Risen3

If you write down every single one you got… Maybe someone can compare your list and pinpoint which one you're after.

Maybe these can help - these are ones I found or didn't get yet (highlighted).
However, I'm still without faction so some are unreachable, haven't visited Taranis, Fog Island nor Gnome Island, so it's not complete. I need to collect 14 more, but on my pics are only 7 uncollected.
If you spot there the one you didn't find, yell, I'll try to remember where I got it.

I´m not sure if my exposure to Dark Souls games has any bearing on it or not, but I have a strong suspicion combat in this game is shit.

Shit!

Exposure to grinders was never healthy. Especially when you're onto PB game where you can't kill something with one swing. Rats, turkey and chicken excluded.

If your reflexes are completely ruined by grinders, either move to muskets or learn sword dancer skill as soon as possible. See… You don't start this game as a world champion in swordfighting.

Btw is it me or the combat in R3 is not nearly as hard as it was in previous PB games? I mean… I didn't have much problems anywhere and those enemies from R2 that I couldn't even scratch early now I kill easily? Okay, sidekick does help, but in R2 a grave spider would kill both me and Patty with two hits, here I could solo it early game.
I'm playing on normal, maybe I should have started on hard.

I suspect you may be right, DeepO, but hopefully the signature PB exploration and overall adventuring aesthetics will somewhat compensate for what it lacks in the melee department. I struggled with R2's melee system initially (as it is so much inferior to Risen's) but after taking a break from it, found upon resuming that the humour and spirit of the game still made it reasonably enjoyable.

Anyway, I'm enjoying reading the impressions here, particularly those that are more detailed and insightful. Although I probably won't be picking it up for some time yet!

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
I suspect you may be right, DeepO, but hopefully the signature PB exploration and overall adventuring aesthetics will somewhat compensate for what it lacks in the melee department.

It does. The exploration is definitely an improvement over Risen 2, and it's easily on par with or better than Risen 1.

Combat is mediocre, and the dialogue is a bit wonky at times, but I'm really enjoying it. In fact, I even quit my playthrough and went back to a much earlier save to do some things differently. Otherwise, I'd already be finished. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a game enough to do that.

It's possible the ending could change my opinion, but right now I'd actually say this is the most fun I've had with a PB title since Gothic 2.

Is it me or the dialog trees are heavily cut?
Budget issues maybe?

Originally Posted by joxer
Exposure to grinders was never healthy. Especially when you're onto PB game where you can't kill something with one swing. Rats, turkey and chicken excluded.

I don´t know whether you played those "grinders" or not, but to me it´s actually Risen 3 which I´d consider to be a "grinder" - besides the settlements the game comes with constant flow of combat and loot and the settlements throw a crapton of quests which are mostly of simple fetch/kill variety. Due to the abundance of combat there´s very little breathing room during wilderness exploration and due to a distinct lack of non-quest related dialogues, there´s very little breathing room in NPC conversations as well.
Souls games don´t encourage players to loot at every step and combat consists of encounters which mostly feel hand placed and designed to offer a varied combat experience. Risen 3 has very, very repetitive encounter design in comparison (and I think that´s quite true when compared to G1/2 as well).
Speaking of which,

Originally Posted by joxer
If your reflexes are completely ruined by grinders, either move to muskets or learn sword dancer skill as soon as possible. See… You don't start this game as a world champion in swordfighting.

I actually think PB made a valiant effort at giving players variety of combat tools.
I think it´s unfortunate they expanded on Risen 2´s system, instead of going back to the first game´s, but the arsenal comes with a good wealth of options, which is nice.

My problem with the game´s combat mostly boils down to enemy and encounter design and the fact there´s a loooot of it. Strictly in terms of visual variety I have a feeling this may be PB´s most expansive game yet, but the ways enemies actually fight are very limited. I feel like I´m fighting the same 3 types of enemies over and over and there´s very little of challenge that I would consider meaningful/fun. The combat severely lacks surprises and due to lack of varied enemy movesets, roll invincibility and instant healing via items, the only question is how fast the opposition will be dispatched, not whether I´ll be able to at all. In previous PB games there usually was a fair amount of enemies I´ve decided to postpone till later and I´ve yet to encounter a single such situation in Risen 3. And all of that goes without me adding the possibility of playing with a companion into the picture.
This lack of threat and variety in turn undermines the varied combat toolset PB has given to me.
In short, I´m finding the game´s combat experience boring and that´s a problem in a game where combat is such a prominent gameplay feature.

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
I suspect you may be right, DeepO, but hopefully the signature PB exploration and overall adventuring aesthetics will somewhat compensate for what it lacks in the melee department.

I agree with JDR13 on that - there´s quite a few recycled areas, but the new islands are well designed and overall the game comes with a very good variety of environments which all have PB´s signature hand crafted flair. Compared to the predecessor, the world design is also less corridor-y (though I´d say it still feels more "artificial" when compared to the Gothics). The addition of a flying option is neat and the fact we can swim once again makes in my opinion a substantial difference to exploration when compared to R2.
Of course, my personal exploration experience takes a pretty big hit since it´s packed with combat I don´t enjoy much.

I wonder if the ideal PB game is smaller than this. There is so much combat that they have spread out in to 8 (?) statistics with 18 upgrades of 5 points each which scale between a dozen and hundreds of monster kills for each one. The loot caches are so frequent that you need to find between maybe 15-30 of them to buy a decent skill upgrade.

Gothic 1 & 2, killing wolves made progress to a significant upgrade. Each kill was worthwhile and got you closer to a bigger goal, and there were big fish that were way out of your pond as incentive to go for those goals. A good loot trove could make the difference in buying a weapon that changed the game.

The game is filled with some outstanding elements, but the old formula doesn't scale to this size. Eventually, you just get fatigued and you are powerful enough to win everything, you are working toward winning quicker. And seriously, how many hours of killing and questing should it take to not have to pass chests up?

trying to get the monocle… off the pirates in Kila but for the life of me no idea where it is

I've already posted it, but okay. Again a hint:

but I did that… oh well maybe it's bugged

There are two pirates playing the game. You probably won against the wrong one.

Yup. And not just that one.

Calm Rant about Angry Joe

Joe played the game a bit, didn't have a clue what to do and how to do as there is no handhold nor lemme kill em instead of you tutorial, there is no superexpensive Prima guide and there is no chance to kill everything when you just start the game since it's bloody openworld with no levelscaling and no grind2win on endless respawns.

What's sad is that PB after Risen 2 reviews obviously simplified the game difficulty for likes of Joe. And while we're complaining on combat being too easy, he couldn't get past a pathetic pack of hellhounds without dying although he has three NPCs helping him.

One thing is sure, PB should lower the impact of Toughness skill on resistances. Joe won't stop hating the game anyway, and ones who care would get some proper challenge instead of being godlike on the last island.

Yes, getting very high Toughness is rather easy, and it effectively makes the hero immune to damage. High level heroes have always been very resistant to damage in PB games (for example in Gothic, the ore armor will make you extremely resistant to damage), but not like this. This is too much.

Actually, I don't think Toughness works the way it should, or maybe it's different on Hard difficulty. Even with a rating of 100, I was still taking damage from low-level creatures.

In Gothic 1&2, and I think Risen 1 as well, low-level creatures only did 1 hitpoint of damage if your defense rating exceeded their attack rating.

In gothic the minimum was 5 damage.