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| | Genre: Adventure & RPG | | | Min OS X: 10.6 |
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Requirements: Mac OS X: 10.6.3 | CPU: 2.0 GHz Intel Processor | RAM: 2 GB | HD Space: 8 GB Graphics: Shader 4.0 and 512 MB RAMReview: Well, here it is, IMG readers, at long last, your Two Worlds II review. What's that you say? The game's been out for months? Well, yes, but you must understand that this game is BIG. As in, many many hours of playing big. As in, you can start your character running from one side of a map, step away and go get lunch, and when you get back, he'll still be running. As in, according to the game's internal clock, I've played it for 72 hours and I know that I still haven't found all the side quests and surprises. It took a long time to play through this game, and I bravely stuck it out, knowing you, dear readers, expect nothing less than utter dedication from your unpaid, part-time, sporadic IMG reviewers.I will first confess that I never played the original Two Worlds, so frankly, there's a certain amount of back-story I just didn't get. For example, why is it called Two Worlds? As far as I can tell, there's only one world available. But in all fairness, it's quite a world; full of lush, vivid landscapes, brimming with handcrafted detail and variation. Scenes ranging from tropical islands to savannahs to vibrant cities to Mordor-esque twisted canyons and dank dungeons appear in this game, filled with cinematic-quality antagonists and bit players. So what do you do in this world? Well, you play a man sprung from an evil emperor's jail by some friendly orcs, and sent out on a forlorn quest to rescue your magically enslaved sister from the same emperor, and hopefully topple his evil reign and restore truth, justice, and blah blah blah - the usual high fantasy canards. When you first emerge blinking into the light of freedom, you're almost as helpless as a kitten. But if you survive you can turn yourself into a wrath-fueled killing machine, a sneaky backstabbing thief, an archery whiz or a spell-spamming Harry Potter on steroids. You'll use and improve your skills, whichever path you choose, on the main quests and a seemingly never-ending array of side-quests, gathering gold, weapons, magical ingredients and trinkets, as well as important clues for defeating your archenemy. The story is not particularly original, and doesn't offer much in the way of a sense of mounting dread; you begin to feel like you can put off toppling the emperor until after you've built a nice nest egg for yourself, maybe taking a couple of trips around the world via the handy teleport systems, meeting some cute girls, and so on. The interactions between your character and the supporting cast have some broad humor and a fair amount of cliché, but, considering the English version is a translation, it could have been a lot worse. There are some decision points along the way where you can be more or less of a jerk, depending on your reaction to certain events, but your decisions don't seem to have the far-reaching effects that moral choices play in games like Jade Empire or Dragon Age: Origins. Mostly, it appears you may have chosen between two endings for a particular side quest, or possibly cut yourself off from another, related quest.
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