Two Worlds II - worth playing?

[Phillip Hone]

I love Skyrim for its gigantic open world and variety of options, but find its dialogue, characters, plot, and combat lacking, so I've been on the lookout for open world games with a different take on the concept. Two Worlds II seemed to fit the bill so I got it a while back.

Is TW2 actually a good game? The voice acting and the characters make me cringe, the difficulty curve seems totally nuts, and the controls are beyond obtuse. That said, I see a lot of potential in its combat and magic mechanics. If anyone here has played it before, does it become a fun experience once you get into it?

[General Zod]

I didn't last for more than 30 minutes when I rented it once.

[TheFeniX]

Two Worlds was an awful game made "playable" due to how hysterically bad it was and also the main character running around asking about "The Taint" combined with atrociously bad voice acting.

Two Worlds 2 (as much as I could play since I ran into what I assume is the same problem as General Zod: the game is just... meh) corrected a lot of the problems with the first one. But what was left was a distinctly mediocre game. It was boring and still suffered from many issues. For just one, whereas animations and graphics in TW1 were just terrible and broken, making the game feel incomplete or like a Beta, Two Worlds 2 was just.... awkward. I can't really explain it: everything feels done, but like it was completed by Valusoft. Much of the early game feels amateurish in every aspect.

IIRC, it hit the market at a time when there wasn't even a lot of competition in the open-world RPG market and it still tanked. I can recommend TW1 if you can get it extremely cheap because it has value in how terrible it is, but TW2 was just a snooze-fest because it was so bland. I'd skip it and pick-up something like Oblivion or even Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning if you wanted something cheap in that genre.

Note: KoA:R plays like a single-player themepark-MMO and gets boring very quickly unless you love that kind of thing. Game looks and plays decent though.

[Phillip Hone]

Thanks for the feedback! I guess my instincts were right. : (

Oh well. So besides KoA:R, there really aren't any Beth type games that are actually good?

[General Zod]

Thanks for the feedback! I guess my instincts were right. : (

Oh well. So besides KoA:R, there really aren't any Beth type games that are actually good?

I liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas. What I've played of Dishonored was pretty solid. It depends on what you're looking for.

[Phillip Hone]

Thanks for the feedback! I guess my instincts were right. : (

Oh well. So besides KoA:R, there really aren't any Beth type games that are actually good?

I liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas. What I've played of Dishonored was pretty solid. It depends on what you're looking for.

Oh, sorry, what I meant was games that are *like* Bethesda games - big, open world, lots of exploring. I've already played Fallout New Vegas, and enjoyed it a lot.

[TheFeniX]

Sadly, Skyrim is a pretty cut-down example of one, Oblivion was better, Morrowind even more so except Beth kept moving forward in one area and back in others. Morrowind has aged pretty terribly, unless you mod the bejezzus out of it, and even then.

I will 100% always recommend Star Control 2 as the epitome of exploration, but it's hard to put it in the same genre as Skyrim/Fallout. The Ur-Quan Masters open-source 3DO port is an easy to install and play version. Older Fallout games are also good options. Some MMOs might qualify, such as Rift (same engine really), except they are riddled with modern MMO conventions which cuts down on the "exploring" aspects to facilitate faster travel (much like Fast Travel in later ESO games).

Wizardry 7 and 8. They are much older games, but they are so worth the time to play. I've never even beaten W7, but that's not the point as I've still dumped hundreds of hours into it.

Stalker is another game I heard a lot about, but I have yet to play. It has insane difficulty spikes and you should be prepared to be claimed by The Zone a lot. I can also recommend the Witcher games, mostly 2 as it cleaned up a lot of issues with Witcher 1. Witcher 3 is supposed to be "super awesome, everything else for years will be garbage" but we'll have to see. I'm not big on hype these days.

[General Zod]

The Borderlands games are pretty big and open. I suppose Mass Effect and Dragon Age, which might or might not be your cup of tea.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Something I noticed in the Two Worlds 1, the mobs don't respawn. Meaning that the big, empty world just gets emptier, and emptier. It got to the point where I could just run around for hours and not see a thing.

[TheFeniX]

Something I noticed in the Two Worlds 1, the mobs don't respawn. Meaning that the big, empty world just gets emptier, and emptier. It got to the point where I could just run around for hours and not see a thing.

I never got that far into TW1 to notice TBH, but that was a huge complaint I had with KOTOR1.

[Death Zebra]

Two Worlds 2 is relatively barren as well. It doesn't help that an overwhelming portion of the biggest continent on the map is basicaly inaccessible as it is reserved for multiplayer. Since I still have a draft of a post I was writing bitching about the game I might as well finish it off and put it here while I'm posting:

If you're talking about the PS3 version I definitely wouldn't bother. When I played it there was quite a bit of slowdown and graphic issues; for instance, there were a few mountains which wouldn't have their highest level of detail loaded unless you were practically right next to it and looking at it from the right angle.

There were also some control issues. The analogue stick was set to have no dead zone so if it wasn't prefectly neutral (which it wouldn't be on an older pad) the character would continuously walk forward even during scenes and some functions, including blocking, wouldn't work if you weren't stood still. Perhaps even more baffling is the ability mapping. You could map physical abilities to the face buttons and pressing said buttons would use those abilities but with spells it would just select them, you'd still have to fire them using the r2 button which is meant to be the melee attack. You could still melee attack by blocking and pressing R2 but because of the aformentioned analogue stick issues.....Also, the run and block button are the same so if you need to run away (the most common reason for doing so being that the enemy is so powerful that blocking is useless) then your character will still stand still getting pounded for a second or two before moving. Finally, I once had to reload my game because the potion button had been overwritten when I created a 4th magic spell and I simply couldn't find a way to remap it,

Other annoying features include the final boss who is fought in such a manner that stats would be irrelevant if it didn't summon minions and a sidequest that involves delving into series of increasingly large and boring mazes without the benefit of a map and IIRC is unrewarding.

There are some good features though. The magic system is worth messing around with and in older patches was abuseable as hell. Also, the pool of items used for crafting is relatively shallow so no loot is ever truly worthless as you can dismantle it into valuable components and the encumberance system is far less annoying than the Elder Scrolls games albeit because it's more unrealistic. These positives aren't really enough to make the game worth buying.

[Phillip Hone]

Sadly, Skyrim is a pretty cut-down example of one, Oblivion was better, Morrowind even more so except Beth kept moving forward in one area and back in others. Morrowind has aged pretty terribly, unless you mod the bejezzus out of it, and even then.

I will 100% always recommend Star Control 2 as the epitome of exploration, but it's hard to put it in the same genre as Skyrim/Fallout. The Ur-Quan Masters open-source 3DO port is an easy to install and play version. Older Fallout games are also good options. Some MMOs might qualify, such as Rift (same engine really), except they are riddled with modern MMO conventions which cuts down on the "exploring" aspects to facilitate faster travel (much like Fast Travel in later ESO games).

Wizardry 7 and 8. They are much older games, but they are so worth the time to play. I've never even beaten W7, but that's not the point as I've still dumped hundreds of hours into it.

Stalker is another game I heard a lot about, but I have yet to play. It has insane difficulty spikes and you should be prepared to be claimed by The Zone a lot. I can also recommend the Witcher games, mostly 2 as it cleaned up a lot of issues with Witcher 1. Witcher 3 is supposed to be "super awesome, everything else for years will be garbage" but we'll have to see. I'm not big on hype these days.

Thanks for the suggestions - def. okay with older games, if they've aged nicely, so I'll look into Wizardry!

I've played The Witcher 1 and 2 and thought they were awesome RPGs, just not quite "open world," even if they (especially the first one) had some modest but enjoyable exploration aspects.

I've got my eyes on TW3 but share your skepticism. It seems too good to actually work, you know? Regardless, I liked the previous two enough that I pre-ordered it.

Have you ever played Oblivion with Oscuro's overhaul? It de-levels the world and makes all the items and crud hand placed. I found Oblivion was still hard to stay engaged with because the setting is so aggressively generic and bland, and Oscuro's leveling system was just too slow for my tastes (I felt compelled to grind, which I loath), but it seemed like it had some really good potential.

On a similar note, have you tried Skyrim with the the Requiem overhaul mod? I've played it a bit, but it runs into the same issue - skill progression is so agonizingly slow that you have to grind for hours to stuff you actually want to go and do. Still, the combat is much better, the loot is hand placed, the perks are reworked in a really cool way. I just couldn't stand the grinding and the gamey tactics that its difficulty compelled.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I am playing through Skyrim with Requiem also, and it seems that my tastes are different from yours, because I am having the biggest blast with an RPG since playing Fallout 2 for the first time. I haven't spent any time at all grinding skills (except enchanting, but that was also the case in regular Skyrim), and have found the skill progression to be quicker, if anything. The de-leveled world means that when I found a clever way to take down a group of bandits in the early game, it was a real achievement. When I came back to Bleak Falls Barrow after getting my face rocked the first time and managed to defeat the spiders and draugr, I felt like a total badass. All the blandness and sameness of regular Skyrim is gone, and I am excited with every new quest, because I don't know what I'll be walking into and what lengths I'll need to go through to beat it. It might not be for everyone, but Requiem gets my highest recommendation.

[Spekio]

I am playing through Skyrim with Requiem also, and it seems that my tastes are different from yours, because I am having the biggest blast with an RPG since playing Fallout 2 for the first time. I haven't spent any time at all grinding skills (except enchanting, but that was also the case in regular Skyrim), and have found the skill progression to be quicker, if anything. The de-leveled world means that when I found a clever way to take down a group of bandits in the early game, it was a real achievement. When I came back to Bleak Falls Barrow after getting my face rocked the first time and managed to defeat the spiders and draugr, I felt like a total badass. All the blandness and sameness of regular Skyrim is gone, and I am excited with every new quest, because I don't know what I'll be walking into and what lengths I'll need to go through to beat it. It might not be for everyone, but Requiem gets my highest recommendation.

I modded Skyrim a lot and have the DLC, but I got bored so fast. Every single mission seemed like a downgrade from oblivion. I played the shit out of Oblivion, and the world seemed to react to my deeds more than Skyrim.

The "And then there was none" -styled Dark Brotherhood quest was a blast. Joining the thieves guild required effort. In this one everything was bland, easy and boring.

New Vegas, however, was a huge improvement on 3. It was the most fun I had since Fallout 2.

[Phillip Hone]

I am playing through Skyrim with Requiem also, and it seems that my tastes are different from yours, because I am having the biggest blast with an RPG since playing Fallout 2 for the first time. I haven't spent any time at all grinding skills (except enchanting, but that was also the case in regular Skyrim), and have found the skill progression to be quicker, if anything. The de-leveled world means that when I found a clever way to take down a group of bandits in the early game, it was a real achievement. When I came back to Bleak Falls Barrow after getting my face rocked the first time and managed to defeat the spiders and draugr, I felt like a total badass. All the blandness and sameness of regular Skyrim is gone, and I am excited with every new quest, because I don't know what I'll be walking into and what lengths I'll need to go through to beat it. It might not be for everyone, but Requiem gets my highest recommendation.

My thoughts on it exactly, actually, but around level 15-20 I got into a situation where I had to clear like three dungeons to go up one level, yet I wasn't high enough to do a lot of the content I wanted to try... so my whole game degenerated into wandering through a barren desert of cleared out dungeons to etch out a few miserly points of xp, which killed the RP value and just made it no longer fun. It may have been character build - I didn't use any crafting ones (very useful for leveling and adding perks) and I put a lot into stealth which is somewhat less viable in Requiem as a main approach to problems. Requiem is awesome but some builds just don't work (like stealth + illusion).

[TheFeniX]

On a similar note, have you tried Skyrim with the the Requiem overhaul mod? I've played it a bit, but it runs into the same issue - skill progression is so agonizingly slow that you have to grind for hours to stuff you actually want to go and do. Still, the combat is much better, the loot is hand placed, the perks are reworked in a really cool way. I just couldn't stand the grinding and the gamey tactics that its difficulty compelled.

I got my game working the way I wanted a while back and don't want to risk jacking it up with an overhaul that still won't fix what really stinks about Skyrim combat: it's just bland. It really needs some new animations with a revamp of how melee works in general, but getting new animations into Skryim is notoriously annoying.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Requiem combat is anything but bland. When a single arrow or power attack can end you well into the mid-game, you might get frustrated when fighting, but you won't be bored.

[Phillip Hone]

You're both right ... Requiem combat is MUCH better than any other setup I've tried with Skyrim (Duel, Deadly Combat, vanilla), but although it's the best that can be done with Skyrim, it's still pretty abysmal.

The difficulty is ramped up, but the AI sucks as much as ever, so there were many bandit leaders and other enemies I could only kill by causing their pathing to bug out so they stayed stuck trying to get to the rock I climbed on top of while I slowly DPSed them to death. The mod floods many of the dungeons with Draugir (BFB especially), with something like 30 in the final chamber, but with how the Aggro in Skyrim works, you can slowly lure them in groups of 3-5 at a time and whittle them down. Of course, not resorting to this gameyness will kill most characters as there isn't a lot you can do against 30 Draugir at once.

Here's something that illustrates the problem. I asked some experienced Requiem players about how to take down a particular spider at one point, and they told me that I needed to:

1) Build character (get the right perks)
2) Prepare (stock up on potions to cure its deadly poison attacks(
3) Tactics ... by which they meant stand under a rock that the spider's AI is can't figure out to get around and slowly DPS it to death with arrows as it moronically stays within range even though it could easily escape.

Requiem is this bizarre paradox where in many ways it is a RP paradise of a Skyrim, but as a result, it becomes so difficult that pure, unapologetic cheese is the only way to beat certain parts. It wants you to think carefully and delve into the underlying mechanics to solve problems, but the underlying mechanics of Skyrim are crap so that's what you end up with. Melee is still mostly just careful back pedaling .. yeah, you die fast if you mess up the back pedaling, but ultimate it just takes it from "back pedal combat" to "back pedal HARDER combat."

Like Arthur_Tuxedo mentioned, a single arrow or a single heavy blow can kill, which is cool, but it makes Skyrim's horrific hit boxes all the more apparent. Requiem was when I noticed that you can get nailed by an axe blow even though the animation came nowhere near your actor. Misjudge the gigantic invisible hit-field even slightly and you're dead. Same goes for your opponents, I suppose, but still, meh.

My conclusion is that Skyrim isn't a good enough game for Requiem, not that Requiem isn't a good enough mod. The guys who made Requiem should make their own game. That'd be awesome.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I would probably feel the same way if I engaged in melee often. My character is a stealthy conjurer with some archery, which I've read is essentially Requiem's easy mode. Hide, summon, quaff potion, repeat is my MO and if my summons and follower get their asses handed to them on a platter and I can't turn it around with staves, potions, and scrolls, then I postpone that particular quest or dungeon until I am more powerful. If I had to do the final Bleak Falls Barrow chamber without being able to hurl endless numbers of Flame Atronachs into the mix while hiding like an abused redhead, I would be a lot more upset about Skyrim's failings.

[TheFeniX]

Requiem combat is anything but bland. When a single arrow or power attack can end you well into the mid-game, you might get frustrated when fighting, but you won't be bored.

But I have that now with the addition of "Legendary" difficulty, because I've avoided abusing smithing/enchanting on this latest runthrough. From what I know about Requeim, it doesn't fix a lot of the underlying issues with Skyrim (because no one really can). The "dumb as hammers" AI combined with it's pathing, the limited combat mechanics (at least for melee). The only thing I'm really interested in is the de-leveling, but it's not that huge a deal for me because I'm already running shit like "War parties" and "tougher and more numerous bandits." I need to re-install that mod that caps your potion spam and also makes them HoTs rather than instant. As part of that, I need to just console-out all my spells because Magic is for filthy wizards, not a true Nord of Skyrim!

If I'm wrong, please let me know and I'll start messing around with it. But from what I know (I really don't care to watch all the description videos), it doesn't do much for a 2h Heavy Armor wearing build. You just get hit harder and don't hit as hard. I would really enjoy something that adds actual counter-attacks, different attacks (such as pommel attacks, outside of kill moves, and other low-damage quick attacks with 2h), maybe even rolls. Man, I'd even resort to fucking QTEs to spice up the combat. I've found nothing in that vein. If you have: post away and I will give you props for days.

Also: does anyone else find it hilarious Two Worlds is so shitty, we can't even talk about it for a page before this turned into a Skyrim thread?

[Phillip Hone]

Well, to be honest, maybe the title should be changed, as this is more of a "help! I'm looking for a Skyrim type game that is actually good" thread. Yeah that did give me a bit of a chuckle, though.

Videos are a terrible way of doing descriptions, don't know why they went that route.

I think you may have a false impression of what it does with combat. You will get hit way harder, true, but you will also hit way harder. Harder as in if you are going the two hand build you will probably one shot a great many enemies once you've leveled a bit. At first you only have access to basic moves, and then as you perk up you get stuff that's a little better, like more power attacks, as well as a chance for insta kills, decapitations, things like that. When you sprint into people it will knock them over and damage them.

Also, heavy armor is radically different experience from light armor, in Requiem. Light armor gives you very little protection and doesn't slow you down. Heavy armor gives you incredible damage resistance at the expense of speed and stamina, but means you can survive a few blows and basically shrug off arrows, which is a huge deal. If a Requiem mage walks into room and gets hit with an arrow, he's dead usually, or close to it. A heavy armor user would shrug it off. A heavy armor warrior still isn't a damage sponge, since most mobs will usually have some way of hurting armor, but heavy armor has a unique feel in Requiem and makes way more sense to use than in vanilla.

The difference between Requiem's difficulty and that of legendary vanilla Skyrim is that by harder, they mean more reflex based, more tactical (doesn't always mean that much as Skyrim "tactics" are often just back pedaling, but still), and way faster. Where legendary = "enemies have MOAR HP," which is also hard, but in a different way.

Stamina is implemented better too. You don't recover stamina while running, and sprinting drains it right away. Without stamina you do very little damage, slow down considerably, and there's a high chance that every time you get hit you will get disarmed. This means that instead of mashing attack, it's all about timing a few powerful but exhausting blows.

The AI does still suck, but it's better, I think, at least. If you're getting attacked by a mob sometimes they will slowly advance from multiple directions with their shields up, slowly cornering you and then attacking when you let your guard down. The same bandit who keeps his shield up from a distance when you draw a sword will suddenly rush in when you try to switch to your bow, for instance. Since blocking actually stops most damage, and since attacks cost precious stamina, this can actually be pretty hard to beat.

Against archers, you can actually rush them and break their bows by attacking, and if you're too slow, you better be heavily armored. They also run out of arrows.

RP elements also come into combat in cool ways. Regular steel weapons do almost nothing against Draugir - you need to use either Silver or magic stuff on them.

So rambling story short, they can't totally take the suck out of Skyrim's combat, but it's profoundly better than vanilla or even any other combat mod. It's not just harder, it's reworked, more dynamic, and a lot more fun.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

As far as I'm concerned, vanilla Skyrim combat basically consists of beating everything in sight to death with a soft foam bat while occasionally stopping to drink one potion out of an endless supply. I haven't tried legendary difficulty, but it sounds like you still have a nerf bat and they have sharp stabby swords, which is even worse since it adds sudden arbitrary death to the tedious snoozefest. Mods like Duel - Combat Realism put some seasoning on the poo to take away some of the turd flavor but don't transform the experience into filet mignon the way Requiem does. This is all my opinion, of course, and YMMV.

[Phillip Hone]

Yeah so even though I've alternated between bashing and praising it, you should check it out, it's far and away the best Skyrim that Skyrim can be. I think once you play it you'll have a hard time going back to any other version. The combat mods don't compare.

Is it polishing a turd? Kinda, but it's the most polished, beautiful turd ever.

[Death Zebra]

I tried Requiem but grew pissed off pretty quickly. A fault caused the Nord that escorts you through the tutorial dungeon to get seperated and not be able to rejoin me leaving my squishy mage facing down a horde of spiders; I do not remember how I got out of that. I quit after fighting whatever I encountered north of Riverwood. I suppose I was meant to use familiars and followers as meat shields but I doubted the AIs would make good tanks and that really wasn't the kind of mage I wanted to play. I might try it again at some point though with a combat mod that lets you roll or otherwise evade attacks.

It would have been nice to be able to dismantle worthless equipment as in TW2 but I can't decide whether having its magic system in Skyrim would be a good thing. There's more depth to it and players would probably enjoy being able to make their own spells again but it might be hard to balance and either end up too weak or broken as fuck and knowing Bethesda, glitchy. The other thing TW2 did better than Skyrim on consoles was to have its equivalent of Skyrim's console menu available to players (though I don't think it was useful as anything more than a cheat menu). I have no idea why Skyrims console menu is blocked on console versions; you need it to get around some glitches. It's not like they must have been bothered by cheating; they left the fortify restoration glitch in.

[Phillip Hone]

The idea in Requiem is that you're just some bozo at the beginning and everything kills you. Once you get better gear you go back and rolf stomp whatever killed you at the beginning.

It's frustrating, but I like it better. In Requiem, find better gear = perform dramatically better, open doors that were closed before, get revenge on all the bandits that you ran away from in previous levels. Whereas in vanilla Skyrim it's just a leveled system where you get things "appropriate for your level" incrementally - you can't just explore, get lucky and find a powerful sword that will help you in your adventures.

Once you have 50 destruction, for instance, you can get a spell that's basically fire artillery. It might as well be called "spell of clear dungeon."

edit:

Light armor in Requiem is really "evasion," meaning, it just lets you move faster and do things like spring sidewise, all of which you can use with just robes.