Risen 2 impressions thread

Originally Posted by Melvil
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 ability to instantly heal yourself by spamming rum/grog ruined the boss battles anyways. They should have kept the drinking animation from previous PB titles.

I had to place artificial handicaps on myself to keep the game challenging. For instance, I didn't allow myself to use healing items during one on one duels.

I found the fight with Garcia to be particularly amusing though. Instead of fighting him and his pack of Sand Devils inside the Fire Temple, I lured him outside and watched a gorilla pummel the crap out of him.

Thanks to everyone for the detailed feedback; particularly DeepO (best of the lot, thanks mate!) There are definitely some concerns for me about the game, but I'm holding my PB faith that they'll still deliver a quality experience.

I've purchased my boxed copy for $60 from ebay last week - but probably won't get started until after winter sometime; as I'll be playing Skyrim first. In the meantime, hopefully this will give some time to iron out any patch requirement issues etc.

Is it worth waiting for patches or any possible future expansions to enhance the game?

Originally Posted by Moriendor
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.

Dorbelec from Deep Silver posted that here:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum…1#post15533458

Originally Posted by bjon045
Is it worth waiting for patches or any possible future expansions to enhance the game?

I don't think Risen 2 will get much better than it already is. There are a few quest bugs that I'm sure will be addressed in the first patch, but the few complaints I have are about fundamental gameplay mechanics that aren't going to be changed by a patch anyways.

Originally Posted by joxer
Dorbelec from Deep Silver posted that here:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum…1#post15533458

Well, from that post it seems Mo is right and your English sucks.

You sure it's the language or at this age memory starts to fail?

Of course it could be your memory too, but I wondered why you linked to a post which confirms that R2 is bigger than R1.

One patchable improvement might be to make more of the combat skills available from the start - anything that would improve the solo swordplay against the unparryable beasts, say kick. It might be too late to alter combat, but availability of moves is presumably just a flag somewhere.

Likewise, much of the flickering was ini-able away, so they could do that if they wanted in a patch without changing anything fundamental.

Originally Posted by Gorath
Of course it could be your memory too, but I wondered why you linked to a post which confirms that R2 is bigger than R1.

It doesn't confirm anything, it only promises players stuff that isn't there. R2 is not bigger than R1.
Unless the size of nonexplorable map areas (not just the sea but also parts of islands you cannot go to) counts into the landmass and 50% more gameplay time actually adds 20 hours of your futile tries to get 10 of 10 hits on medium game difficulty.

Originally Posted by joxer
R2 is not bigger than R1.

Um… yes it is. Did you play the same game I did?

If you were to add all the islands together, it's most definitely bigger.

Originally Posted by JDR13
The ability to instantly heal yourself by spamming rum/grog ruined the boss battles anyways. They should have kept the drinking animation from previous PB titles.

Yeah. It unbalances combat and hurts immersion in the process.

On a slightly similar note, I don´t like the changes done to crafting presentation - I´d prefer these to be presented in-world and not on a separate screen and I miss the multistage smithing, immersion and all.
The hero also can´t sit anywhere, but … that´s not really an outrage material .

I´m also not very fond of items not having requirements anymore.

On a different note, one other thing that came to mind is that the game is a bit frontloaded in certain features - on the first island we can witness termites actually working and I haven´t noticed anything like that afterwards, also on the first island there´s use for certain cannons which I´ve found pretty cool, but I haven´t come upon a similar type of "puzzle" anywhere else (well, maybe except for certain artifact being useful in one of the temples, but that´s a bit different type of interaction with the environment) and, at last, I haven´t found any notable use for monkey after the first island, Sword Coast and Antigua (I may have missed some, of course), neither there were any minigames besides lockpicking after these three locations, but that´s not really a bad thing.

On the other hand, I´ve felt some companions became available a bit too late into the game, though that´s partially because I happened to leave the areas they´re in till last. I wouldn´t mind being able to spend more time playing the game with the full crew on board.
edit: Actually, I think the real problem (for me) may be the extremely brief endgame - if it was longer, more elaborate and involved the whole crew in some substantial capacity I probably wouldn´t mind getting some of the companions late.

Speaking of companions, I appreciated that the summonable ghost had comments during certain quests, area related comments and even dialogue with one major NPC. Don´t remember any direct convo with Patty though.

Originally Posted by JDR13
If you were to add all the islands together, it's most definitely bigger.

Indeed.
Though Risen has some fairly extensive dungeons which Risen 2 is unfortunately devoid of so that cuts into the difference a bit.

Guys I really dunno. It really seems to me that Risen 1 was bigger, why do I feel that way I don't know. Honestly I feel I had more explorable space in the first game.

Because Risen 1 has no quick travel until you get teleport stones + a lot more walking back and forth between the camps due to quests. The actual landmass of Risen is quite small. You can pretty much walk across the entire island in a few minutes if you know where to go.

It's also worth noting that Risen 1 uses the Z-axis much better. There are a lot of ups and downs, small mountains, valleys and so on. Often you might find yourself in a "completely new area", but in reality you're just above, behind or below some area you've already explored, but can't see due to the terrain.

Risen 2 is definitely the worst PB game in terms of Z-axis. They've always been experts at taking full advantage of it, but Risen 2 is mostly flat (or close to it).

PBs use of Z-axis in the past presents users with a game that *feels* much bigger than it really is. Risen 2 doesn't have that feeling. I understand how people can feel it's smaller than previous games, even though it's not.

Originally Posted by DeepO
The hero also can´t sit anywhere, but … that´s not really an outrage material .

I don't know… I was pretty outraged.


Remember how cool it was when you finally got to sit here?

Originally Posted by DeepO
Speaking of companions, I appreciated that the summonable ghost had comments during certain quests, area related comments and even dialogue with one major NPC. Don´t remember any direct convo with Patty though.

Yeah, but I thought it was disappointing that you don't get him until the game is nearly over. I realize it's possible to go to the Isle of the Dead sooner, but the level of difficulty makes that pretty tough. It's also really lame that it's the *only* thing that makes use of the Death Cult talent.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Remember how cool it was when you finally got to sit here?

Yes.
Now I´m mad!

Originally Posted by JDR13
I realize it's possible to go to the Isle of the Dead sooner, but the level of difficulty makes that pretty tough.

I went there before Maracai and finishing Antigua main subquest because I had a suspicion the area might be the least enjoyable of the remaining bunch (and I was quite right) and it was actually pretty easy, just maybe a bit tedious. The area was likely intended to be a major test of character´s skills, but I had a shotgun .
But yeah, tying the ghost to the area intended (at least seemingly) to be visited last was not a particularly good move.

Played Risen 2 on the RPC in Germany or the very first time.

I kind of liked it (only played the very first few things in it, still on Caldera), but what I didn't like was the almost complete absence of facuial animation. I must admit that I have seen far better games in this respect.

The gestures, looked great, imho, although not always that good fitting to the sentences, I thought. But okay, this is once again my personal impression …

I think I'll buy it one day.

What astonished me is that the NPCs were talking of "Titan-Lords" even in the German-language version of the game ! The word "Lords" was not translated at all ! It reminded me of the "Scavenger" creatures of Gothic 1, which hasd been English names in he German-language game as well, untranslated.

Originally Posted by DeepO
On a slightly similar note, I don´t like the changes done to crafting presentation - I´d prefer these to be presented in-world and not on a separate screen and I miss the multistage smithing, immersion and all.
The hero also can´t sit anywhere, but … that´s not really an outrage material .

That sounds like a pretty cheap approach considering it was the first game they had access to MoCap

Would any of you recommend playing on Hard whenever I get my hands on R2 or would that make monster combat extremely frustrating? I guess I can't ditch companions completely but I'd rather avoid reliving the memories of G3 boars.

Also, while I have a rough idea of how many islands there are in the game and how exploration has been distributed, I've yet to see how many settlements(=quest hubs at least as big as Onar's farm in G2 or the swamp bandit camp in R1) exist in the game. Risen 1 was a bit underwhelming in that field as there was little to do in all 3 areas after chapter 2.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
What astonished me is that the NPCs were talking of "Titan-Lords" even in the German-language version of the game ! The word "Lords" was not translated at all ! It reminded me of the "Scavenger" creatures of Gothic 1, which hasd been English names in he German-language game as well, untranslated.

Erm, I'm pretty sure PB games are first written in German and are later translated into English and not the other way around. Afterall most of their games got were characterized by dodgy localization and a distinctly "German" humor.

Originally Posted by Kostaz
Would any of you recommend playing on Hard whenever I get my hands on R2 or would that make monster combat extremely frustrating? I guess I can't ditch companions completely but I'd rather avoid reliving the memories of G3 boars.

It might be best to start on normal and then bump it up later if you think it's getting too easy. It's a lot like PB's other games in that it starts off extremely difficult and ends up incredibly easy.

Also, while I have a rough idea of how many islands there are in the game and how exploration has been distributed, I've yet to see how many settlements(=quest hubs at least as big as Onar's farm in G2 or the swamp bandit camp in R1) exist in the game. Risen 1 was a bit underwhelming in that field as there was little to do in all 3 areas after chapter 2.

Most of the islands have 1 or 2 settlements, though they're all fairly small, each with about 10 or so named NPCs. It's probably better than Risen in that respect, but don't expect any bustling cities.

Companions reduce difficulty considerably. Also, group fights are exponentially more difficult because the movement and targeting system is clumsy (yet again). I'd say you start on normal and see how many excess provisions you have. If you tend to stockpile provisions it might be a sign to go hard.

I'm all against difficulty setting in games and that's one of the things PB went two steps back.