Two Worlds

I've actually owned this game for a number of years, but only recently have been able to play it. You might ask why that is. Three letters: DRM. A few years ago I purchased Reality Pump's Two Worlds at a local Wal-Mart, perfectly legally with my own hard-earned cash. But as my luck would have it, it was one of those games that contains a nasty little bit of DRM that makes it impossible to re-install and re-activate it more than once or twice. After an OS replacement on my old computer and later switching to a new computer, apparently I inadvertently had used up all the permitted installs. Thus the game ended up sitting in a DVD rack collecting dust...

This is where websites like GOG.com (Good Old Games) come in handy. Offering DRM-free versions of many popular games at reasonable prices, GOG.com is really the sort of place a reminiscent gamer like myself should hang around more often. Special thanks to unofficial GOG.com spokesperson Kirtai for mentioning that Two Worlds could be found there for just $10 USD. So, now that I've owned the game for a few years and have purchased it twice, I can finally play it...

THE PLOT:

You're Hooded Dude. Your sister, Scantily-Clad Chick, has fallen off the horse you both share. While you go off to fetch a pail of water, Armored Hooded Dude drops by and kidnaps her. Several years pass and still you're looking for her.

Okay, there's a bit more to it than that, but the game doesn't really give us much of a prologue before we jump right into it.

Two Worlds is the game that I've always felt really wanted to be Oblivion but just didn't quite make it. Much like the famous Bethesda cash-cow, it offers players a large green world to explore and plenty of quests and stuff to hack at with a sword or throw fireballs at. However, unlike Oblivion, you can only play the game as the one guy and you have a pre-determined list of possible skills that you can activate with your experience points (think Witcher, but with an interface and skills that don't look or feel quite as cool or complex).

To be honest, the only things that really went wrong with this game in my opinion are the characters and the dialog. The NPCs all look quite shoddy by today's standards, and everybody likes to say things like "forsooth", "mayhaps" and "pray tell ye" a lot, to the point that it just sounds really corny.

But I can overlook such things if the gameplay keeps me entertained, and so far Two Worlds is doing just that. It took me a few tries to grow accustomed to the GUI and find a control configuration that I'm comfortable with, but now that I'm getting into it I could see myself actually playing this one through to the end. It has plenty of side-quests, a large world to explore, plenty of stuff to buy and sell, lots of spells to learn from various elemental schools of magic and of course hordes of enemies to hack your way through. The combat system does not seem at all complex, but I'm a fan of hack-'n-slash adventures so I really don't mind.

If you've heard bad things about this game and have avoided it because you found the Bethesda games first, the best way I could describe Two Worlds to you would be this: imagine a game that tries to emulate Oblivion but with lesser graphics and gameplay similar to Morrowind, though the quests and factions system aren't quite so complex.

I'm not going to preach that everyone should buy Two Worlds because admittedly there are better RPGs out there, but I also have to say that you could do a lot worse. At only $10 USD for a full game with two expansion packs and no DRM, you really can't go too wrong. If you get bored of playing those other games that you've already been through more than twice and want to mess around with something different, Two Worlds might be just the thing you could check out without emptying your whole wallet.

(What this game really needs is a Construction Set. Don't know why more game devs and publishers haven't caught on to that yet...)

I've also managed to get a copy of Two Worlds II... but that, my friends, will be another story for another time...