Risen 2: Dark Waters

Give some pommes to patty the cameltoe and hope for the best

The game was a chore, unfinished clusterfuck, suffering from everything it's there. The lore, the world structure, characters, combat, the character progress, crafting, exploration and engine with BS graphics (remember the horrendous flora pop-ups?) - everything was broken beyond repair. The combat was shit, it's not up for a dispute. Useless melee, laughable cunning that didn't even work as intended (the parrot was the majestic way to loose your character points). Overpowered fire-arms that turned the game into boring shoot-a-crap marathon until you encountered the last boss that died from 3 shots. Vodoo was mind boggling useless gimmick. I refuse to accept the fact it pulled out with a full knowledge from a developer. Do you remember game telling you to dodge while fighting animals? There was no actual dodge move in the game. The patch came out week or more after the release. In previous games every NPC had their day routine. What do we have in R2? A pirate theme that forces the game world to be divided into islands. Most of them are too small, on two you can even see the other side of them. Islands are full of NPCs, but the small sizes of environment made impossible to give them all their own place or even a daily routine. Also, here you're a pirate here all the way, working for nobody! Hunting Mara, killing Earth Titan with a fart! Wearing the same tricorne hat for 90% of the game. If you got yourself a dlc outfit, you will keep it for 99% of the game. By "get it" I mean literally get it via a console, because Risen 2 is also an excellent example of DLC scam policy, where a publisher blocks a retail disc content and demands money for unlocking it. The studio was too incompetent to block it properly and you can access all the content via console downloading nothing. Also, being the game about PIRATES ARRRRRR, having ALL SHIPS to LOOK EXCACTLY THE FUCKING SAME is beyond my mind. Even A GHOST SHIP looks the same like every other in the game, even your own.

This is so incredibly bad you won't believe it's from the ame studio that brought you the Gothic series. The story telling has terrible pacing, the narration is bad, unnatural dialogues, there is literally nothing to like here. When you play it feels more like a bad port of a bad console game and your immersion is constantly disrupted. If you open a chest, the screen goes black as you enter an inventory screen as if you had to be taken out of the game world so that you wouldn't be distracted or whatever. Another thing: Not too far off into the game after a dialogue you are supposed to walk approximately 30 metres down to the beach. Not too much of a hassle one would assume but the game deems it necessary to teleport you. Any immersion is instantly wrecked as you ask yourself: With whom in mind was this game made that it doesn't think the player can find the beach downstairs? Everything feels forced and unnatural. The game evokes the same feeling that you get when watching a bad movie with actors who can't act: Everything is slightly off but you can't exactly put you finger on what it is that throws you off except that the entire thing overall lacks craftsmanship.