Two Worlds II - Pirates of the Flying Fortress DLC

It's as easy as this: If you liked Two Worlds II, you'll like this DLC, if not, then skip it. You can get about 8 hours out of this DLC, which is a good amount, and it brings more and better loot, and a decent level of challenge for those who have already finished the main game. The problems that Two Worlds II have are still not adressed here however, facial animations are still terrible and characters still sound and feel one dimensional, and for some reason there barely are any sidequests in this piece of DLC, maybe two or three at most. That being said, I liked the main game, and I liked the DLC, although I do think it is better to buy during a discount, just to make sure you get your money's worth.

Two Worlds II was not a game that I enjoyed but I still forced myself to return and play through its expansions 'Pirates of the Flying Fortress' to answer the question, "does this DLC have quality enough to redeem the whole title?' Well... no but we'll get into that later. First things first a short recap of the main game is in order - let us take a look at what I'd written as it overwhelmingly still applies to the DLC content. "The first game was better. Really can't recommend this one to anyone who isn't already a giant fan of eurojank rpgs with exceptionally poor storytelling, subpar mechanics and a threatening UI. Typically with games like these the CHARM outweighs the lack of quality, but here the only charm is making fun of it. What does this game have going for it if you can look past how bad it is? - environments LOOK good - game actually functions, I had no crashes or gamebreaking bugs. - general consensus is that the magic system is really good (though my playthrough was melee) - COMEDY" This review is available on video here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glu5cVaAZOI What is Two Worlds II: Pirates of the Flying Fortress TWII:PotFF released during the September of 2011 and was developed by the Polish studio Reality Pump working under the German publisher TopWare Interactive. Two Worlds II itself is a sequel to the TES OBLIVION killer Two Worlds. To put things short, the Two Worlds series is rather janky and seems to of taken heavy inspiration from the classic Piranha Bytes games like Gothic and Risen. It's a bit difficult to track down information since these companies are foreign to me but I believe TopWare Interactive is now defunct as they seemed to have financial problems in years previous. STORY From this point onward the review will be dropping spoilers. If you do not wish to see spoilers turn back now. This game is more than 10 years old and has a pretty low completion rate - I have no qualms spoiling it in full. To begin the DLC I went the route of going straight in, which provided me with an appropriately leveled and geared premade character, instead of carrying over my previous save from the main story. After character creation some cinematics play which set up the plot - more or less our hero is hired by the cursed and legendary pirate Ed Teal to hunt up some treasure. Besides treasure Teal sets us off on a covert mission to reunite him with his lover Maren however it's revealed there are two Eds vying for her attention as the archipelago's curse renders its citizens as two separate entities - a body and a soul. Now we've got our main plot and a major subplot. Find the treasure, reunite the captains body and soul. There are a few important crewmembers, the aging Nicky Nails aids us against Ed's body behind the scenes, the grump Cutter sends us on some side quests and the drunken slob Billy Bugeyes functions as the ships merchant. This is more or less where the pirate theme comes to an end as the majority of playtime is spent doing stereotypical fantasy roleplaying game things. Anyways to carry on with the plot after the wild goose chase to reunite Ed Teal's body and soul (or not there are a few plot choices and I only played through one) you set off into another wild goose chase for the treasure and end up at the magical Flying Fortress to discover it is the ship of a cartographer named Nanook that has been cursed into stone and cast into the sky by the god Throglin. Nanook wanted to be so much of a big brain Throglin got upset and morphed him into a rock. The section of game near the end about this is mostly set within the winding mind of Nanook after he's lost his marbles and the amount of visual effect features through his several hour sequence made me feel like losing my lunch. Really, I could deal with the yellow tone shift but putting a fish eye lens over the entire game for several hours was a poor choice. To wrap up the story we fix Nanooks mind in order for him to grant us a wish and then we grant his by ending his eternally tormented life thus causing the Flying Fort to fall into the sea. If that isn't your cup of grog then keep in mind this is an RPG and has a plethora of side quests. GAMEPLAY Through my entire playthrough my character remained dressed like Shrek during his initial Fiona rescue and most of my gameplay was spent running through cave dungeons killing orc-things or standard zombies. Despite this being the pirate DLC I never managed to even find the tricorn hat to dress my character appropriately. Side quests were very odd. I think the developers realized a large proponent of the Two Worlds fanbase were folks playing it for it's unintentional comedic aspect but they've missed the mark for me as it seems when they are purposefully trying to be funny the jokes miss. There are side quests such as a Santa Claus present delivery, transexual elf dating, secret zombie nightclubs as well as dog-man training. Perhaps I'm humorless. While running all these quests you'll be hopping between a few islands via a small sail boat. Boat combat is non-existent. While on land somehow I kept feeling the maps felt oddly linear for an open world experience and also the mob density was way too high. Overworld mobs also respawn. I very quickly got tired of taking a few steps in any direction and spamming my way through the braindead combat which led me to simply run past most encounters. The combat in this game is only praised if you play a sort of wizard - I took on the role of a warrior which perhaps is where my problem lies. I had a very small pool of attacks and pretty much facetanked everything head on. I'm not sure if part of the problem here is that my pre-built expansion character was overpowered to start or if the DLC in general is poorly scaled for difficulty. BUGS In my initial review for Two Worlds II I stated that my experience was bugless, that sentiment does not apply for this expansion. Almost immediately after starting and getting the sailboat to island hop I managed to accidentally beach the vessel which made it permanently stuck. A bit later the ship disappeared completely. This led me to having to swim between the islands before unlocking the teleports. A nearly gamebreaking bug I encountered was during the end section within the mind of Nanook. There is a sequence where he must run through several rooms of a house and you help with different tasks per rooms however his pathing causes him to get stuck on the doorways. I had to reset this instance several times and discovered that in order to progress I'd need to run ahead of him to block and push his character to walk through the doors correctly. As a minor a lot of real time dialogue sequences and cutscenes seemed to have broken animations for me. Mostly this was apparent as characters would talk without moving their mouths. FINAL THOUGHTS Despite providing me with an additional 12 or so hours I can't say that any of it was very fun or redeeming of the main game itself and it is by and large absolutely not worth paying full price for. If you are dead set on playing this go into it with very low expectations.

Do not buy - Currently there's a bug that will not let you progress through this DLC at several spots, there's very little you can do in it because of this and the team working on this game has been very vague on even awknowledging they are working on a fix that will be implemented anytime soon.

Depending on how you play, this is 15 - 35 hours of content. It's in its own standalone world separate from the main game, but you can import your character. The writing, quests and new areas to explore are a lot of fun, and basically more of the same game play and questing. It reuses some assets from the base game, but not in a cheap or lazy way. In fact, it adds a nice "coming home" feeling to revisit certain areas of the original.

Loved everything about this DLC until I got to the mandatory music mini-game at towards the end of the game and couldn't complete it. REALLY frustrating to not even be able to GET to the actual FLYING FORTRESS in the story. Infuriating. Who puts an impossible mini-game as a bottleneck/impossible gate to the end of the story?

I really considered to give a positive review but more I delve into the DLC I could see its poor execution. But to take it from the start - the story felt very interesting from the first moment, especially because of the Flying Fortress. It served as a magnet to me and I was truly eager to discover its mysteries. I don't want to give any spoilers so I will simply say that this potential was wasted..... The gameplay doesn't add anything new. Simple as that. There are some new enemies - they could be described as elemental beings made of wood. And these elementals using same metallic weapons as humans and of course they have the same moves as your enemies in the base game. This is just a cheap re-skin. I liked the idea of more smaller islands to which you have to sail, but this was quickly shattered by the sail and wind system. I quickly yearned to find the teleports and never use my boat again. As I said the story starts well but it goes into ashes very quickly. The only thing that I remember from the story isn't connected to the main quest line, but one journal about certain grave digger who had an necromancy gift and it was pretty good reading. Yes, one journal was more interesting than the whole story about this DLC. There are 3 different endings but they are all completely desperate and generic. Also I have problems with the language localization. This DLC should have czech subtitles but is is broken and you can get them only through a community guide. And still there is a lot of glitches and texts in polish. Even in the menu where you setup your characted, that is really annoying. But the devs care more about microtransactions.......

While I enjoyed the main game somewhat, this DLC is garbage. The island you're confined to is empty except for the legions of enemies that pop up every 3 feet. Seriously, I enjoyed the combat in this game until I got to the DLC. Waves and waves of crap mobs that take way too long to kill, it's just a chore and not fun at all. And you can't really upgrade your spells because there are no magic vendors, so if you don't have your magic cards stacked right, you're in for a bad time. The voice acting gets progressively worse in each DLC, so enjoy this one while you can. Why do they hire new voice actors that sound nothing alike for the main character every time? It sounds like his dialogue is recorded by an intern in the bathroom with a $20 microphone. I wouldn't recommend this DLC unless you're a huge fan of the base game, which I thought I was, but I guess I'm not THAT much of a fan.

[u]The newest feature to this list, which is why the total bin fire:[/u] Console command removal to support the IDIOCY™ microtransaction system. And no, now I don't care that the console commands are said to be coming back by a developer's claims. [b]That previous game owners had to fight to get back part of their game makes this an asshole move by the developer[/b]: http://steamcommunity.com/app/7520/discussions/0/2333276539596165497/?ctp=2#c2333276539597526642 [quote=Raidor dph;2333276539597526642]Having cheats and console commands in a game is not a game feature. It is usually for developers and unlocked. The current GOG version has also no console commands. I mean the version we are just uploading. So better not buy it again. Only chance to get the console back is to convince us to put it back. [/quote] [quote=Raidor dph;2333276539597610061]Very funny the guy this Jim - but he forgot to mention, that we also added achievments and trading cards to a game from 2011. - and all because the users wanted us to do this. However - his promotion now was definitly worth to remove the console. Let him get 5 Mio views and we can put the console back. [/quote] [quote=Raidor dph;2333276539597659808][quote=Harshishas;2333276539597625905] How rude, and I had respects for this company... [/quote] why is this rude? - if Jim get´s 5 mio views he makes good money on advertisement. And we get good promotion. [/quote] 6 years and this guy had to figure out their own community and game by this. Nope the fuck away from these developers.

DLC done right. Honestly, I found it to be better than the main game. The difficulty curve is balanced out by allowing players to import their beefy characters from the original campaign. The fights feel fairer, the story is pretty good, and the map is packed with all sorts of interesting stuff. Levelling up still occurs on a regular basis from quest exp alone, which means that high-level grinding isn't really a thing here. Would recommend, even if the base game left a bad taste in your mouth.

Pros: -Awesome story, except the ending of the main story. Otherwise, the quest is meaningful and realistic, your character can speak and his response is meaningful throughout the story and side quest. This make the game become more interactive (in other game like Skyrim or Neverwinter night, you can only response with dialogue, no voice, no speak back and forward between you and NPC) -Charming music -Graphics is beautiful for a game from 2011. Vast desert, corrupted lands, dark dungeons, fresh forest. The world is smaller compare to skyrim but more quality and less repetitive. -Day and night circles. NPC go to work at day and return home to sleep at night. -NPC response to your action, they run and scream when you hit them, then guards will try to beat you and they are while powerful. If you pull out your weapon when guards are nearby, they will surround you and ask you to sheath your weapon. When you break into people's home. If the owner see you they will ask you to leave and if you don't leave, they will call the guard. -Combat system is realistic and fun: Melee is included block, counter attack, combo, passive and active skill, dodge, step back and strike, while blocking you can strike at choose direction by pressing move button + left click. Due wielding, two handed, one handed with shield or touch or nothing, all these options have skill to support them, for example you can strike enemy with the torch and deal %100 of your physical damage as fire. Different weapon have different skill to support them: axe strip enemy shield, mace stun them, etc. Some skills can be use with any weapon. Range is very powerful, you can snipe, you can shoot power fire arrow/bolt deal area damage, shoot arrow/bolt that create a decoy, when decoy expires or dies, deal % of your physical damage as spectral damage. Poison and frost arrow/bolt that slow enemy. Frost option deal a small area damage while poison is single target but deal damage over time. With the pirate dlc, you get access to the crossbow, which provide a different using mechanism and fighting strategies. This game has the best magic system, you can create a lot of spells by combine magic cards together. You can make stone rains from the sky and then create a tornado that make these stones flying around you and hit enemy. These are hundreds, even thousands combinations. Air, life, lightning, fire, power, force, water, ice, psyche, corpse, poison, decay, trap, summoning, area, etc. -Crafting and alchemy system -Teleport system: besides the fixed teleport gate, you can create your own teleport gate as many as you want and spread them across the world. -Nice lockpicking system -Fun mini games -mod-able Cons: -Lack variety landscape: no winter, fall landscape. -Lack variety of races, the variety of monster is okay but I still want more. -Only one dragon. Conclusion: Two worlds 2 is a must play game. I played Skyrim and Oblivion, the worlds is vast with a lot of side quests, but everything is repetitive and dust story. When it comes to quality, I choose Two Worlds II and its DLC pirate, meaningful quest chat-chit and dialogue, different quests outcome, rewards and different ending in DLC. This the first open world game which I truly want to replay.