Two Worlds x360

[Ian(not Ian)]

Dammit.
I had high hopes for this and pre-ordered it from Play, who have emailed to say it has shipped....bah!

And it duly arrived yesterday. I managed about an hour and a half gametime last night.
Character customisation is inexplicably minimal, with only a human male available. No other races. No females. Those who have played Oblivion will recognise the usual facial tweeks and hairstyles etc, but not much more than this. I find this bizarre as the game can be played online with up to 8 players, but surely they'll all look broadly the same.

Oblivion fans concede 3rd person combat is not worth trying in 2Ks effort. Two Worlds though, expects you to use it....and it's downright awful. Auto-targetting will switch at will to the nearest assailant (plenty of those around which hinder progress considerably) this can be frustrating as you can 'almost' beat one nasty wolf but before you can finish it off another roams in and is targetted, of course the second one has full HP and you're now getting bashed by 2 of the rascals.

I've stuck with melee weapons so far as ranged magic and bows are extremely difficult to target (even auto-target fails here)

Laughs ensue when you get your mount though. An early quest to take out a few brigands is rewarded with a horse from a nearby stable. Controlling this horse is so frustrating I gave up and carried on using shank's pony.
Initially you think think the horse is behaving exactly like Oblivions, but no...push forward to 'run' and it moves from a trot to a full gallop and does NOT stop galloping, turning is sluggish and stopping demands pulling, nay tugging, back on the analogue stick. If anyone's still reading the last bit sounds like it 'should' be thay way, but this is truly frustrating I assure you. Oblivion uses broadly the same control, but releasing the forward analogue stick stops the horse.

Should anyone be thinking of renting this I advise you stock up with healing potions as they will help you defeat the mutliple enemies you will aggro on your adventure.

Cumbersome character inventories and skills menus add to the woes.

No option to adjust controller sensitivity.

An earlier post cited the character's floaty jump. This looks like an issue the devs didn't figure as it seems the character's movement speed is affected directly by terrain and inventory load, therefore an agile character with an almost empty inventory, going downhill moves and jumps much faster and longer than a fully loaded and armoured one. I also looks like the mechanic used to implement this has a direct effect on the frame-rate. Check it out.

This evening's session will focus on exploring a castle/town not far from where I gave up. I intend to persevere to at least find a dungeon to crawl through.