Risen 2 - First Reviews

The first Risen 2 reviews have been spotted by our forum members, along with a couple via Google for good measure. The early results are mixed, with IGN finding the game "watered down", while others think Risen 2 is quite difficult.

From IGN, with a score of 6.5/10:

Following the overly ambitious and buggy mess that was Gothic 3 in 2006, Piranha Bytes and the Gothic franchise split ways. For its next project under publisher Deep Silver, Piranha Bytes created a new fiction in Risen, retaining many of the elements that made Gothic great: open-world freedom, rewarding exploration and a gritty, believable world. Though flawed, Risen represented a distilled version of the Gothic formula – a smaller chunk of explorable terrain with more focused objectives and slightly less punishing combat. Piranha Bytes continues the trend of making its signature style of role-playing more digestible in Risen 2: Dark Waters, though in the process thins out too much of the series' fascinating density. 

Destructoid, 7/10:

Risen 2: Dark Waters is a difficult game to review, because I want to express how much I enjoyed myself in spite of the mountains of criticism that it quite rightly deserves. It's unnecessarily mean-spirited, it demands an immense amount of the player's time before it hits its stride, and the whole thing's potentially offensive to boot. All that said, when it finally opens up and lets the player have fun, Risen 2 has hours upon hours of legitimately enjoyable gameplay on offer. The frustration of getting trapped in the corner by a faster opponent never lets up, but once players get strong enough to soak it up and hit back, the feeling of relief and vindication is remarkable. All told, you'll get over thirty hours of pirate-flavored silliness that will brutalize you, then make you feel good inside. 

VGRevolution, 8/10:

For me Risen 2: Dark Waters was a nice change of pace from the fantasy or space RPGs we generally see.  Playing as a pirate was a blast.  The game’s RPG mechanics like the quests were fairly traditional to the genre, but at least it does not take away from the game.  The one thing I did get frustrated with at times was the game’s pacing.  It was slow.  You start off with only the ability to do a simple attack with your sword.  As you earn experience you can then trade that experience in to upgrade your different attribute categories of sword fighting, bugs, toughness, thievery and magic.  However, upgrading these areas does not immediately grant you the new abilities associated with that level.  Once you rank up the level you need to then talk to someone who will train you on the abilities related to that level.  A few times someone will train you on a specific area for free if you help them but most of the time you have to pay gold to be trained.  I found this frustrating as I was constantly short on gold. I never had enough to train my character in all the abilities that I had access to for my level and buy the best equipment.  Even simple tasks like sneaking, you have to pay someone to train you.  The more advance the task the more you have to pay.  Early on I invested in the sneak, lock pick and pick pocket abilities so I could have more money.  This did help some as I stole pretty much everything I could get my hands on in the game and then sold it.  But, this dual process made the progressions too slow for my liking.  It would make more sense to be able to unlock new abilities by either upgrading or paying someone to train you to do them, not both.  The one benefit of this dual unlock requirement was that I did a majority of the side quests in the game for the extra gold.  This really helped fill in the story and game world for me.

...and The Controller Online, also with a score of 8/10:

I did, however, enjoy exploring the islands in Dark Waters. Since there is no mini map or waypoints, and most quests aren’t marked on your map you’re left following verbal direction from quest givers or simply exploring the jungle on your own. I found this gave a real sense of accomplishment when you found something interesting or completed a quest. Dark Waters may not grab you right away, but it is one of those games that will find you looking at the clock and realizing that it’s suddenly four hours later.