Two Worlds II HD

MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE REVIEW: YOU MAY NOT BE EVEN ABLE TO PLAY THE GAME Think of it as an entertaining mediocre. It's rough around the edges, but has some interesting stuff. Overall, i was not the biggest fan, but somehow i made it past the LiterallyUnplayable™ menu screen and played the game. It's got magic, combat, a story and weird things. If you are a fan of a somewhat entertaining mediocre game, this may be for you, but personally its not my cup of tea. Second warning: You may not even be able to get past the main menu screen, so thepiratebay is gonna be your friend in finding out if you can even somehow play this.

Pretty fun AA rpg with forgettable main story, satisfying gameplay and some memorable side quests. Is it a must play classic? not really, but it is better than first game in every way possible and i enjoyed replaying it 16 years later. There is something lost decade ago this game reminded me about, i played Two Worlds 2 on release year and it worked perfectly on toaster pc and took only 5gb of space while having pretty large open locations and decent graphics, quite a contrast to modern gen games that take 100gb+ of space, have mediocre visuals and run like crap without upscaling. Id rather replay this game for 3rd time than subject myself to Starfield or Outer Worlds 2. Important note: Game requires NVIDIA PhysX installed otherwise it crashes on launch.

Awesome, modular magic system. If you want to feel like a powerful sorcerer, this game is one of few featuring wizards that allow you to do that. Protip: create the file steamapps/common/Two Worlds II/parameters/autoexecGame2.con (create the parameters folder if it doesn't exist), and paste the following into it: graph.SetFastRunSpecialEFX 0 engine.edgeAABlend 0 engine.fov 60 This will disable some forced motion blur and terrible default FoV not fixable through the in-game settings menu. The Pirates of the Flying Fortress DLC is also worth playing, but neither of the two other DLC are.

Two Worlds II HD is an ancient console game from 2011, and a terrible console port. It's a whopping 13 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for the typical features of modern gaming PCs, hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on contemporary machines. The game looks and feels dated. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an old game. This seems to have be lingering on Steam with an inflated price to try profit from abandonware. In a sheer insult to PC gamers, the developer has locked out keyboard and mouse controls on this game if you have any gaming peripherals at all (HOTAS, racing wheel etc). The developer demands, without compromise, that you must use a console peasant children's toy gamepad to play this garbage game. This is simply unacceptable, developers must never dictate to gamers how a game is to be consumed. If you want to play this, you'll need to reconfigure the hardware on your gaming rig. Screw that. The arrogance and hamfistedness of console developers will never cease to amaze me. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. You don't have to take my word about how bad the game is, we can measure the interest in a game by how much people bothered to play it. Two Worlds II HD has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "The Great Escape", getting out of prison at the start of the game (yes, they ripped off Oblivion), trivial to achieve, but less than 10 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Two Worlds II HD is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $25 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. Even when it was new, this was never a triple-A game. This is the kind of game that went almost directly from the warehouse into the cheap bargain bins at the front of the shop. Now, on Steam, without any modernisation? This is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $25 asking price for this game could get you games like "Dark Souls III", "Elden Ring" or "Total War Warhammer III". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. $25 (plus almost $100 worth of DLC) for a crappy console port that's 13 years old. This is offensive.

If you’re new to the series, this HD version won’t magically make it modern or accessible, but for returning players, it’s like revisiting an old polish classic that never really died. It’s clunky, it’s flawed, but it’s also uniquely itself. so yes the main reason for the positive review is nostalgia.

I don't recommend this game unless you love pain and trash ass games like I do. There's something charming about the poop feeling of this game. Everything is jank and wrong, but I still play this pile of crap from time to time. I would love to talk to the devs and pick their brain. I bet they do a lot of drugs

My main observation is that this game is one of very few in my memory which didn't require mods or bug fixes in addition to the base game to be playable, which is very impressive. In fact, devs still support the game, as the release date on latest DLCs and online mode could evidence. I like certain decisions made for controls and the spell crafting system. Many of the locations have unique and strong atmosphere. I am looking forward to Two Worlds 3.

It has that 'euro-jank' charm that I love. It's not perfectly polished like a Bethesda game, but it has more character and weirdness.‍

Two Worlds II is one of those games that feels objectively janky yet somehow manages to be incredibly addictive. It’s rough around the edges in almost every department, and still I found myself sinking dozens of hours into it and genuinely enjoying the experience. The main story is fairly generic, but not bad. There are a few plot twists that help keep things interesting, and overall it’s competently told. That said, the game clearly peaks early - the opening hours are by far the strongest, and unfortunately the quality steadily declines as the game goes on. Despite its RPG label, Two Worlds II leans much more toward action RPG / hack & slash than a traditional role-playing game. Dialogue is relatively sparse (though fully voiced), and meaningful choices are limited. You won’t be shaping the world through major decisions, but some side quests do allow for small variations and consequences, which is appreciated. Where the game truly shines is its magic system. It’s creative, flexible, and genuinely fun to experiment with. Similar to the Sacred games, you can build your own spells, but Two Worlds II goes even further by letting you stack modifiers, carriers, and elements. The result is one of the most enjoyable spell-crafting systems I’ve seen. That said… magic is wildly overpowered. If you want an easy mode without selecting one, just play a mage. Combat overall is decent. Melee fighting allows for attacking, blocking, and dodging, and it feels solid enough. Archery, however, is absolutely terrible - underpowered, clunky, and borderline unusable. It feels like an afterthought and is easily the weakest combat option in the game. The skill system is surprisingly good. Most skills feel useful, and character progression is satisfying. Items, on the other hand, are quite boring, but crafting partially saves the day. It’s effective, pleasant to use, and actually worth engaging with. The world design is where the game stumbles hard. The map is large but empty and extremely unrewarding to explore. As someone who loves checking every corner and going off the beaten path, this was a huge disappointment. Exploration rarely yields meaningful loot, some map edges (map finishes there...) literally let you fall off and die, and even sailing to distant islands offers little payoff. The game actively discourages curiosity. Honestly, you’re better off sticking strictly to the main story and side quests - exploration simply isn’t worth it. Technically, the game is a mess. There are a lot of glitches, so constant saving is mandatory. Worse, some quests can bug out entirely and never appear, which can permanently lock you out of certain achievements unless you restart the whole game from the beginning and replay it. That’s inexcusable. There’s also heavy recycling of locations, though the scenery itself is still impressive. Even today it has its moments, and I can easily imagine how stunning it must have looked at release. A special mention goes to the lockpicking minigame, which is practically a game on its own. Somehow, even after 80 hours, I never got bored of it. Pickpocketing, on the other hand, deserves to be buried on a remote island and forgotten forever. Surprisingly, the multiplayer is excellent. There’s a co-op campaign, guilds, team deathmatches, arena duels, and even a small city-building mode where players manage and develop their own village. Even more impressive: the servers are still alive in 2025, which is fantastic to see. The music is consistently great. The soundtrack is atmospheric, memorable, and far better than I expected. I still listen to it on YouTube from time to time. In the end, Two Worlds II feels like an enormous wasted potential. Almost every system has flaws, and yet the game remains oddly compelling. Despite all its problems, I didn’t get bored - I kept playing and, surprisingly, kept having fun. Would I recommend it? Yes, but only on sale. If you can look past the jank, there’s a strangely enjoyable experience hidden underneath.