Risen 2 Risen 2 impressions thread

joxer said:

Dorbelec from Deep Silver posted that here:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/foru...ut-RISEN-2?p=15533458&viewfull=1#post15533458

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Dude, he said each region would be 50% to 66% the size of Risen 1 so he basically promised an average growth of 58% for each map over Risen 1.
So what we got in Risen 2 -excluding DLC- is: Caldera, Takarigua, Sword Coast, Antigua, Maracai Bay, Island of the Dead, and the Island of Thieves.
That sums up to seven regions so 7x58% = Risen 2 landmass = 406% more than Risen 1 = WTF?!?
That's what Deep Silver (doberlec) promised. I have no idea why you seem to believe that Risen 2 is smaller or why you would believe that it has been advertised as being smaller.

Realism check: I don't think that doberlec's numbers are correct. He obviously gave that statement little thought or should have clarified that only the main locations, i.e. Takarigua, the Sword Coast, Antigua and Maracai Bay are 50% to 66% the size of Risen 1 (which seems plausible IMHO).
It's pretty obvious that the other islands and especially Caldera are much smaller than 50% of Risen 1.
If I had to venture a personal guess about the size (explorable landmass) of Risen 2 in comparison to Risen 1 then I'd say it's somewhere between twice but not quite as much as three times as large so 200% + x% while x < 300.

DeepO said:

Indeed.
Though Risen has some fairly extensive dungeons which Risen 2 is unfortunately devoid of so that cuts into the difference a bit.

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This was one of those "two steps back" (to borrow from BrotherNone's review) moments for me.

There were many complaints about the lack of memorable dungeons/puzzles in G1, G2, and G3 (mostly G2 and G3). They answered this in a big way with Risen. I greatly enjoyed the dungeon-crawling there. But now with Risen 2 they scaled back again. I kept waiting for that huge tomb/temple full of jumps, puzzles, etc..but it never came.

Overall though, solid game. Best voice acting of any PB game, best dialog (quite a few LOL moments), and the exploring is still the main attraction.

I finished with a Muskets run earlier today. Had 56 hours total. I'm with Moriender here. If you truly explore and try to pursue every quest, then 30 hours really is rushing it.

I'm going to restore from my "decision point" save and now try things with Voodoo.

BTW -- those with the Treasure Island DLC --- try to do the Island as soon as it becomes available. There is an item you gain from the quest there that is most useful if obtained as soon as possible.

Just finished - 40 hours for me. I loved acquiring a crew but agree they were a bit underused.

hwfanatic said:

I'm all against difficulty setting in games and that's one of the things PB went two steps back.

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How so? Risen 1 gave you a choice in difficulty, and it worked out well. Not everyone wants to play at the same level.

As much as I enjoy the challenge of something like Gothic 2+NotR for instance, I realize that there are some gamers who don't want that kind of difficulty. PB also realized that.

Difficulty should be an in-game mechanics and not an external setting. Having trouble killing something? Come back later, or hire somebody to help you out for a share of the profit, or prepare better with potions and magic, or practice combat, or something along the lines. The way difficulty is implemented in games doesn't feel right because it usually just cranks the damage to unrealistic values. Piranha Bytes had it right with G1 and I'm afraid it just went downhill from there.

The things you mention are already implemented in PB's games. There's nothing wrong with presenting two different levels of challenge in regards to combat. Some people are simply better at it than others. I'd argue that Gothic 2+NotR was the best, but I accept that some people are simply turned off by that level of difficulty.

Two welcome things the difficulty level affects in R2: The speed of objects thrown in the shooting minigames and the amount of time you have to respond to QTE traps!

Moriendor said:

Dude, he said each region would be 50% to 66% the size of Risen 1 so he basically promised an average growth of 58% for each map over Risen 1.

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The problem is that I remembered it wrong. When you asked for link I found the link and as I said afterwards, my longterm memory is not in good shape. Smoking+pot+coffee+booze is responsible? Nah… I believe it's my age.

hwfanatic said:

I'd say you start on normal and see how many excess provisions you have. If you tend to stockpile provisions it might be a sign to go hard.

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I finished the game on normal (medium) setting with tons of provisions and I still wouldn't play on hard. Why? If you are able to kill Cave Spider on the first island without problems first time you stumble upon it, then you should really switch to hard. I couldn't do that so I left the medium setting. Also the first time on Tacarigua I couldn't kill those 4 ghouls in the swap unless leaving Patty to wait and then luring them away one by one. Sorry, but I don't see the point of switching to hard if there are mobs I can't easily beat on normal setting.

I'm running into more and more bugs in the voodoo path. I can't make one elixir (it won't appear in the inventory). The voodoo option regarding Benito is missing, which, if it is a design decision, actually deserves the name 'bug' imho. But the worst thing is that the game didn't offer me the voodoo option regarding Butch on Antigua, the appropriate dialogue option never appeared (I checked online and I did everything right). Also, the scepter of power doesn't seem to work properly on my machine — after gaining control of an enemy I cannot tell him to target anyone else, I can move the mouse all I want but the skulls do not change their position. I like the game but I chose the voodoo path to actually, you know, use voodoo, and so far it's simply not working right.

Hmm sounds odd, I didn't have problems with Butch or the scepter of power. The scepter is somewhat odd in its targeting from time to time, and requires enemies to be rather close to each other, but no serious bugs like the one you're describing.

Well, I even talked to the NPC who suggests the voodoo option regarding Butch. Then I got many dialogue options about the pirate life and the only that's left is the one to lead him into the cave and fight. There's no other option left!

I thought I should maybe use the scepter on him but the requirement was 75 so I decided to go elsewhere. Then I checked online and it turns out the game was supposed to give me a dialogue option which it didn't give. I hate this kind of bugs; I don't care about clipping or flickering but in a simple RPG testing quests and dialogues should be a priority!

Elwro said:

I'm running into more and more bugs in the voodoo path. I can't make one elixir (it won't appear in the inventory).

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That bug is global and not just on voodoo path - you can learn potion making skill no matter who you side with. The data for that particular potion is either corrupted or doesn't exist in the game and because of that you don't receive the potion.

Elwro said:

The voodoo option regarding Benito is missing, which, if it is a design decision, actually deserves the name 'bug' imho.

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Without you writing more details on this, I can't say you're right or wrong. What exactly is missing?

Elwro said:

But the worst thing is that the game didn't offer me the voodoo option regarding Butch on Antigua, the appropriate dialogue option never appeared (I checked online and I did everything right).

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If that's the person outside the town you need to use the doll on, then you definetly did something wrong as it's not bugged. You can't just talk to him and expect the dialogue, you need to talk to other NPCs to get the idea. Besides, while talking to him about everything perhaps you didn't notice you have in your inventory something needed to create the doll?

Elwro said:

Also, the scepter of power doesn't seem to work properly on my machine — after gaining control of an enemy I cannot tell him to target anyone else, I can move the mouse all I want but the skulls do not change their position. I like the game but I chose the voodoo path to actually, you know, use voodoo, and so far it's simply not working right.

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When you click on the first "target" do you see numbers in red? If yes, then it's not bug, you just have to improve your voodoo skills.

Elwro said:

Also, the scepter of power doesn't seem to work properly on my machine — after gaining control of an enemy I cannot tell him to target anyone else, I can move the mouse all I want but the skulls do not change their position.

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I found the scepter of power a bit confusing at first. After using it on your target, you have to rotate the camera until another enemy is highlighted, then press your mouse button a second time.

joxer said:

Without you writing more details on this, I can't say you're right or wrong. What exactly is missing?

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At a point in the game you have to sabotage 3 cannons with Benito standing / sitting day and night in front of them. This is an obvious opportunity to give the player an option to use voodoo especially since But no such option exists. If that's a design decision, than it's a very bad decision, especially on the island in which you learn voodoo.

If that's the person outside the town you need to use the doll on, then you definetly did something wrong as it's not bugged. You can't just talk to him and expect the dialogue, you need to talk to other NPCs to get the idea.

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As I clearly wrote, yes, I did talk to the other NPC to get the idea. You say "it's not bugged", but the fact it works for you is not a good piece of evidence "Doctor, I'm ill!" "What are you talking about? I'm fine!"

Besides, while talking to him about everything perhaps you didn't notice you have in your inventory something needed to create the doll?

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I later went to a voodoo altar to check and I didn't have the option to create the doll.

When you click on the first "target" do you see numbers in red? If yes, then it's not bug, you just have to improve your voodoo skills.

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Again, as I clearly wrote, the skulls do not move. If the numbers were in red, I of course wouldn't even see the skulls. You see them when you gain control of an enemy.

joxer said:

I finished the game on normal (medium) setting with tons of provisions and I still wouldn't play on hard. Why? If you are able to kill Cave Spider on the first island without problems first time you stumble upon it, then you should really switch to hard. I couldn't do that so I left the medium setting. Also the first time on Tacarigua I couldn't kill those 4 ghouls in the swap unless leaving Patty to wait and then luring them away one by one. Sorry, but I don't see the point of switching to hard if there are mobs I can't easily beat on normal setting.

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I was able to kill the spider because it got stuck and couldn't bite me. Back to the point - I won't play on hard because it just makes everybody else cheat (I tried it of course). If hard meant more realistic (for example - people have to actively reload muskets for 30 seconds instead of auto reload) then I might consider it. But it doesn't.

And besides I'm all against difficulty setting to begin with. And what's this about calling them easy, medium, and hard? What happened to normal or default or baseline? I'm really having a problem in my head with this stuff.

Kostaz said:

Erm, I'm pretty sure PB games are first written in German and are later translated into English and not the other way around. Afterall most of their games got were characterized by dodgy localization and a distinctly "German" humor.

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Yes - and that's why I'm astonished that these two words ("Titanlord" and "Scavenger") were *never* translated !

If someone else gets the Butch bug, a guy on a Polish forum suggested a solution which I can't check right now (away from my gaming PC), but maybe it'll help someone else?

The fact that PB put it there points out that they are aware of the bug...

joxer said:

If you are able to kill Cave Spider on the first island without problems first time you stumble upon it, then you should really switch to hard. I couldn't do that so I left the medium setting. Also the first time on Tacarigua I couldn't kill those 4 ghouls in the swap unless leaving Patty to wait and then luring them away one by one. Sorry, but I don't see the point of switching to hard if there are mobs I can't easily beat on normal setting.

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I´d agree that there´s no point of switching to hard if you´re struggling against common enemies on normal, but those two encounters you mentioned are supposed to be way out of your league the first time you stumble upon them.
It´s something PB has been doing since Gothic and it´s a great design because it makes their worlds not entirely revolving around your character and it gives perspective to character progression (aka beating the crap out of these encounters, while remembering how hopeless you were against them in the beginning, is the shit).
The way these encounters are more or less supposed to play out the first time you stumble upon them is you landing a hit, seeing how little damage you´ve done, you getting hit, seeing your health bar close to depletion, you running away screaming (or, well, reloading).
If something akin to the above doesn´t occur, then yeah, switching difficulty might be desirable, but if it does, it may still not be saying much about how difficult the rest of the game is.

That said, Risen 2 does somewhat worse job at this compared to the other PB games - companions shake the difficulty significantly, combat against monsters isn´t much satisfying regardless of character development stage, firearms are easily abusable right from the start (especially when against just one or two enemies) and then there´s the instaheal.
I know there were some potential exploits in previous PB games, but in general Risen 2 feels comparatively a lot less authoritative when it comes to difficulty.
Personally, I couldn´t resist cheesing the spider with the shotgun the first time I´ve stumbled upon it.

Not that I´m necessarily advocating playing the game on hard difficulty, but I don´t think that not being able to beat everything upon first meeting easily is a good reason for staying on normal.

Elwro said:

At a point in the game you have to sabotage 3 cannons with Benito standing / sitting day and night in front of them.

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I´d be surprised if there wasn´t a design oversight somewhere in there.
In my game the scenario resulted in a pretty funny experience with half of the town in fight which kinda made the likely bug worth it .

On the subject of Benito, use the damn Fear scepter against him at night and watch for the patrol, bam, done and done.

Melvil said:

On the subject of Benito, use the damn Fear scepter against him at night and watch for the patrol, bam, done and done.

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Yeah, I've seen that mentioned, but a lot of people won't have a high enough Voodoo skill at that point in the game.

I agree with DeepO.. there's an oversite there somewhere, and I expect PB to address that in a patch.

On the subject of difficulty, like DeepO said, people need to realize that not every enemy is meant to be beatable the first time you encounter them. Some areas are meant for you to simply return at a later point in the game when you're stronger.