Risen 2 - Reviews @ AtomicGamer, Mash Those Buttons

Here is another pair of Risen 2 reviews and, once again, the results are mixed. AtomicGamer complains that Piranha Bytes needs to make their games more accessible (which our readers may take as a positive comment) on the way to a score of 7/10:

Serious pirate-themed games only come once every few years or so. Sometimes the gimmicks the theme brings are welcome additions, and other times games feel bogged down with half-baked swashbuckling gags and silliness. Luckily, Risen 2: Dark Waters is one of the former, but it seems that Piranha Bytes refuses to learn their lesson about making games accessible, so you can expect your first few hours with the game to be quite frustrating as you learn (or re-learn) the peculiar way that the developers want you to play it.

Mash Those Buttons finds the game "inconsistent", though again our readers may enjoy some of the oversights. Score: 3.2/5:

Piranha Bytes gained recognition for the hardcore Gothic series and Risen, while more accessible, still has some of the same uncompromising attitude toward player guidance woven throughout. It’s important to pay attention to what NPCs tell the main character because there’s not much hand holding in quests. A quest log helps keep things organized and can show prior conversations relevant to individual quests since NPCs don’t usually repeat themselves. Quest markers can be placed on the map in the menu, but here again inconsistency shows up. The location of a mundane NPC in town that needs to be spoken to might not be marked, but a quest marker may show the location of every individual piece of cargo on different beaches for a side-quest. The lack of markers for things like legendary items scattered throughout the world make perfect sense – the hunt is part of the accomplishment – it’s the occasional missing marker that is baffling.

More information.

) these guys sound so lame. Again good news! Just a little more

So we have mixed reviews. What I expected from a PB game. There games will never be Bioware or Bethesda killers.

This one sounds very promising (polish website gry-online.pl - google translation)

Google Translate:

Pros:

capital, a pirate climate;
large freedom of action in the second part of the game;
great character development system, which forces to make difficult decisions;
different ways of solving problems;
two factions to choose from, affecting the character development;
large number of diverse and well-designed site;
that require a clash with edged weapons;
firearms;
voodoo.

The Bad:

flood of banal, repetitive tasks;
underdeveloped mechanisms for fighting, bent rifle;
lack of a final sanding, characteristic of high-budget production.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
So we have mixed reviews. What I expected from a PB game. Their games will never be Bioware or Bethesda killers.

Maybe not for the mainstream masses, but I find PB's games to be far better than anything Bioware has done in years, and superior to most of Bethesda's work prior to Skyrim.

I wonder what bent rifle means…

Originally Posted by Alistair
I wonder what bent rifle means…

It seems to be a polish idiom which means over the top.
I think they meant 'too powerful'

Nie sądzisz, że to było…lekkie przegięcie? - Don' t you think it was…, a little over the top?

Originally Posted by Alistair
I wonder what bent rifle means…

Broken musket - as in the musket mechanics are crap?

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
So we have mixed reviews. What I expected from a PB game. There games will never be Bioware or Bethesda killers.

Do you have to kill bioware? Aren't they busy slitting their own throats?

Originally Posted by sakichop
Do you have to kill bioware? Aren't they busy slitting their own throats?

Nah they've got the people at their new studio building an automated Tesla tank to do the job C&C style - much cleaner and more efficient that way. I hear it'll be featured in a $20 million CG cut scene too.

RPGFan really hated it. I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this.

IGN says "Risen 2 is by far Piranha Bytes' most user-friendly product." Now I need a Tums.

'Przegięte' is polish colloquialism for overpowered.

I wonder if there'll be a patch. You could imagine things like firearms could be toned down if necessary.

'Accessible' = dumbed-down button-mashing.

Originally Posted by Zephyr
'Accessible' = dumbed-down button-mashing.

What's funny is that IGN even meant that "more accessible" wasn't really a good thing in this case. The video review made the same statement - that it was their most accessible RPG to date - but immediately followed with explaining that this came at the expense of some of what they felt made PB games special.

Even stranger is that a lot of these reviews have completely contradictory opinions about many of the specifics, even when their overall opinions of the game are similar (both positive and negative cases.) I trust brother none's extremely thorough review though - far more than IGN or RPGFan - but I'll still probably have to play it at my neighbor's house before deciding given the divided opinions I'm hearing. And yes I mean even more divided than usual.

Does Risen 1 (or 2) have dungeons/locations with back stories? Or is it just find a cave/abandoned castle, battle monsters and there's a chest with loot at the end?

Ha. The RPGfan review TRASHED the game, then gave it a 58%. Its graphics "score" lifted the overall score to merely mediocreWhat a silly number system. Their summary:

Pros:
Solid exploration, high level of detail.

Cons:
Horrendous combat, never-ending fetch quests, feels unfinished, spoiled potential.

Bottom Line:
A cheap and immature chore simulator.

sad panda

don't believe that magazine, it said mass effect 3= perfect, and also gave dungeon siege and neverwinter nights a better score than fallout 1. pff, i'm pretty sure he didn't play risen 1 also.

Originally Posted by rikus
don't believe that magazine, it said mass effect 3= perfect, and also gave dungeon siege and neverwinter nights a better score than fallout 1. pff, i'm pretty sure he didn't play risen 1 also.

NWN is one of the greatest games on the planet (as long as you realise it's not a single player game) and is far above Fallout 1.