

Like I said the game is fun, everything looks great…character models on humans are not it's strong point.

Well like I mentioned in the other thread, they fixed that in the expansion. There's a fixed camera angle now that focuses on the person speaking during conversations so you don't get that talking to the air effetc. The character models are more detailed too.

Voice acting is still hit or miss, but I feel like they genuinely are trying and are improving.

rune_74 · October 11, 2011

Motoki said:
Well like I mentioned in the other thread, they fixed that in the expansion. There's a fixed camera angle now that focuses on the person speaking during conversations so you don't get that talking to the air effetc. The character models are more detailed too.

Voice acting is still hit or miss, but I feel like they genuinely are trying and are improving.

I really hope they do, since everything esle seems to work well...they have an engine that works...now they need to beef up the other parts. This has the potential to be as good as the gothic series and elder scrolls series. However, they have to tighten up the presentation.

Nerevarine · October 11, 2011

I'm not sure where I remember reading this (probably here somewhere), but didn't the devs say they were "taking a break" from the Two Worlds series in order to work on something else? That's disappointing if true, as it would be nice to see this series get closer to reaching its potential before starting new projects.

crpgnut · October 11, 2011

Propheet sometimes lurks here, so he might have an answer to that, Nerevarine. I haven't read about a break, but that's not much to go by.

Nerevarine · October 11, 2011

I must have been imagining things...after looking around a bit, it seems that a 'Two Worlds 3' is expected to be out sometime in 2012. Seems a bit quick, but they are using the same technology, and 2W2 does feel somewhat like a "test-drive" for the new engine.

JDR13 · October 11, 2011

Nerevarine said:
it seems that a 'Two Worlds 3' is expected to be out sometime in 2012. Seems a bit quick, but they are using the same technology, and 2W2 does feel somewhat like a "test-drive" for the new engine.

That seems like an awfully short time to put out a sequel for an open world RPG of that size. Hopefully it doesn't suffer from Dragon Age 2 syndrome.

Nerevarine · October 11, 2011

JDR13 said:
That seems like an awfully short time to put out a sequel for an open world RPG of that size. Hopefully it doesn't suffer from Dragon Age 2 syndrome.

I agree, the quick turn-around is definitely cause for concern if it doesn't get pushed back to at least 2013. On the other hand, Two Worlds 2 does feel like an engine "test-drive," and perhaps it was used as a stopgap release while a meatier 2W3 gets developed using the same engine/technology; that would at least help to explain 2W2's frustratingly incomplete feel of the game world as well as certain gameplay elements being under-developed. This is probably a theory that is a bit too optimistic, but I just hope they avoid making another 2W2: As in, a mostly enjoyable game that isn't developed enough to live up to its potential and feels incomplete. Either way, I never thought I would even slightly care about the 2W series after the abysmal-in-every-way 2W1, so at least they've gotten this far

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