Two Worlds II - Preview @ BrutalGamer

BrutalGamer posts a hands-on preview and some screenshots from Topware Interactive's upcoming sequel, Two Worlds II, having played a little of both the PC and XBox360 versions. It's a very positive article all told. Here's a snip on combat:

Over the whole preview event both played and shown, easily the most notable (and honestly, best) feature about Two Worlds II was the improvements – seemingly completely remade-[to the] combat system within the game. Instead of pretty much 1 animation of a sword swing being repeated hundreds of times, it has a whole new combat system where attacks are turned into combinations and will vary depending on the weapon you’re using, guaranteed to be something different each time. And with the incredibly nifty armour set shortcut keys and the massive amount of variation which is available with the 200 weapons and god-only knows how many armour pieces, there is another variation for anyone who is into the whole ‘decking your character out’.

More information.

Nice.
Can't wait for some more Previews to come in soon

Judging from those screenshots, the graphics need some more polish, especially at antialiasing and world lightning.

That's a very positive preview. He is nearly gushing.

I assume he's exaggerating the game's merits, but it does give me hope.

Originally Posted by Anderson
That's a very positive preview. He is nearly gushing.

I assume he's exaggerating the game's merits, but it does give me hope.

Whenever I read a crop of excessively positive previews, two words come to mind : Dungeon Lords. There was *one* preview that questioned anything about the game. One.

Originally Posted by txa1265
Whenever I read a crop of excessively positive previews, two words come to mind : Dungeon Lords. There was *one* preview that questioned anything about the game. One.

LoL. Very true. I fell for the the Dungeon Lords hype. Still, I kinda liked it though.

Originally Posted by txa1265
Whenever I read a crop of excessively positive previews, two words come to mind : Dungeon Lords. There was *one* preview that questioned anything about the game. One.

Odd. Previews usually give a game the benefit of the doubt, but still, that's a lot of people who missed something.

Two Worlds II ought to be different though. Two Worlds I was such an embarrassing flop, especially compared to the hype that preceded it, that I would expect gaming journalists to be well aware of the pitfalls of overhyping this sequel. Surely they would not make the same mistake twice.

Right?

Well, it may sound cynical, but the big sites are driven by ad revenues so they are careful about previews, and small sites are dependent on getting press copies so they don't want to poison the well. I'm not on that treadmill anymore, but there was definite 'find nice things to say and couch your criticisms' pressure.

Thanks for the behind the scenes peek into previewing. I think I'm a more educated consumer of previews now.

I liken it to reading (or writing) letters of recommendation. There's an unwritten rule that you have to be positive, and that you should be very cautious about saying anything negative. So when you're reading them, you tend to dismiss a lot of the praise as overblown fluff and key in on anything critical or negative that is mentioned, reading between the lines, trying to figure out how serious the problem is. You know that since the person put it in there, he/she had to overcome the reluctance to say anything negative at all, and so there must be something significant to it, even if it's couched in very soft terms.

That preview is so positive I don't believe anything in it. Still, I am looking forward to TW2, as I enjoyed TW1 quite a lot.

So the engine is great , there are plenty of weapons/armor and you can explore .
We have read about special moves before … this preview reveals very few on game mechanics , even the very basic ones ; given that they are unwilling to answer questions on their official forum i am a bit sceptical .

"And whichever platform you plan on picking the game up on, you’ll be pleased to know that there is very little difference (graphically) between the two"

That's only pleasing for console owners that doesnt like that PC users gets better graphics..

The whole preview sounds like an add, but it does make it sound interesting (i kind of liked the first game, but it was unbalanced).

Originally Posted by Maylander
That preview is so positive I don't believe anything in it. Still, I am looking forward to TW2, as I enjoyed TW1 quite a lot.

Same here - I might be coming off very cynical and negative, but I was also one who openly criticized Two Worlds but had plenty of fun with it.

I never played very far into TW, but I'm going to give it another try before TW2 is released. I wish there was a mod to tweak the balance so the game stayed a bit more challenging.

Originally Posted by bemushroomed
"And whichever platform you plan on picking the game up on, you’ll be pleased to know that there is very little difference (graphically) between the two"

That's only pleasing for console owners that doesnt like that PC users gets better graphics..

It's not about envy. It's about being tired of looking at mediocre graphics. So far, all these Euro RPGs (the original TW, Risen, Div 2) have all looked very poor, well below the standard for current console games. So I'm pleased to hear that they are figuring out how to work with the hardware.

Hopefully it runs smoothly. Framerate was TW's biggest technical problem, in my view.

I enjoyed Two Worlds I—except the incredibly corny and stilted dialog. If that had been rewritten, I think the game would have fared much better.

Originally Posted by Zephyr
I enjoyed Two Worlds I—except the incredibly corny and stilted dialog. If that had been rewritten, I think the game would have fared much better.

Like many others I'm sure, I enjoyed the silly sounding and written dialog for being so over the top. You know, so bad it's good. And the rest of the game was fun as well. It will be interesting to see how they address the many complaints about the dialog. If they water down what they have in TW1 it might just be bad without any unintentional comedy value. It's hard to imagine them pulling off good dialog.

How are the controls of TW2 compared to TW1? As silly as it may sound, the only reason that prevented me from enjoying the game as much as I should was the controls…
I definitely saw potential in the game, and wanted to love it. As a result, I participated actively (helping out and such) with the TW Insider community. But the darn controls!

I could never got used to the movement control (and at the time, couldn't fix it via a mod, has that changed now?) and the limitation of the spell casting/active skill system only added to the annoyance.

I blame it on WoW though. I got too used to the rather fluid RPG oriented control scheme and UI… CURSES!

Here's another preview, from IGN:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/106/1062438p1.html