Can you do faction quests without joining them like Gothic?

Yes, and then additional quests are unlocked after you join.

Ok, thanks.

Well, yes, but in Gothic the faction quests are removed after you join a faction. That is not the case in Risen 3, so you gain nothing by doing the "joining" quests for all the factions. The unique quests are only offered after you've joined a faction - all other quests are available regardless of whether or not you've joined someone.

Also, the map where you select destination describes which island belongs to which faction, so it's rather straight forward.

Finished the game.

Something around 6.5/10 for me, I guess.

I welcome the game´s generally very good world design, varied environments, quite expansive portfolio of player´s tools, notable lack of bugs, as well as a somewhat more personal take on the story, plus I think it´s commendable that PB obviously listened to a variety of complaints about R2 as additions of swimming, sea battles or factions with mutually exclusive quests show.

On the other hand I found writing mostly unengaging and was underwhelmed by simple fetch/kill quest design; minor disappointments include run-of-the-mill soundtrack, underutilized soul meter (I think it may lead to 1 or 2 companions leaving and two different endings, but I haven´t noticed anything otherwise) and absence of an intricate dungeon or two.
However, what really brought my enjoyment of the game down is the combination of severe lack of mechanical diversity (and, for most of the time, difficulty) of enemies, lack of encounter progression (after being done with the first non-tutorial island I think I´ve seen and defeated pretty much every enemy type in the game) and the fact most of the world space is packed with combat encounters.

The ending result for me was feeling of generally busywork-y and repetitive experience, rather unsatisfying sense of advancement and exploration that was more often chore than fun.
Á propos ending - the endgame felt once again rather lackluster and the ending itself barely came with any sort of denouement, which was a surprise considering this was, AFAIK, supposed to be the final Risen game.

Hopefully PB will put more thought into the combat aspects of their next game, because what I see as a lack of it in Risen 3 negatively impacts not only the combat experience itself, but also exploration and sense of character progression, aka elements which I consider to be major draws of their games.

Like you, I thought this would be the last Risen game. However, I am now quite certain it's not.

I'm not sure they can afford to make another one though, given the mediocre reviews, but time will tell.

I enjoyed it a lot more than that, but to each his own.


Yes, that's what I meant by "additional quests" being unlocked. As far as the "joining" quests go, you would still get whatever XP rewards they offer, but there's obviously no need to farm XP in this game.

Björn Pankratz said "Risen 3 is the last part of the series"

Thanks for the link HiddenX.:thumbsup:

Well talk about not knowing how to end a series then, and I'm not surprised after Risen 2. I just finished the game, and don't see myself replaying again.

I would rate this game a 6.5/10 based on past nostalgia.:disappointed:

They could make an add-in to make an end and enhance the combat…

There are actually conflicting statements regarding Risen 3 being the end of the series. In one of the Gamestar Let's Play videos another PB dude, Harald Iken, answered to the Gamestar editor's question that Risen 3 is not necessarily the end of the road for Risen and that they'd like to keep all options on the table for future projects.
But Pankratz (project director) is much higher in rank than Iken (design/story guy) so there's a good chance that Pankratz was correct and Iken was maybe just hesitant to reply truthfully to the Gamestar editor because maybe he did not know if he was cleared to reveal the truth.

Personally, I'd much favor if they start fresh after Risen 3. The poor series has been abused enough in the lore, setting, consistency and continuity department. PB should start a new series and actually think things through a little better next time, i.e. create a vision right at the start that could span several games and where stuff makes sense ;) .

An add-on would probably be the best solution. They'd get to write a decent end to the story, but they'd also be able to start fresh in not too long.

At any rate, I have now completed it with a Mage as well as my original Demon Hunter. I'll update the original post with some additional information, such as information about companions and quest information/joining a faction. Unlike Gothic 1-2 and Risen 1, there is no XP lost if you join a faction ASAP, which is worth knowing.

Also, I completed my little "experiment" regarding Attributes: It is indeed possible to reach 105 in everything. There's no real point in doing so, but it was to give it a go.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/…statsrisen.jpg

Finally finished it.
If it matters, I've enjoyed this exploration for 72 hours and didn't get bored a single bit!

My ending character is slightly different than Maylander's. :D

http://s30.postimg.org/rhjbspgi9/char.jpg

And just when I thought this is it, this is the end, no more laughter on Bones' oneliners, I get a huge cash reward for a quest, and he goes:

http://s23.postimg.org/ba5x02tob/bones.jpg

Full impression post will go into our general "just finished" thread when my head cools down a bit. Just to say Risen 3 is by no means a masterpiece, it's above average game, but highly above average, it's not 6 as some suggested on the forum already!!!

I believe I've finished every possible quest and turned every stone. Sadly I didn't make notes on everything so I can help now for some particular recipes from some chest or quest reward. Same goes for legendaries (found all of them).

Which means I should replay the game. This one was with mages. Which faction you said also gets telekinesis and healing? Voodoo or Demon hunters summoners?

They actually both get that, though Voodoo's healing is a life drain, so you need to fight something to heal yourself. Demon Hunter has a rather traditional heal, but it heals your entire group (including summoned creatures). Beyond that, Voodoo mostly has utility (parrot form, lowering armor/damage of enemies etc) while Demon Hunters mainly have self buffs (increasing attack speed, damage and defenses).

Voodoo is worth it for the necromancy spell alone. After you kill an enemy, you can bring them back to fight alongside you for awhile. It works on everything, even on groups of enemies. It's fun to pit different types of monsters against each and see which is strongest.

Just don't make me regret - I just want telekinesis so I just don't have to come close on something to pick it up.

Necromancy is indeed very powerful, though it trivializes quite a few fights. Also, I've found it to work on everything except Shadow Lords so far. The best "pets" seem to be the huge guardian guys and the skeleton shadow beast things.

All of that is pointless. All you need in this game is a gun and/or a crossbow to win every single fight. I only got 45 in both Cunning and Ranged and a silver gun that does 70 damage and a skull crossbow that does 65 (I think) damage.
Shadowlords go down from approximately 10 hits from the crossbow. The biggest problem is the inaccuracy. If you hit a streak of extremely bad luck then the fight can get tough but if you achieve an average hit ratio then you fire 15 times, hit 10 times and the SL is history. All of this takes less than a minute.
Golems are fun, too. Doesn't matter what type of golem. You can kill every single golem in three (= 3) shots. Have to use the gun instead of the crossbow though since golems seem to be more prone to gun damage.
I've cleared every single island now (still chapter 2, no faction) just with those two weapons and got 70K glory saved up because I just don't need it though I guess I'll put some in ranged and cunning soon because the inaccuracy is getting annoying.
Honestly not sure here if PB did any gameplay testing at all. The whole game balance is WAY off.

Dunno how much was needed for blade dancer skill, something about that number, took that skill and was unstoppable. No points put in guns nor I used guns at all, I used only sword+pistol against shadow lord early game and he was history.

It's not about testing, I bet they've made the game deliberately easy - for people like Angry Joe. People for whom previous Risen games were too hard.
And believe it or not, even after they made it super easy, Angry Joe is still struggling!!!
If you can't believe it, just visit his youtube channel with "Risen 3 fail" vid.

There are more differences from previous PB games. In older games when you advance a chapter, the game populates areas with tougher mobs. Here mobs do respawn (I think it's not chapter progression but timer or quest related), but those new mobs are just the same easy chicken and mice.

In short, PB just tried to please the audience who think you should be able to kill anything on level 1. You can't blame them for doing that. We find it easy, they still think it's hard! :D

I finished it today as a mage, combat was faceroll after about 15 hours, maybe sooner honestly. That was definitely not balanced well. Overall though, 7.5/10 is a fair score I think. The world was great and exploring it was fun all the way until the end. The villain in this game was better developed than Mara for sure, but could have had a little more going on overall. He is no Jon Irenicus.