Note: The multiplayer component of this game is more or less dead these days and thus was not tested. This review is only based on the PC version, console versions were not tested.


In the history of civilizations, it was said one of the very first was Ur, a Mesopotamian culture. Thus an "Ur example" would be anything that sets the standards for all things coming after. Two Worlds is an open-world RPG that is the Ur example of all the bad ideas of the genre, though it still has its moments of brilliance.

Two Worlds has a very simple plot. Your sister is kidnapped by a creepy cult-like organization wanting to bring back a demon, and you want to rescue her. With the help of a sympathetic double agent, you are trying to undermine this cult while saving her. This all takes place while you are in a world with various competing factions, civil wars, and supernatural threats besides that of the main story.

While the above paragraph sounds nice on paper, the actual story is pretty mediocre. There are various factions you can work for, but you never really join any or feel you make an impact, you just work as a courier doing fetch quests for the most part. The various supernatural threats outside of the main plot tend to be disconnected from the world at large and mostly just extra things to slay. There is a civil war between two factions and a nasty war with orcs (in Tolkien-esque tradition), but you never really do much to change anything major during either, they just boil down to set pieces to give you more quests to do. Even the main plot feels like an on-rails story with a twist a moderately intelligent person can see coming practically from the start and a hilarious exploit can let you see the end credits barely five minutes after the game begins if you know what to do. In short, the story is there to give you an excuse to run around and do quests.

The gameplay also suffers from "broad as an ocean, deep as a puddle" problems. All melee combat consists of predictable figure-eight-style slashes and smashes with various weapons. Bows are super predictable, though it comes with a nice auto-aim option to make using them even more simple. The magic system is divided between five different spell schools, but it feels like an afterthought. Enemies will rarely use anything beyond the basics and the player can get through the whole game without using any. Some skills are flat-out worthless and only useful in the now-dead multiplayer mode. The thievery and assassin skills are super niche and can be skipped without any problem. The remaining skills are either active combat skills (which can be generally ignored, combat is very easy) or some passive boosts, which are generally the only things worth getting and leveling.

That said, this game isn't terrible in some ways. It feels like if an Elder Scrolls game and Diablo had a baby. Specifically, it has the progressive randomized loot system of Diablo (tied to player level) with a familiar cliche storm of a world that would be old hat to Elder Scrolls players. While it's a great example of a rather boring open-world game that could be shrunk in size by 60% and still have a ton of content, it's definitely got a lot of enemies to slay for those who want to just hack and slash monsters to kill time. I've blown a few hours on it while terminally bored and can't say I regret it if nothing else.

Graphically, this game is decent by 2007 standards, with a variety of colors, acceptable 3d models, and decent loading times with a mostly seamless open world. Unfortunately, this game suffers from hilariously stiff animation (which actually makes it super easy to dodge attacks when combined with the back jump key). The set pieces feel very generic and blocky at times and with the grass draw distance turned down it's obvious where the land seams were stitched together. The open world is varied, but it feels like it's ticking off all sorts of story tropes. You have the medieval areas, stock ancient ruins, the standard Japan/China fusion part of the world, a Mordor-style part of the map, and all the other classic high fantasy location cliches. Some of the enemy designs are pretty creative, though they also suffer from the stiff animation and the larger stuff is laughably easy to kill due to the goofy hitboxes working in the player's favor to an absurd degree.

The music is pretty decent, with a really nice vocal open theme and some great ambient high fantasy music. The sound effects are okay if a bit generic sounding. The voice acting, however, I won't mince words, is hilarious. Everyone speaks in a hilarious "Ye Olde Butchered English" style, which makes every conversation sound slightly goofy.

The game is controlled primarily by mouse and keyboard, with game controllers only supported through third-party tweaks. I have not played the console version, so I cannot comment on whether controllers work well either way. Given how a prominent part of the interface uses a hotkey bar, I recommend the keyboard and mouse regardless. The controls aren't too hard to learn, with a brief tutorial area to help you learn the basics. Keys are remappable, but I found the stock key settings more than acceptable.

This game requires a legacy version of Nvidia PhysX to turn on, but otherwise, it runs on modern Windows fine. It does run natively in Linux via the Linux beta branch on Steam and the Windows version can run with some tinkering on Steam Proton. Similar tweaks will work fine on the GoG versions of this title. The only bug I noticed is you can't use the console to type letters properly, but this is not a game where you'll really need to use this. Otherwise, meet the rather modest requirements and this game will run fine.

Morally, this title has some definite issues.

Violence has a cheap blood spray effect when you land hits, but bodies just fall and hit the ground after death, eventually disappearing. The player, if they die in battle, the screen just goes black and they reappear at the nearest Maliel Shrine to start over.

Language is pretty mild. The hokey Olde English style doesn't lend itself well to swears and profanity. Sexuality is also nigh non-existent, with the exception of your sister and her plunging neckline black dress for some weird reason.

The game religion isn't well-described in game, but basically is a generic polytheistic style religion. Maliel is the typical God stand-in, complete with ankh-style shrines that revive you if you fall in battle. Azriaal is a fire god and also the typical Devil stand-in. The rest are generally ill-defined background fluff of neutral affiliation. You can work for and use necromancy, though it is considered bad in-universe and Necromancer quests are some of the few you can purposely fail by killing them off instead via explicit dialogue choices. All the typical high fantasy cliches appear, including various demons, all of which you can beat up in some fashion or even summon for your own use.

There is a theft and murder system in the game, the rules essentially boil down to "don't get caught or the guards will come after you". You can work for the Giriza and Necromancers, who are a thieves' clan and the other speaks for itself as the "evil" options. The rest of the groups you can work for are generally decent though some have in-universe competition with each other. While you don't drink any depicted alcohol, it is mentioned and one quest has you delivering some to others. It's worth noting while the core purpose of your quest (to rescue your sister) is good, your main character acts like a sociopathic mercenary, apparently uncaring they unwittingly got an entire city killed by proxy at one point.

Overall, this is technically okay but little more than the earliest example of a vapid open-world game of shallow depths. It can be a decent time waster, but there are far better games out there. Morally, it's got a lot of issues and is not fit for anyone who is not a mature teenager to adult. It's generally super cheap and a decent time-waster, but it was so-so at best when it was released and there are still far better games in this genre today.