This game will never really grow old. Its intriguing, its fun, its challenging, its also annoying to control the character as the controls are rather bad, but overall its an excellent experience, even if the graphics are kinda dated, but still work very well.
Best of the Risen series IMHO. Really nice athmospere in this game, graphics look good even to this day, especially if you play it in ultra-wide (and know how to swith to UW, its not natively supported, but can be done and works perfect) Story is good, characters are mostly interesting, combat is fun, but not for everyone, players who expect easy going might have an issue. Progression is very good, you can feel getting from a wimp to a god, very satisfying. You cant really bruteforce it, you need to be smart. Its not perfect, animations are dated, but thats a Piranha Bytes thing :D But its a very very good game!
DISREGARD the 1 star reviews, those are born out of frustration for random things, not from reviewing the game itself. In its current state it deserver 4 out of 5 stars, 4 because is not really optimized for PC,, and has a couple of glitches, graphical mostly. Gave it 5 to counter the totally undeserved 1's. Finished it, The graphics, if turned to max are gorgeous, best I have seen in any game, the sound and music are also very very good. First game I felt the need to stop from time to time and take screenshots. Gameplay is fun, skills are interesting and you can do a lot of builds and build mixes, story is good, but not fantastic, characters are also good, but not fantastic. Main quests are fun to play, side quests are rather repetitive with a couple of chain quests that are also quite good. All in all, its really fun, and that's one of the main things I expect from a game, there are some AAA games out there that bored me to tears, Red Dead 2 being the last example, this one kept me glued to the chair for 130 hours :D I wish they would optimize it properly, especially the Ray Tracing part...... and one more thing I wish, for ALL game studios to get in touch with id Software and license their graphics engine, its far superior to anything out there :)
So, for starters, I can not for the love of god understand the hate this game gest just because its not the exact same thing as previous Gothic games. Comparing it to the other Gothics 1,2 and 3: Story: not the best, but decent, not on par with G1 or G2, but goodish nonetheless. Combat System: Best of the series, by far, no more weird mechanics, you can win a fight if you know how to. Magic simplified vs previous Gothic games, but fun nonetheless. Difficulty: relativeley easy vs previous Gothics, even on harder ones, but hey, I like being the God in Gothic :D Graphics: also best of the series, world is a pleasure to walk around, graphics is beautiful even for todays standards.. Sound: very nice, goes well with the game and environment as far as music goes, voice acting is a little bit on the weird side, but I have seen a lot worse. Characters: the only slightly negative, lots of same faces being refurbished, dont understand why, cand be that hard to create some different faces. Character dialogs are acceptable, some are even funny, some are boring. Best Diego in the series from my point of view, good Gorn, good Milten, good "my friend" Lester. Gameplay: overall pretty good, misses some simple things from the previous games, but none groundbeaking. Crafting is simpler, but more items craftable, and some quite good. Quest are simple and boring mostly, go there, kill that, fetch that, lots of needy NPCs in the world, too many :D Game is not as open, as previous games, but works well in the way it is built. Teleports are useless mostly. All in all, a very good game, even if a little different from previous Gothics, but by itself quite enjoyable if you dont let various things go to your head. I found it quite immersive overall and fun to play, had a couple of enjoyable days with it. I would replay it for testing other builds. So, if you want to give it a chance, unbiased one, you will enjoy it. If you reaaly want the exact same Gothic, you might have issues, but things in life progress, this game is from many points of view a progression of the seriies. Goods and bads, I would reccomend this game.
