Two Worlds

Two Worlds has been billed as this year’s Oblivion, and there’s something to that. It has a huge world, teeming with side quests. There are different factions you can suck up to or annoy, depending on what you do and whom you do it to. It also provides more evidence that game designers are failing to keep the needs of console gamers in mind when they develop a role playing game for both the PC and a console.

Two Worlds has rich, detailed quest text and a wide range of weapons with different strengths. You can customize your character’s skills to emphasize whatever you find most interesting. The alchemy component is a real revelation – intuitive, intelligent, and necessary for success. However, it’s really hard to appreciate any of this stuff while sitting on a sofa seven feet from the television. The print is eye-strainingly small, made worse by the insistence on a font chosen more for character than readability. The minimap is even worse. None of these UI things pose a problem on a PC monitor.

The game itself is rewarding. The dialog is cheesy; forsooths and mayhaps fly like dragons from the mouths of the characters. The ridiculous limits on the look of your character are more than made up for by the flexibility in character design as you level up. Resurrection points (you’ll need those) are close enough to keep dying from being a pain, but far enough apart to make you watch your step. Traps, spells, and stores filled with stock will give you lots of combat options as you make your way from point to point.

Two Worlds isn’t easy, though. The default difficulty level is punishing even in the early going, and it only gets marginally easier as you level up. Your character will rarely take on a single opponent at a time, so you can’t do a strictly melee hero since you’ll need a way to weed out enemies before you close in. Archery is a powerful option, fireballs doubly so. Horseback travel takes a while to get used to, and may find yourself careening through the woods at breakneck speed if you miss the turn in the road. Good thing teleports provide an alternative mode of travel. The developers claim that the world around you changes because of your actions, but it’s too long a game to put to the test in a single review.

Two Worlds isn’t as good as an Elder Scrolls game, but it’s a fine stopgap measure. If you have patience, fortitude and better than average eyesight, it could be the role-playing game for you.