Risen 2 impressions thread
 

Hi folks.

Yet another big RPG has been released, so it's time for impressions and what not. Feel free to contribute.

I'll get started. I just completed it with a marksman type of character, swords as back up weapons (nice to have when dealing with sand thingys and so on). My ending stats:

Played time: 27 hours (in-game, actual played time is no doubt longer)
Blades: 7
Firearms: 10
Toughness: 4
Cunning: 9
Voodoo: 2
Gold: 3263, but with enough loot to boost it by 10k at least if needed.
Completed side quests: All that I came across, except finding a few legendary items (mostly ones I had to buy for 2000 gold, didn't bother as they didn't provide me with relevant stat boosts) + a bugged quest (The King's Sword, I got the hilt for Soul Caller twice instead of one for Soul Caller and one for The King's Sword).

Let me first start out by stating that the game is longer than Risen, despite the low played time. The main reason the played time is so low is due to extensive use of quick travel, and in Risen 2 it's available right from the start, unlike every other PB game where you have to dig up teleport stones in order to quick travel. The game world is bigger than Risen, no doubt about that, so there's quite a few places to explore.

Moving on to the good stuff.

Graphics
The graphics got something of a boost from Risen, but the overhaul is not a major one in my opinion. Like always, PB creates a very vivid world, filled with strong colors. PB really manages to create incredible environments. Too bad the same can't be said of their characters - this was one of few things I wanted them to improve from the original Risen, but the upgrade is.. not much of an upgrade. Also, there's the infamous "plant pop up" feature in Risen 2, which can be toned down by tweaking the ini file. I suggest doing so. Beyond that, I had no technical issues at all - no crashes, no weird graphical glitches, no hiccups, nothing. I came across one bugged quest (the sword I mentioned above), but that's it.

For reference, my rig:
- OS: Windows 7
- CPU: Intel i7-2600K
- RAM: 16 GB
- GPU: Asus GTX 680
- I do have an SSD for my OS and similar, but Steam is installed on a regular 7200 RPM drive. Saving and loading was still very fast and smooth, however.

Disclaimer: I have no idea how it performs on other systems.

Sound
Rock solid as always. Not a lot to say there. The voice acting is better than in previous PB games (English that is), and the music might not have been as priceless as that in Gothic 3, but overall the sound is great.

Gameplay
Why did they alter a system that worked so well in Risen? I have no idea. The menus and what not are quite good, as are the hotkeys, but the combat actually takes longer to get the hang of than the one in Risen. Also, even once you do get the hang of it, it doesn't feel as smooth as it does at its best in Risen. The biggest loss is the lack of dodging, which really sucks once you face gorillas, alligators and so on.

I originally intended to play a melee character, but once I got a musket I abandoned that idea as muskets are so much better at dealing with certain annoying enemies (mainly due to the lack of proper blocking and dodging). No idea how good voodoo is yet, but I'll be trying that out in the next few days.

There are a few QTEs, but nothing major. They're more of a nuisance than anything else. I did find the final fight a bit odd though:


My biggest complaint is actually the lack of memorable armor. PB has always been good at making armors distinguishable, something of a symbol, an achievement. In Risen 2 I barely even paid attention to what I was wearing. Most items looked similar, with minor differences. Getting native armor for a voodoo using character or inquisition armor for a musketeer would've been nice.

Character development
Character development got a completely overhaul. Regular stats are gone, replaced by talents and skills. Talents are the "stats" in this case, and determine your base skill at something, while skills can be bought from trainers once you reach a high enough talent level. Example: Blades determine your melee fighting skills, and in order to train the power attack skill, you need Blades rank 2. Talent ranks are bought for experience, or "glory points" as they're called.

The system works well enough, though no better or worse than previous systems. In all previous PB game except NotR, it's been possible to create powerhouses early in the game by pumping virtually every point into melee skills + strength. The main difference now is that such builds can't be made because of the increased glory point cost per talent increase (Blades 3 costs more than Blades 2). Whether preventing such builds is a good or a bad thing boils down to personal preference.

Also, I feel the cunning requirements are off the charts in a some cases. I focused quite a bit on cunning early on, but a lot of conversations were still far too demanding for me to choose the silver tongue option. A lot of them are not possible to repeat, which means it's actually expected that some players might have high enough silver tongue skill by the time they get to the conversation. I really don't understand how that's possible, unless every available glory point is spent on cunning and every gold coin is spent training persuasion.

Companions
This is one of the best new additions. I like having companions, bringing them along really makes exploration quite a bit easier. They do have some interesting conversations (more than Skyrim, less than BioWare), though they're obviously intended for combat and comic relief more than deep, soul searching philosophy. Small piece of advice: Don't build your character around having a companion, as they might not always be available. I learned that the hard way by pumping cunning like crazy in the start to get high conversation and thievery skills.

Story and setting
The other great addition is the setting. The whole pirate thing with muskets and what not works. It feels refreshing. They did take the whole slavery bit a tad too far from my point of view, but other than that I'd say the setting is a huge success. Hopefully, we'll see PB trying even more new stuff in the future, as they are clearly capable of making interesting settings.

The story is decent, certainly above most PB stories. In fact, I'd say it's better than most open world RPG main quests, but worse than most narrative RPGs (Mass Effect and similar).

There were a few really annoying fetch quests though, especially related to finding X objects spread out over a fairly large area. Overlook a single object and you might end up combing an area several times just to find it.

Exploration
There are several areas to explore (five islands, including the Treasure Isle DLC + three areas connected to continents), so there's no lack of exploration options once you get a ship. However, it's all a bit more streamlined than I would've liked: Going somewhere usually means you have a very specific goal in mind, instead of just roaming around.

It's worth mentioning that PB is still PB though: There are quite a few hidden treasures to find, some more valuable than others. The best treasures in the game are usually hidden pirate treasures, which tend to be a real bonus to find.

Also, the atmosphere is very good, as always.

Summary
As I've already mentioned in several other threads, I honestly wanted PB to simply improve Risen in a few ways: Better looking characters/animations and a bigger, more refreshing world to explore. I felt such small improvements could turn Risen 2 into another Gothic 2, maybe even with NotR. Let me be blunt: Risen 2 is not another Gothic 2, with or without NotR.

It's a good game, by all means. It's rock solid, in fact. However, it really is "two steps forward, one step back" as others have pointed out. The setting, voice acting, companions and story all take a step in the right direction, but at the cost of exploration, factions and certain gameplay issues. Also, it's technically superior to most PB games: Very few bugs, crashes or other issues that I came across. In fact, the most annoying issue I've discovered so far is the whole "stacking save game" issue - quick saves and autosaves stack indefinitely, so the save game folder ends up being massive after a while. After completing the game, my save game folder contained:
- 1442 different save games.
- 2886 different files
- 8,67 GB

Anyway, I really don't see the point in whatever streamlined they've done. Risen 2 is still a hardcore game, no doubt about it. I simply don't see how anyone that did not enjoy previous PB games is all of a sudden going enjoy Risen 2 - it's still a challenging PB game at the core. They'd have to abandon their own formula completely to reach the mass market, which is something I really hope they refuse to do.

Verdict
I'd say Risen 2 is a 7 or 8, depending on the player. I've got a fairly strict scale though, so that's a good score. I enjoyed it a lot, but there's clearly room for improvement.

There's probably a lot more to say, and I assume I've missed a few points here and there, so feel free to comment or ask questions or your own impressions or what not.

I'll be playing a voodoo based character now, cheerio.

Interesting about Cunning, is the lockpick/pickpocket skill worth it overall? Seems like a big investment down that path when I could be focusing on swords and toughness and getting some of the nice skills there sooner. Am finding it more of a graft than Risen for some reason to "get going".

Cunning is probably the most important in this game so don't listen to him. I'm not even near the game end, I've cleared only 3 areas (first two islands and then went back to Caldera) and now my thievery is 90 so I've backtracked all chests I couldn't open before. Pickpocket although expensive earns you some nice cash later and I can't say I had some problems on buying anything I want, for example you saw in the first tavern you were in that you need to pay 2000 coins for +10 silver tongue mirror, not a problem, then you find in the Caldera shop another such item (not spoiling this one) which is a must have, again I had enough cash on me. Selling warthog/jaguar skins, bowls, candlesticks and etc simply can't earn you enough cash. At least not enough to buy just anything. ;)
Not to mention that you need IIRC cunning at least 4 to be able to loot (some) temples. You can't transform into bug in Risen 2, but you can, if your cunning ain't low, to move through holes in the wall use… Well… ;)

27 hours Maylander, I really don't know how you did it. I'm 20 hours in the game and still haven't set a foot on 4th location.

EDIT:
Ah, I went swords and voodoo, not muskets as Maylander did. And honestly I have a hard time with some enemies - aligators for example. I do use a pistol for some additional burst damage, but it's reload is very slow and while you can outrun some enemies till you're able to shoot again, aligators are faster than you so either you'll use plenty of grog or you'll bring a party member to distract aligators. I'm playing on normal and wanted to solo areas, and generally it isn't a mission impossible - but on aligators I had to bring a party member. Without tons of rum or grog, also groups of ghouls are impossible to kill solo, not to mention the grave spider which was so far the hardest enemy (even the undead guardian you meet in the tomb behind that spider looks like a baby compared to the spider).
The damage you make with swords is not bad at all, but your low health is the real problem. Perhaps I should have invested some more into toughness and not so much in blades. ;)

So we should expect the next sum-up tomorrow?

@huggster and joxer
Yes, cunning is worth it. Looting is practically impossible without it. However, it is a huge investment and will leave you lacking in combat (for some time), as it takes a lot of glory points and gold to really get it going.

However, I wouldn't take cunning above rank 8 (including a legendary item that boosts it by 1, so 7 as max), as you can get both thievery 3 and silver tongue 3 then, which adds a grand total of 30 points each, giving you 70 points total (40 from the 8 cunning, 30 from skills). Add an item or two and you'll pass 90 without problems. Use a potion of thievery in the few cases where 95 or 100 is needed (I think I bumped into two such situations).

@Kostaz
Hehe, probably Wednesday, but you never know.

If it's true you don't need thievery above 100, then I absolutely support this!

As said in a few previous posts, I've cleared so far only 3 locations which means I've returned to loot chests and open doors I couldn't previously and I've also killed respawns: Caldera, Takarigua and Sword Coast.
I haven't been anywhere else yet.

My cunning is 8 and my thieving (unlocked master thief) with inventory items is 90!
I'll provide a screenshot later.

Maylander stating we don't need thievery above 100 anywhere is a huge hint, thanks!

EDIT:
Arrgh, the legendary item I thought I have is not +1 cunning, it's actually another such item, Snuffbox, +10 thievery that I have… :(
So I've practically wasted too much of glory, nevermind when I replay with guns I'll stop cunning on 7. Also I went to Antigua, found another item and now my thievery is 100. :D
And a huuuuuuuuuge spoiler for Antigua, in case you have the monkey and are into muskets:

actually unless you want the parrot a level of 5 without the black pearl +1 is probably enough to open any chest. i just found the ring (or was it amulet) of greed on antigua which has a +15 theivery, rather easy to get to.

First impression: underwhelmed

I'm going to give it some more time, but I might just wait for a patch. The ballooning foliage and flickering scenery are really annoying. The movement is pretty clunky. Combat (so far) is pretty boring.

It looks nice though. I'm only about an hour and a half in so too early to judge. Back to Skyrim for a while.

With all the faults mentioned thus far this is a typical PB game and it has the MAGIC!

3 words - I L O V E I T!

…as every Gothic fan should do ;-)

Completed my voodoo playthrough now. Quite a bit different to be honest. Trying both paths is worth it in my opinion.

I'll update later on with more specific impressions of the differences.

You're definetly fast, I'm still playing my first run… And am on 7th area.

I don't know how you finished so quickly(no work, no kids?!), but thanks for the review. I've been playing this game this week and I must say that I am really enjoying it. The weird graphic anomolies don't bother me much like the foliage growing…found it strange at first. I have a very old system P4 3.2 GHz with an 8600GTS and play on medium settings. I really like the way PB has done most of this game. At first I was turned off by the Pirate theme but I am now enjoying it. I've got about 10 hours game time into it…more than that in reality due to reloading and redoing things in order to get as much glory/gold as I can. I'm hoping someone comes out with a guide to get most glory/gold and build some uber character…not sure if there is enough gold/glory to achieve that in the game though. Going inquisition this round and will try voodoo next.

There is definetly not enough glory in the game to bring everything to 10.
Right now I'm 38 hours in the game and only two things are left to do. Treasure Isle and Temple of Mara or whatever it's called. I've collected all legendary items except Steelbeard's almanach (dunno what does that one do) and currently I have 905 spare glory and these stats:
blades - 8
guns - 2
toughness - 10
cunning - 9
voodoo - 6

I've seen some respawned mobs on islands so it's possible I can get voodoo higher but I really don't see the point of it as because of swords I haven't needed anything from voodoo but potion making for perma-potions that give you +2 permanent to three skills - for example I got +16 from permanent potions for pistols, shotguns and muskets.
As previously noted by maylander, there is no need to improve cunning above 7 (8 if you already have the legendary +1 cunning item) but I didn't know that in my first run so it's 9 on me which is a massive waste of glory.

If we talk about money, then there are some more things to note. As you can see I went with blades but wasted (too much) money on piercing weapons. And in fact most of the game I actually use slashing weapons.
Also what you're not aware of when you start the game is that soon you'll get a ranged weapon - spear, that is equipable and useable. After that I got the knife that's equipable and useable, those are two weapons needed to nail Mara and not bad at all. So in fact maybe it could have been wise if I've improved throwing weapons instead those piercing ones!

My first impression was: the game leaves much to be desired.
After 20 hours I feel pretty much the same.

Okay I've finished the treasure island, as I do everything thorough I wasted about an hour on it. Not a bad area I must say and it grants you about 7K glory - unless you first go for the treasure and after that explore the rest of the island. In the case you get the treasure first, then do the rest things available on the island, you'll get more glory. Just a hint for those who didn't finish it yet. If I knew what the legendary item (Almanach) does, I'd go for this quest ages ago.

And since Temple of Air/Storm Island DLC is not released yet, man… I feel so unhappy I'm gonna finish the game now. :(

EDIT:
Did Mara in - the game lasted for me (checked the time on the last autosave) 39 hours and 57 mins. Since I've loaded then replayed some areas/dialogs etc on Steam it says I've been playing it for 50 hours in case someone wonders.

Now I know why some reviewers said "the game has many things that are underused". I'd really love to have more areas "beatable" with monkey, more "nuff said" situations, more intimidate to show, hell, I'd love more of everything.
But it's still 8.5/10 for me and I'll replay it as marksman when Temple of Air/Storm Island DLC gets available.

all in all was enjoyable I dunno if I'll replay it , while I had a good time, I can't say I had a gothic good time where I want to try out different things:)

Yea well I'll replay it because now I know I can sell all those golden monkeys and gold ore from the inventory I was holding all the time instead of training all skills as soon as I could. Pots too, I never used any of those and my inventory is full of that stuff.

Oh and a huge hint for those who play voodoo path… When you control someone - don't forget to open any (empty) chest and to load out items from your victim's pocket. You won't believe what awsome stuff you can get that way.

I honestly don't know how you got by joxer :) I suffered from lack of gold all the way to the 4th location

Of course you you can't get rich that early! Only 3 locations are not even close to grab enough money for everything you can learn.

Doubleposting, yea, I know, but since Ive given the game some more thought after I've finished it… A few more words.

It's still 8.5/10 for me and I'll try to explain why it ain't 10/10. I won't write OMG this part was so amazing and stuff, once you'll play the game you'll see that with just a few adjustments Risen2 had a potential to be this year's GOTY. There are so many things to try here, so many options, even wits tests (for example the boss frog you solve easily when you realize he eats everything on Isle of thieves) and on the other hand hard to believe just a few non-performance/quest bugs of which none is gamestopper. Instead, this year's GOTY title will probably go to MassTurd3 endings which is really a shame.

QTE traps scheme is the biggest annoyance I've added to a reason for giving 8.5/10 to the game. While new picking locks system is IMO great because no breaking lockpicks nor arcade minigame means less reloading, I really dislike rediculously low time interval to react traps (not just jungle ones but also those ones in temples). Final QTE in the fight against the first boss is also not bad at all, even if you miss to trigger it first time, you still don't have to reload the game.

Another annoyance already mentioned and easy to someone but not me is shooting minigame. As previously said, it's not a big problem to successfuly hit 7/10 on normal (medium) game difficulty. But although I've tried, I never managed to grab 10/10. You'll say so what? See, I don't like to have a "fake quest"/"steam achievement" unsolved. You'll also say, so what, another reason to replay the game and that's good… Sorry but a reason to replay the whole game shouldn't be just a minigame that really doesn't add to the story or something. You may also say, joxer you imbecille, just turn the difficulty on easy while doing that minigame… And you'll be right in that case - I was just stubborn to do it in my first run through the game expecting in time maybe I discover something that affects this minigame just like lockpicking, but I was wrong.

While we can all agree that muskets are OP (I've recruited Venturo and cleared aligators with him although went later with voodoo path so I've seen it), who says voodoo isn't OP? If you did play voodoo path and used curse dolls you could finish the hardest enemies in just a few hits. Groups of hard enemies like those 3 gorillas or a pair of aligators on Tresure island? Baah, equip Sceptre of power and they're history.
The only problem in this game is early melee, swords do low damage. But even if you improve swords (as I did), you didn't lose anything as while on voodoo path you can get 45-100 damage sword on Sword Coast before you steal the ship. There is IIRC only one better (slashing) sword (sabre in fact) to get later in the game, and you want to say Inquisition is better choice? Easier maybe, but better… Can't agree, sorry.
Why am I writing this then? You won't believe what I'll just write. Once you make a choice, you get only one crew member of two possible ones. Yea, Chani is really great, she heals you during the fight, but c'mon, I took voodoo path which means I need a damage dealer and not a healer! While everyone will say it's a design choice, it wouldn't feel right in the story, and etc, I find this issue very annoying.

Another annoyance is attribute system. Okay, you can't get everything on 10, and that's not the problematic part. The problematic part is that not all attributes are equally important. So investing in cunning over 7 is utterly useless, in fact (if you'll keep the earring) it's useless over 6.
On the other hand, getting toughness on 10 (9 in fact since you'll find a legendary item for +1) as soon as possible then training healing is awsome not just for fights but is moneysaving thing, you will not need provisions any more so you can just sell them.

It's not the end. While clothes DLC is IMO a rip off and not needed by anyone, Treasure Island is really fun although short. But what's annoying in that area then? The annoying is the legendary item you get as a reward. It's utterly useless if you get it just before the end (as I did). That's the item you should get as soon as possible in fact, not when you're just about to reach the final destination.
It's not everything I've had in mind but those are things I really disliked. The game is really so much fun and tries not to repeat itself anywhere, so an annoyance here or there is really easy to forgive. But once you finish the game, once you decide to replay it with the second faction, you start to remember those things and you can't just say "10/10, best game I've ever played, not GOTY but DOTY (decade)", or something.

Oh and… Okay, it's a pirate game so yucky romances feel unwanted here, but where the hell did brothels disappear? Some players wouldn't like to see them? That's what's RPG for, you don't want to visit sluts, your choice. Just give me an ability to make such choice!

But I'll disagree with anyone who says Risen 1 was better. It was not. Risen 2 went into a good direction. If PB continues with a good job like they did here, there is no way Risen 3 won't be GOTY. Will there be Risen 3? Of course it will. In two Risens we nailed just 2 of 5 "titans". Honestly, can't wait to see the next one.

after several hours of play, I think it's a solid rpg as is but I can not keep being disappointed, PB lack of ambition in its evolution or even regresses in certain matters, especially the roleplay part.

Don't judge the game based on just a few hours of play. The "worst" part of the game are those few first hours, and then you start to discover the rich world out there. It's like a slow starting but great movie you turn off after 10 minutes without giving it a chance. I't easy to do that and say that the game sucks, but in fact you should only say that the beginning could be a way better and trust me, 99% of players will agree with you.

for those running short on gold, voodoo is the way to go. specifically the feather earing only requires a tusk and feather to make but can be sold for 400 gold. if only i hadn't killed well over half the warthog and a bit less firebirds so early on…

Then hint #2 related to it: With high cunning skills you can get the tool to take that stuff early from Sebastiano's daughter. And also those things respawn (only once), so make sure you revisit already cleared islands. ;)
But once you learn from already said stuff that you don't need to keep chunks of gold ore (hell I had 199 of those in inventory before going for Mara instead of selling them early), golden monkeys, crowns, masks and idols, you really won't have any money problems.

Like I wrote yesterday, I've completed the game twice now. The first character chose Inquisition and muskets, the 2nd chose natives and voodoo + melee. All in all, I have to say that the choice is really significant. There are quite a few quests that can be solved in different ways, which gives the game fairly high replay value.

Ending stats:
- Blades: 10
- Firearms: 2
- Toughness: 4
- Cunning: 8
- Voodoo: 10

As far as muskets vs voodoo goes, I'd say they're about equal, but depend primarily on playing style. Voodoo has a lot more utility than muskets - easy ways of making money (as explained above), easy ways of solving certain quests using voodoo dolls, a summonable ghost that can help you during certain solo sections, a mind control spell that can solve certain tricky fights in a rather smooth way and a bunch of potions that can boost your skills whenever you need it. Muskets on the other hand has.. well, crazy damage output and an overpowered companion.

The biggest issue of using voodoo is that a lot of nifty stuff is only useful/available late in the game, while muskets are very useful right away. Also, you can get the best musket in the game about halfway through the it without too much trouble if you know how to get it.

In fact, voodoo is balanced similar to how magic is always balanced in PB games - starts out slow, but gains power towards the end of the game.

Anyway, I still find Risen 2 highly enjoyable, and will play through it a third time before putting it away for now. I'll max out endurance this time and focus on intimidation more than persuasion (silver tongue). Should be interesting, though it might be somewhat easy now that I know where to find all legendary items and so on.

Edit: Oh, I spent almost 34 hours on the voodoo character, which is significantly longer than the musket one, despite knowing most locations and quests. Muskets are just that much faster, especially early on.

And I went to replay the game although I said I'll wait. This time with muskets…

The reason? PB joined EA train it seems:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum….php?t=2682851

I'm extremely disappointed with PB now.

http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net…35_700b_v1.jpg

Have you tried what they say in that thread? I'm just curious if it's true and if it works for all versions.

Ah apparently developers consider this hacking and piracy.

You don't need voices - just turn subtitles on and that's it. I've checked the official Risen2 forum - all 3 DLC are fully functional inside every game version and you can enable all 3 by cheats, the only part missing are voices.

I never planned to buy the clothes DLC (nor ever will for any game), but I really wanted Temple of Air which isn't available on Steam yet, and now I find out that it's already in the game just without voices. What kind of crap decision was that?
Seriously I thought DLC fraud can't go lower than EA's, and I believe this wasn't PB's decision but Deep Silver's. But I still can't believe PB agreed to do this to fans. If there was no way to avoid the charade how DLC weren't a part of the game, then at least remove most of the files like EA did with ME3, then you can arrogantly tell customers to shove off because they have no real proof.

I will not cheat my game to unlock Temple of Air DLC and then play it. But also I will not buy that DLC nor any other that maybe comes for Risen 2.
I'm aware noone from PB and DS will read this and even if they did, they obviously don't care otherwise they wouldn't do this in the first place. But PB was one of my favorite game developers, I was numbering days till Risen 2 was out, couldn't wait for it. And now I can't even describe how disappointed I am.

Finished the game.
Played on hard, voodoo path, found all artifacts, took me 42 hours.

A fun game overall and certainly still a Piranha Bytes experience, though not without shortcomings.

I´d say the strongest points of the game are world building, atmosphere (lively world, day/night changes), no level scaling, economy (both in terms of experience points and money) and, consequently, exploration.
The piratey setting turned out to be a fresh change over the rather nondescript setting of its predecessor.

Among the weakest stuff I´d count inclusion of QTEs, dungeon aspect and combat against monsters.

All the other stuff like character development, itemization, writing, combat against humanoids, voice acting, UI and quest design would be in the average to good range.

Don´t feel like writing point by point impressions, though I´d like to compare the game to previous PB titles in some aspects.

I would say that one improvement over pretty much all previous PB games is the progression in balance between major gameplay elements - the ratio between combat, exploration and questing remains quite in the same ballpark throughout the whole game. Some areas are more quest-heavy, some more combat-heavy, but there´s no sense of one element taking over during the last 1/4 of the game.
The reason for this is that due to the quest structure and area division the whole game is basically a huge "middle".
However, this does have one downside - due to effectively absent endgame, the finale feels abrupt and non-eventy.

The other clear improvement over other titles would be inclusion of dialogue skills - though they don´t affect quests dramatically, it´s nice to have dialogue options tied to character development.

Compared to its direct predecessor, the game comes with more chracterful setting, tolerable woman models and mostly better voice acting (for many people VA is likely the best in a PB game, but personally I have a soft spot for VA in the first two Gothics).

So much for clear improvements.

Now for some perhaps controversial stuff.
While I consider world design and exploration to be the game´s biggest strengths, I would say that compared to previous PB titles these mostly took a hit in one or more ways.

First, the world design. Besides the straight disappointing Caldera, the settlements are nice and feel lived in, but a bit too cramped/small, and the wilderness feels "real" and hand crafted, but I think the game underutilizes z-axis and is relatively lacking in variety, which results in a somewhat sparse amount of memorable, distinct places.
Some areas feel rather "corridor-y".

Second, the act of exploring. PB has been stripping down means of exploring since Gothic 3 and Risen 2 is their most stripped down iteration to date.
G1 and G2 had swimming, diving and climbing, G3 removed climbing and diving, Risen fortunately added climbing back with levitation on top of it, but removed swimming, Risen 2 removed levitation, assigned climbing to few clearly defined spots and on top of that gimped jumping - the result is traversing the environments feels very one dimensional.
No doubt, some of these limitations are mirrored in world design.

On a more positive note, the division into more areas maintains a sense of novelty, treasure huntery is fun and developers made sure that exploring places off the beaten path won´t go unrewarded.

All in all, exploring the Risen 2´s world is certainly fun and retains most of the signature PB craftmanship, but as a whole the exploration is probably weakest of all PB games. That it´s still strong compared to most of the other RPG-y titles on the market is a testament to how good for exploration PB games are.


At last, three disappointments.

First would be combat. After Risen, I think it´s a clean cut downgrade.
Shit, I´m late for the meeting! Sorry, the below probably won´t be very concise :).
Melee against single humanoid opponents is fun once one gains few abilities and understands how to use them, there´s good variety of weaponry, dirty tricks and voodoo are thematically fitting.
However, ranged combat is too straightforward, voodoo lacks in variety, dirty tricks aren´t useful against monsters and melee abilities are useless against monsters, besides kick and powerful swing.
To me, clearly the biggest issue is the lack of dodge, which really hurts combat against non humanoids and those constitute majority of opponents.
Companions shift balance significantly and are available for most of the time, firearms and a bit of running around can solve everything (even on voodoo path), once developed voodoo abilities turn into "I win" buttons, but are fairly dull to use…
Overall, the quality of combat felt quite similar to that of Gothic 3´s and that´s not really a good thing. They should´ve taken Risen as a basis and build upon that.

The second disappointment would be dungeon crawling aspect.
I thought they were on a good way in Risen, just made it too repetitive, but instead on improving upon it, Risen 2 cut puzzle elements and dungeon exploration almost entirely. Boo!!

Third, QTEs. They suck, period.

Oh, and DLCs. What a shame.

I´ve forgotten some other stuff, no doubt, but I have to go :).

Overall I consider Risen 2 to be a good, at times very good, game, but it´s no Gothic: NotR.

I will probably cheat, I'm a fan of PB myself and I bought all their games(pretty much the only games I buy) but this DLC bullshit is just plain annoying and disrespectful day 1 DLCs suck, they are basically parsing the game up so they could make more money. I'm not gonna spend another 10$ on the temple of air so cheating it is.

Yeah, I was starting to wonder the last few weeks how could this be so long in development (on an already developed engine they just improved) and have the biggest budget of all PB games but still turn out to be shorter from what people were claiming… I had an inkling but hoped I was wrong…

Very sad if true (not going to test any time soon)…

Jon, actually the claim that came from Deep Silver months ago was that I'll be shorter in landmass than Risen1 (true) but longer in gameplay time (absolutely untrue even with DLC).
cpt, I also have all PB games, hell I bought also digital versions of Gothics on GOG just to make sure I never lose them. So honestly I dunno what were they thinking. If they wanted a new fanbase of players who won't say a word about all this new DLC stuff, I can only say good luck. But an old fan, me, feels betrayed. And thus I won't use cheats nor will support that DLC.

Do you happen to have a link to any such statement from a Deep Silver person? Not saying you're wrong, just curious because in the German part of this planet where I'm coming from they always said that Risen 2 would be bigger, better, longer and even promised Gothic 3 proportions at one point.

As for myself, all I can say is that this is going to be a pretty long game for me thanks to an obsessively thorough approach to exploration. I'm at ~30 hours now and have only done Takarigua, the Sword Coast and I'm currently back in Caldera.
Since there is a respawn of monsters (and herbs?) when you visit an island a second time I'm going to have to do/clear Takarigua and the Sword Coast all over again when I return to those places later. Then open all the chests where I lacked the lockpicking level earlier on etc. etc. etc.
Well, hmmm… yup… *rolls Voodoo dice*.. I can see this get into the 60 or maybe even more hour range for me and thus at least double of what all the reviews are claiming.

I have absolutely no idea how someone can finish this game in 30 hours and claim with a straight face that they explored everywhere (and I mean everywhere), cleared every cave, killed every single monster (including the respawns), opened every chest, finished every quest, collected all the treasures, found every single legendary item and so on and so on…
I know I'm slow because I'm taking my sweet ass time as with every new PB game and I might be a little too obsessed with not missing anything but my guess would be that a seriously thorough first run through the game should take an average gamer somewhere between 40 and 50 hours at least.
30 hours may be possible on a first run if you do only nearly everything but it would have to be far from a completionist run.

But why kill every single monster? Re-clearing an area won't provide any benefits whatsoever, especially not after you've got high enough skills and good enough weapons to kill everything in a few hits. Chests, treasures and so on don't respawn.

Also, you're probably not using quick travel considering how long you've spent so far. Risen 2 has quick travel right out of the box, no teleport stones needed, so you can just pop around incredibly fast once you've explored an area. Just like Skyrim, Oblivion and similar.

Quick travel is the main reason it seems shorter than Risen 1 to a lot of people. The actual content no doubt takes longer. There's simply less walking.

I don't like quicktravel. Kills immersion for me and lessens the fun of exploration and the feel of traversing a real world that was always a huge part of the allure of a PB game. Also considering how modestly sized the islands are I do not really see myself even remotely tempted to use it (Skyrim after having seen all of he World was a different story)…

So 45-50 hours without quick travel is definitely acceptable to me…

But yeah, I too remember the claims Moriendor is noting among others . I am sure someone will say they meant the water too or whatever. In my neck of the woods we call that dissembling ;)

I just finished a Voodoo/Toughness focused run in about 42 hours, and I'd say that the most disappointing thing about the game was the lack of development of Mara. It was sort of like Darth Maul in the new Star Wars, he was evil because someone said he was, not because we saw him repeatedly force choke people to death for minor infractions (ala Vader). The overall narrative was rather non existent as well, and instead focused on vignettes per island that moved in a more personal path rather than the grandiose.

Regardless, I enjoyed almost every minute of my playthrough, which was rather thorough. The exploration was very rewarding to me, and had the story been a little more involving, this game could have easily been PB best overall effort yet.

That's because anyone claiming that is full of shit. The people who were finished in 2-3 days were trying to finish it that quickly. Some people just have that need to finish asap so they can hurry up and post about how they beat it.

I played pretty much the way you describe, except I didn't kill every single respawn. I'd have to check the time stamp on my final save game to be sure, but I think I got around 45 hours out of it.

I don't remember exactly how long Risen 1 took me to finish, but I don't think Risen 2 was shorter for me. Risen 2 is also significantly bigger than Risen in terms of land mass if you were to put all the islands together. I don't know how anyone could think otherwise.

There were a few things that detracted from game for me, but the story wasn't one of them. I thought the story was really good, but I agree that they could have fleshed out Mara a lot more.

The first thing that bothered me was the simplification of items. I really disliked how every food item you pick up is simply changed to "provisions". You also can't drop items anywhere you want like in previous PB games.

The second thing, which I've already mentioned in other threads, is the retarded QTE traps and mini-games. Thankfully they're not very frequent or it would really have brought the game down further.

I also felt the game started to become somewhat predictable towards the end. The sidequests and treasure maps stuck to the same formula throughout the entire game.

Finally, I ultimately found Voodoo pretty disappointing, especially in terms of variety. The Black Magic talent in particular was a huge letdown for me. I also thought Ritual was grossly overpowered towards the end.

Despite all the complaints, I still loved it for the most part. The voice acting in particular was phenomenal, and the game reeked of quality from start to finish. Give me the same thing again but with swimming and improved monster combat, and Risen 3 will be the best PB game ever.

When I refer to the story I mainly speak of the pacing, and really, the way the ending panned out. I really enjoyed the 4 sub plots with the pirate captains and felt those were very well done. The Water Temple could have been an epic dungeon crawl including dialog with Mara interspersed to build towards a climax. As it was, I literally put a curse on her and 2 shot her with 6 skill points in Swords ;) The first hour and the last hour were a little disappointing I guess, but 95% of the game was PB through and through.