Risen 3: Titan Lords

The game crashed two times already during the tutorial. Then I got multiple crashes in the next 15 minutes and as I wanted to put any item into the fast access slot the game reliably crashed. That made the game unplayable, because some items in the game require to be in the fast access to be usable. Every try to put them there ended up in a hard crash of the game. I bought this game years ago and found eventually some time to play it. Incredible how it is still a complete garbage after almost 10 years after its release. That is sad, but seems to be a pattern in Piranha Bytes release history. The third part of every series is always a crap left to be fixed by the community... if at all.

First the good news, the combat is better than Risen 1 and Risen 2, once I've unlocked the parry move I managed to interrupt the attacks, even from monsters and animals. And figuring out for various enemies when they will attack, and getting the timing right, was nice. Muskets are also fun. Then the world is beautiful with more variety than previous games, you can swim, there are more monsters types than in the past. The bad news is that the game is a disaster in the story and the dialogue. The main character is voiced very poorly and talks incredible aggressive. There is so much profanity where it should not be. For example the female companion ask a normal question and he replies with "what the f you want?" out of the blue. Combine with the aggressive voice acting and it takes you out of the world immediately. The quests are a hit and miss, some are fun but other are not logical or are poorly executed. I will go into minor spoilers but for example at some point you beat at NPC and this removes the control from the evil forces. It should had been handled better. Instead of just beat him, you beat him, (because he attacks you) but then you get a quest to make a potion for him or maybe get into a dream sequence and try to save him bu helping him overcome the evil handle it has over him. Or just to let him die. The quest starts ok, there is some mystery, but then you get hints that the developer cut parts of the quest. For example in the same quest where you beat the NPC you get the task to collect some spider eggs. Another NPC will propose you to use normal Firebird eggs instead. Because this game has a good vs evil slider, it is clear that quest was intended for you to decide if you want to use spider eggs (evil) or Firebird eggs (good). But that is not possible, you can't find or collect spider eggs.

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The final chapter of the series, is also the most polished technically speaking, is well optimized and runs smoother then the others, even with a way more pleasant graphic. But, despite lot of the technical jank was solved, something has gone missing. the combat is more fluid, with animations that are finelly decent and functional in malee combat, magic have casting time that is not unbearable anymore, so now magic is also fun and not just functional. that said, the mechanics of the game have kept the lack of depth of the second chapter, with all the weapond that feel the same, with samey anumations, no shields, no bows, and overall the game is also too easy, not only compared to other PB game, but in general. the story is decent, but less compelling then the one in the first episode of the series, in general is a technically better game but also a more bland one in the departments that made the first one interesting. decent, a bit then the second chabter, but worst then the first one. 3 stars for me Played on a lenovo ideapad 3 Ryzen 5 3500U AMD Vega 8 2GB v-ram 12 Gb Ram win 10 Worked fine, around 40-50 fps, with details between mid and max.

Game is beatiful, balanced, well optimized and have decent Gothic-style experience. However, game tries to please a lot of different groups of gamers, so it stretches thin on storytelling and setting. 1 and 2 was both was whole and complete, 3 is kinda overdeveloped.