Risen

Here's Risen, another title I had hidden on Steam -- a whole trio of Risen games in fact. I thought I might do a full franchise run but apparently whatever Deep Silver bundle the second game came in didn't include its DLC, so that will have to wait until a sale happens.

Eurojank action roleplaying from Germany

I had considered playing Risen in the past but then thought I might as well play Skyrim instead (which I now have, to the ground). The main reasons for that were character customization and mods: Skyrim has both in spades, Risen has neither. The lack of customization is puzzling because you play a generic nameless dude, a castaway on some island. There's just no good reason for not being able to change at least something on your character.

I think that's a problem with all of Piranha Bytes games. The games in their Gothic series are, as far as I know, also open world RPGs with backstories lacking protagonists. Same with their latest title, ELEX, which is now getting a sequel as well.

Piranha Bytes is somewhat infamous for their games being janky but that wasn't too much of a concern for me before playing Risen. I had beaten a handful RPGs of the '00s (The Witcher, Venetica etc.) before so I thought I could handle whatever issues Risen had. Still, there were quite a few oddities and rough edges, particularly with combat, that could've used more polishing to make the game more enjoyable to play.

In combat, the game tries to soft-lock you to the closest enemy you're looking at. That is highly unnecessary when playing with mouse; it just makes you wrestle with the camera all the time. Thanks to its control-freak nature, keeping your shield between you and multiple enemies at once is a struggle.

Dodging has a too long execution delay (it could probably use invincibility frames) to be viable over blocking. Some enemies have powerful attacks to knock back your shield but at least most of the time you're fairly safe when holding down the block button.

Falling for long enough (which is not long at all) makes the camera stop on its tracks and just look at you dropping down and jumps to you once you have landed. I don't see any reason for it to be like that; it just adds to the jank. The camera might as well keep continuing to follow you as is normal in other games.

Jumping up on a ledge with uncapped framerate might also cause problems: the camera locks in place and your character disappears. The game has no vsync setting but enabling it from Nvidia control panel fixed the issue.

The ledge climbing is surprisingly universal; I wasn't expecting a feature like that. It's not as smooth as more modern ledge grabbing but it still makes getting onto places like house roofs rather easy.

Simple and challenging

I think Risen is a pretty difficult game. Even in endgame gear I found enemy damage output to be high. You cannot take a prolonged beating without using consumables but maybe that's the intention. There's no passive health or mana regeneration; you really have to drink those potions. Or find a bed to sleep in but that's often terribly inconvenient.

I also made the game more difficult and time consuming for myself than was necessary by starting exploring in chapter 1 already. Your armor upgrades with story progression and the best one you can have at that point barely offers protection against the majority of the easier enemies in the game -- the more dangerous ones will one-shot you. If avoiding damage was easier, i.e. dodging worked better, exploration at that point would've been less of a struggle. Later on you acquire fast travel teleportation and speed scrolls that make getting to places much faster as well.

There are bows and crossbows for ranged combat but I don't know if they do enough damage to pass as your main weapon because I didn't raise their respective skills or dexterity to increase their usefulness. The few times I used a crossbow was cheesing some difficult monster by standing in a place they couldn't reach. In Bethesda's RPGs enemies try to get out of your line of sight when you attempt that particular trick but not in Risen: they mostly just stand in place despite being attacked.

The game's skill system has some pitfalls, surprises you won't know on your first playthrough unless you've looked up stuff beforehand. For instance, spending gold and learning points to train Acrobatics and Sneak skills is a complete waste since there are rings that grant both for when you need them.

Another surprise might be that you can level sword fighting skill past 7/10 only if you haven't joined a faction called the Order. That can be unfortunate as at skill level 9 you could use a two-handed sword with a shield. Luckily there are at least two rings that grant +1 to sword fighting, which allowed me to equip the highest damage sword with shield even with being with the Order. Naturally I wasn't then able to use other useful rings at the same time though.

With hindsight, I would say that going for axes would be smarter. Among other things, axes get a charge-up attack already at level 2, opposed to swords' level 7. The attack breaks opponent's block, making fights against humanoid enemies go much quicker. The trade-off is that you can't use a shield with any axe until skill level 6 whereas smaller swords go with a shield right away. There's also an endgame thing where having few levels in axe fighting is useful although it's hardly mandatory.

A minor detail, maybe some lost in translation issue, is how not all swords are actually swords: some of them are maces. The same thing with axes as they include two-handed hammers. I suppose calling the skills one and two-handed weapons would be more accurate but that wouldn't apply to the larger swords. Maybe they should be sword fighting and another skill for both axes and hammers since they're more alike in terms of their weight balancing.

Risen's story is about on the level I expected to be based on what I had seen of Elex. It's enough to function as a backdrop for exploration and give you goals to progress towards. The game's fully voice-acted which I found slightly surprising. There is maybe even too much dialogue: characters don't really have that much of actual interest to say.

Gods have apparently left Risen's world and primordial titans have started causing trouble. Storms have surrounded the island you have shipwrecked to. The island itself seems relatively safe although there are earthquakes and ancient temples have risen from the ground, unearthing their secrets. High Inquisitor Mendosa is investigating the happenings with the Order. You either join them or the island's bandits and get pulled into the search yourself.

Exploration is definitely the high point of the game even though treasure is fairly sparse, probably due to the lack of depth in mechanics. But there are some nice items hidden around the world. Some require the use of a levitation spell which I considered a cool addition.

The game's visuals are pretty basic but immersive enough: pretty standard for an RPG from 2009, I would say. Character models maybe could've been more detailed. Dreamy depth of field blurring often gives Risen's scenery sort of a forced perspective effect, making distant objects appear closer than they are.