Two Worlds II Is 16 Years Old, and Its Hundred Hours Still Go Nowhere

Reality Pump’s Two Worlds II opens in a dungeon, and that is the right place for it. The hero of the 2007 original is a prisoner in Gandohar’s castle, his sister Kyra captive, his power spent. The escape that follows doubles as the tutorial, and only when the hero steps out into Antaloor does the game finally show what it is: a very large, very uneven fantasy role-playing game that asks for a hundred hours and, in this paper’s view, repays considerably fewer.

Two Worlds II released on 9 November 2010 in Europe for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and reached North America on 25 January 2011 on the same platforms. It also runs on Linux.

Trailer, via moviemaniacsDE.

Gandohar’s Dungeon and the Orc Rescue

The setup is the strongest thing here. Aziraal, the god of war the Orcs revere — the source also calls him God of Fire — had his tomb opened at the end of the first game, and his power passed into Kyra. Gandohar wants that power. He has taken both siblings, and he is draining Aziraal’s powers from Kyra. The hero is freed not by his own cleverness but by a squad of Orcs acting on the orders of their prophet — a race he had always hated, which is the one genuinely interesting idea the plot offers.

That rescue party includes the masked rogue Dar Pha, the archer Nortar, the mage Ghortarius and the warrior Rogdor, who runs into Sordahon, Gandohar’s right hand. Gandohar has named himself Emperor of Antaloor. The hero’s goal is not conquest but information: find the weak point in Gandohar’s defense, or lose Kyra for good.

Antaloor’s Deserts, Swamps and Seashores

Antaloor is the argument for the game. Deserts, forests, swamps, seashores, cities, rural country, hidden caves and dungeons, all open from the start regardless of story progress. Enemy levels are not tied to yours, so the map will kill you if you wander badly. That is a real design choice and it mostly works — the world feels like a place rather than a corridor.

The cost is that Two Worlds II rarely gives you a reason to care about any of it. The quests are numerous and thin. The game’s boast of roughly 100 hours of content reads, to this paper, more like a spreadsheet than a promise.

Sailing, Forging and the Card Modifiers

Reality Pump rebuilt the user interface, the engine, and the magic and crafting systems, and it kept what worked before: horseback riding, forging, alchemy. Sailing was planned for the first game and never shipped; here it exists, but only in a few locations, which is a strange thing to advertise.

Spells combine through new card modifiers that alter or enhance their effects. Crafting and forging let you improve weapons and armor in different directions, and inventory objects can be broken down into base elements — cloth, wood, iron. It is a flexible system that rewards attention without demanding a spreadsheet.

Character building is looser than it should be. You get one hero in single-player and he is male only. There is no class lock: warrior, ranger and mage are determined by what you equip, and how well any of them works depends entirely on where you put earned skill points. Points go into endurance for health and damage, strength for combat, accuracy for ranged, willpower for magic. You can mix builds instead of committing. That freedom is generous, and it also means a bad early allocation can leave you grinding to fix it.

Five Multiplayer Modes and Eight Players

Multiplayer supports up to eight players across five modes: Crystal Capture, PvP, Dual, Adventure with seven chapters, and a Village mode. Here you can create a new character, pick from several races, and play as male or female — which only sharpens the question of why the single-player hero could not be.

A Hundred Hours, Unevenly Spent

The comparison that matters is to the first Two Worlds, and Two Worlds II wins it. The engine is better, the interface is better, the magic and crafting are better, and the world is larger. Against its actual peers in 2010 and 2011, though, the gap shows. The combat has weight but not precision. The writing has ambition but not discipline. The non-linear map is the best idea in the game and the quest design never rises to meet it.

What holds up is the structure: an open Antaloor you can walk into underleveled and regret, a crafting layer worth learning, and a rescue plot that gives the Orcs a reason to matter. What does not hold up is everything carrying the story. Gandohar is a dark lord with a plan and no personality. Kyra is a vessel.

Two Worlds II is worth playing if you want a large, systems-heavy RPG. It is not worth playing for its story, and after sixteen years that is the part that has aged worst.

The Numbers Behind Two Worlds II

• Score: 6.9 of 10
• Developer: Reality Pump
• Publisher: TopWare Interactive
• Europe release: 9 November 2010
• North America release: 25 January 2011
• Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC (Microsoft Windows), Mac, Linux
• Genre: Action role-playing, open world, third person
• Modes: Single player, multiplayer, co-operative
• Multiplayer: Five modes, up to 8 players
• Claimed content: roughly 100 hours of quests

Release Dates by Region

The published critical score sits at 6.9, and that lands about right. Two Worlds II is a competent, ambitious sequel that fixed its predecessor’s worst problems without finding a reason to exist beyond them.

Antaloor · open-world RPG · Reality Pump · RPG review · TopWare Interactive · Two Worlds II