Video Game Review: Unrefined RPG ‘Two Worlds II’ Feels Too Familiar

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Video Game Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – As more and more successful games are developed and released, it becomes difficult not to have a mental rolodex of comparable titles as you play a new game. Who doesn’t compare new war-set shooters to “Call of Duty”? Who is not going to remember “Dead Space 2” the next time they play sci-fi? And the world of the fantasy RPG has seen some gems recently including “Dragon Age Origins,” “Elder Scrolls IV,” and the “Fable” series. “Two Worlds II” fails in comparison in every single category.

One has to be a hardcore RPG fan to get much of anything of value out of “Two Worlds II,” a title that looks and plays like something more likely to have been released in 2006. It’s just not refined. Character models, the stilted dialogue, the boring quests, the personality-less enemies — “Two Worlds II” would make the grade in the last-gen era of consoles but just doesn’t work once you’ve played something like “Origins” or “Fable III.” It doesn’t just pale comparatively but becomes nearly unenjoyable, like turning in your iPhone for one of those giant car phones people carried around in the ’80s. It would get the job done, but you wouldn’t be happy.

Two Worlds II
Photo credit: SouthPeak Games

From the beginning, “Two Worlds II” just doesn’t look polished, almost as if it wasn’t complete when it was released. There’s an odd disconnect in the graphics. Some of the character models are strikingly detailed (and the developers clearly spent more time on the ones with the larger breasts) but others look downright unfinished. And the backgrounds are uniformly uninspired, looking as if they came out of a cut-and-paste program designed to make a fantasy game.

Two Worlds II Photo credit: SouthPeak Games

The gameplay in “Two Worlds II” is so haphazard and contextual that you’ll have to memorize an unacceptable number of controls. Imagine an entire keyboard of controls in a PC game ported to an Xbox controller. In one of the more boneheaded decisions, the same button runs as sneaks, depending on the context. It may sound like quibbling but a game is largely defined by how you control it and one never gets comfortable with the poorly-designed controls in “Two Worlds II.”

As for the story, it starts interestingly enough with some cut scenes of value but eventually disappears for a traditional quest structure that has little depth. The conversations with the people you meet are almost entirely free of wit or character. The story has something to do with you trying to save your sister after being rescued yourself by a band of Orcs who have similar goals to topple a corrupt leader but it’s hard to care about any of the proceedings when the storytelling is so weak. And don’t get me started on the voice acting. It is so horrendous that I actually turned it down and read subtitles (a remarkable number of which feature typos…giving yet another sensation that this title wasn’t even done when it hit the market, or at least not refined).

What’s to like about “Two Worlds II”? It gets the basics right. As someone who has played a number of RPGs, the structure is there. The problem is that they just didn’t build anything on the foundation. The only thing that did provide a bit of intrigue is a spell creation system in which you find cards and craft your own magic powers. That’s kind of neat. And it’s also a customizable element that’s somewhat incorporated into items as well, as things can be broken down to build new ones. Although when your inventory and spell list is the most interesting thing about a game, something’s a bit off. It’s also rare to see an RPG with multiplayer at all and so the attempts in that arena are notable.

A decent foundation, customizable spell creation, and multiplayer are places to start not places for a game to be reviewed. Let’s hope they put a little more effort into “Two Worlds III” should that day ever come.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com [email protected]