downloading Risen 2 now:)
 

I'm giddy:) thank you PB and steam:)

Same here, GMG key came through about 30 mins ago

Mines dowloading now too :)

Did you guys get a seperate GMG key for the treasure Island DLC? I'm confused as to whether I have it or not….

Your original GMG e-mail should have a voucher code for the DLC bonus that you have to redeem in their site (GMG)…

risen 2 manual?
 

Hi all,

Have you managed to find where the manual is located? Doesn't seem to be on Steam… or in the download dir.

yeah i've redeemed it off gmg but never recieved an activation code for it - i've just got the activation code for the main game. Did you get 2 seperate codes? one for the game, and one for dlc?
Cheers

booboo you're right, there isn't one included. It's odd.

Just received one key so I assumed the game includes the DLC by default in our case. If it is not (I have to get home from work to check), then better drop them an email. They are usually pretty fast to reply.

Edit: Did you check your "Extras" ingame as people are saying here ?

cool thanks for the reply. Hopefully once the games finished downloading it should be obvious whether its included or not. At the moment steam is saying I don't own any DLC for the game but I also can't see the DLC to buy on the steam store anywhere. It's all a bit confusing really!

Looking forward to hearing what you guys think about the game.

Hm. I played for about 80 minutes - I think the game-play is fine (although so far I have too little gold/glory to afford decent skills). the graphics are not really a step up from Risen though - the popping is really bad and shadows don't look good either. I can't believe they tested this on a PC really - I have everything maxed, and there are still major popping artifacts. objects pop in right in front of you too - logs, some barrels etc. Some foliage seems to 'dimenion-warp' in (!) - that must be a bug. It looks like a billboard scaling up for some reason. Its pretty distracting. Combat is confusing with the camera angle - seems to lock onto arb opponents. Since I do not have a manual I don't know if there's a way you're supposed to manage combat better. Anyway, not bad, but they could have done more to fix things.

Sounds like an unfinished release yet again :( I would suppose PB is pretty strapped of cash…. so they might not have had a choice.

Yes, I hope they can patch some improvements in. Hopefully someone will post a tweak ini soon… From what I can see, the engine is pretty much the one they used for Risen - one would have hoped they addressed issues with that, but they are a small studio, so I suppose it's not reasonable to expect that. Maybe they should give their source code to the gothic community and have them fix it :P

But the list of talents and skills looks interesting. I tried fighting some better swordsman and had my butt kicked ;-) Initially its button mashing, but it def requires use of talents later to win.

You might want to check your GMG account again. I only got one email with the key for the main game, and the key for the DLC has now been added to the keys section. Oddly enough, it was called "Valve Test App" when I redeemed it in Steam, but it seems to have worked okay.

Yep, must have been added to my own keys section too, some time in the last few hours (checked this morning) as Risen 2: Treasure Isle PRE-ORDER DLC

I've also played it for a couple of hours but my impressions are different.

Also everything maxed (GTX560 and latest beta driver) but in my case I don't see any popping objects or whatsoever.
Instead of popping objects there is something else but I don't think it's a bug. While moving through the jungle, plants seem alive and are shrinking as you approach them, but are growing back into a thick mass while you're moving away. Plants are not alive of course, and this "trick" only improves visibility of the nearby area, and if you ask me it's a great feature. Honestly I don't remember seeing this in first Risen, but then again my rig was very old back then and I played it on lowest settings.

I had no problems with combat nor camera, actually it seemed pretty much straightforward and easy - except the duels/training. But you see there that your opponents in duels are using moves you still didn't unlock, so it's logical to lose those early game.
Mobs on the shore and in the jungle are pretty easy to kill and I actually thought about setting the game on hard. But then a jaguar jumped on me and I died in 3 seconds. Reloaded the game, got the party member back (not spoiling everything!) and somehow we managed to kill that "beast". And it wasn't easy. But then a mere spider jumped out in a cave and practically nailed both of our arses with two hits! I'm definetly leaving the setting on normal, obviously there are and there will be many challenges.

Now some more things not mentioned by booboo…
The vocabulary is "dirty" enough to meet my taste. And I want to hear more of it! :)
I've seen in some reviews a minus for non-existing minimap, but honestly you don't need one (you can get a sketch map of the island you're exploring and check your position on it anytime you want).
Also some reviews give a minus because the game lacks of "MMO for dummies" quest giver/location/trigger/target pointers, but I really don't see the reason to include those in this game. Not only that, I feel that if those were added, it'd ruin exploring experience, so actually not adding those to the game is only a plus. If you're unsure into something however, you may always consult your log.
booboo noticed first and I confirmed, Steam version doesn't have a manual included. It's not bad as it looks, inside the game you can see details about pretty much everything you want to see.

I'm on the second island the game looks very promising, interesting and I like it. The ambients are pinpointed good enough that all the time I just expect Jack Sparrow jumping out from a corner any time.
Please keep in mind that things I've posted are only initial impressions, dunno about later game stuff.

It's true that graphics could get some improvements, but c'mon let's not be nitpickers spoiled with "billions invested in" EA games and such. In fact I like the looks.
It really wouldn't be fair to compare this game with Skyrim or The Witcher 2 - if there is a game to compare this one with it's Sea Dogs and a number of it's spin-offs. And if you tried one of those Akella pirate-sim games, Risen 2 looks as Sea Dogs on steroids with better graphics, better sounds, better story, better everything only there are no ship fights here. But who knows, maybe some future DLC adds exactly that?

Can you dodge at the beginning of the game? I was told to 'dodge from the boar' when it attacked - but double tapping directional keys etc doesn't seem to work. At the moment all I can do is turn around an run…sure I could dodge in Risen 1.

@joxer - the popping I'm talking about is really noticeable for me (GTX 480, latest beta drivers). I see plants flicker and then appear in the distance, objects (logs, pots etc - but not all) appear 10m in front of me (some object-based appearance LOD value etc). I have now tweaked the INI file slightly, so the game runs more slowly but I get much less of the popping appearing. As for the plant shrinking thing - I don't like it at all :-/ Maybe they intended that it looks that way, but I know a fair bit about graphics tech/LOD etc and that just looks a buggy LOD implementation. But it is odd that only happens on some foliage…Still, I'm having fun.

Another note: any idea how to pass time? I couldn't find a bed to sleep and had to run all the way back to the ship to sleep (!)

No I can't dodge in classic console "rollaway" scheme, but I can hit warthog then run a bit on a side so they can't nuke me with charging forward just like that. ;)
The best results you'll get if instead waiting for it to run towards you - you do exactly the same to it - you charge then hit&hit&hit, move a bit on a side, again hit&hit&hit… etc. :)
I mean… If there is a key combo for dodging, I dunno what is it. But you don't need to dodge those tiny animals at all, c'mon! :)

Sorry for those objects popping out on you, I really don't know what to say. It simply doesn't happen on my machine. Also there is no flickering in the distance here.

You can pass time only on beds. And any bed will do. The problem is that sometimes your only option is a bed in a house/building you shouldn't enter or you'll be attacked by a guard/guards/security/whatever. In those cases however…

awesome so far, I like how I'm dirt poor all the time… and I die a lot , refreshing change from other RPGs.
@Booboo - plants do the same for me , they change size whenever I go near them thought it was just part of their rendering engine , doesn't bother me that much.
graphics look old but I was never much of a graphic buff anyway(I still play fallout and Baldur's gate sometimes).

It's much better than most of the review scores I've seen, imo. The only thing I really don't like so far is the stupid QTE traps. On hard difficulty, those things kill me every time unless I already know where they are.

I saw some message flash up the one time I stepped one…so what are you suppose to do? press space when you hear the 'twang'? I hate not having a manual - I'm a slow reader so I never get the messages that pop up while I'm fighting for my life or otherwise preoccupied…

Yep. You just hit 'space'. You need to react very fast or it's game over. I think I would have preferred if they had limited the traps to the dungeons. Would be nice to explore casually at times and not needing to be prepared to ninja the space button all of the frickin' time ;) .

Biggest problem so far: Save games never replace each other, so the savegames folder becomes massive after only a few hours. I'm now close to 15 hours, and my savegame folder contains over 700 savegames, at a grand total of 4,49 GB. If the game is 35-40 hours, that means 12 GB for a single run through the game.

To top it off, the savegames aren't even named, so I can't figure out which ones to keep and which ones to delete (with explorer, not in-game, that would take too long).

You can name your savegames.

You can also check the "date modified" and save games are numbered from 0000 to xxxx anyway so the last/latest ones are usually the ones with the highest number.
I have a SSD so I like to keep it clean as well. I just backed up my save games folder to my internal backup HD and manually deleted ~2.7GB of save games, only keeping the most recent five. That was a matter of 30 seconds (if that) so it's not really a problem :) .

So a question about faction choices:

Not putting the reply in spoilers since this is a general hint. The choice of faction only influences your access to teachers and how high you can train a certain skill level. That is all. So you can keep using guns all you like. You just won't be able to max out your shooting skills if you side with the natives.
Likewise, if you side with the Inquisition you won't be able to reach the highest Voodoo ranks but you can still use it.

Like I said, the explorer version, not in-game. Naming a savegame in-game will not give it a name in the savegame folder, it's still just a number. I don't want to manually delete 1200 savegames in-game.

Yes, I know. Right now, that means keeping savegame numbers above 1200. However, I also want to keep a few named savegames that I created early on - after the first few islands, before any significant choices were made. Similar to a pre-joining-a-camp save in Gothic 1 and 2.

Saves me the first five hours when I'm replaying, as I'm bound to do exactly the same stuff all over again.

Anyway, I should be able to find it by checking when the save was made, then deleting saves before and after it.

I just passed 7,5 GB of saves by the way. Someone at PB honestly didn't think of the consequences of not re-saving auto and quick saves.

You can disable autosaving. But c'mon you can delete those saves.

BTW, the reason why they might be having this excessive save game orgy is that the game seems to be suffering from random save game corruption (which has also happened to people playing the beta). If and when that happens you'll end up in the "debug room" which looks like this :biggrin: