Hot on the heels of the first review of Two Worlds II comes the first hands-on post-beta Q&A from Polish gaming portal GameCorner.pl by Slawek Serafin. He had the chance to play the release PC version of the game already so decided to take a closer look at some of the features. And we took the liberty of translating a few of the interesting tidbits and there's a veritable goldmine of those in the comments section beneath the original Q&A article. Check our highlights below!

* Character movements look smooth. It's not Assassin's Creed level of animation, but it's still head and shoulders above e.g. Alpha Protocol. Trot looks kinda odd but still natural. Sprint doesn't look artificial. Sneaking and walking without running have correct animations. The combat also looks nice: the swings have the "momentum" feel to them, it's definitely not just swinging any weapon as if it was light as a feather. Blows do have an impact on the enemies. The only odd part is jumping - it looks a bit stiff. In addition, regular movement is not very precise, and sometimes to get to the box or when moving in a cluttered interior, you need to slow down to a walk or sneak. Horses have the worst animation - the mounted movement looks quite stiff in trot and jumping. Slawek notes that he didn't get the chance to fight mounted and there might be no possibility to do that at all.

* Combat is real-time and very input-intensive. Aside from performing special attacks, constant movement and aiming your character's swings is key. Enemies' AI seems higher for humanoid enemies: they can use active blocking and block breaker moves, while only very rarely do ripostes themselves. Non-humanoid enemies are much more "dumb" in that they only move back and forward, run away or charge the hero from the distance. Speed and range of weapons is of crucial importance: Slawek notes that sometimes he was able to get in close to the polearm-wielding enemies and just bash their heads in with a close-range axe so fast they were unable to mount defences or perform their attacks. The bow&arrow fighting was even more fun: with automated aim and manual sniper modes, several types of arrows (stunning, freezing, etc..), possibility to enhance bow by shortening draw time and increasing the draw strength archery was fun. The "dead-eye"-like mode where several enemies could be multi-hit at once was a life-saver, but Slawek noted that pure archers will have trouble fighting, since one arrow, maybe two is all you could pull off before the enemy closed in on you. He wasn't able to find all of the magic cards he wanted so he didn't really get the chance to test magics that much, but there's a definite need to use magics against some of the enemies- since they are usually resistant to some types of damage more than to others. This also confirms that there's several types of damage and resistance to it. Slawek advises to always carry a sword (slashing damage) and a blunt (crushing damage) in order to be prepared for most enemies, and have a spell or two on the ready for some immune mobs. [7 types of damage are available in TWII: physical - piercing (reserved for arrows only), slashing and bludgeoning, elemental - cold, fire and lightning, and (not mentioned, but shown before) spirit and poison.- Two Worlds Vault]

* As far as enemy density goes, Slawek confirms that Savannah is very densely packed with rhinos, cheetahs, baboons etc.. However, if you have cleared some region once, unless plot dictates it [e.g. in case of the Swallows where permanent blight on the land causes dead to rise all the time - Two Worlds Vault] the region will stay cleared. The enemy variety is quite moderate: if the region is occupied by Varns, you'll only meet Varns and perhaps a hyena or two. Most of the mob placement has been apparently done by hand, so there's no "randomization" of encounters.

* Slawek describes (for the first time) the pickpocketing minigame mechanic. To pickpocket an enemy, you have to position yourself properly and pay attention to special "snake" meter. It shows two (or several?) snakes that are trying to bite one another's tails with narrow space(s) between them. You have to rotate the hand above the snakes until the gaps between them are aligned, and then there's a very brief window of oppportunity to empty your target's pouch. An interesting note to lockpicking has also been mentioned: the lock rotations and amount of "rings" to nail with the pick are random any time you attempt to lockpick, so if some pattern is particularly vicious and fast, it's enough to move away from the lock and back into the lockpicking to get the new, perhaps easier one. Quicksaving/quickloading will not let you off the hook that easily!

* In the comments section, Slawek describes the overall combat difficulty. There were many times where he had to retry a fight simply because he was overpowered.The game is definitely VERY hard . Some fights had to be attempted only after gaining a few levels. Some of them were so hard in fact, that only by "bugging" the AI was he able to win them. In the beginning, Slawek had to quicksave (there's such a feature in PC mode) before every encounter, but later on he stopped dying all the time. Apparently, TWII boasts a very steep difficulty curve.

* NPC/Quest Dialogues are more on the simple side. You don't get many choices and it's not Dragon Age or Baldur's Gate "multi-thread" decision chain. Think more elaborate Diablo - talk and decide if you want to do some quest, then get out.

do the smart thing and kill those goody-two-shoes paladins and join up with Gandohar. Think both endings weren't anything special though.