Most people, including myself, are waiting for the arrival of BioWare's Dragon Age II with much anticipation and loss of sleep but if that means people are not going to check out the least hyped-out releases like Two Worlds II by Reality Pump Game Development Studios, those individuals just don't know what they are missing! After 10+ hours of playing Two Worlds II (and one embarrassing character remake) on my Personal Computer, I am completely in awe of it. The game starts off with you escaping a dungeon - yes, it's so The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion-ish - and the main goal of the game is to save your sister from the clutches of a powerful villain who captured the both of you in the first place but of course the beauty of an open world role playing game such as this one is that you can lose yourself in the plethora of side quests and exploration outside of the main storyline. The one thing about this game is that it will certainly turn off most people during its first few hours of gameplay because it seems so unresponsive and confusing. The melee attacks don't feel like they connect when you actually hit the enemies and the archery/sorcery require recharge time that make them deceptively ineffective. Persevere through the game's initially awkward gameplay mechanics however and you will discover the game's fun character growth customizations and its highly addictive crafting system.
I love running around the game world just to check out the pretty sights.
The one element of the game that got me through the slow start I mentioned earlier was the graphics. This game is beautiful. I am able to get all the graphical options maxed out at 1920x1080 at a smooth and stable frame rate with my PC setup. The character models may be a little stiff but the fantastic and large open environments are truly out of this world. The lighting effects are particularly noteworthy, especially when you can see beams of light coming through the windows or between the leaves of trees and besides objects that are blocking the brightness of the sun and the moon. The game has a night and day cycle to make everything even more dynamic. All of the interactions between characters are fully voice acted. The quality of the voice acting ranges from mediocre to flat out robotic, which is a bit disappointing especially during clever, offbeat comments that could have been really funny if they were voiced properly.
The crafting system involves breaking down items to empower newer equipments
and it is a great solution that balances out the game's generous amount of loot.
I expected Two Worlds II to be better than the first game but I never expected this game to be this good. Mind you that there are a lot more contents to the game outside of the single player mode. I have created an online character and there is a separate campaign that can be played with others but unfortunately, I was not able to find low level characters to play together with. I would probably spend most of my time with this game playing it offline but I will definitely check out the online mode again in the future for its multiplayer co-op features. There are still so much for me to explore in this game and I keep finding myself going back to it since I got it last week. If you are a fan of the genre, why live in just one when you can live in Two Worlds II?
FIRST IMPRESSION: 5 out of 5
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