Two Worlds II HD - Shattered Embrace Reviews

Been playing the whole Two Worlds series and now I've got to this one, I though this expansion couldn't be as bad as it's reviewed. I do like the story and the world design again. But it's riddled with bugs. First hour or two I fell through the ground multiple times, a lot of npc's are acting like drug addicts. Characters voice acting stopped working and has not returned. Just clearly a not well designed expansion to finish the second game.

This expansion feels like a practical joke, honestly. The Two Worlds 2 fan in me wants to keep playing, but I don't think I can bring myself to do it. Playing as a magic user is kind of miserable. The quests and dialogues feel extremely low brow, low effort and the cheap difficulty is off-putting. I regret purchasing it, but at the same time I really wanted to see what it was all about. The only positive feedback I can give is that the game has been patched and is not utterly broken like it was at launch. Get it cheap, otherwise don't bother.

Awesome expansion, but very flawed. + Storyline is fantastic. Full of twists and actually quite complex. + Tons of content, dozens and dozens of quests and areas to explore. + Most of the stuff have better textures than previous expansions. + A whole new soundtrack which is very beautiful and epic. It's one of my favourite soundtracks ever. + They added autolooting for the bodies with weightless items. Extremely useful and time saving. + Tons of characters from the base game and previous expansions make an appearance here. + Tons of references to quests from previous expansions and even consequences of your choices if you play with the same character loaded from save files. - The first hour is terrible. If you go off the main track, you get instantly killed. Exploration is non-existent. It's full of cheap death traps. After that terrible first hour the game gets much better, so obviously, this game got such a bad reputation, not many bothered continuing playing. - Received a free bonus code for activating my license. The key was already used... I guess they game me the same code I got for base game. - There is no sound for the lines of the protagonist in the dialogues. That includes every dialogue in this game... The protagonist is fully voiced in the cutscenes, so... I have no words to comment, it's a terrible glitch, I guess. - Worst optimisation ever. Fps range from 5fps in city and 60-100fps everywhere else. That graphics upgrade truly paid off. - There are places where you can go through the wall and fall out of map. - Main storyline ends with a cliffhanger. I have a feeling it will never get a continuation. - Very sadly, I could not beat all side quests. 1. Abe's questline was left with him telling me speak to Bernard first, I have completed all Bernard's quests, but Abe still tells me to speak with Bernard first and only later he will speak to me. I've beaten the whole game but Abe is still saying the same stuff. 2. The elf shop would possibly give me more quests but the owner is forever waiting for the classification from the king which again, I've beaten the whole game and he still is waiting for the classification. 3. Chancellor was ready to give me a special mission if I got enough reputation but the only possible way to do so was to play the main quests and by the time I got enough reputation the chancellor forgot about the mission he was supposed to give me and only talked about the main quest instead, after finishing the whole game the chancellor is gone, I've no idea where he is now. So, I could not finish 3 side questlines which is really sad since it's maybe 2 hours of content lost. There are no walkthroughs of these quests anywhere to watch so I guess I'll never know what I've missed. I can definitely recommend this, but keep in mind that the first hour is terrible and there's tons of glitches which some make some quests unbeatable. 8/10

A simply hilarious disaster of a game. This game is the perfect example of what an incomplete and unfinished product looks like, while filled with bugs, glitches, performance issues, missing voices, skipped dialogues, broken quests, placeholder and un-named items, unbalanced combat and all wrapped up in a pretty full release, Beta release and Alpha release all at the same time. LMAO It's clear that the game was rushed and released, because the investors did not want to spend any more time or money on the game and just wanted their immediate return on investment. LOL I consider myself one of the hugest fan and supporter of the Two Worlds franchise, but even I could never support this garbage they sold us. It's obvious that Two Worlds 3 was never going to be made, at least not by TopWare Interactive/Zussex/Reality Pump. How this company remains in business is true mystery to me. I can only hope that some other well funded company, purchases the right of the Two Worlds and Raven's Cry series, as both games have huge potential and should not die and become forgotten relics. The funnest time I had was swimming naked with placeholder Edwina in Freehaven. LMAO

So I just "finished" the game, as in I was half an hour from the end and a game-breaking bug prevented me from progressing so I youtubed the rest. I really wanted to recommend this game, I really really did. If you've played through twII, potff, cot and still want more, shattered embrace should be a no-brainer. Yes there are bugs, no it isn't polished, yes the story is cheesy, these are the things we can expect from a TW game. When the game boots you are greeted by a bad Morgan Freeman impersonator that now plays Orias. Many of the voice actors from previous installments, even as recent as CoT, are absent in SE and very poorly replaced. The protagonist only seems to have voice files for cutscenes, and while conversing you are often prompted to click on what he would be saying next- as if conversational choices were going to be implemented at some point but the mechanic was never removed. I found CoT to be refreshingly funny, but SE tries to force humor seemingly nonstop. Much of the writing, as well as some artwork in the game, really seems like a rough draft that was made quickly but never revised. The first section of the game is kill-happy but it ties the story and gameplay together nicely and the danger element was fun imo. Ive heard many times how the game's main city is big and empty but I found it very different from the other citys of TWII and thought it was well made and with plenty of teleports. There is much more loot to be found in SE than CoT, and maybe even PotFF. Many sidequests can be undertaken and alot of the questgivers are marked on the map so they can be easily found. SE's World maps are okay but kind of dull which is very disappointing as TW has always had great variation in the levels. Even worse is how many of the game's enemies are recycled, and poorly. Don't tell me that an elemental cloud and a rock monster are robots. And only ONE enemy type in the ENTIRE game gives experience points! Combat is entirely worthless unless an enemy is actively preventing you from progressing or you want some loot. Soundtrack is okay, could be better could be worse. Heres the thing, I would still recommend Shattered Embrace if not for a game-breaking glitch. There is some neat stuff in this expansion, even with the bogus lack of combat xp and terrible/missing voices. If you absolutely must scratch your curiosity about this game just remember you are rolling dice as to whether you can complete it or not.

Currently I cannot recommend this game but neither can I completely say "Don't buy". What I mean is do not buy this yet as the game has a lot of potential but sadly, after playing less than 2 hours of it, I have found numerous bugs or potential bugs: 1. For some reason the game did not register my previous save file to import. Not sure if this is because I've bought the HD dlc and the core game series I have is not part of the renewed HD remasters. I cannot see why that would be an issue but for now I'll put that down to "Not a bug" status just an annoyance. 2. Some dialogue is voiced and others not, which I believe is a bug, and one that is very annoying. My reason for this is when the game crashed and I reloaded a save the previous unvoiced line suddenly had voiced dialogue. Either have all dialogue voiced or have none of it voiced in my opinion. The developers deffinitly need to get right on that ASAP. 3. When lockpicking the MANY MANY chest in the starting area some of the lock picking would focus the camera away from the chest lockpicking mini-game and either zoom away to some cliff side or into Dar Pha's breasts (not entirely complaining about that one ;) ) but it is annoying when you try again and the mini-game for lockpicking doesn't appear. Again the development team need to fix that. 4. When I decided to fight a certain series of "construct creatures" at the start sometimes when I was fighting I would suddenly zip under the map and fall endlessly to my death. No idea whats up with that, but again I assume its a bug. 5. When I decided to use the stealth option to go under the rocks the function wouldn't work. Tried re-loading and again it wouldn't work which forced me to fight the constructs. Annoying and not entirely a problem but thought I would report this. 6. Also the game's tutorial reminders seem confused as to what you are using. For example; I use keyboard and mouse when playing this game and its previous games. The help windows were telling me to use Left trigger and Right bumper for certain actions which is just plain silly... These are the 6 I encountered and then I just stopped playing as currently the game needs sorted. I would also ask the developers to play test the game and bug fix before they release further content as its really put a downer on such a cool franchise and it just pisses the fans off. I honestly love Two Worlds 2, the characters, the lore everything and I loved the £5 cheeky buy years ago at a steam christmas sale which I had purchased the entire collection. I never knew it had a HD collection until I saw this dlc release. I find myself in a sad position of, right now, being unable to rate it positive in the recommend choice so for now I have to mark it negative BUT if the bugs and kinks are worked out I'll switch my review to a positive instead.

At Present i would not touch the game with a barge pole. The game has some major issues, the cut screens at the begin lose sound and picture, the screen goes into a wall, the sub titles are there but no sound, also when the game starts, it gets confused with what you are using, keyboard and mouse or controller, instructions on screen alternate between them when saying what to do, at present the game is unplayable, i might/will up if this ever gets fix, but they should have not released the game in this state

It's time to completely edit my early review, as, after 12 hours of playing (at least that's what it says, I feel it has been a LOT more) my opinion changed drastically. Reality Pump, you really, really dropped the ball with this game. I was willing to stand behind it even in spite of the technical issues, countless bugs, horrendous voice acting, terrible animation and everything, because it still managed to make me feel entertained, and I was actually really interested in the story. However, I will have to say that right now, the game is BORING ME TO FUCKING DEATH. I am still curious about the ending, so I'm at a point where I just try to sprint through the main questline to get there, but BOY, the game just goes on for-feckin'-ever. And on top of that, a bug is preventing me from continuing, so, I guess I'll just wait it out. But the game is a right mess. The quests are atrociously boring and lackluster, and they're ALWAYS just a mindless back-and-forth from one NPC to another. Case in point, I went from Shadinar to Freehaven, only to be sent back to Shadinar and back to Freehaven and back again for so many times it was just painful. I have a questlog that is cluttered with side quests which I just don't want to do anymore, and I am a huge completionist at heart. Never missed a quest in Two Worlds II or in Pirates of the Flying Fortress. Outside of that, the world is big, but it's EMPTY. There is really nothing to it. Shadinar is a huge city, as promised, but the districts are just all the same, and they have nothing worthwhile. It's the same with Freehaven. And even worse is that the missions you're sent to have you need to just run through huge clusters of enemies, all packed together along the way, which makes it damn near impossible to get there without cheating. Worst case of it is in Gromshar, where you are literally sent to fight an army of rats by yourself. Don't even get me started on the story. In the beginning, it seemed interesting, but right now, it's all just a big "what the fuck" filled with moments that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. I don't know what else I can say, but seriously, RP, you done messed up big time. Shattered Embrace is a damn mess.

It's the same thing as the DLC just with a lot more glitches. Same product being sold with different packaging.

DLC needs some serious patching and polishing to fix issues at present time. Not nearly anywhere close to good as Core game title. At this time, although I do like this game title franchise I could not in all good conscience recommend this DLC in its current state. I'm sure the Two Worlds 2 team will address this straight away. Voice acting is different from Core Title 2~W~2 and could do with some serious love and attention as well.