Risen 2 - Dark Waters

Risen 2 - Dark Waters takes the series into a pirate themed direction. The still-nameless hero, currently a soldier of the Inquisition, goes undercover to put an end to another Titan threat. Shields, plate armor, and arcane magic are gone and instead you get cutlasses, muskets, and rum. There is also voodoo magic if you decide to side with native tribes.

Budget pirate action

Pirates are somewhat more interesting than the bland and generic fantasy atmosphere the first game had. I wouldn't call Dark Waters a great or unique story but it is solid enough, more focused and clearly defined. Many previous characters return, including Patty and her father Captain Steelbeard, giving a nice sense of continuity.

There are no ship battles in style Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag or anything like that. That was most likely way beyond Piranha Bytes' capabilities. You do get a ship and a crew of sorts for travelling between the game's islands: there are multiple maps this time.

It is odd that you have to make yourself seem trustworthy for the Inquisition first if you choose to seek their aid for a boss fight. I suppose you have to play your pirate role but I feel some sort of message could've been passed secretly to the local commander of the Inquisition forces.

The boss fight itself turned out to be an unexpected spectacle. I guess I could've expected such a thing after the first game's end boss that did have some mechanics to it. But multiple phases was still a surprise. You have four Inquisition musketmen with you fighting against a crew of pirates. Then there's a Titan artifact involved and some huge primordial being too. Unfortunately the fight is also the high point of Dark Waters -- rather early too -- and you won't get anything like it until the end of the game. And even then the final boss fight isn't as great.

Improves slightly upon its predecessor

Mechanically Risen 2 is more elegant and sensible in its design: there were no gotchas this time on skill training. You have attributes that govern talents which have skills. You increase attributes with glory (experience) and skills are again bought from trainers with gold. It is a simple and straightforward system still, no flashy stuff, although I don't know how voodoo works since I went with Inquisition to get musket training. The naming scheme of attributes, talents, and skills also feels second language level awkward.

Combat in Risen 2 isn't much better than previously. The annoying auto-locking camera is gone but fighting itself remains a janky experience. Double-tap dodge is not quick enough to use and the game tended to queue more than one dodge thanks to me spamming a move key. Getting staggered is constant as well. The combat might feel better with the melee upgrades but when I got those, I had already started using firearms exclusively. I also wish that your guy could run more than a few seconds before being out of breath.

Melee isn't quite as punishing as in the first Risen though you still end up using resources quite a bit -- at least when you're exploring on your own. What makes Risen 2 easier is that you can almost always have someone with you to distract enemies. In the first game NPCs were quite restricted on where they would follow while accompanying you but in this one they seem to go everywhere. It can even get amusing if you leave The Sword Coast largely unexplored until you get the four musketmen with you. With so many guns (though one of the guys preferred using a sword for whatever reason) clearing the island from enemies is quickly done. After that you can finally lead them to the boss fight they were actually meant for.

Firearms are definitely the way to go for an almost pleasant gaming experience. Ammunition limits their usability in the early game but later with more resources, especially once you get access to muskets, enemies die effortlessly. You hardly need to aim: the game isn't particular with hitboxes and in general gunplay is very basic. It seems that as long as there's some part of the target within the huge aiming circle, you will hit it. Reloading is a cooldown that passes even while you're dodge rolling. With double-barreled guns you can hit manual reload after the first shot but I didn't see the point to it. Fire twice, roll twice, and the musket is ready to fire again.

Some technical issues

Like in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, every method of saving makes a new entry. The save files start piling up if you don't keep deleting them. I did that but got bit lazier with it towards the end and discovered that there might be some limit to how many saves there can be. At the end of the Isle of the Dead I took a screenshot during a cutscene which the game didn't appreciate and proceeded to crash. After I relaunched it, I discovered that not a single save had been made during my adventures on the isle and I'm pretty sure I had at least quicksaved few times. The save file folder had 110 save files, which does seem like an odd limit. Or maybe something had simply gone wrong and saves were just not happening.

Risen 2 has few issues with Steam achievements as well. The developers have removed a set of completely broken ones but there are still many that are rather inconvenient to unlock: all progress towards achievements with a counter (kills, number of quests completed etc.) is reset when the game is closed. I think that's good enough justification to use a 3rd party tool to unlock them. Or if that's too much, you can use the in-game console to spam helpful commands. Using the kill command on an enemy corpse 2000 times will take a while though.

Loading times also feel a tad too long. I guess the game loads up the whole map into memory at once since fast traveling is an instantaneous transition every time.