Risen - Review Flood #1

Piranha Bytes' RPG Risen, this time for their new publisher Deep Silver, will be released in most countries on PC and XBox 360 later this week. Only the XBox version in NA has been delayed to Q1/10. Naturally, reviews are popping up everywhere. The following articles are in German, with one notable exception.

• Let's start with the print mags. GameStar uploaded a site-seeing tour split into 4 videos. Their review, not online yet, rewards Risen with 87%. "Risen is no unofficial Gothic 4. Risen is the return of Gothic 2. […] The best Gothic so far […]"
• PC Games says something similar: "[…] the title is exactly what Gothic fans expect." - 86%
• 360Live gives the console version an 8.3/10. Their 2nd opinion 7.8/10. They praise the captivating gameplay but criticise the outdated graphics and the small font size.
• According to GamePro Risen deserves 80%. "A fine RPG with lots of details, but also with a few quirks blurring the fun."
• GamesAktuell thinks "Risen has become a very good RPG […], only suffering from minor weaknesses." - 9/10
• And now online press. DemoNews offers positive first impressions without a rating.
• Gameswelt likes Risen. "At the end of the day Risen does a lot [of things] right and few wrong." They like the usual Gothic formula and criticise a thin story, a couple of logic holes and minor technical glitches like sporadic clipping errors, incorrect camera position and frame rate drops in the city.
• Xboxdynasty gets the credit for the first roasting of the XBox 360 conversion. They say the game has some interesting points, but the visuals doen't reach current gen niveau, which impacts the fun. "[The] graphics clearly kill the atmosphere and the mood of the game."
• And finally an English article. World of Risen published a translation of their detailed Risen review. Clever as they are, the fan site left out the rating part. The piece is relatively spoiler-free and very informative. Especially the page about the technical stuff.

First retail copies have surfaced in Benelux, Russia and the US.
On a sidenote, we've made a couple of changes to our forums. We've opened forums for Risen, Dragon Age: Origins, Drakensang: The River of Time and the indie game Tactica: Maiden of Faith. If you feel like chatting about the listed games, you know where to find fresh forums in need of traffic.
More information.

LOL @ Xboxdynasty

Originally Posted by ToddMcF2002
LOL @ Xboxdynasty

Frankly, if your playing on a next gen console the graphics should be continually pushed or there would be no need for a next gen console.

Course, I believe Risen will look great on the PC so yeah LOL @ Xboxdynasty.

Sorry to hear that the 360 version's graphics don't compare to the PC version's, though I'm not too surprised, since PB is a PC developer and the 360 version seems like almost an afterthought. Hopefully the reviewer is being overly picky and the graphics are not that bad. I am no graphics whore, so mediocre graphics are not a huge deal to me. I assume we're talking resolution and textures, not framerate hitches, etc.

I'll await further reviews. I'm particularly interested in how the English translation for the 360 holds up.

Well. choosing graphics over, game play and game quality is exactly what the xbox crowd seems to be about, no surprises.

Very excited about Risen.

Well, to be fair, if you consider the xbox 360 market, one of the biggest things scruitinzed with each new generation of consoles are the visuals. So in the videogame market, visuals are kinda important.

But in a game like Risen, where the gameplay looks to be great, I think it would be a disservice to xbox gamers to base a conclusion soley on the visuals.

Wait a second, you can scale mountains in this? If not how can it be considered a sequel to Gothic 2?

I love how the only 2 negative reviews are of the console version.

One being completely superficial…the graphics aren't as good (hehe).

The other is basically griping about their console game being PCified. The font is too small. HA! I love that since most console to PC ports have had oversized fonts & menus which looked horrible on a PC. This just amuses the hell out of me for some reason.

I just hope the game actually ships on Oct. 2nd, that way it should arrive the next Monday.

Damn, I can't wait to play Risen finally. I wasn't that excited about a game in a long time.

Yep, I think it was obvious that the Graphics would be a main criticism point from the
console crowd, they work fine for me from what I've seen…

What I was a bit disappointed to hear were the criticisms for the story but imho G2
suffered from the same thing too and it still was great (ofcourse NOTR raised the quality
there too). At least this time they returned to the G1 way of handling the main quest
(you don't have a clear objective from the start other than joining a guild), I love that.

The rest seem to be as great as we dared hope…

Damn, this is gonna be one long month before I finally get the chance to play

What a great review/test from the world of risen. Very informative.

Originally Posted by Majnun
I love how the only 2 negative reviews are of the console version.

I only counted 1 negative review.

I think your 360 Live reference is being considered the second negative of the console version. Either that or you have a counting problem!!

8.3/10 is good. Who cares about the 2nd opinion guy? He's not important enough to be #1.

From what i've heard the map isn't as big and varied (like in Gothic3), but i guess at least it's more filled with interesting things, so probably not bad thing in the end.. i DO enjoy RPG's with varied landscapes though (Morrowind beats most games in that), but i guess you can't have everything

People have tendency to often sit relatively further from TV than computer screen so the font on consoles needs to be bigger.I guess they ripped the graphics from xbox-version for performance?

Anyways gothic/risen is propably too hard for console-generation. I bet very few would be able to play through gothic2 (with expansion).

Well the story takes place on a Med island, Med islands only have rocks , forests and beaches and occasionally a swamp ; it wouldn't be believable if a desert or tundra were present .

Gotta say I'm pretty happy that there are so many great reviews. All I was really looking for in these reviews were any reports of bugs, but it seems like PB learned their lesson last time and made another great game this time without a ton of bugs.

Exactly who is this "console crowd" again? I thought we were beyond that sort of shallow categorization.

I'm sad to hear about a bad review for the Xbox 360 version. It's obvious that graphics on PC should be better, but Risen should at least compare to other current games in terms of graphics. I do think that graphics are important in a game like this (and it's not because I'm a shitbox kiddie!! ), just like I used to enjoy the view in the Gothics (through amazing coincidence and infinite trial-and-error, I was able to complete those games with my pee-sized console brain!! Amazing!!).

Originally Posted by Thaurin
Exactly who is this "console crowd" again? I thought we were beyond that sort of shallow categorization.

I do not mean to be offensive. But there seems to be some correlation between console
owners young age and a predilection on having the latest and greatest in eye candy…

At least all the console oriented reviews seem to place an almost monotonous emphasis
on the technical aspect. Perhaps they wrong the console owners and they could be a
more sophisticated "crowd" that I give them credit for. The people I do know though are
mostly casual gamers, they do care about pretty graphics and an hour of leisurely fun.
Several are more intelligent than me too, its just that gaming is less of a serious form
of entertainment for them as it is for me…

I seriously do not get people getting riled about a simple "demographics" comment simply because they own a platform…

And yes I do Like pretty graphics too… They just take a waay lower place in my list of
priorities in comparison to gameplay, Story, atmosphere etc…