Risen 3 My Risen 3 Impressions

TheMadGamer

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I recently finished playing Risen 3 (R3) and thought I post some impressions about my experience here for anyone who might be interested.

I’m a long-time fan of Piranha Bytes (PB). I’ve played all the Gothic Games and all the Risen games. To give you an idea of gameplay I’ve enjoyed a lot in the past, my favorite PB series is the Gothic series and my favorite game from them is Gothic 2 Night of the Raven (G2).

Overall, I enjoyed R3. I felt I got my money’s worth and that the game delivered a decent Gothic-like experience – which is a particular style of RPG I enjoy quite a lot. That said, the remainder of what I’ll write here are my criticisms (in the spirit of hopefully improved PB games in the future) as at this point there are plenty of reviews and user comments on the game to get a better idea of the whole game proper.

What comes next is my unrestrained ramblings which may contain spoilers so you’ve been warned.

Setting
The Risen series uses a pirate backdrop to tell its stories. This was less prevalent in Risen 1, became front and center in Risen 2, and then took a few steps back in Risen 3. I personally prefer the kind of fantasy setting Gothic 2 provided but never minded the pirate elements found in G2. That the Risen series chose to make the pirate setting a main theme is a decision I would have voted against in favor of a full blown G2-like setting. But R3 does manage to have quite a lot of locales and gameplay that give that G2 vibe so I did appreciate that.

Start of Game & Tutorial Island
Like Gothic 3, Risen 3 begins the game in the middle of a battle. Like anyone else, I can cope my way through this, but I don’t at all enjoy this approach. I can’t imagine that most people would like this kind of thing as you don’t really know the controls and the whole experience is kind of jarring. Secondly, unbeknownst to you, you are controlling a leveled character with notably better weapons and armor which will soon be replaced by an unleveled character and basic equipment after you have finished the tutorial island. As a new player, you are unlikely to be aware of any of this as you take in a brand new world, brand new game mechanics, and brand new UI. The result of all this is a sort of jarring and uneven feeling to the start to the game. I can imagine people making it part way through (or even all the way through) this start, getting the wrong impression about the game, and giving it up, which is tragic because the game actually offers up a lot of fun.

User Interface
The UI is pretty much the same as from R2. I personally don’t like it all that much and prefer a UI catered to mouse and keyboard capabilities of a PC. I also prefer an overlay UI that comes up over the game world proper. When you bring up the R3 UI, the game world disappears and is replaced by a full screen UI. This is another jarring mechanism which breaks immersion. The UI itself is laid out decent enough. But I don’t like the list style inventory and I think it would have been helpful to have more inventory filtering options as there are a huge number of items to acquire in this game. Also, when you use in game assets such as a treasure chest, forge, or alchemy table, the same kind of thing happens where the game world disappears and is replaced by a full-screen UI – totally immersion breaking.

Melee Combat
I chose to use melee combat as my main way of killing bad guys. Melee combat is frustrating and I don’t recommend it as your primary offensive over the course of the entire game. There are so many things to melee combat that drove me nuts I don’t really know where to start. There was the stupidly fast attack animations of monsters that could stun lock you over and over. There was the overly simplistic click-roll-click-roll bore-fest of combat. If there was a ledge anywhere within 5 square miles of where you were fighting a monster, you could be 100% sure that when you landed that final blow, the monster was going fling off of that ledge, forcing you to back track if you wanted to loot it. In fact, by midway into the game my fighting tactics always incorporated maneuvering enemies so that they wouldn’t fling off the edge of some cliff. I had varying success but it was annoying whenever it happened and it happened way too often. Eventually I joined the Demon Hunters and was able to incorporate magic into my fighting which made fighting monsters less annoying. But they still fell off ledges at every opportunity. Lastly, it makes no sense for groups of monsters to stand down while you fight one of them. Then again, had the developers made it where groups of monsters attack at once, that would have been annoying too. The only solution I can think of would have been a complete re-thinking of how combat works.

Difficulty Level
Risen 3 is too easy. I started on medium difficulty then quickly advanced to the hardest difficulty setting. But still, the game is just way too easy. Remember the trolls from Gothic 2? When you happened by one early on and foolishly decided to fight it only to be handed your hat? That kind of thing does not happen in R3. This has a devastating consequence for many of the resources the game offers – namely making them pointless. There are all kinds of skills you can learn from alchemy to forging to spell making. I never engaged any of them because I was never compelled to. So finding that rare herb or the hilt part of a sword becomes anti-climactic because you’re pretty much breezing through combat anyway. And the occasional times when I did have trouble, I’d just recruit Bones or Patty and problem solved. This was probably the most disappointing aspect of Risen 3 for me. The game never scared me or punished me to the point of looking into the game’s resources to eek out whatever edge I could lend myself. I just sort of rolled through each area no matter if they were populated by a shadow lord or a crab.

Boss fights
The good news on the few boss fights in R3 is that they don’t replace your carefully crafted character abilities with some cheesy boss-fighting mechanic a-la Risen 1. Well, one boss fight does employee a cheesy mechanic, but it was at least only one boss. The bad news, if you’re melee, is that the boss fights are annoying and take forever, but never really threaten your ability to survive the encounter – not even close actually. The spider boss on Kila took me about 15 boring minutes and I never came close to dying. It was pretty much the same experience with the end-game boss. Just a process of dealing with annoying re-spawns while slowly hacking away at the boss’s HP.

Final Thoughts
So after having re-read what I just wrote, it sounds like R3 is a dud of a game. But you’d be wrong. I still enjoyed the game quite a lot and if you are a fan of past PB games you don’t want to miss out on this one. The strengths of this game are character customization, exploration (PB always makes interesting landscapes and lots of Easter eggs to find), and NPC conversations – all done superbly. So many times I was amazed at how I’d go back to talk to some obscure NPC to see if they’d react to some quest I’d done and sure enough, they did! I’m a sucker for that kind of detail. Outside the context of G1/G2, R3 is a solid game and dense with content. I just keep longing for that G2 experience where you have all the strengths previously mentioned but also just crazy hard where you have to really eek out every resource you can in order to progress.
 
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Thank you for your detailed thoughts :)

I partially agree with you, though I didn't have the same issues with combat and UI. I agree it's too easy too soon - which is the biggest problem with the game, but I don't remember having much trouble with monsters falling off ledges, and I thought the system itself worked fine. I didn't have much difficulty fighting monsters at any point, though becoming a Demon Hunter certainly helped with the buffs. Well, not true, I also had some issues with the Spider boss - but I was so powerful at that point, and it wasn't a big deal, just annoying.

Your comments about the introduction are spot on, though :)

Beyond the major balance issue, my main issues are that the islands are a little small - and I would have loved a more involved loot system, and better mechanics. All PB games are a little too simplistic for my tastes when it comes to damage/skills/loot. Risen 3 is actually the best of the bunch in this way, but I would still like loot with magical properties and other unique items to find, as it would make exploration slightly less familiar after a while. I've never really liked how weapons just have a number associated as damage, and that's it. I would like stuff like speed/penetration and the like - and I would prefer a system that made a variety of weapons useful for multiple reasons, instead of just picking the weapon with the highest number, regardless of whether it's an axe or a sword. Same goes for the artifacts. It's nice they're there - but I would like something less predictable than skill bonuses, and something with unique properties to shake up the formula a bit.

While the game is quite large, I feel the size of the islands gives the whole thing a strangely artificial and compartmentalised feeling. It doesn't feel like a large expansive world - and it really should. I think the world should have been just one or two land-masses instead.

I still think it's a great game, overall, though.

Simply because I'm so fond of how PB craft their worlds and handle exploration. But I think it was pretty obvious that the passion isn't quite there anymore - and they're running on a strange combination of auto-pilot and memory loss regarding what they used to do that worked.

That said, I think it got a raw deal when it comes to its reception. I think PB could really use a break about now. I'm especially pissed that the attention-driven moron Angry Joe spread the bad word based on having no insight into what he was playing.
 
Well at the risk of defending Joe the stun lock monster melee problem has been around since G3. It's annoying as hell and PB has had pretty bad melee through several games. I liked the shield in R1 though.
 
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While the game is quite large, I feel the size of the islands gives the whole thing a strangely artificial and compartmentalised feeling. It doesn't feel like a large expansive world - and it really should. I think the world should have been just one or two land-masses instead.

I agree with this completely. The running conspiracy among numerous Risen threads across the internet is that the Risen series is designed like this to accommodate memory limitations of consoles.

What sort of saves Risen here is density in exploration, if you take advantage of it. If you want to discover all the secrets of each island, you can't just blow past areas while going from quest to quest. You have to search every nook and cranny, which creates a perception of each island perhaps being larger than they are.

The end game island exposes this a bit, as there isn't too much to it as with previous islands. It is perhaps as large as Calador but I moved through it much faster because it's mostly barren, which was a little anti-climactic and frustrating because they should have just made that island smaller.

But I think it was pretty obvious that the passion isn't quite there anymore - and they're running on a strange combination of auto-pilot and memory loss regarding what they used to do that worked.

That's an interesting way of putting it. I tend to agree. I think PB fans across the internet are collectively hoping a Gothic game is in the works... and hoping beyond hope it will be a return to that series' greatness.

That said, I think it got a raw deal when it comes to its reception. I think PB could really use a break about now. I'm especially pissed that the attention-driven moron Angry Joe spread the bad word based on having no insight into what he was playing.

I've been embarrassed by the American gaming press for a long time now when it comes to their treatment of European based RPGs. It can be argued that U.S. based RPGs highlight style over substance (not that substance is entirely ignored). And it can be argued that European games highlight substance over style (not that style is entirely ignored).

But U.S. media is consistently and persistently fixated and obsessed with the superficial (visuals, FPS etc.) and praised otherwise shallow games while handedly disparaging numerous RPGs out of Europe that are admittedly a bit rough but chalk-filled with incredible gameplay.

Then without blinking, they praise JRPGs who's gaming formulas for the most part haven't changed much for 20 years. Ah well...
 
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Well at the risk of defending Joe the stun lock monster melee problem has been around since G3. It's annoying as hell and PB has had pretty bad melee through several games. I liked the shield in R1 though.

I've always appreciated Angry Joe's entrepreneurial-ness. He isn't totally wrong about melee combat in my opinion. But he drew strong criticisms about the game too early and didn't seem to understand that the combat gets better as you improve your stats.

Anyway, Angry Joe should stick to fast paced FPS games. I think that's what he enjoys most.
 
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I agree with this completely. The running conspiracy among numerous Risen threads across the internet is that the Risen series is designed like this to accommodate memory limitations of consoles.

Yes, I suspect this is not far from the truth. After the Risen 1 console debacle, they sort of had to accomodate those platforms with the sequel - and I think that's what happened with both R2 and R3.

What sort of saves Risen here is density in exploration, if you take advantage of it. If you want to discover all the secrets of each island, you can't just blow past areas while going from quest to quest. You have to search every nook and cranny, which creates a perception of each island perhaps being larger than they are.

Yes, I agree with that. The exploration is pretty great, and there are lots of neat things to find.

The end game island exposes this a bit, as there isn't too much to it as with previous islands. It is perhaps as large as Calador but I moved through it much faster because it's mostly barren, which was a little anti-climactic and frustrating because they should have just made that island smaller.

Honestly, I rushed through the last two islands. My last island was the native one (forget the name) - and I didn't bother to explore the end island at all. Not because I didn't enjoy the game, but because I was so powerful that I knew it wouldn't make a difference in that way at all.

I always do that with big RPGs. I start out going OCD with exploration and then I exhaust myself to the point where I just have to finish it, if I get that far.

Pretty stupid of me, really.

That's an interesting way of putting it. I tend to agree. I think PB fans across the internet are collectively hoping a Gothic game is in the works… and hoping beyond hope it will be a return to that series' greatness.

I would love a proper Gothic, but I don't think the name is really the key.

I've been embarrassed by the American gaming press for a long time now when it comes to their treatment of European based RPGs. It can be argued that U.S. based RPGs highlight style over substance (not that substance is entirely ignored). And it can be argued that European games highlight substance over style (not that style is entirely ignored).

But U.S. media is consistently and persistently fixated and obsessed with the superficial (visuals, FPS etc.) and praised otherwise shallow games while handedly disparaging numerous RPGs out of Europe that are admittedly a bit rough but chalk-filled with incredible gameplay.

Then without blinking, they praise JRPGs who's gaming formulas for the most part haven't changed much for 20 years. Ah well…

Good points. You sort of see the same thing here from some of our US members - that tend to give EU RPGs a hard time.

Personally, I'd love to see a combination of style and substance - and maybe TW3 will be one of the first example of that.
 
Personally, I'd love to see a combination of style and substance - and maybe TW3 will be one of the first example of that.

For me, if it weren't for European RPGs over the last 15 or so years, my interest in the genre would have diminished considerably. It's the European RPG makers who have best kept alive the spirit of the 80s and 90s RPG play styles but with better hardware and ever evolving interfaces.

If Euro developers could achieve the level of polish and UI elegance/controls that U.S. based companies achieve (admittedly after a lot of post release patching), I think such developers could give companies like Bethesda and Bioware a good run for their money because Euro RPG devs provide GREATLY better content. Though I wouldn't be quick to hold my breath that U.S. based media would give them a fair shake should they achieve this.

On many levels, it will be interesting to see how TW3 shakes out.
 
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Tend to agree with much of what has been written and I love the Gothic and Risen games.

Risen 3 was easier and shorter than the others and felt more of an expansion of Risen 2 than anything to me.
 
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Agreed about European RPGs. They also reinvigorated my interest in the RPG genre, specifically, Risen 1 and Divinity 2 had a big impact on me during a time when I simply wasn't aware of other choices outside of the big U.S. companies.

Now that I've properly discovered this dark and mysterious "other half" of RPG gaming, I'm a lot happier for it. :D
 
Risen 3 was easier and shorter than the others and felt more of an expansion of Risen 2 than anything to me.

Shorter? I agree about the reduced difficulty, but Risen 3 was definitely longer than either of the first two games.

In fact, I thought it was too long. That last island was completely unnecessary, and I felt the game would have been better off with it not being there at all.
 
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As some of you may know, I'm a pretty completionist dude and according to Steam I spent 66 hours with Risen 2 and 58 hours with Risen 3. So Risen 2 was in fact a little longer for me than part 3.
Now, it might be that my Risen 2 time includes the Risen 2 beta that people like me who bought the Risen 1 CE received as a special bonus.
If that is the case, then I'd put Risen 2 and 3 at about the same length for a completionist run. Well, even 58 vs. 66 hours is kind of "the same".
As for Risen 1, I did not play the Steam version of that one so I'd have to install the game from disk and load an old save but even w/o doing that, I'm pretty sure that it was -at most- in the same range. If it would have been way above the 60s or in the 70s, or even higher, of hours, then I'd remember that.

And I agree that Risen 3 could have been a little shorter. The game had tons of combat on the islands and the shadowland parts were just one big grind basically. The final island then topped it all with even more mobs and even more rather tedious fighting. It definitely dragged quite a bit towards the end.
It maybe wouldn't have been so bad with a more engaging story or less recycled parts from the first game but with the way things are in Risen 3, I was pretty glad when it was finally over.
 
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That's interesting because I finished Risen 2 in around 60 hours and spent 80+ in Risen 3. Content-wise, I think Risen 3 is significantly larger, at least in terms of exploration.

And yeah... that final island was beyond tedious.
 
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I really should play this game sometime soon. Risen 1 was one game that I just loved no matter how hard the combat was at times.
 
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That's interesting because I finished Risen 2 in around 60 hours and spent 80+ in Risen 3.

80 hours is definitely impressive :) . My 66 hours includes full exploration and even "excessive" exploration, i.e. I did a lot of random trial&error runs/flights in bird form to see if there was loot on a distant rooftop or a mountain top. It also includes probably two hours alone of looking for that stupid hunter on Calador (called Bronach in the German version IIRC) who got lost and apparently despawned during the hunt. I could never finish that quest.
It also includes full 50/50 Steam achievements. What did you do to push it to 80? Or does your time include more than one faction playthrough? I only did the Demon Hunters and just joined the other two factions for the achievement but did not continue playing after the joining ceremonies when I read somewhere that only a single quest per faction is different from the others.
Of course, there is also the possibility that Steam can't count which does happen with some games where the hours just disappear.
 
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Risen 3 is bigger, and has more content, but it doesn't take longer because there are so few difficult fights. Even first-timers can almost play through it in one go, without any re-loads. Breezing through content really does take considerably less time than facing one difficult fight after the other.
 
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Risen 3 is bigger, and has more content, but it doesn't take longer because there are so few difficult fights. Even first-timers can almost play through it in one go, without any re-loads. Breezing through content really does take considerably less time than facing one difficult fight after the other.

Yes but Risen 2 was just as easy as Risen 3 (even on hard) or maybe only marginally harder so that can't be it ;) .
 
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Yes but Risen 2 was just as easy as Risen 3 (even on hard) or maybe only marginally harder so that can't be it ;) .

I found Risen 3 to be much easier than Risen 2, especially as a melee character. I played both on Hard.

To me, they're all roughly the same in terms of length and content - but as with all games, it depends on how thorough you are, and how much time you spend smelling the roses. I remember being more thorough in Risen - because I think the atmosphere and immersion level was higher in that one. I didn't finish Risen 2 - but I got to the last island, IIRC. I started feeling fatigued around halfway through. Risen 3 seems to be the most varied and largest when it comes to landmass - but it also seemed to have a much faster flow - with less time spent travelling around and stuff.

I don't think combat is the major factor in terms of length, though. Maybe initially, when you "learn the system" - but I don't think it adds up to all that much.

I could be wrong, though.

Also, Steam playtime estimates are notoriously inaccurate - because it (often, anyway) adds idle time, which is all but impossible to estimate yourself.

Savegames tend to have more reliable information about playtime - if you really care about this :)
 
Interesting comments back to my point, Steam has 50 hours for 3 and just under 80 for 2. That includes idle time so it looks and seemed much shorter for me, despite that last island.

I'm not a major completionist really but try to get the easy EXP where I can, I did find this easy for a Gothic-type game though especially after the first 5 or 6 hours.
 
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