Role-playing games (RPGs) aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. All the monsters, magic, statistics and silly names tend to put off anyone who wasn’t brought up on a diet of Dungeons and Dragons and JRR Tolkien.

More recent RPG titles, such as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, have managed to appeal to a slightly wider audience, largely by sidelining some of the nerdier elements of role-playing in favour of a more easily accessible action-based approach.

Two Worlds tries to take a similar tack, allowing players to indulge in seamless swordplay instead of the more traditional stop-start combat of most role-playing games. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its fair share of RPG elements. The back story, for example, sees the main character searching the medieval-style fantasy land of Antaloor for his missing sister Kyra and winding up saving the world from the evil Aziraal and his orc-ish minions.

Players also need to be reasonably familiar with the mechanics of the role-playing game if they are to succeed. Your character gains experience points, money and various items of loot and these all have to be managed carefully in order to build him up and allow him to progress through the game. There aren't a massive amount of customisation options at the beginning of the game, but it's possible to build up the character by beefing up various attributes with the skill points gained.

All in all, the game delivers on its promise. But the main problem with Two Worlds is that it invites direct comparison with the aforementioned Oblivion. And that’s not something that’s necessarily going to work in its favour, given how accomplished that epic game is.

Both games present huge environments and allow the player to wander freely from the main quest path to explore other avenues. But where Oblivion was extremely polished in its presentation, Two Worlds can be slightly rough around the edges and its universe often feels a little empty in comparison. Dialogue is a particular weak point, with voice-over actors delivering annoyingly laboured medieval-speak, and doing so unconvincingly.

Unlike a lot of the games we’ve looked at recently, Two Worlds doesn’t make particularly large demands of a PC’s resources. It will need a fairly recent graphics card and 512MB of main memory to run, but it’ll look pretty and run smoothly without the need for the latest processor or stupidly powerful graphics hardware.

If you’ve managed to wade through everything Oblivion and its expansion packs have to offer, and you’re hungry for something similar, Two Worlds is about as close as you’re going to get. And if you can put up with some truly appalling dialogue and a few presentational quirks, Two Worlds certainly offers a lot of game for the money.

Vista compatibility: Yes