I always skilled up my Conjuration in Oblivion, and it was tremendously helpful in ranged combat to have something to distract enemies and soak up damage will I plinked at them. I hope this is as effective in TW2. If I get to the point where I can summon one of these Giant Ants - the M-1 Abrams tank of this game so far - I’ll be really happy.
Not necessary to play the first although it’s basically a direct sequel. There’s plenty of ingame lore to fill in what’s not immediately apparent and it’s all well written and usually funny.
LOL too true.
I picked up Two Worlds 1 recently from GOG and really enjoying it.
The voice acting with it’s cheesy dialogue and stilted delivery is more humorous than Deathspank anyway. And I’m actually having some fun exploring and fighting, the world itself looks pretty good as does the armor and spell effects and even the horse riding is well done IMO.
So overall I was expecting a lot worse than this.
The only part of that which sounds like Two Worlds is the voice actin and cheesy dialogue. Are you sure that’s what you’re playing? Can you discern between wolves and boars? If yes to the latter, no to the former!
Been playing this gem recently, and I must say it is a pretty polished and good game. It has so many little “extras” that add to the enjoyment of the game. (patch 1.3)
- There is the music minigame, which is a bit like Guitar Hero, except you can buy a flute, a guitar, a violin, a drum, and some other things, and you also buy music notes. And you can play in front of a crowd to get money, or team up with other musicians and get even more money.
- You have a lockpicking minigame, which is both difficult and simple, and works quite ok when you master it. I felt it worked better than the one you had in Oblivion.
- You have stealth kills for humanoid mobs, with a nice little ‘cutscene’ showing you stabbing your target in the kidneys
- Horseriding around waypoints for prices, like you have in LOTRO Midsummers Festival.
- A simple dice game where the objective is just to get as many points as possible, and you can kick the table to help your dice along
Then there is the item upgrade system which is basically a combination of ; Resources available, the item and your skill. A plus thing with system is that you get extra resources by disassembling other equipment, and almost everything you kill will drop something you can disassemble, so you’ll hardly ever run out of materials to upgrade your gear to a higher “itemlevel”. Upgrading items give them better stats as well as unlock gem slots, where you can put gems that can add different magic damage types or buff one of your stats. When you gem some of your weapons with special damage gem, they even get a fancy glow - like we all love from WoW. So your sword might start burning, or dripping acid, depending on what kind of gem it has been infused with.
You have an alchemy/herbalist system where you can mix various materials to create different unique potions. When you create a new potion, you get a new recipe that you can choose to save, so you can quickly look it up to create more of those potions at a latter time.
There are tonnes of skills to discover/buy, and as you use some of your skills you will get bonus skill points you can invest to further increase your skills.
Combat and your equipment is pretty nice as well, since you can choose to dual wield, singlewield with sword, fist fight + kicking, you have blocking, riposte, aoe, defensive attacks, offensive-attack with jump, you have archery and magic. With a joypad you can quickly (in combat even) switch between 3 different loadouts (Rings, Armor, Weapons… everything) depending on your foes or the range. Foes have various resistances and vulnerabilities, so you might want to switch around mid fight if you have another gearset better suited for the fight. You also have different special attacks that are showed in slow motion when executed, which proc randomly depending on the foes you are fighting and your skills. If you loved the “dual knockdown” in Deus Ex 3, you might be lucky and see something similar executed randomly here ;)
Also; Your weapons have a Swing timer and a reach limit, so you can fight enemies with weapons that have a 1.7m range, and the pathetic enemies you fight, with puny 1.0m range weapons will never be able to reach you. Weapons such as Staffs and Halberds have this, whereas a dagger might be 0.4m range. Swords are usually around 0.8-1.1m range.
Your shield has a block value (for either blunt or sharp objects) as well as a block field, which can range from something as small as 28 degrees to over 100 degrees of coverage. Which means you need to position yourself correctly when attempting to block versus your enemy or enemies.
Other abilitie you can use allow you to disorient your foes, pickpocket players, and within the magic tree there are even abilities to summon Elementals or undead to your aid.
When it comes to Magic, in Two Worlds 2 you create your own spells. You start by obtaining various spell cards, and as you get more of them, you can mix them up to create different unique spells. If your FIRE Missiles (Homing) do not work versus something you are fighting, how about replacing the FIRE card with a FROST card, and you now have Homing Frost Missiles. Or, perhaps the enemies are many, and close, so you can replace the homing card with a spray card, and now you shoot 3 missiles that dont home onto enemies.
The graphics are pretty good as well. Even though it only comes with a DX9 and DX10 renderer (would’ve liked to see a DX11 for performance). Its pretty playable on my laptop on 1920x1200.
There are loads of side-quests you can find as you travel the landscape. The map and quest log works ok to track your active or inactive quests. YOu can create your own map markers and even create waypoints to send you through different ones. You can discover dungeons all over the land, and they’ll be marked on your map as you uncover them.
You have horseback riding, sprinting and a network of teleport circles for fast travel. You can also get your own Teleport Stones and portable circles to make it even quicker to get around.
The only downsides I see with the game is that the story and dialogue is a bit meh. For everything else I would say that this game has more features than The Witcher 2 (TW2) and if you loved TW2 there is no reason not to like TW2. err.,. TWT… hah… Two Worlds Two. That said, there are several books and pieces of lore you can pickup and read at your leisure from your inventory, some of them are quite long and detailed, and some are even funny. So there is at least some lore that will help get you into the world.
Now, I’m off to kill some more Rhinos for my alchemy!
I’ve been wanting to get back to this. I’m just not sure if I want to pick up where I left off with my warrior character or start over and delve into the magic. I wasn’t all that far into the game. I also noticed that this received a patch recently, nice to see that they’re still working on it.
My current character is a bit of everything. Mostly warrior-esque, with blocking, damage mitigation and strength, but I’ve also put some points into accuracy and wisdom, so I can use my fancy bow or staff to pick off dangerous foes from a distance (well, kiting them really).
The start of the game is a bit buggy. Where you are set on a spot and told to move 50m in a direction to teleport. Of course, this being a free world exploration game, I decided to instead make my way around the island killing everything I met. This was achieved through the use of pulling single mobs, kiting and exploiting the terrain. And by the time I finally took the teleporter I had killed everything I could see. This turned out had some interesting side effects, in that, in one cutscene you are shown a bunch of boulders crashing down over some mobs sitting around a campfire. Except, I had already activated the boulders and killed the mobs. So what I was shown was the camera panning down the hill, with sound effects of boulders and screams from the dying, except, none of this happened. Still, I’m sure it would have made a awesome cutscene had there actually been anything happening apart from sound effects.
My favourite foe I hate at the moment are the Large Scorpions… They have a long range on their attacks, and they usually end up poisoning me, so I’m forced to pop a potion while fighting. Seems like the best tactic is to do 1 attack (trigger), then 2 defensive attacks (a button) before attacking again. It seems like combat requires a bit of attention and strategy (although mashing the button works for a lot of foes, especially if you put a wall to their back) in that on the stronger foes you will usually have to time your attacks and blocks to be able to survive.
Anyone know what the STARS on equipment and jewlery means, by the way? So far I’m just equipping the Rings with the highest value for the stars. Good thing you can remove gems and put them in other equipment (Hey Wow!) since I usually have to replace a ring or two around every level I gain.
I’m a few hours into the expansion, Pirates Of the Floating Fortress, and first impressions are good. It still has some of the clunky writing, but has succeeded in creating interesting situations - I’ve fought tentacle-mouthed archers in sea-covered sandbanks, and been chased on horseback by grasshoppers the size my horse, hostile magicians have summoned rocks out of the air above me… A few hours in, thumbs up… so far.
Yea, was curious about the expansion. but still working on the main. Annoyingly ran into a bug in some of the old tombs so it looks like that side quest will be left incomplete, as the corpses are stuck in the walls and I am unable to loot them.
The expansion looks good. Unfortunately, I have the Impulse version of the main game, which cannot be registered on Steam. Steam won’t let me buy the expansion without the base game. And naturally, the expansion isn’t available on Impulse.
Does the expansion take place after the end of the main game? I am just starting in on chapter 3 of the main quest.
It’s kind of separate. You choose it, rather than the main game, from the start menu and can import a save if you have one.
Expansion has yet to drop for the 360, right?
I’ve been playing this a bunch the last few days, on the PS3, and having a lot of fun. I’m playing a hybrid archer/caster, and just starting Ch. 2. After playing the demo for the first game on XBL, I’m frankly astounded at how good this game is.
I was having a hard time of it at the beginning, trying to play with just the bow/spells, and frequently had to pull out a sword to get the job done. For pretty much the second half of Ch. 1 until now, though, I haven’t had to use it- I think the change was when I got the summoning spell, so I could have a pet to tank for me. I decided I’m trying to play as a ‘ranger’ character, tuning my spells to fit that concept. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to what the game thows at me in the new (asian-themed?) Island.
I’m into what I assume is the endgame of Floating Fortress - there’s been lots to like along the way, but it seems to peter out into a combat-heavy ending section. Also they throw away one of their plus points by applying a blurry ‘spirit-world’ filter and zoomed FOV to the otherwise great graphics in the section I’m in now.
If you liked the main game, this is worth picking up. Not sure it’s a $30 purchase given The Witcher 2 is going for the same amount, but presumably it’ll be cheaper soon. The game systems are all the same as the main game, but I liked the setting (not super-varied but very well drawn) and some of the questing. It’s also nice to have a character who can actually run. There is a painfully perfunctory nature to some of the quests sadly - many stages are presented as bald instructions to do X to the Y, when the Y is in the same room as you. The obligatory treasure map puzzles are literally all solved for you, and plonked on your mini map. However just cruising round the islands was a fun time for quite a few hours for me, so recommended to anyone who liked the main game at all.
I just realized that if I buy this on Steam, and play it on my Mac without rebooting into Boot Camp. Can somewhat please summarize the past 12 pages of discussion in one sentence KTHXBAI!
TW2 has plenty of enjoyable parts but some pacing & clunkiness problems?
OK, I picked it up. When I don’t like it, I’m going to hold you personally responsible for your absolutely unambiguous claim that it was the best game ever!
(ok ok i kid. It does look like it will scratch the morrowind/gothic/risen itch when i feel like scratching it, and i won’t have to reboot to scratch it.)
Post your impressions so I can point and laugh…
Well, I bought Two Worlds I for the XBox for $5, and I felt that I massively overpaid. So in getting through the tutorial it’s already surpassed that (very low) bar.
The UI is pretty clunky, but it definitely has that Risen/Gothic/Morrowind feel. So let’s see how it goes.