It's really unbelievable how a game that came a whole decade after Gothic 2 basically recycled the same structure while dumbing down everything that made that game so special. Extremely limited exploration on really small islands, lots of bugs, fundamentally broken gameplay elements (the combat system is really a mess, the fact they included a critical element like dodging as an afterthought with a patch weeks after the release really shows how much care was put into planning these mechanics), limited interaction with the environment (forget climbing or swimming, interesting "zelda-like" dungeons from Risen 1 are gone), simplified NPCs routines and behaviour (I mean, just compare Khorinis to the biggest town in Risen 2), terrible production values (like awful character models, animations, giant 2d-sprites for the vegetation...). But by far the worst thing about this game is how BLAND it is, I swear you won't find a single interesting character, line of dialogue or quest inside. Everything feels terribly generic and it seems no kind of effort was put into flashing out the setting, which is really just a bunch of stereotypes clumsily mashed together: evil titans, scruffy good-hearted pirates, noble savages, arrogant white men etc... There is absolutely zero sense of place and it feels the entire world is made up only by those few little islands you visit. Let's just hope Pirahna Bytes will eventually get back on track and deliver a worthy sequel to their first two games.
It's really unbelievable how a game that came a whole decade after Gothic 2 basically recycled the same structure while dumbing down everything that made that game so special. Extremely limited exploration on really small islands, lots of bugs, fundamentally broken gameplay elements (the combat system is really a mess, the fact they included a critical element like dodging as an afterthought with a patch weeks after the release really shows how much care was put into planning these mechanics), limited interaction with the environment (forget climbing or swimming, interesting "zelda-like" dungeons from Risen 1 are gone), simplified NPCs routines and behaviour (I mean, just compare Khorinis to the biggest town in Risen 2), terrible production values (like awful character models, animations, giant 2d-sprites for the vegetation...). But by far the worst thing about this game is how BLAND it is, I swear you won't find a single interesting character, line of dialogue or quest inside. Everything feels terribly generic and it seems no kind of effort was put into flashing out the setting, which is really just a bunch of stereotypes clumsily mashed together: evil titans, scruffy good-hearted pirates, noble savages, arrogant white men etc... There is absolutely zero sense of place and it feels the entire world is made up only by those few little islands you visit. Let's just hope Pirahna Bytes will eventually get back on track and deliver a worthy sequel to their first two games.
