I was cranky about Risen 2 when it came out too. The beta was so clunky and I was just soured all around.

Now I just started playing it again after grabbing it on sale on Gamersgate and now I'm all over it. It's a really good game. Maybe it was the patch that came out or the current state of mods (I'm running a bunch) but it's pretty, fun and the combat is less intense than Risen 1 but still quite acceptable. I feel silly being able to kill a boar so easily in one of these guys games.

Is it as immersive as the first Risen game?

I really liked Risen. First RPG I've ever role-played a thief character in. It felt so natural to join the bandits, since you are stranded on an island and have to survive, it's survive by any means necessary. Once you get the Sneak skill and Pickpocket, oh man, that game gets real fun. Great game. Sadly it's one of the million games I've never finished. But I did log a nice chunk of time in it.

How does Risen 2 stack up? Are they even similar at all?

I play on the 360 and I just can't get over how bad the graphics are. I was wondering if I had somehow set it up incorrectly, or the TV has to be set up in a particular way. I just can't believe this is how it's supposed to look. There's no AA so there is terrible jaggies on everything and you have to see the character models to believe how bad some of them are. Then there's the dialog animations and the combat. I mean oh man. I loved Gothic one and two, quite liked Gothic 3 and Risen and I wanted to like this. I bought it despite the bad reviews because I had to play it myself to see, but so far I think it's terrible, although I haven't been playing long and I will give it a good go but I can't see myself getting into it.

I also beat this game without the combat patch that improved things and would say that atmosphere is what carries the experience. Stormy nights especially immerse the player. If I remember correctly it took around 60 hours to beat, and I definitely did a full scouring of every map. Never got the DLC they released later.

That's why I would never buy a game like Risen 2 for consoles. The PC version looks *much* better assuming you have a PC powerful enough to run it on high settings.

The Xbox 360 is nearly 7 years old now. Any recent cross-platform game is going to look superior on the PC. Plus Risen 2 was developed for PC first.

I would answer 'Yes' to that question. Caldera (where you start) is quite small and linear. But it's also quick to move on from there. Once you get to Tacarigua (sp?) and out of the initial area where your ship lands, the map really opens up for some exploring. The Sword Coast, where I am now, is also very fun to explore.

Both games are similar and Risen 2 is actually quite fun. I won't know if R2 is better than R1 though until I finish R2. There are a handful of very minor design choices that I don't particularly care for - but they are minor. There are two design choices that I've encountered so far that I don't care for which I'd classify as 'bigger' complaints. One is the island structure of the game. I prefer a contiguous game world. If you're gonna have islands then let me control the boat and get to those islands myself. Second, I didn't like the many quests on The Sword Coast where I had to follow other NPCs. First, there were just too many of those kinds of quests and secondly, I prefer to explore at my own pace and the NPC follow quests had me running all over the island willy nilly - I personally just don't like that. I don't want to be held captive to 'follow the NPC' in a game like Risen 2. I don't mind that a little bit, but in my view it went way too overboard on The Sword Coast.

I'm from the generation where for a long time playing a CRPG meant accepting the notion that the game would be 5 years behind then-current action games in the graphics department.

However these days, graphics quality for CRPGs have gotten a lot better compared to their contemporary 'actiony' counterparts.

That said, if I was stuck playing Risen 2 on the xbox360 I'd probably not complain so much about the graphics though I'd certainly still notice the awefulness of it - because decades of accepting 'bad graphics' for CRPGs is sort of built into my blood now.

On the flip side, if you can mentally downplay the graphics and focus in on the gameplay I think you'd really like the game. Even back when Ultima IV was released, its graphics were very ho-hum compared to games on the C64 and NES. But it was the complex gameplay that really pulled you in. If you can let the Risen 2 gameplay pull you in, you might just like it despite the crummy graphics.

Risen 2 definitely gets a lot more fun once the world opens up, about 6-8 hours in. Just looking at the achievements people gained for the 360 version, at least 90% gave up well before that point!

Such a shame - it's a lovely world to explore and some of the dialogue is surprisingly good.

Where do you go to see achievements results like that - where you see achievements results in macro?

There's a panel on the right-hand side which displays Achievement distribution. http://www.trueachievements.com/Rise…hievements.htm

I will be playing this game sometime soon I think. Well, maybe not too soon, but sometime in 2013 at least. I have a serious backlog of games that are going to be keeping me busy for awhile. But I eventually want to get to this game as I enjoyed the first Risen quite a bit, but never got very far in that game either (and Risen is also on my backlog of games to eventually finish).

The atmosphere of the first Risen was fantastic though so I'm really looking forward to trying Risen 2.

Risen 2 is undoubtedly the best RPG AND game I've played in a long while. I've played Risen 1 and the Gothics, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the character system has finally been overhauled. There's plenty of skills that you can use in dialog and, more importantly, there's dialog specific skills. The much better character system resembles more the system of FO than the previous Gothics.

The gameworld seems smaller but I got so much fun from developing my character that I did not care. The other elements of exploration, good combat, characters, story, setting etc. are all there.

If you learn Voodoo you will be able to possess certain NPCs for quest purposes. It's pretty hilarious and I LOLd at least a few times.

Risen 2 is refreshingly hard. I had to restart since I was throwing skill points and gold willy nilly at dialog specific skills, thinking that combat shouldn't be that difficult. I made the same mistake with Divinity 2 by investing everything in to mind reading. If you're new and looking for tips, I advise against taking recommendations from this walkthrough (first result if you google "Risen 2 walkthrough:

http://guides.gamepressure.com/risen2/

This walkthrough basically states that purely combat skills are worth the investment and that you should completely disregard speech skills and magic/voodoo. This is plain wrong, since I found all skills valuable and important, and magic to be somewhat overpowered. Following this guide would be the same as creating an average intelligence and charisma fighter with Heavy Weapons, Energy Weapons and Small Guns tagged in FO.

I enjoyed Risen 1 much more than Risen 2. One reason being that melee combat was actually quite good in the first (vast improvement over G3…it is silly to fear a wold over of troll due to who can stun lock who). Risen 2's melee was boring and simplistic.
Muskets were just over powered and it make little sense that magic was removed since magic was taught be the Inquisition.
It did feel short as well, even doing the Gargoyle and Air temple quests.
I just wish they would take the engine and update Gothic 1. I really tried to play it (loving G2) but the interface is just horrid.

One of the few things I really not liked in Risen 2 are the traps, at least in the first one was possible to perceive their presence and try to avoid/disarm, in Risen 2 is impossible to detect them and they are instant kill except if you manages to press a certain key in a second…

Yeah I didn't really like how traps worked in R2 myself.

When I read this, I thought I would hate this part, since I like to be thorough in exploration and I hate following NPCs across large distances when I could be exploring instead. BUT, in practice, these quests are actually great in Risen 2 because they give you a sort of guided tour of the island. I have more of an understanding where certain areas connect to each other now and when I do free roam and explore, I'll know my way around a bit better. Also, it's nice to clear out a path of enemies so I know where I've been. These types of quests seem to really work well in this game.

I can accept it being inferior, but I just want to note this is amazingly bad. It looks way worse than the original Gothic game does in places. I am not expecting Skyrim, which looks really good on the 360, but this looks worse than just about every other RPG of this console generation. It is inferior in looks to Oblivion, which came out at about the 360 launch.

Plus, they never patched it (bought it this month, no dodging or rolling). So 3rd rate port plus no support. I am very wary of going console with Risen 3.

I've read many times (as I'm sure others have too) that the visuals of R2 on console is pretty bad. But even on PC, there was a lot of criticism over the visuals - not that they were terrible, but generally a few years behind.

Personally, with these types of games, even outright poor visuals won't matter to me if the gameplay is fun. 'Fun' to me are games like Ultima VII, Ultima Underworld, Arx Fatalis, Gothic 1 & 2 (and 3 even), and Risen 1 to name just a few.

I come from the dinosaur pre-internet era where it was automatically assumed that any RPG would have visuals years behind other genres so I'm sort of hard-wired to put visuals in second and third place on my list of gameplay priorities. I do have to admit though, that the weird foliage 'bursting' effect was really irritating and took me a while to ignore.

Visuals aren't huge with me either. I can still play the original Gothic and appreciate it visually. Even in dated games there is an artistic direction that works with what they have and it ends up looking alright, even if it has fallen way behind the norm.

The thing with R2 on console was that it appeared that the art vision was trampled on, such that I couldn't help but feel there was an ugliness everywhere I went. I know the port was outsourced, and it seems like they just lowered the resolution to the point it worked, turned off AA, and let textures pop-in and called it a day. They butchered it enough that it looked worse than any PB game to me.

I didn't play R2 on PC, but I did play the original Risen on PC and I was pleased with it. My assumption was that they didn't take a big step backward on the PC from the original Risen, but that could be wrong. Was R2 a lot uglier than R1 on PC?

Yep. Pretty much. At least the models and such are far more cartoony. Maybe it'll hold up better over time, I don't know. The scenery is still beautiful though.