There’s a passage in the Bible that, when simplified, says that the sins of a father would be passed on to his son and the only way to break this cycle is through Jesus. I’m not sure if divine intervention has a part in Two Worlds 2’s creation, but by some miracle the game breaks out of the stigma the original Two Worlds created, and somehow Two Worlds 2 manages to be a pretty decent RPG in the process.
Two Worlds 2 starts out with your character being freed from a dungeon by a band of Orcs as he begins a quest to save his sister from the evil lord Gandohar. Character creation is fairly in-depth, with plenty of options to customize your appearance all the way down to “brow angle.” Sadly your main character can only be a male - so female players and men who like to role-play as girls are in for a disappointment. As soon as you jump into the game world you are greeted with some truly impressive visuals - vibrant landscapes, lush trees and grass, and impressive draw distances.
One thing I immediately liked about Two Worlds 2 is that your character isn’t locked into a class. While there are many different areas you can apply skill points to based on class - warrior, mage, assassin, and ranger - you aren’t locked into any one of these things. Combine this with the quick on-the-fly weapon and armor set switching, and it’s easy to play up to three “classes” at any time.
Speaking of weapons and armor sets - the one really stand-out feature of Two Worlds 2 is its crafting system. Every item can be broken down into basic components - a sword into iron, a shield into wood, a helmet into leather and steel. These components can then be used to upgrade your existing items to make them more powerful. Of course, determining what’s “more powerful” is a bit of a conundrum in itself because, by default, item stats are represented by a bunch of indiscernible icons. Thankfully this can be toggled with a option in the settings menu, but it took me a good 10 hours of playtime before I dug out the manual and realized it.
Another option you’ll want to make sure to set is the auto-save time; the more frequent the better. Because when you’re dead in Two Worlds 2 - and you will die a lot - you’re dead and need to reload. Part of this problem of dying so often comes from trying to figure out if the giant ant you are about to face off against will kill you with one swift blow from its antenna, or if you are an equal match for it. I’m still not sure how you’re expected to decide if you are capable of facing off with an enemy. According to Southpeak this isn't something presented to the players, instead you get a set of icons that show their resistances.