Review | Risen
I got stuck on the scenery far too many times. It’s fairly common to find yourself blocked by an obstacle that’s clearly ankle-high. NPCs occasionally freeze on the spot then shake violently as if in some sort of convulsion, should you have the audacity to stand slightly too close to them. There’s a nice design to the visuals, but they’re improbably muddy and low-def, with frightening amounts of popping-up in the distance. Animations repeat far too much, particularly one hilariously overblown looking-around-nervously action. Yet there’s not one to act as a specifier for the multiple instances where you’re told a place of interest is “over there.” Bringing up the inventory mid-fight to, say, drink a healing potion inexplicably sheathes your weapon, and re-emerging into the game doesn’t automatically ready it again. When accessing menus and inventories, the game doesn’t pause, but the AI kindly waits for you to finish doing what you’re doing – except when it arbitrarily doesn’t, and someone gets a clean swing at your face with an axe.
But there are things I really do like. I like its unapologetically vicious world, especially. I guess people are going to play Risen and think I’ve made far too much of a deal out of that – it’s hardly STALKER, after all – but the stifling relentlessness with which this place sticks two fingers up at you is really impressive, if occasionally not-so-fun. I like how you can switch between two cameras, one standard third-person and one pulled back a little further – though a first-person option would have been more agreeable. I like the way NPCs respond to your smallest actions. Go into someone’s house uninvited and they’ll keep a close, suspicious eye on you and heavily suggest that you might want to stop eyeing up their things and leave. Apart from when they sometimes don’t. I particularly like the way it lets you fight without anyone necessarily dying. A number of quests ask you to rough someone up but stop short of killing them. When your health bar drops to zero in a sword-fight, you’re rendered unconscious and people might nick your stuff, but you’ll quickly get back up, dust yourself off, and find you’re only missing a small chunk of the life you started with. That’s a neat idea, and one that’s thankfully forgiving, given the harshness of the rest of the game.
Indeed, I often found myself losing hours at a time to Risen without realising it. It regularly gripped me despite itself. Despite the fact that, for huge stretches at a time, I wasn’t really getting anywhere. Despite the fact that I often wasn’t having that much fun.
Then, after somewhere in the region of 30 hours, the review code mysteriously stopped working. There’s a bit of a scratch on the disc, so it could be that, though I’m not sure. It didn’t load for a bit earlier in my time with the game, but somehow temporarily recovered. Either way, I doubt I’ll replace it.
//Judgement calls
And so here we are.
Risen’s a brave, self-assured game that I’m sure a lot of people are going to really dig. You can tell it’s from the same development team as the ambitious-but-flawed Gothic series, and there’s a reason why that found such a dedicated following. I’m not so taken, but my increasingly frazzled mind through endless streams of instant-gratification blockbusters might have something to do with that. Or maybe I’m just losing patience with minor flaws. Or maybe I’m just weird.
Do I recommend it? Hard to say. There’s a PC demo out, though it seems only to cover the most introductory of bases, so perhaps that won’t provide much further insight. I imagine as many people will find themselves enthralled as will find themselves bored, even within circles that usually share the same tastes. Risen’s an odd one like that. I’m totally in two minds myself.
What have we learned, then?
Christ, I don’t know.
I suppose I’ll say this: there’s a lot of talk about whether games reviewers are trustworthy in their judgements. There’s a lot of discussion about critics hedging their bets a little too much, or, conversely, coming down too enthusiastically on one side. There’s a reason why people post things like “I’m going to wait for the user reviews” on website comments threads. People need multiple opinions from people with whom they can associate, because sometimes, people’s impressions are going to be so polarised that any isolated hard-opinion is going to be rendered a little meaningless.
That’s the case with Risen, but extended to the point where I can’t even say with any real conviction what I think. There’s no point in masking that, no use in running too far in one direction to the exclusion of reasoned reporting. So, I guess, here’s my review of Risen in a nutshell: it’s a game I like, except when I don’t, and one you might be rather fond of, unless you’re not.
6/10
Well, great review first off Lewis, and it has actually made me interested in Risen, a game I had nary given a glance to before! It sounds like a game I would enjoy and hate (maybe a bit too strong a word) in equal amounts, and thus I know I would end up wondering if it was £30 down the drain.
Perhaps I should have paid attention to the game more before hand eh?
Ah, the usual confusion that occurs when a mainstream gaming site reviewer comes across a Pirahna Bites game. The same occurred with their previous series, Gothic (well G1 and G2, G3 was a bit off and was a buggy mess), before the split with the publisher lost them the rights. It might look like Oblivion (and btw, PB was doing open-world a long time before that – they actually started around the same time that Bethesda released Daggerfall), but it is made for a far more hardcore audience. In PB games, wildlife is DANGEROUS, far more dangerous than, say, a low-level guard – just like in real life. If you’re expecting the Bethesda tropes where almost no-one lies, people will help you and send you on quests for no apparent reason, and wildlife is exterminated so easily you wonder how it doesn’t become extinct, then you’re in for a shock. In PB games everyone has a motive, people life and deceive, and you can’t expect to fight against wildly superior numbers of foes (no leaving the vault and immediately blasting the heads off 5 experienced raiders) and win – well, not until you are MUCH more experienced. PB games have more of the traditional rpg feel in that you start off very weak, and eventually become very strong. Having said that, they aren’t a ‘hardcore rpg’ in the sense of, say, Fallout (the 1st two, not the action-rpg FO3) or Arcanum, with stat-driven combat and complex character/party builds – they are very much action-rpgs with a sole player-character and real-time combat. But they’re as close to those old games that we’re likely to see, sadly enough.
Don’t play it on the 360, it was terribly raped.
If you find it too difficult on PC, then it’s just not for you, just Gothic 1 and 2 fans.
[...] How Possibly To Do Good Games Journalism, Maybe – Part 3: On Being A Tard Jump to Comments Hey! Remember two days ago? Before yesterday, when I didn’t post anything here, due to Comrade Richardson pouring goodness-knows-how-many tins down my throat the night before? Remember that? I said I was reviewing Risen! Well, I reviewed Risen! [...]
You obviously played the Xbox 360 version which is inferior to the PC version. Also you obviously didn’t pay attention and talk with everyone like you are supposed to in all rpgs. (You would have been guided to the rear gate of Harbor Town otherwise)
If you would have spoken to everyone you would have found trainers that will train your skills. I am in harbor town and have found several very easily. (take the right path after entering from the rear gate and go down the steps and there is someone that will train your sword skill and strength) The further you are from the beaten path the stronger the enemies are.
You also need to gain the peoples trust before they will treat you decently. (for the most part) You shouldn’t even compare this game to Oblivion or most other games since this game actually has choices and consequences and has far more depth and a better story then most other games.
“I erased my save file, and started again.”
You did WHAT? Sorry, but why? So you didn’t know what to do – why didn’t you just try to find out? Explore? It’s not like the other path into the town was hidden.
I just find it odd that you threw away ten hours’ worth of progress and experience because you didn’t know what to do next. Imagine doing that in Monkey Island. “Hm, I can’t figure out how to get that navigator’s head, I’d better just start from the beginning again”.
Sorry about rambling, I just… well, the thing is, if that’s how you play Risen, no wonder you don’t like it. This is a game that expects you to make some mistakes along the way, but that’s all right. You learn to live with the consequences.
(and it’s approx. 16 times friendlier than The Void in this respect – The Void kills you later on because you screwed up earlier, Risen doesn’t. Yeah, I know, different games, just pointing it out since you reviewed both, and seemed more ready to forgive The Void for its unfriendliness)
Makes sense to address a few points.
1. I know it takes an opposing approach to Oblivion and as such is only cosmetically similar. That’s pretty much what I said in the review, right? I know that’s not exactly what was opposing on here but someone’s been following me round the internet suggesting as much.
2. Since the time of writing, it has become apparent that the complaints regarding certain technical and presentational issues are isolated to the Xbox 360 version of the game. We were not provided with a PC version, and had no access to one until release day, by which point the review was already published. This is worth keeping in mind.
3. People seem to be completely misreading my comments about the harshness of the world and its characters, which I said I really liked about the game. At no point did I say it was too difficult – the closest I came was to say the early difficulty removes the compulsion to explore, which I was unsure about.
4. “You obviously weren’t paying attention.” This is true. Hence why I say in the review: “I wasn’t paying attention.” I was illustrating a point about how tuned in you have to be.
5. I spoke to quite a lot of people, actually, in various regions of the world. Yes, in Harbour Town, it did become apparent how the levelling system worked. But only eventually – I didn’t initially twig. Maybe that was me expecting something different for whatever reason, or maybe the game just never had the courtesy to properly explain it.
6. I started again a couple of times after becoming more knowledgeable of how the world worked, and wanted to try my hand at the early decisions again, seeing how things would pan out with that extra wisdom.
7. I rather liked the game. That’s one that people seem to be missing. There are elements I really don’t like, and perhaps that’s because I’m not entirely the target market (despite being a long-time RPG fan), but then not a lot of people are. I can only write what I think, based on my impressions, for the readership of this site. If you’re a huge Gothic fan who had Risen on pre-order and knew they were going to adore it, well, this review kinda wasn’t for you, y’know?
Hope that clears some stuff up. Thanks to everyone for reading.
(Oh, to expand on 7: that said, I did try to approach this from all angles. That *was* the angle. Hence the conclusion. Hence the recommendation to read lots of reviews and see which fits. Hence the admission that I’m not sure how to judge the game. All in the name of clarity and fairness, eh?)
Lewis’s review makes Risen sound nothing short of fascinating. I’m really tempted to pick up the PC version.
After reading the review and the comments I’m really tempted to get Risen, its sounds really interesting and obvious passion fan have for it, based on the comments, makes the temptation even stronger.
Can anyone tell me what are the main differences are between the PC and 360 versions? Why is the 360 version considered inferior?
Texture detail is enormously higher on the PC, for a start. Other than that, the interface issues on the 360 version can be pretty much eradicated by assigning shortcut keys, thus eliminating the need for trawling around various sub-menus to get to where you want.
On of the best reviews i’ve read in a long time.
I’ve got an understanding of the game and is what i wanted.
Thanks a lot Lewis
I’ve actually picked this game up now and I’m about 7 or 8 hours in and all I’ve been doing is side quests, I’ve barely even touched on what’s really going on in the main story, and yet I can’t put it down. There’s an addictive quality to it that I just can’t explain, there’s a bunch of really obvious flaws in it, mentioned in the review, but it really appeals to me for some reason.
Greg – AAAAAhhh, now you know what we felt when we played Gothic 1 8 years ago and Gothic 2 and its expansion 6 years ago : ).Piranha Bytes are the best fantasy world builders in the industry.
This is a very good review. I’ve been playing Risen since it came out and my character has attained level 8, and I’ve upgraded my weapons and armor. The game story line goes linear at the beginning, but the game open up later. Then you can tho what ever you want. For me this game is far better than Oblivion.
[...] matter; personal preference is key. Greg’s up first, delighting in a quirky RPG that scored only 6/10 here at Resolution, and split opinion more than almost any other title in [...]