Risen - Review Flood #2

The 2nd batch also includes a couple of international reviews.
<ul>ePrison.de says "[…] Risen is less mystic than the announcement promised, but instead a very beautiful and entertaining RPG[…]" - 88%
Gameswelt.de updated their review with impressions from the XBox 360 conversion made by Wizarbox. They laud nearly perfect controls and identical content but criticise that compared to other multi-platform games the conversion technically "leaves a quite harrowing picture und reminds not seldomly of titles for the first XBox". -77% for XBox 360, 82% for PC
Gamers.at = GamersPlus.de made their print review available online. 90%
French site Gamekult.com gives 8/10 - Tr&egrave;s bon
gamona.de believes Risen is "As Gothic 3 should have been: Risen is Piranha Bytes' best game so far!" - 87%
Austrian site GamingXP likes Risen. I don't see a rating, but according to WoR it's 88%.
jeuxvideo gives 17/20. Their summary is very colourful: "Durant les premi&egrave;res heures pass&eacute;es &agrave; arpenter l'&icirc;le volcanique de Risen, o&ugrave; le mot d'ordre est la survie, vous aurez l'impression de vous adonner &agrave; une simple variante de Gothic. Puis, &agrave; la faveur d'une progression lente, mesur&eacute;e et cr&eacute;dible, le titre exercera sur vous son irr&eacute;sistible pouvoir d'attraction. Terriblement exigeant, jusque dans ses combats tr&egrave;s techniques, le nouveau Piranha Bytes perp&eacute;tue les qualit&eacute;s de ses pr&eacute;d&eacute;cesseurs tout en se montrant plus gratifiant que jamais. Dot&eacute; d'une IA tr&egrave;s convaincante et d'un univers dense et riche, source de multiples interactions physiques et sociales, Risen est un excellent jeu de r&ocirc;le qui affiche un degr&eacute; de finition inesp&eacute;r&eacute;." Babelfish delivers a good translation.
The reviewer on the German site Spieletester says: "I like Risen. It's what Gothic always wanted to become: a solid, semi bug-free and stable RPG with action-adventure attitude." - 84%
XGN.nl tested Risen for XBox 360. They like the game - and surprisingly also think it looks pretty good. 8.0/10
Technic3D.com (German) gives 89%: "Risen is exciting, entertaining and especially bug-free. Piranha Bytes irons out the Gothic 3 disaster."
The generally critical Eurogamer.de gives Risen a "narrow 8" for PC and "narrow 7" out of 10 on XBox 360. "If you have the choice, definitely get the PC version. It simply looks better."
Looki.de thinks Risen is "as addictive as the first two [Gothic] parts" - 85%
InsideGamer.nl published a short review, as it seems of the PC version. The think Risen is a game which does almost nothing wrong, but stays within the limits of the genre. They also mention the graphics are outdated. "But if you can look through here, you will see the true beauty of the game." (auto-transl.) - 8/10
nignside.de's mascot looks at Risen with wide open, bloodshot eyes. According to their review policy that's the equivalent to "great". Only open eyes, not bloodshot, and a crown on top would be better. Quite an interesting article.
PC Games.de posted a walkthrough.
Sister site videogameszone.de offers first impressions on the XBox 360 version - but no rating, although they like the game as much as PC Games! See b…More information.

Very positive scores.

I really like jeuxvideo.com review.

If I'm bored tonight, I will (legally) download the game!

btw, I called my local ebgames today and the answer I got put the final nail in the coffer for me as far as this store is concerned for pc games. The guy basically told me that nowadays, they only get the “major” pc games such as Blizzard games. Risen is not in their database so they don’t even expect to have it.

Online, I didn’t even find a place where I could order the game from in Canada. I could always order it from the US but the expedition fee is pretty high. So I guess I will have to download it from D2D.

In comparison, I found Gothic 3 quite easily.

Even a small ass country as sweden has loads of places where you can buy Risen, online and in stores.. Either your search skillz sucks or Canada is a third world country

on-topic, nice to see those positive reviews coming in.. i hope they sell a lot of games so they can make even better games in the future..

Woo hoo got my copy of Risen installing it right now

Originally Posted by bemushroomed
Even a small ass country as sweden has loads of places where you can buy Risen, online and in stores.. Either your search skillz sucks or Canada is a third world country

on-topic, nice to see those positive reviews coming in.. i hope they sell a lot of games so they can make even better games in the future..

Yeah, perhaps I suck. I tried looking/calling at every retailers I know of, in my area.

But european games tend to not be very well published over here.

And pc games tend to be more and more disapearing in stores…

Gave up using bricks&mortar stores years ago. Move online - you won't look back.

I just checked Amazon.ca and they don't have Risen listed so maybe it isn't in Canada. It is on Amazon.com so it looks like it is just the Canadian version that doesn't have it.

PS. A little off topic but when I was searching for Risen I noticed a different date for Alpha Protocol on Amazon.com which is May 31st, 2010. It was October 27th, 2009 until today.

Nah, I do purchase games online, sometimes. But I prefer having the "real thing". Call me conservative if you want.

Oh, I don't just mean digital delivery- I mean ordering real copies from good online stores (GoGamer or whoever). Beats the the idiots at the local mall every time, in my opinion.

I cant believe that this game is banned in Australia. Thank God for Direct2Drive.

Eurogamer hated it. Console version.

[ http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/risen-review ]

Originally Posted by Damian Mahadevan
I cant believe that this game is banned in Australia. Thank God for Direct2Drive.

Why? Their version is NA only.

The Eurogamer review is really way too harsh. Of course, I haven't seen the Xbox 360 version, so his complaints about the controls, graphics and interface might be true, but come on. No reviewer should make hyberbolic remarks like "the characters look like they wandered in from an MS-DOS game." He also laments stuff like the lack of fast-travel, something that many here will find beneficial to exploring. Maybe Oblivion is more his game.

I don't think that they are too harsh. They only thing they should have done is marking the review clearly as "360 review" and posting a seperate review/grade for the PC version. The console port is obviously weeks or months behind the PC version and in no shape for release from a technical point of view. But as even the console version gets advertised by PC screens and PC ingame material only I think that such a grade is necessary in order to spoil the "easy money" plans of the publisher. If it were the other way around (very good console version and crappy PC port) the upset would be as justified as it is now.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Why? Their version is NA only.

Nope, i just bought it from them and downloading as we speak.

I was unable to find a copy of Risen in three stores here in Rotterdam. I think I'll get it from Stream when I get home.

Originally Posted by Damian Mahadevan
I cant believe that this game is banned in Australia. Thank God for Direct2Drive.

Don't forget Australia has no "18" rating. It's either "15" or "ban".

Originally Posted by Thaurin
I was unable to find a copy of Risen in three stores here in Rotterdam. I think I'll get it from Stream when I get home.

Strange. Everybody else from the NL already has it.