Oh two worlds. Thy Voice acting is bad, and thy graphics are poor, but if you look past that, thou is decent. Pray tell why your reviews are bad. I must assume due to bugs.

Not all dislike the game, nor the voice acting. I LOVE the voice acting! I can tell you why too. I really enjoy computer games, and computer RPG's, so I've played a lot over the years, as time permits. Several voice actors in Two Worlds are in older computer RPGs. Is this a nostalgia factor? Indeed, and I won't deny that, and why would I? But that's not all, I love the voice acting because it's not "Hollywood". I find voice actors from games like Mass Effect incredibly annoying to listen to. I like my characters to sound like a normal person! And in Two Worlds, they do to me. Also, I think the main characters voice is great! As well as his funny comments. In several past games, the unknown lowly paid voice actors a lot of the times sound better than the highly paid ones, in my opinion of course.

The game itself I think is awesome. It reminds me a lot of the early Ultima games, and I only played the early Ultima games fairly recently(I wasn't even born yet in the 80's). And I'm not saying they are the exact same. I liked Two Worlds so much, that I bought lots of the extras like the Two Worlds soundtrack and strategy guide, even the royal editions and Two Worlds 2, and I really dislike the DRM on Two Worlds 2, yet I still bought it anyway for my like of the first Two Worlds.

The graphics poor? Not to me! Then again, I think several older games have better graphics than a lot of newer ones, all comes down to personal taste.

For the bugs, I didn't get a single one in my playthroughs. I did find glitches and exploits by accidently doing stuff I wasn't suppose to though (haha!). I do believe lots of the bugs were fixed in the Epic Edition. Most bugs you hear about are probably from when it was first released.

I enjoy Two Worlds far better than the Elder Scrolls games, better than the Mass Effects, way better than Dragon Age. Far better than the games the mainstream seem to push on others. I love Two Worlds!

In the end, it's all just opinion. Me, I love deep tough RPG's like Star Trail and Knights of the Chalice, and even though Two Worlds isn't always tough, it's incredibly fun for this olde school RPG fan.

It was a LOT buggier on release. Apparently sections were imcomplete as well... I heard that the desert didn't have any monsters in it, for example. The heavy patching made the game much better.

I don't have a problem with Two Worlds' graphics, but note that you can improve them a bit using the Two Worlds Control Panel. This has settings for raising the detail levels of various effects beyond the in-game maximums (e.g. setting 3D grass to fade out much further away). Most capable modern systems would have no trouble running the game at beyond-maximum settings.

I like it when games have non-professional voice acting. It can make it seem more real, in a way. It's certainly preferable to the modern trend of big-budget games having a famous voice actor or two which can make it more difficult to associate that voice with the character rather than the real person.

One of the local broadcast channels near me shows English news programs from around the world. There is a German one that has one the the Two Worlds voice actors do some of the translator voice overs for random people. Or at least I think its him. I could be wrong, but it sure as heck sounds like him.

All games capitalized by Steam are to be hatred.
Maybe you mean TwoWorlds2 has been freed from Steam? That would be good news.
(I edited: TW the 2, yes, sorry)

I'm confused... it's available right here on GOG, so clearly it's not exclusive to Steam. Unless you are talking about Two Worlds 2? I don't think that's exclusive to Steam either, but I'm pretty sure it is digital-only in the United States (but not just from Steam... Gamer's Gate and others carry it too).

Yeah sorry I thought about the 2nd; I'm so a Steam-hateboy that this blinds me :)
DRMs infuriate me, and the all-invading Steam among all.

EDIT: Oh, a Steam-only game came on GOG! Alleluyah!

I used to defend Two Worlds a lot when it was fairly new, then I started really hating it, now I think it's okay.

Personally I don't get why people are still complaining about bugs now, I've played the game quite a lot and at least after a few patches (all included in the digital releases) the game seems pretty much bug free to me. A few of the quests are designed badly and you might end up unable to solve them just because you didn't do the stuff the exact same way the developers planned it or characters might die too early (however, you seem to be able to revive them with a certain spell later on) but aside from that I don't see any major technical issues in the game. The game has crashed like once recently and it only did so when I used ALT+TAB a lot because I was chatting with friends while playing.

Anyway, so I like some stuff about the game but I also dislike a lot (which has kept me from ever beating it, despite the many hours I put into playing it). I like the visuals, I like the design of the outside world which seems more natural than in most RPGs out there with its really vast, diverse and beautiful areas. I also enjoy the fact that you can play the game rather casually. You're pretty much free to experiment with the skills because there's no skill tree and you get LOTS of skill points. Also I can't complain about the combat. The combination of hitting enemies, casting spells and doing backjumps is enough to make the fighting somewhat interesting and skill-based (many people seem not to be aware of the backjumps btw. so they say that it's just button bashing - but evading attacks with that little jump is an essential part of combat).

Anyway, here comes the bad stuff (a lot of it):

Content-wise the game is pretty bad. The whole world (the locations, the factions, the creatures and the plot) is the most generic high-fantasy stuff ever. There's simply nothing about the game that really feels original. The plot isn't engaging, no creatures or places make me say "wow, haven't seen anything like this before" etc.. This also means that all the dialogue that is supposed to expand and explain the world are just boring. It's really just a typical high-fantasy universe as you'd expect it from a generic fantasy game.

There's no characters! Yeah, there's a fair amount of NPCs but none of them are fully developed. Most NPCs just give you one simple task and that's it and most of the stuff they say is absolutely unoriginal. Just compare it to Gothic where there's real characters that you get attached to and even almost every "average NPC" will make you laugh because he's either a total jerk or has some other funny stuff to say. And if they just provide background information it's stuff that actually helps you understanding what place you're in. In TW it's really just generic fantasy talk like "hi, I'm a peasant and I'm scared of orcs". That's it.

It's the same for the locations. Compare it to most other RPGs out there. Most villages and towns have some specific features there, here's it's just a few generic tiny villages and a few generic bigger towns (which are disappointingly empty and small compared to the whole world's overall size).

The quest design is awful. I'm currently playing the game and I barely remember any of the quests. Most of them just involve going somewhere and coming back, giving an item that you already had on you or maybe having a simple conversation without any options. And once a quest is more complex in that it provides different approaches it feels like the game is barely holding it together, make one mistake and it becomes unsolvable. And also purely content-wise 99% of the quests are absolutely generic boring stuff.

The world does not feel alive. It feels like everyone is just sitting in one place all the time and you're the only person who is doing something. There's no developing relationships between NPCs and places etc., there's almost nobody outside the villages except for bandits sitting at a bonfire all the time. Again, compare it to Gothic where people don't just go to sleep at night but many of which seem to actually do something for a living, where you feel how the general mood and even the whole game world seems to change as the plot progresses. The only thing that kinda feels alive in Two Worlds is the fauna but once you've cleared a certain area of all creatures it's just dead. Compare that to say Stalker where there's stuff going on all the time, the factions fighting each other on a regular basis, loners being overrun by mutants etc..

Also the factions are boring. Not only are they extremely generic but interacting with them is dull. You do a few quests for a faction and you're done. You don't get any specific benefits (except for a trading bonus in case of two of them), you don't get new options, the world doesn't change. At first you think that the Karga-Skelden conflict is something huge and important but it's absolutely meaningless. After doing one sidequest for a faction you can already end the conflict - the only result is that all NPCs belonging to one of them disappear and you get access to one part of the relic. That's it. Again, compare it to Gothic where you really feel involved with the faction you choose, you get some benefits but also loose access to other options, NPCs start addressing you differently, you get unique items and some special tasks and services. In Two Worlds working for the factions feels like any other quest.

There's a certain lack of direction and a certain emptiness to the whole world. As you traverse the world you barely feel that you're getting closer to anything and depressingly large portions of the game world don't provide any special content. Many locations aren't related to any quests, the dungeons feel all the same and you will find the same equipment pretty much anywhere. The only rule is that to the south there's more strong enemies - but also, to the south there's less and less interesting locations, there's just more and more bandit camps and other generic foes. Additionally the game is very badly balanced. You will usually be overpowered very soon or suddenly encounter enemies who are absurdly powerful compared to what you've been fighting to this point. 99% of the game is ridiculously easy with 1% feeling oddly difficult because the developers didn't seem to really plan the character development and its relationship to the character and plot progression.

Then there's the equipment. Better equipment is just related to your experience level, you don't get rewarded with special items for anything. Later on you start finding powerful weapons with a unique name but you can get them literally anywhere, you can find them in the earliest dungeons if you only visit them at a high level. There's just no real feeling of reward. Made even worse by the system that allows you to combine weapons and armor of the same kind. So I finally come upon some powerful item I haven't seen before but at that point I've already combined so many of my weaker weapons that the supposedly special and powerful item is just another generic piece of junk unless I find it multiple times. Also this encourages hoarding items at some stash - after all, almost every item can potentially become rather powerful if you find it multiple times.

Despite that I kinda like the game. Why? Honestly, I think it's just the beautiful views and the countryside. There's the woods in mountains, there's the (ridiculously small) glacier region, there's beautiful plains near Cathalon, there's the fishing village, those weird bamboo woods and the wastes to the far south. The diverse views and changing atmosphere is probably enough for me to kinda enjoy the game.

Somehow I had a really different playthrough. I agree some with your assessment of factions, and I really hated the first 5 hours of the game; but once I got past some of the presentation issues, I really enjoyed most of the game. I was surprised how often the side quests seem to enhance the main quest and didn't seem wholly detached like a lot of other RPGs. And I loved the 'combine equipment' mechanic! Most RPGs you collect a lot of trash that has absolutely no use. At least here, you can make your current stuff a little more powerful each time on your way to finding that named weapon. It just felt like you could advance your character in a slightly unique way. Not to mention the ridiculous potions you could create. It's not the best RPG out there, but there were a lot of fun elements.

I honestly don't know what you mean. Actually Two Worlds is one of the worst examples of this, IMHO. I can't think of one example where a sidequest was really linked to the main plot aside from the Karga/Skelden quests which you need to do in order to get the relic frame - which actually feels incredibly odd as content-wise there's no explanation or reason given why Clan Karga would keep this thing, neither does it serve any purpose nor do they even mention the thing. You just see it lying around in some generic stash and assume that you might get access to it if you kiss their asses

I pretty much always feel like I'm doing stuff I shouldn't be doing because I can't find any relationship between the sidequests and the main quest. Heck, the evil dudes who abducted your sister actually mock you for taking your time and my only thought is "yeah, you're right - 99.9% of the stuff I'm doing is completely unrelated to saving my sister and it's incredibly dumb of me to test your patience". An RPG that comes to my mind where the sidequests are incredibly well connected to the main story is The Witcher and that game feels like the exact opposite of Two Worlds.

Well, I already explained pretty thoroughly what I think of this mechanic. For me it pretty much ruined the whole loot system of Two Worlds and forced me into a frequent mini-game of Memory.


I completely agree with this.

It's been a while since I've played it, so I can't give any specific examples, but I distinctly remember not directly pursuing the main quest and following side quests, and then ending up advancing the main quests because the side quests were taking me to related places or giving me clues as to where the next main quest location would be. I just know that when I play an elder scrolls game, I can get so lost doing the side quests that I lose all urgency for the main questline because there's virtually no connection between them...I didn't experience that here. But it could have been a fluke. I'm pretty sure I didn't do 100% of the game either; I just continued as felt natural.

Just felt like pitching in on a few points here. Me neither, the oldest version I ever played the game in is 1.1 (this is way older than the version on GOG.com) and I have never had the game crash once, plus the loading times are super-short. That's like leaps and bounds beyond pretty much any other big-budget game I've played in the last 10 years. If anything, by my own experience Two Worlds is one of the most bug-free games of recent years. True, but there's something to be said about presentation and delivery, which can save a lot. Take Mass Effect for instance. Game world and plot are the most inane, generic sci-fi drivel you could think of .But the boring story is told so well, you're made to feel such a part of it, get to explore so many interesting places and talk to so many characters, that you really end up not caring. If you'd write a plot outline of Mass Effect it would be the most boring story ever, but playing through it is a blast. I feel it's similar for Two Worlds. With a big "but" concerning the main plot, coming up... In contrast to Gothic or Elder Scrolls you get to partake in the NPCs lives much less, I agree. But I didn't feel like that made the characters necessarily worse or less interesting, it's just that you had to fill in more of the blanks yourself—i.e. it was not a welcoming world where everybody was keen to share their story with you, but one where you are making mostly casual, utalitarian acquaintances, with only a glimpse into their larger lives. The lack of simulation, that they just stay at the same spot through the entire game certainly hampers this. But I remember fondly many of the characters even if you just swapped a few lines with them. Like the guy at the inn who dreamt of becoming a mercenary himself but didn't have what it takes, admires you like a little boy and is always glad when you go say hi. These belong without exception to the most important reasons why I love the game, to me they are all clear and big upsides of the game. Being able to get lost and having to decide what to do in a world that is way larger than you is, I believe, important to an RPG. I'm not very interested in RPGs where you have your one big overarching quest that you're trying to solve and everything you (can) do is just a means to that end. It helps that usually the overarching plot is shit, as it is in Two Worlds. I love that the world lacks a clear direction, and I love that it is huge and full of places that have absolutely no relation or importance to the main quest. I love that not every place feels like it had to be put there, and that the entire world evolved in order for you to fulfill your destiny. I want it more lifelike, with lots of anonymous unimportant (but maybe beautiful) corners to explore. So that it's way too big to just explore it all (and every player ends up seeing different corners).

And as for the balance, I love that there is no scaling with player levels. There are areas where you can't deal with the monsters at that point. Find a way around them or do something else. Again, the world in Two World isn't just there to please you, it just is and it's up to you to find your way around in it. I much prefer that.

That's why I still think Daggerfall and Morrowind are far superior to Oblivion or Skyrim. I get less and less lost in these games, I feel like I already know what to do to some degree, and that I will be led the entire way. But what I want is to be dropped alone and directionless in a huge, simuated, lifelike world, and find my own way. For that matter that's also why I think the original Grand Theft Auto is still one of the best titles in the series. I probably liked Vice City a bit more due to its style, but the original GTA is at least second place. The reason is the size and "genericity" of the cities. With the step to 3D, the cities had to be streamlined, most places have a direct purpose for you as the player. The cities still have their diverse districts, but it's all boiled down to the essentials, just short of them becoming to small to feel like actual districts anymore. In contrast, the top-down GTA cities are huge and full of anonymous, unimportant backyards and alleys that might still be interesting to discover. Much more like a real city. My perfect GTA would be one in a city whose scale is 1:1 comparable to that of a real city. Huge, taking you ages to travel across, and with countless locations that don't feel like they're there because they have to be, for you, the player.

And the disconnectedness between side quests and main plot is, to me, an upside too, because as I said, I hate main quests, and Two Worlds is no exception. That the main quest is so stupid and small compared to the rest of the game is, to me, its saving grace. If I could have had it entirely my way, I would have done away with the main plot entirely, and added some dashes of Mount & Blade to it: completely open-ended world story; fight through it for your personal gain like traditional RPGs, pledge allegiance to kings/guilds/causes and influence the politics that way, or try to become one of the shot-callers yourself.

The more I think about it, the more a hybrid between Two Worlds (big, seamless, diverse, non-linear, uncommitted, beautiful game world; mechanics, quests, NPCs, etc.) and Mount & Blade (dynamic storyline, balance of power, politics; player chooses level and area of involvement) could be my ideal RPG.

I agree with you opinions, Anamon. I can see why Two Worlds wouldn't appeal to everybody --it is not a game for everyone, and anyone who expects to see the same kind of polish and production value as an AAA title is going to laugh at this game.

You really do need a certain mindset in order to see the gem there is inside. I like it partly because it is so unpolished. Exploring the map might end in quick death or really powerful loot. I might end up braking the game. Most importantly, I get the sense I'm exploring a dangerous and exciting world and making a difference with my decisions. I'm not getting bored like I did with Oblivion, because it took care of me a little too well. It always made sure my opponents and loot were suitable for my level. It was like the game was in control, not me. Adventuring with padded swords so that nobody gets hurt.

Two Worlds is in many ways rough around the edges and amateurish, and IMO it gives it personality. It's not polished to death.

I loved Two Worlds when it came out, heck I still play it. I saw all the negative reviews and thought the same thing, why does everyone think it's so bad?

Now as far as Two Worlds voice acting, I thought it gave a little extra uniqueness to the world with the bad old English accent and speaking. Made you feel like you were in a different place although it was a bit cheesy, I thought it was an enjoyable kinda cheesy.

There were also lots of cool stuff to find. I thought some of the areas like the wastelands and the hidden Necro town were great. TW was and I think still is quite an enjoyable open world game. Of course there is not much of a story, but that didn't stop people from liking Sacred II

Now Two Worlds II on the other hand, talk about bad voice acting, the man whispers his lines in monotone. To me that is way more annoying than bad old English dialog. But TW II is a whole nother thread, lol.