Review of Two Worlds for the Xbox 360

Two Worlds for the Xbox 360 was released on August 24, 2007. It was previously released for the PC in Germany to lackluster reviews. The developers pushed back the date of release for months to iron out the bugs and fix the choppy frame rate, which was one of the big complaints of the first release. Did they manage to fix all of the issues, and deliver an entertaining game on a system starving for quality RPGs?

Upon starting up a new game the player is able to customize their own character. I found the customization options to be severely limited. There were 4-5 hairstyles (honestly it was difficult to tell much of a difference between any of them), a handful of hair colors, a few eye colors, and a couple advanced customization options dealing with facial structure. The player is only able to create a few slight variations on the same bland character. There is also no option to change race, humans only.

After creating your character, you will watch a few cinematics. The story, while nothing spectacular, is standard for an RPG. Your sister is missing, Orcs and Groms are invading, it's nothing that hasn't been done before. You are started off on your first quest, to clear a temple area of Groms. Groms can best be described as goblins from Oblivion; in fact, one quest will ask you to steal Grom totems from inside their war camps. This sounds a bit familiar, hmm....

After the first quest, the player is free to roam around and find more to do. It's open in that regard, you don't need to complete or find quest lines in any particular order. Players will find the world mildly entertaining to explore. Graphics are on par with current Playstation 2 games, completely unacceptable for a machine as powerful as the Xbox 360. The frame rate is still rather choppy. Not only does the player model look bland, but all NPCs are quite bland looking. They lack the facial definition which most current-gen games can give their characters. The clothing and items are also nothing that can't already be seen on a Playstation 2 game. The HUD map is small and cluttered, which makes it rather difficult to go to the place which you intend. The HUD also shows your health and mana bars. At least the low level of graphics result in some pretty quick load times.

Combat is a toned down version of Oblivion's. You can swing your weapon with the right trigger. The left trigger either fires a spell or uses an active skill, which are mapped to the d-pad to be easily changed during combat. Active skills are special moves that can only be done when a button is pressed, like my personal favorite, the dirty trick, where the player kicks a cloud of dirt in the enemy's face to blind it. The menu is usable but clunky. The graphics for items are small and not very detailed. There are five different menus to scroll through. The first shows your level and progression. It is on this menu where you increases your skills and attributes after you gain a level. The next menu shows your items, where you can equip different weapons or clothing. You can also combine items in potions or by attaching them to your weapon or clothing. The effects of each item are shown when highlighted. The third menu lets you switch through spells and summons. The next menu is your map, which is difficult to work with. It's difficult to scroll through the various waypoints, which are added to your map as you find them or accept a quest. This menu also shows your quests. The last menu shows how far you have progressed in the different guilds and societies.

The music for the game is nothing remarkable. It's not so bad as to be noticeable either, except for the character creation song which is a bit corny. The voice acting, however, is atrocious. I always regretted starting conversations with NPCs because then I would have to hear them speak. The voice for the player character is easily the worst, which makes it quite irritating as you have to hear that voice the most. The script for dialogue must have been written by a live action role player with little talent for creative writing. Each conversation is sprinkled liberally with the phrase "pray tell".

After playing this game, I couldn't help but have the feeling that I just wanted to play Oblivion again. It felt like rather than just taking some ideas from Oblivion and improving on them, the developers of Two Worlds tried to copy the game almost directly. They just happened to do a poor job of it. It's not that the game is incredibly boring to play, it's just that it's not particularly fun to play either. Overall, this game is a failure in terms of delivering compelling gameplay with stunning graphics, but as a promotional tool to get players back to Oblivion, it should be a smashing success.