![]() ![]() In fact, the game as a whole begins terribly and improves slightly from there. Most players will likely focus on one, however, and I chose melee. Combat runs on the ubiquitous melee-ranged-magic triptych and switching between various methods comes easily. Two Worlds II offers armies of monsters to fight, and although many can be run through and evaded easily, what fun is that? Turns out it isn’t much fun either way. I didn’t think that needed saying, but evidently it does. Anyone who has played the Elder Scrolls series knows what to expect on a fundamental level.Ĭombat and control need to be entertaining and tight in a hack-n-slash game. Players explore, slaughter cute animals alongside strange beasts, pick up a dozen rusty swords, and level up to grow in strength. Side quests and optional distractions make up the bulk of the content, as the main quest is surprisingly short. Two Worlds II plays like an open world hack-n-slash RPG with plenty of exploration, combat, and character building while also offering a slight sandboxy feel. Ultimately, however, a parody is no excuse for garbage gameplay. That I have to ponder this at all indicates something amiss. One is left to wonder where the self-parody ends and where the genuinely bad content begins. While I applaud Reality Pump’s partial awareness of its own past shortcomings and the stereotypes of its genre, I found little to laugh about while playing and more to laugh at. Some may cite the game’s self-deprecating, light-hearted approach in defense of these criticisms. Evidently Antaloor’s denizens enjoy being rude. Dialogue is constantly clipped at the end and interrupted by the next line. The game did part of that for me, however. An NPC says, “The payment?” and my choices are “Of course” and “No, I haven’t.” Combined with unenthusiastic voice acting, the script made me want to skip every word of it. These even spill over into player choices. The dialogue could have been ripped from an amateur fantasy novel (probably was, considering), full of illogical responses and nonsense. The only character with an attempted personality is the protagonist, but his sarcasm and man-of-action traits are neither fully developed nor unique. The complete absence of a story would have been a mercy.Īside from the cipher of a plot, Two Worlds II features forgettable characters made slightly more memorable by their awful dialogue. No one helps the protagonist without first asking a favor or two or three or who cares anymore? It isn’t entertaining and it isn’t pleasant. The main quest is about half dialogue as the player runs about from one NPC to another and back yet again. No one will play Two Worlds II for high drama, however, but unfortunately, the developers seem to think one might. Video games aren’t usually great at communicating the details of a plot, and this one is no exception. ![]() It’s a good thing the plot’s minutiae don’t matter because they don’t make sense. Told through inept cutscenes and childish dialogue, the plot meanders about, concerning a vague prophecy, your sister as a god’s vessel, and an evil lord with a name straight from a teenager’s first D&D campaign. Nothing could properly prepare you to make sense of the story. The lack of imagination covers everything from combat mechanics to dialogue and story.Īlthough Two Worlds II continues the story started in the original, that game is not required playing to understand the plot. These are not merely inspired by they are copied from. Egyptian hieroglyphs, Old Germanic runes, Japanese architecture, among other things are pillaged from the real world without a hint of transformation. As a microcosm of its anonymity, one of the swords in the game looks exactly like the sword hanging on my wall three feet from my television. From weapon and monster design to world building to combat mechanics, the developers looted from the world around them to create the most anonymous RPG ever made. Everything in the game – from fluff to gameplay – has been done before, better, and earlier. If Two Worlds II was any less imaginative, it’d be plagiarism. On the surface, the latter two cause the most headaches, yet it is the first which I find most unpalatable. Two Worlds II has a few core problems: lack of originality, tedium, and sloppy control. Reality Pump may have made a playable game this time, but nothing approaching a respectable level of quality. And, this is largely the case with Two Worlds II. After all, no matter how much polish you slap on a piece of feculence, it remains a piece of feculence. I never played the infamous original Two Worlds, but improvement upon predecessors has little weight in a critical assessment anyway. ![]()
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