Risen: Give your input

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Well I got it and played a few hours to short for a review but enough for a global look. I am not going to bore you with fact about who made it, and stuff like that.

What style of rpg: The first thought I had was that it looks and plays like Oblivion. Open world, but not as open as Oblivion. It is not Oblivion. Reviews say it is what Gothic 3 should have been. I have not played any Gothic so i would not know.

Combat: Hard at early levels, you need to pay attention. Wild clicking is useless, you need to block and observe the enemy before striking. No idea if level scaling is used.

Graphics: Not great, but solid, good enough. dx9

Rpg elements: Yes, alchemy, crafting picking sides it is all there. No signpost above NPC head. You need to talk and figure out more by yourself.

Menu/map: The game drops a few points here. Workable but really previous generation. Should have been done better.

The big question is, is it worth its money? I do not know yet, but it looks promising. There is a demo so check it out yourself.

 

Can you specify what you didn't like about the interface? From "professional" (hah!) reviews I read it seems most of the media had an issue with the game because the reviewers didn't read the manual, didn't check the default controls, and because the game doesn't hold their hand, something I consider to be a big plus. Since everything else I've seen about it looks very attractive I'd like to know if there are real issues with the UI or if it's just the lack of handholding that put the reviewers off.

 

I played the first Gothic back when it was released some years ago. I did not like it much and consequently skipped the later Gothic games. Based on some reviews that I have read Risen seems like a classic RPG full with clichés. I am not a fan of the combat style the game has so I think that I will skip this one. But overall I think the game should be okay if you like the ES/Gothic style.

 

The user interface is not bad, but it just seems to miss something. Hard to put the finger on. The map is the worst part of it. Not as crisp.

Reviewers are scared when a game does things differently. The panic reaction is not to like it. The pc only focused reviewers of pc gameplay take more time for it. They gave it a 87 score.

it is hard to choose a game now with Dragon Age so close by.

 

A small update. All goes well, the quest are not as dumb like in most games, but still, not the big leap ahead either.

The combat is though. it looks like they did not want to make it easy, so everything that moves kills you in the early levels. At level ten a some beast end monsters are fine, but still no luck with the bigger ones.

The human ones differ a lot. At this point I am stuck since I cannot win a fight from two key NPC's that I need to defeat to go along wiht the quest lines. So back to the wilderness and grind, one beast at a time. Until I am strong enough. I still die far to often while tackling one or to animals at the same time. The learning curve is to steep at the bottom for the casual games.

The complete lack of buy-able armor and more than 3 weapons at a smith irritate me. No shopping in this game, and no item fever so far. Little things that pull the score of this game away from 90 to 80.

What can you expect? To polish a game for a month more puts it right on the same date as Dragon Age. And you really do not want to get your game to the shelves at that moment or just behind. If this game is released in a time slot like march with no competition in the genre sales would be up.

Wait for the first price drop.