Risen 2: Dark Waters

Worse than Risen

Awesome

Risen is a streamlined diluted version of Gothic, and Risen 2 is a streamlined diluted version of Risen 1. The two games are so dissimilar, Risen 2 might as well have been made decades apart by a completely different dev team. Everything about this game screams "for the casual gamer", making it an RPG for people who don't want to play RPGs. The map is fairly small and made of a series of islands, which you can't travel between freely, at least at first. At every island you'll also be restricted to following the trails available for you, since about half the island is made of unscalable mountains and hills. Meaning that you'll kill every monster and find every treasure in the island before completing all the quests you're given. You'll also complete about half of the quests before ever receiving them, and the ones that require work are simple fetch quests, with your map showing you where is the person that gave you your quest, and where is the item you need to fetch. Since you can fast travel in Risen 2, the easy, mindless quests become even easier and more mindless, ensuring there's no fun in completing them. Like previous games you have factions, which you can choose between, but you switch factions several times in the game, and learning skills isn't dependent on them, making them obsolete. You can level general traits yourself, and learn any skill if you have enough gold. Collecting plants has become obsolete as well, since they're fairly useless now. Stealing has also been made easier - people see you steal but don't react, and you can loot someone house while they're in it. You also aren't forced to level up as quickly, since throughout most of the game you'll have an OP sidekick to help you fight. There are also achievements and collectibles, but collectibles don't require any skill to get - you find them in chests or buy them from merchants. You also don't need to buy anything, since your gear is as good as the ones for sale, saving you money for skills.

The story telling and characters you meet are great. Love the settings for the different island and the music. It feels like there is so much traveling back and forth between the islands as one who wants to lockpick all the chests and mine and explore everything. Meele combat felt even worse then Risen. Good luck hitting what you want when you got multiple enemies around. Be prepared to be carried by follower in the beginning. Not unusual with it comes to Piranha Bytes games. I felt like the ending was a bit meh. Not saying why as don't want to spoil anything.

Average RPG by ppl who made Gothic in good old days