I don't know why people complain about it not being a good RPG: it doesn't even try to be an RPG. It is an open world pirate/fantasy action adventure game with character skill progression, focused on exploration. RPG is not even mentioned in the categories. The biggest pros: Piranha fixed 85% of the annoying bugs and glitches from Risen 2. Gameplay-wise there weren't too big changes, only the skills/crafting were streamlined in a positive direction. We've got a new story in an interesting world. The game is still atmospheric beautiful (not in a photo-realistic way like new titles), even in 2021. Swordplay was improved and balanced, now I didn't feel the need to switch to muskets at the half of the game. You have the map of every island, so no blind starts. Now the negatives: Dodging is set to avoid falls from cliffs due to the minor platforming elements, but this causes you to get stuck in battle on every small obstacle, like a patch of grass. The story-telling is pretty bad (voice acting and script), but at least mostly skippable. We didn't get a new world, which were interesting sometimes (how those islands changed in a few years), but mostly boring. The challenge went to the bottom. The game is simply too easy. The Fog Island DLC is kinda OK, but the Isle of thieves is only ~1 hour, and the equipment addon only makes the game even easier. The permanent skill potions now count towards the XP scale of the skills. This means if you want all your attributes at 105, you need to wait a lot before using them. Completely unnecessary restriction. I would give the game a 3.5 or even 4 because I really liked it, but objectively for a new player it would be mediocre.
The target audience of the game were most likely the stealth game lovers and those who loved the world of Orcs and Men (especially those like me who mainly used Styx for solving problems and only called Arkail to clean up the rest). I feel like those two goals were contradictory. The first part of the game is really boring. Due to the skill point system you lack a lot of options, and the story unfolds very slowly, and adds very little to the world. No wonder many players quits the game in less than 6 hours. The second part of the game challenged me quite so, but If you tend to save-scum you won't have problems even without stealth game expertise. The story started to become incredible as a prequel to OOAM, and many things happened right before my eyes which were only stories and legends in the first game. The problem is that levels become twice as long, and the game reused the early levels: the only changes were that they were repopulated with tougher enemies and you needed to go the opposite way. It was kinda nice because those maps provided more opportunity this way and it was a huge benefit to know its quirks, but for the love of god, certain maps appeared 3 times, and for the first playthrough you most likely replay levels since you can't get the speedrun /no kill /all token targets at the sane tine. 6 times on the same map is a little too much. Few minor things: The finale was rubbish gameplay-wise. You can't really do boss battles in a stealth game like this. There are some really annoying features in the game. Like if you want to jump down between two ledges you simply cant. The character will grab one of them and automatically climbs up. The tutorial level does a good job introducing you to most of the mechanics without being boring, but forgets one thing: you and your clones can actually roar/whistle to attract guards. Would be very useful if I know it sooner. 10 of the achievements are not working on the GoG version. If thats important buy elsewhere.
First of all, this is a good game. It is a rougelite, but don't let that chase you away if you don't like the genre, it is really 'lite' in that aspect, you basically keep everything even if you die, only very minor setback (corruption fatigue for a few rounds). The gameplay is simple. Nothing special. There is a new game+ option (as usual) if the length of the base game seems short, and the higher difficulty can be challenging. The dungeon levels are randomized, but there aren't many motives. The biggest up is that all characters plays quite differently, especially on higher levels, it adds more variety than anything else in the game. The game is absolutely playable on controller, but easier with mouse+kb. The coop mode is unbalanced (too easy). The biggest pro in the game is the narration and setting. You control the members of the Bergson family and fight against the corruption. With levelups and bonuses, you feel more and more like it is a family, they help each other - quite literally. The story is not even that great, but it is dosed in small portions, so it doesn't get in the way of the actual gameplay, basically you get 0-3 short intermezzo between each run. These can be story moments or reflections on the events of the last run. You can help a lot of strangers, creating wholesome scenes. The biggest letdown for me was the graphics. I admit, I usually don't love 'retro' pixel graphics (maybe because I grew up in the pixel era), but it suits some games. This is not one of them. To be honest it really feels like the game was supposed to use hand-drawn graphics, but it wasn't good enough in the end of the development, and somebody in the dev team had an idea to pixelise it since 'people love that'. It adds nothing, but causes eye fatigue during the fast paced runs were you concentrate on enemies and loot. The game have some annoying bugs. E.g. 3 times I played with Mark and the targeting went wrong and I couldn't hit anything after that.
Gameplay-wise Trine 4 was my favorite in the series, though it was a little too streamlined for my taste in some places (it is really easy to reach 100% compared to the first two episodes). A lot of puzzles could be solved way easier than the developers thought it out thanks to some new gameplay elements (like Zoya's rope attach/walk and fairy rope ability), and felt a little short without real ending though. The leveling system was a mess, basically in certain parts of the stories you got new abilities and instantly a puzzle which required them, and this was concealed as battle cp. For the missable gatherable xp you could buy improvements for this, which were lackluster at best. The fights were incredibly boring, and the character balance really turned (for example Zoya became a better fighter than Pontius, while Amodeus were better at platforming than Zoya which was strange). Despite its flaws I rated it 5 since there way worse games get 4 stars on GoG. This DLC fixed Trine 4 completely. Only 6 new maps, but they are longer and their puzzles finally require some thinking. In the base game some abilities were only needed 0-2 times because you got it late / the developers didn't think about them, these got new opportunities here. There are some new enemy types and some puzzle boss fights, which really improved the base game's obligatory but boring fights. The new collectibles and dialogues are golden. Too bad it was not included in the base game and released as a 8 EUR DLC.
The main issue is with the controls. It is really hard to do precision jumping, you need to counter the sliding after each jump. The game suggests that you use a controller, but don't do it, the joystick is too sensitive for both this and the object movement during pauses. The hit boxes are not refined either, you will notice it when you need to avoid moving sawblades and playing raptor in your little flying thingie and try to shoot/dodge homing projectiles on a small screen. Being hard is not a letdown for me, but being hard because you need precise movements. You don't have health (everything kills you just by touch) which is not a problem on its own, but combining it with the suboptimal controls and hitboxes is really an annoyance, especially that checkpoints are BEFORE the cutscenes. Also its not clear for me who is the target annoyance. The graphics are kinda cute but generic and nothing special, the story/setting is simple as it can be (you are a mouse, you hate your neighbor, boom meteors, you go to grab the fragments and somehow have a laser shooting ship and such), so I would guess it was aimed for children, but children will quickly give up the game because the early 90s controls. By patching the game to solve the above problems, this can be an above mediocre puzzle platformer for kids / newbies to the genre.
5 minutes impression: - detected my resolution wrong, cutting off the back buttons in the menu - not detected any of my three USB controllers - cannot handle more than 2 button press at the same time + on keyboard you need to press 2 directions + the jump = unplayable - terrible camera view for jumping in 3D I love platform/puzzle games, but haven't seen such bad controls since the early 2D->3D transitions.
I've finally give it a go in 2021 since people couldn't stop with the praises and hype in the last decade. First impressions: - The graphics, UI, mechanics a little bit grotesque/clunky, but surprisingly enjoyable even 14 years after its release. I love the paper imitated dialogue windows and the map design, but hate the fixed map scale, lockpicking, sluggish menu, etc. - I really enjoyed the NPC interactions and the side-quests so far, even if they were a little bit cliched and shallow. I love that you start next to a big city, and can spend your first 8 hours of playtime without any dungeon crawling or such. - I DROPPED the game because of the ridiculous leveling system. You see, in 8 hours of playtime I've broke my character so much, that leaving the city for a quick adventure seems impossible now, I couldn't kill 2 skeletons without lowering the difficulty, since I've made it to level 10 without fighting. Speechcraft, sneak, and some other frequently used skills were majors to me, and I've casted spells while exploring the city constantly. This resulted rubbish HP, damage for my character which is logical: but the enemies got 10 times stronger which is absolutely ridiculous. I looked up, and there are solutions for this (effective leveling, under leveling), but I don't understand why an open world game (which is about freedom) PUNISH me for playing intuitively, and give zero warning about it?!! The only way would be restarting the game or intentionally turn myself into a meat shield to increase my HP which is no fun at all. +1 annoying thing: since I've bought the game of the year edition, at the end of the tutorial I've received at least a dozen quest popups with location and person names I couldn't put into context at all. This is a standard for Bethesda games for some reason. Maybe I will give it a shot in another 14 years. Or maybe leave it for the fanboys who played hundreds of hours with it and happily live with its flaws.
The game is a strange metroidvania/rougelite hybrid. At first (just like many reviewers) I've hated it: the movement seemed clunky, I didn't felt progress and the world seemed barren. Then I've died for the first time, and realised the rougelite elements: after each run, you can cash in you collected materials, and the map is recreated (half true, the bigger blocks are fixed, but the smaller blocks inside them are random) To be honest the game is more like a rougelite action platformer with metroidvania elements (one nonlinear map, where you unlock new segments with harder enemies by getting new abilities) then vica versa: - since the map is partially re-generated after each run, you can't do the known locations by finger memory, you need to fight through them again (still easier though) - there are way less shortcuts/waypoint system then I'm used to in metroidvanias, probably because the worldmap feels smaller ( - the enemies are periodically created in the form of attacking groups. each location has its own set of enemies, but you can never be sure what will you fight on the next corner. - you can only improve your character between runs (by returning to the hub) Positive: - you don't need to grind at all, the leveling pace is simply perfect. I've only grinded 15 minutes efore the final boss to get the last few skills (I didn't need them, I just like 100% things) - if you like dark/horror fantasy, the world and the concept will be to your liking - you have plenty of options during action, and each enemy/boss needs at least a little different approach Negative: - maybe I'm old, but sometimes I couldn't follow whats happening on the screen. Mainly when there were so many enemies and projectiles on the screen that a bullet hell could envy it, but also during the final boss of the embrace path (detailing it would be spoiler) - a few more teleports/checkpoints would been cool - I would be more happier if the game keeps the current status of my run if I quit
I usually hate survival games, this is the first one I've really liked. Simple and logical interface, gameplay mechanics, the characters have uniqueness, and the whole game is much more about the experience than memorizing crafting recipes and break the game economy with math. I've especially liked that there was no tutorial at all. Just like the real civilians haven't got one before the bombing started. Every new situation introduced new uncertainties: will these people attack me? Can I kill them? Should I hurt them? And the answer is the same all the times: it depends on you. My only problem was that certain resources were way less important than I've expected them to be (like electronic components), and some of them had a surprising scarcity at the second half of the game (like basic components: you need tons of them, but the only reliable source for them is trading once you've looted the few early locations). Even so definitely an 5/5 game. My first playthrough took 13 hours and resulted in a sad ending (everyone survived, and I've helped others, but.... I've also did things. Bad things.), and I will definitely replay it a few more times. I'll also check the four DLCs.
Critics are often harsh to this game, and I understand why. If you didn't like Risen, you will not like this too, but if you love it like me here are the changes/problems: 0) technical issues: the game often crashes. Be sure to disable anisotrophic filtering ant anti-aliasing, plus play in windowed mode. This solves the problem most of the cases on a modern PC. 1) concept: well, Risen didn't really placed itself in an over-specified setting, but it was still a surprise to change to complete victorian pirate theme. Opposed to the prequel, you can't use real armor, medieval swords/axes, etc. only rapiers, pistols and muskets. The pirate theme is forced down on your throat, even when everyone discriminates you for being a pirate you dress like one so they notice it at first glance. It wouldn't be a problem, but you don't really act like a pirate in any point of the game. 2) Risen 2 has 6 locations (+2 with DLC), and each of them is uninteresting in comparision to the single, well-designed on of the prequel. They are basically just series of tunnels, even if you can climb the rocks there is no point in doing so. Risen 1 had an awesome spell system, and you could do really whacky stuff with levitation and the other spells which were removed from 2. The world is overally bigger, but each segment, NPC has less content. 3) Risen 2 really simplified the inventory/item system. 98% of items you find will be sold in the next shop. This further makes exploration uninteresting. Crafting skills are now also useless in every way, even economically. 4) The idea behind the attribute/skill/talent/glory system is really good, but not well-thought: shotgun/musket and piercing/slashing distinction is only to have symmetrical 3 skills in every category. The combat is still just enjoyable with some good changes, but firearms are obviously overpowered. Magic was nerfed to basically useless. 5) The story is still enjoyable. I could go on, but GoG has some serious limits on reviews.
