Risen 2 - Five Fixes Will Make It Outstanding

I think Risen is an exellent game. If there are two things I'd like to change, it would be a better balanced combat difficulty towards the end of the game (I had become fairly overpowered). The last thing would be the endgame boss battle.

Their atmosphere and story are head and shoulders above of the remaining rpg developers. I'm surprised he mentioned leveling. It really something I didn't notice. The story felt more prominent, and when you complete the storyline, the game naturally ended there.

Only bummer I've seen so far is that the original musician has left.

While it may have been his favorite game his complaints don't quite fit his opening statement. And to me, he missed the number one fix for Risen 2 that kept Risen 1 from being an RPG classic. That horrendous game changing end boss.

But his compliant have the ring of "please make this RPG more console friendly" as opposed to gamer friendly. Which makes sense why the guy made no mention at all of the non RPG end game boss.

Pladio said:

TSL, there'll always be flamers. Ignore them, and address normal posts
While I don't agree with your article, I haven't played much of Risen, and what I did play was on PC. So, I don't know how it was for you. Try the PC version maybe ?

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Flamers don't really bother me. It's a part of this culture. And truthfully, I actually owe the angry mob a bit of thanks as it raised this article to the #1 slot on my site in less than an hour.

What I tried to do here was expound a bit to show more about where I was coming from and address the comments from posters that had merit in the midst of the flames. I also understand that some of my tongue-in-cheek comments are tough to pick out in writing. Especially for folks that look at things more literally than I do at times.

I would actually like to get into PC gaming. My problem is that I don't own a PC that can handle games very well.

Dajjer said:

While it may have been his favorite game his complaints don't quite fit his opening statement. And to me, he missed the number one fix for Risen 2 that kept Risen 1 from being an RPG classic. That horrendous game changing end boss.

But his compliant have the ring of "please make this RPG more console friendly" as opposed to gamer friendly. Which makes sense why the guy made no mention at all of the non RPG end game boss.

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I can see your point. These issues boil down to a matter of perspective. We have to keep in mind that everyone has a different approach to games and different expectations of those games.

When I play an RPG like Risen, there are a few things that I really want:

1. A living world that I can explore at my leisure - For the most part, Risen gave me this. I just wish they could have made it slightly less restricted.

2. A fun and engaging combat system - Risen's combat system is one of the best I've ever played in a game of this nature. (my opinion of course)

3. The ability to level and develop my character any way I choose - This is where most RPGs and I are usually at odds. Typically, these types of games employ a low level cap that prevents this. My guess is that they do it to provide balance in difficulty. I actually am not turned off by a game that allows me to power-level. My stance is that if I'm willing to put in the work, I should be rewarded according to that work.

Those are my expectations. So getting to an end boss that breaks from classic tradition would never upset me. I find challenge in the development of my character through fighting enemies throughout the game... Not by eventually running into uber difficult monster or boss to fight later. (I admit that this is very different from most gamers that I know)

TSL said:

I can see your point. . . . . .
Those are my expectations. So getting to an end boss that breaks from classic tradition would never upset me. I find challenge in the development of my character through fighting enemies throughout the game… Not by eventually running into uber difficult monster or boss to fight later. (I admit that this is very different from most gamers that I know)

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After I posted I started thinking about one of you points - a more open world. Probably the best example of open world gaming in my book was Gothic 2. You could basically and literally go anywhere (even climb mountains or rooftops that had no type of game implications). Very few games do their games that way and I too get disappointed more often than not when I play a new game.

And yes level caps are stupid but its not a game breaker if the game play offers a truly dynamic leveling sytem that keeps you interested (Fallout Vegas worked pretty well with it leveling limitations imo)

But as far as the Risen end boss, that was far more than breaking from classic tradition. I was playing an RPG and ended up playing some kind of hybrid platformer/shooter. The developer literally switched games on me. Perhaps if I played Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, or Shadow of Colossus, I would be more intune with Risens final battle. Perhaps if they would have had some kind of monster that was like the end boss I could have practiced somewhat. Perhaps if they would have allowed you to develop a character build to fit the final battle I might have been more prepared. But sadly, PB failed.

In the paragraph I quoted from you, you said you find challenge in the development of character, not by running into a uber boss. That was what upset so may Risen fans, all your character development was for naught.

The developer who made the greatest RPG of all time, Gothic 2 (and I plan on a replay very soon), messed up the end game of their latest product. And it made me very sad. The Risen end game was NOT a break from tradition but a break from a coherent story narrative. Or as we say nowadays a WTF moment. I will no doubt give Risen 2 a chance, it will probably be a day 1 purchase. But once I get word they did a repeat of Risen 1 (my playthroughs are through and slow), I will look for the God mode cheat and wrap the game up like that.

For me, the only thing i'd like to see is Swimming restored(which isn't happening) and a couple or even 1 more Faction(s) that are Joinable adding a new direction for the character. Tall order i know but they did it in G1 & G2, no reason they can't do it again.

I hate everything about Risen , level cap is retarded and so are trainers ,combat was worst than in Arcanum . Pre-fixed situations are anti-RPG , yeah i cheated and killed all priests in the 1st area and then the screen faded and i was captured NOT nice.
Frame rate was okay although i had the feeling that it was constantly night; i understand that the island is small but i have been in more than 50 Mediterranean islands and there is no way vegetation will make you go in circles .
And how about investing only in bows? bowman's best skill is not to be able to run like hell and since there was no horses how about giving archery a chance?
You can use bows basically in 3 ways, either by shooting things far far away, sneak sniper mod or getting into areas melee things can not reach, in Risen none of this was possible.
I will not go to quests leading to dead ends, people ignoring corpses next to them or the awful feeling that you are tied to follow main quest while you don't know what to do next ; in such games there must be a full screen pop up saying where to go and to who you must speak with.
Risen reminded me of the Gothics crap and im 99% sure that the sequel will be inside the same lines.
To conclude R2 needs 30 fixes to be barely entertaining.


No pan to cook a steak? use a stupid stick instead.

Woo an Arcanum developer visiting RPGWatch, what an honor.

Tragos said:

yeah i cheated and killed all priests in the 1st area and then the screen faded and i was captured NOT nice.

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Consequence. You don't believe you should be able to kill EVERYTHING/EVERYONE on sight and THEN go freely home as if nothing was there at all, do you ?

You don't believe mass murderers shouldn't be bothered with "the police", do you ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

You don't believe mass murderers shouldn't be bothered with "the police", do you ?

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If the mass murderer kills all the policemen that are after him he won't still get arrested by the gods though… The complain was valid.

In fact I'd say that all your complains were valid Trage but none meant anything more than that Risen is just not your kind of game. If it works well as a whole none of that is an issue and none is uncommon. I could rip apart even my most favorite game by offering such a list of weaknesses and controversial features.

Nice Troll attempt, Tragos. "Risen reminded me of the Gothic crap..." Lol!

holeraw said:

If the mass murderer kills all the policemen that are after him he won't still get arrested by the gods though… The complain was valid.

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... Except for the "I cheated", I would agree. But a developer is not required to implement C&C for cheaters.

GhanBuriGhan said:

… Except for the "I cheated", I would agree. But a developer is not required to implement C&C for cheaters.

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Killing anyone in Risen doesn't qualify as cheat. Dumb move probably, but if it's within the game's rules it's not cheating. If you make your NPCs mortal then you should implement some sort of consequence for killing them, even if that's simply inability to finish the game. If the game simply behaves like they are alive is a flaw.

holeraw said:

Killing anyone in Risen doesn't qualify as cheat. Dumb move probably, but if it's within the game's rules it's not cheating. If you make your NPCs mortal then you should implement some sort of consequence for killing them, even if that's simply inability to finish the game. If the game simply behaves like they are alive is a flaw.

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Well maybe I misunderstood him, but I assumed that "I cheated" meant that he operated outside the games rules, e.g. using console cheats. If not then I would agree with you, but then he wasn't cheating, either.

My point is that there was no alternative in the situation , either you have to stay in the rebel camp or get caught by the templars , well i am mostly a free roam rpg player and i hate the only 2 options .

Nice how you skipped everything else i posted to get into the cheating .
And yeah Risen is as boring and annoying in the same time as the Gothics .

Tragos, PB games are somewhat more story driven then TES or other more sandboxy games, that is true. They tend to have a few story-related bottlenecks like that, but otherwise they are still quite open. A little less freedom, but stronger stories are the result, an acceptable tradeoff, IMHO.
Well for the rest of your post, you know that the Watch has a very strong Gothic Fanbase, myself included. Someone who cites similarity to one of my favorite games (from the same developer no less) as negative evidence, and tells me he hated "everything" about Risen clearly signals me that we don't have much in common. Crying for more handholding (full screen pop up) is pretty much something I would give my left foot to keep it far, far away from future PB games. So I think further discussion would not be fruitful here, I think we are looking for very, very different things in our RPGs, or at least in Risen 2.

I can't really take such criticism seriously

I just conclude that I must have very different demands/expectations from my games than Tragos.

Which is interesting, as I'm not exactly a forgiving gamer.

DArtagnan we are not only just like different games but we also like games with different mechanics .


GhanBuriGhan i am not crying for more handholding , i restarted the game several times and got stuck on main story quests , what i am saying is that if a game is forcing a linear path to you they better turn the lights on so the path is visible . Not knowing to who you must speak and what you should do to move on is very annoying when you can only move to one or two directions.

A better journal - yes. Sometimes it was a bit unclear what was left to be done in some quests, and I remember having to look online once for how to proceed myself. Big popups telling me what to do next - no.

holeraw said:

If you make your NPCs mortal then you should implement some sort of consequence for killing them, even if that's simply inability to finish the game. If the game simply behaves like they are alive is a flaw.

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A flaw? I dont know. A game design decision though.

Ten years ago, the reciprocation gameworld-player's action looked as the next big advance to be made in the RPG genre.

Today, it was not achieved.

Developpers have been striving to protect players from the consequences of destructive behaviours, as if developpers fear that withdrawing content due to the player's actions would harm the game.

The incoming Skyrim is another example: they implemented a system that will redistribute quests in case the player kills somebody along the way. A player can kill a merchant, his family inherits the shop and keeps offering missions to the player.

All this effort to protect players from their destructive behaviours consequences...