Two Worlds

More summer meadows to keep Oblivion fans happy.

Roleplaying games come in a few flavours. There’s the hack’n’slash kind, where conversation is kept to a minimum and you focus on beating up creatures, levelling your character and getting phat loot. Then you have the RPGs that are a little more social. Fighting is not the only way to solve problems; you can convince the bandits to abandon their life of crime and become honest potato farmers, or something to that effect. While being marketed as the latter type, Reality Pump’s Two Worlds is definitely more suited to the former crowd.

The story starts with the main character being informed that his twin sister has been kidnapped. The perpetrators are under the impression that the twins are linked to an ancient evil, and want you to awaken it in exchange for your sister’s life.

In addition to the main quest, there are sub-quests to solve and monsters to slay. With each level up you increase your base stats, which consist of health, willpower, strength and dexterity, as well as various skills.



Skills are comprised, for the most part, of a variety of combat manoeuvres, such as kicking dust in your opponent’s eyes, disarming them and breaking their shield. There are also four magic schools of earth, fire, wind and water, with the fifth school, necromancy, having to be learnt somewhere in the game.

As we played, we couldn’t help but draw comparisons to Bethesda’s Oblivion. Big rolling landscapes dotted with trees, packs of wolves and bandits as you travel the roads and curious special effects that make you wonder ‘If I walk into that, will I die?’ (bit like STALKER in that respect too! – Ed) The game landscape looks pretty and well-designed, however, and the world is huge.

Two Worlds features armoured, horse-drawn tanks. Just watch your shins getting in and out.

Two Worlds is pitched as a game where your actions have an impact on the world. Yet, after about a week’s worth of playing, we have yet to see our actions have an effect on the bigger picture beyond the quest giver saying ‘Thanks for finding my dog’. The closest we found was that doing quests for one faction increased our standing with them. If your reputation is too low, you will flat-out be refused entry into certain towns, while higher reputations will grant discounts at allied stores and a greater selection of items.

Being refused entry to a town wasn’t too big a drama, as beating the gate guard to a bloody pulp and opening the town gate yourself didn’t seem to provoke any sort of negative reaction from anyone at all. It’s almost as if nobody liked the gate keeper, and everyone was secretly delighted to not have to deal with him anymore.

In fact, at one point in the game you need to get a relic for part of the main quest, but it is in the hands of one of the faction leaders. He tells you to go talk to his people and help them (Read: Build your reputation, in game mechanic-speak) and he will give you the item. Seeing as how it was nigh impossible to find out which people were actually members of his faction, let alone had a quest to offer, we decided to try him out and picked a fight. Not only by beating him did we gain access to the item we needed, no-one seemed to mind that we had killed their leader, and life resumed as normal.

As for quests, it was often very difficult to find out where you’re supposed to be. For one quest, it is hinted that ‘The Brotherhood’ may know where to find an item we needed. After messing about we eventually figured out that the ‘The Brotherhood’ was the equivalent to the ‘Fighters Guild’, and naturally none of their members had the faintest idea what we were talking about in regards to the quest item.

We’d recommend this title for someone who was looking for Oblivion with a greater emphasis on combat and loot, minus the whole ‘role-playing’ thing. Enjoy exploring the world, bashing orcs, robbing their corpses and gaining levels. Just steer clear of the quests.

For:
Great landscapes; combat is interactive and fun.

Against:
Frustrating quests; reputation requirements; dumb NPC logic; role-playing elements kept to a minimum.