The game itself is great - you can get really sucked into the world, and it gives you this Gothic-like challenge to work your way up from a guy who starts washed up on a beach with no shoes and a branch for a weapon to a monster slayer. The characters are interesting and their acts are believable, and the main plot keeps you engaged. Some people mention annoying combat - I'd say it's only annoying at first. Your guy moves slow and can get eaten by a stingrat if he makes a mistake, but that's because he's a nobody and has no idea how to fight. As you progress with your combat skills, he starts to move faster and gains access to more moves, that make the combat easier and more fun. To me, it's a plus. The game is hard, but in a good way - instead of a mastery in clicking your mouse in all the right moments, the challenge is often in using your head to get through traps and blockages waiting for you in ancient temples and knowing when to sneak through your opponents and come back to fight them when you're stronger. The game has 2 issues: first, it's a bit buggy, but you can live with it if you save often. Sometimes you'll try to jump and your guy will get launched miles into the sky, either dying immediately or getting stuck with the only way out being reloading game. It takes away a bit of immersion, so that's half a star down. And now the ending - without spoilers, it's just leaves you with huge "That's it?". You don't feel like you really finished the game, and since the sequel is in my opinion unplayable, you're just left hanging for all the eternity. All in all, it's still one of the best games I've played.
After playing Risen 1, the sequel is just ridiculous. You know how the Order used to fight with staffs and magic? Well, now they use no magic at all and suddenly they all fight with sabers, pistols and bayonets. You're basically looking at British East India Company and the game offers zero explanation how that happened. The whole fighting system is gone - now combat is a fencing match, although you can also shoot your opponent in the face with a pistol. For some reason no one's bothered when you challenge a commander to a duel and then just proceed to run around and repeatedly shoot him in the face when he's chasing you with his fencing epee. Oh, and the main character is the same guy from the first part, but now he suddenly doesn't know how to fight, because he was drinking for last couple of months. The guy recently defeated a Titan, but now some weird sand rats of a size of his shoe are a challenge. Together with losing his combat abilities he also, for some reason, doesn't know how to open locks, sneak, or use magic. The latter doesn't really matter though, since no one uses magic anymore. Remember how the Order consisted of mages and warriors? Well, now they all just use epees and bayonets. The immersion is impossible - there's no way to believe that this is the same world as in Risen 1. So it's a pirate game, for reasons unknown proclaimed a sequel to Risen. It could still be good if you try really hard to forget that it's supposed to be tied to the previous story. Except it's not. The combat, apart from being completely different than Risen 2, is just terrible. Did I mention that you can't move backwards? If you're fighting an opponent and want to take a step back, you need to literally turn your whole body around. The game is full of bugs and they start to seriously interfere with gameplay after 15 minutes from the beginning. I didn't expect much, but I was still massively let down and I would recommend this game to absolutely no one.
