Risen - Review @ PCGZine

Okay, first: get a chair, sit down before reading this.

This evening my lovely husband walked in and handed me a box. Guess what? Opening it there are two discs and one manual. It smells good - mmmm, new. According to the label one of the discs is the soundtrack. The other label says you have to be at least 12 years old. On the back of the box there's a warning about violence, drugs and language… O, and overthere there's a text that you have to be 16. Fine, no worry about that… Just telling these irrelevant details to make you drivel.
Good. Now the box is open again, ooh, just a few centimeters away… And as soon as I have clicked 'Post Quick reply' I'll put the first disc in the player…

Then it's Risen, now, tomorrow and every single minute I can find. Yeah, I know, I said I had different priorities. But having this on my desk… who could resist it? So tempting…. oh!

Bye bye

Konjad said:

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...enchmark-test-Radeon-HD-5870-on-top/Practice/

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WoR says something completely different.

Omega said:

This evening my lovely husband walked in and handed me a box. Guess what? Opening it there are two discs and one manual. It smells good - mmmm, new. According to the label one of the discs is the soundtrack. The other label says you have to be at least 12 years old. On the back of the box there's a warning about violence, drugs and language… O, and overthere there's a text that you have to be 16. Fine, no worry about that… Just telling these irrelevant details to make you drivel.
Good. Now the box is open again, ooh, just a few centimeters away… And as soon as I have clicked 'Post Quick reply' I'll put the first disc in the player…

Then it's Risen, now, tomorrow and every single minute I can find. Yeah, I know, I said I had different priorities. But having this on my desk… who could resist it? So tempting…. oh!

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What's your address?

There is apparently collectors edition of this game too:

According to the presentation at the Gamescom the Risen Collector's Edition will offer the following:

• Map of the island Faranga
• Soundtrack of the game, composed by Kai Rosenkranz
• Making of DVD with Piranha Bytes interview
• A1 sized poster with Piranha Bytes signatures
• Access code for the Beta phase of Piranha Bytes' next game
• Art booklet about the creation of the hero and other characters
• Gnome and Ghoul sticker set

Looks like its yet another exclusive for the germanic people:
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00...mp=1638&creative=6742&creativeASIN=B002FFYHF2

Maylander said:

@Soulman
That's the exact same review I posted a link to 4 posts ahead of yours. Also, it's the same thing we were already talking about.

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Er… oops?

The CE has been announced a long time ago. It will be released in DACH, F and I.

Guys, I live in Ukraine and I've played the Russian version a bit today. I wanted to share some of my impressions with you.

I won't tell much about localization, save for mentioning that it's awful and I'm looking forward to get the english version

I hope you all know how the game starts, so I also won't tell you much about an unnamed hero being stranded on an island after a shipwreck (though he's got a girl for a change)

The game in general reminds very much of Gothic 3 (the same engine, actually), so I'll keep comparing them here.

First - the fight system. Here it's something between G2 and G3. The camera isn't as freewheeling as in G3, it locks on enemy. The hero can block and can strike. Several strikes form a combo. At first there're only 3 moves in a combo, though in the char screen more moves are promised on further levels.
Every hit or block is registered with a blood splash effect which is more satisfying than no effect at all in previous G-games. Also the hero can evade strikes in a fast-strafe moves and jump back instantly. Not very realistic, but effective. Otherwise the fights look very much like G3.
Of the monsters I've seen Scavenger, wolf, some kind of bloodfly and a spiked rat. They all look much better than in G3. More shaders on them, the animation is more detailed.

However, all in all the animations are good old G3. The jerky moves of the hero, frantic jumps from any inclines, monsters standing upright on inclined surfaces and turning like armored vehicles - everything you got used to while playing G3. Facial animation is also minimalistic.

The graphics has moved on. The shaders are more complex (water looks quite good actually), more effects are present, like fog, smoke, rain, cloud shadows, various material shaders. Shadows are more detailed and smoother, the textures are more detailed also, the lighting has improved. On the following screen you can see the effect of sun rays traversing fog (god rays):


One thing I liked is that during travels through dense forests the foliage close to camera kind of dissolves unobtrusively, thus not getting in the way, which makes forest travels more pleasant than in G3.

When I got to a bonfire, I tried to use it to fry some meat - the hero told me that he needed a frying pan. I rejoiced at the obvious step towards realism and set off to find a frying pan. After I did, I returned to the fire and was rewarded with a nice scene of hero, frying an empty pan

The inventory is better than G3. The images are nicer, everything is organized, an inventory doll is present.
The leveling system is the same - skills bought for learning points and money, however skills are much different from G3. There are like 7 levels of swordfighting and 7 levels for axefighting, each extending combos (and I hope, improving the fight animation). Other skills are not as numerous as G3 and I didn't get to see much of the magic system, however I suppose that it will be more like G2 - with runes.

The performance is actually an improvement over G3 (taking into account that we see the same engine). My system is XP SP3, 9600GT 512MB, Core2Duo E8200@3.2 GHz, 4Gb RAM, I set everything to maximum, 1680x1050 and I got 20 to 40 fps in the first region (forest, night, fires), which is rather playable, though I haven't been to cities yet.

PhysX was installed along with the game, however I haven't seen much of physics let alone any hardware-based effects. Though ragdolls seem much nicer than G3.

Much frustration was caused by a slow running hero and absence of sprint function, I hope this will be improved during levelups.

Crouching (stealth) was removed. Along with them was removed my favorite trick when you could skip item pickup/chest opening animation if doing this while crouching

To sum all up - the gameplay mechanics and graphics seems to be an improvement over G3. The world looks nice and tempts to go exploring. If the dialogs and quests are good than this could be as deep an impact on RPG world as G2 and G1 were.

Thanks for reading

P.S.: If you try to swim away from the first beach that you get stranded on, a huge teethed claw-tentacle rises from the ocean and carries you to the shore

So there's only one movement speed for the hero? No walk/run function at all?

Also, can the camera lock-on during combat be disabled?

JDR13 said:

So there's only one movement speed for the hero? No walk/run function at all?

Also, can the camera lock-on during combat be disabled?

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There's run and there's walk (AFAIR in G3 we had walk/run/sprint). But run, to my mind is slower than running in G3.

I cannot tell you about disabling the lock-on camera as I didn't try to disable it. I don't remember the option among game settings, though. Maybe there's something in .ini files

Is there any stuttering? The stuttering was unavodiable with G3 no matter what .. the main reason i cant find myself playing it, even with the community patches.

bemushroomed said:

Is there any stuttering? The stuttering was unavodiable with G3 no matter what .. the main reason i cant find myself playing it, even with the community patches.

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Running the game for the first time, without any patches or tweaks whatsoever yilded to me much better impression than with G3. Although I've only seen a small portion of starting area and haven't got to a city, I've posted my system's specs and fps above - they're rather decent for a game like this. And there are no occasional drops due to swapping as there were in G3. Quicksave/quickload also
work very fast

However, some ppl at our local forums claim that they've had huge fps drops even with rigs far better than mine. Some solved this by disabling nvidia physx, some - installing older drivers. I haven't seen anything like this yet, so I cannot say anything about that.

Sounds good! The videos i've seen looks fluid.

Corvin said:

There's run and there's walk (AFAIR in G3 we had walk/run/sprint). But run, to my mind is slower than running in G3.

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Sounds like they went back to the Gothic 1-2 scheme, which I have absolutely no problem with. You had me worried for a second, because I thought you meant there was only one speed.

Maylander said:

The part that really stood out for me was combat/challenge. Combat, especially melee, is supposedly very challenging, a "dance of blades" with the enemy whos AI is actually very good.

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This is the only thing that worries me. I just can't do this. I wouldn't know how.

A distant friend of mine wrote she lets her son play these fights because he is far better in this kind of combat than her. She enjoys the rest, then, everything else, without the combat.

Me, I'm preferring to play archers … I wonder whether they'll have any kind of chance ?

Good question on ranged combat, which is something I enjoy. Not very many games do it well.

Any impressions on bows?

JDR13 said:

Sounds like they went back to the Gothic 1-2 scheme, which I have absolutely no problem with. You had me worried for a second, because I thought you meant there was only one speed.

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I've played a bit more, so I'm ready to share more impressions

Yes, the gameplay in general is much more like G2 than G3. It's closer to G2 than G3 ever was. Both in terms of "handmadeness" of the world and quest details. The world is much smaller than G3, but quests are more detailed, there's more variety and nonlinearity.
For example, while walking through the first borough of Harbor-City I've gathered somewhat like 10 quests and only one of them sounded like "take these 5 items and give them to 5 people", others were more complex than that. "Help to bail a smuggler out of prison", "Help locate a hidden shack of a pirate captain inside the city", "Investigate a number of robberies during recent days". The latter one includes cross-examining the victims and suspects and is more interesting to me than anything that could be met in G3. I won't spoil the rest, but even the choice of faction that you are urged to make from the very beginning is made creatively (and you may still leave the choice for later). .

As for combat - I'm beginning to like it more. Using shield in monster combat adds a nice touch to it since you can block many attacks, but some monsters can also disrupt your defense by a strong strike which makes the hero stumble back and lose his guard. Swordplay with people is much more creative than that and it promises to become even more so, because here a well placed strike may open opponent's defense, the swords may clash, which may also make someone vulnerable to strikes and more combat moves come with upgrades. For example lvl2 swordplay introduces parrying and blocking (I haven't been able to try it out though). And there are separate upgrade paths for swords, axes (2h swords, maybe?) and staffs.

Archery is much like G3 - you aim, the camera zooms, you release the LMB - the arrow flies. Headshots seem to cause more damage. Levelups add to reload speed and accuracy. I haven't tried out crossbows yet.

Magic effects seem to have become cuter - checkout the freeze effect: http://img01.imagefra.me/img/img01/2/9/29/urukhai123/f_4m_3a69fba.jpg

The one thing that disappointed me was the disappearing of bodies. That's one of the tolls the consoles take, but still, I miss G3 here, where traces of epic battle could stay in the field for several days. Here bodies seem to disappear as soon as you walk away a bit I hope it could be fixed later, through config files or whatever.

Real odd question

I got my copy of Risen last night and am quite happy with it so far, but I can't figure out how to spend my learning points, unless I just don't have enough to increase any stat yet (I have 20 so far). The manual for the game is typically un-helpful.

Anyone able to tell me how to use them?

AdmiralJohn said:

I got my copy of Risen last night and am quite happy with it so far, but I can't figure out how to spend my learning points, unless I just don't have enough to increase any stat yet (I have 20 so far). The manual for the game is typically un-helpful.

Anyone able to tell me how to use them?

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Welcome AdmiralJohn.

20 learning point is sufficient to learn two or more things, depending on what you wish to learn. There are trainers everywhere. Talk to people you meet. Some can teach you how to improve your sword handling, others how to use a bow or crossbow. Some will give you the chance to improve your pickpocketing skills, others can give you more strenght or dexterity. Et cetera.
You'll have to pay a certain amount of gold and some of those learning points you are talking about.

When you have more questions about the game, or would like to help others, please visit the Forums. You'll see there's a Risen forum, it has several threads.