Two Worlds II Reviews

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Written by Brother None on February 18th, 2011

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Where things get genuinely remarkable, though, is in the potion mixing and magic combination system, which turns combos of ingredients or spell cards into items with unique effects. Initially, you'll just be mixing up basic health potions, but eventually you'll find yourself reanimating corpses and creating whirlwinds of rocks. You could potentially lose yourself for hours just playing Delia Smith with the contents of your knapsack.

Multiplayer is similarly imaginative. While there's the standard co-op campaign, which is entertaining enough by itself, it's the village mode that is unique. Unlocked once you accumulate 10,000 auras for your separate multiplayer character, it allows you to build your own township by dropping buildings in plots of land, and roping in your friends to help you smash beasties in the surrounding area. You really do get a lot of game for your money.

The story has a depth and character list that goes well beyond most RPG's, and you could easily spend weeks playing through the entire game. Lockpicking, pick pocketing, sword fighting, quests, and so on, lead you in to a world that is well designed and though out. The overall map of Antaloor is huge, but portals can be found that help you to quickly navigate between the areas of the map. There's also a portal stone that will allow you travel to any given portal and a personal portal stone which can be dropped in a spot and become a temporary portal so as to be able to move between your current location and another portal. This is very helpful if you need to pick a lock but are out of picks. Drop your stone, teleport to a town and buy some lock picks, then teleport back to your personal stone. Be sure to pick it back up though.

It's when you begin to level up your character, get a hang of the spells and get into a few good online battles that you realize.hey, Two Worlds II is actually tolerable. The game features three different combat styles that you'll turn to when you're roaming around the world. The first is magic, and it requires a bit of menu navigation, as items you pick up are randomly placed and often need to be combined in order to be truly effective. Once you get the hang of it, however, you can really mess some enemies up with ice and fire attacks. One even set the room ablaze, like a birthday candle lighting gone wrong. The second involves swordplay, and the collision detection is slightly shoddy, so you don't always hit as often as you'd prefer. The best of the three, in my eyes, is the third one, archery. You use a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective to fire arrows at enemies, while occasionally using fire shots and multiple arrows (someone's been watching Kevin Costner's take on Robin Hood) to gain an advantage over groups.

For example, Two Worlds II's combat takes several cues from traditional third-person action games, and the pace is always high. Players can switch back and forth between three completely different equipment sets (melee/arrows/magic, for example) with just a push of the d-pad, and the ability to map several buttons on the controller means that players will have easy access to items and abilities in the heat of battle without diving into menus and choking off the flow of the action.

The quick pacing doesn't just apply to the combat. While the square footage available to explore is impressively huge, quests are laid out in an easy-to-read fashion, map markers point out nearly every goal, and plenty of teleports scattered throughout the kingdom make fast travel a snap. Hell, the main character even runs like the wind. While I enjoy digging into huge RPG adventures just as much as the next critic, it was a pleasant surprise to find one that wasn't afraid of letting the player forge ahead at their own pace. There's tons to see and do, but the critical path can be burned through if that's what's desired. It's a breath of fresh air, really.

Two Worlds II has a unique crafting system that is great for getting some use out of so-called vendor trash, or loot that is so crappy you might not even bother lugging back to town to sell. It allows you to break down weapons and armor into base materials like iron, wood, and leather, and then use those to upgrade the equipment you actually use. You can also set special gems that bestow bonuses to skills, attributes, resistances, or damage. Being able to do all of this from within your inventory is awesome because it cuts down on how many trips you take back to a merchant to sell stuff while you're out and about, leaving you more time for adventuring. Alchemy works in much the same way; you combine up to 10 ingredients and create various potions within the inventory. They can range from standard health/mana regen pots, attribute boosters, or poison cures to more interesting effects like invisibility, water-walking, and self-resurrection!

If you decide to go the mage route, you'll spend a lot of time experimenting with the quite revolutionary custom magic system. Throughout your travels, you'll find or purchase different magic cards, which represent separate elemental effects and characteristics such as delivery system (projectile, AOE, etc.). You start out with an empty spell container (amulet), then mix and match cards to create your own spells. Like the crafting and alchemy systems, the number of unique combinations is potentially vast, though I didn't experiment much beyond the basic things like fireballs and lightning bolts. The majority of the game's most dynamic and visually stimulating combat will result from casting magic, provided you have the patience and discipline to master it.

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