Risen

[Tagaziel]

Anyone play it? For the record, it's the first non-JoWood Piranha Bytes game, proof that their former publisher is to blame for Gothic 3's state at release. It's built on the same Genome engine and is, well, stunning.

Risen is a welcome change to the usual "modern" RPGs (Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Oblivion), where "frictionless" is the key word, where the gamer cannot possibly be challenged, cannot make bad choices and can't, for the love of god, face actual consequences of his actions.

It's a hard game to people who can't comprehend that the world is a dangerous place to those unprepared and a very enjoyable experience for any player with half a brain and an attention span longer than last Thursday.

It's like Gothic 1, except incorporating all the best design choices from the trilogy.

And a plot where gray is the dominant colour. Oh, how I love ambiguous games...

 

[MultiVaC]

It's a pretty awesome game, I loved it. Even though I'm used to the easier "modern RPG", Risen was a lot of fun and even when it's difficult it's never unfair. It does a good job of starting you out as a wimpy castaway who runs from packs of rats, and slowly you learn to handle yourself out in the wilderness. It's the first game I've played in a long time where the world really feels "dangerous".

 

[Warped]

The game looks cool, I'll have to wait for a steam deal though. Dragon Ages looks slightly more my alley

 

[MRG]

Do I like Risen?

You tell me.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=161583

-MRG

 

[Wanted Bob]

I am downloading the demo as we speak. Looks like fun...

 

[Paulaner]

Playing it right now. It's very good. A lot of quests are kind of pointless but funny. The gameplay is well balanced and the combat system is adequate and it works better than Witcher, in my humble opinion.
The graphic engine is wonderful, with awesome lighting effects; the night/day cycle, the skybox, the shadows are perfect. I'm enjoying it.

 

[Alan00000]

I put in a lot of hours in this game started to use a trainer screwed up a lot of the quests . I didn't bother starting over. Great game though.

 

[Tagaziel]

Do I like Risen?

You tell me.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=161583

-MRG

While it's true that "Great visuals do not make great games", a low poly count can quickly kill a games enjoyment factor, if the story & game play are not sufficient enough to make up for the visuals.

Forcing myself to have an open mind, I continued playing.

Stopped reading there.

 

[Acepilotf14]

I have a feeling you read 'I continue playing' as well.

Just a hunch.

 

[Tagaziel]

It's a figure of speech, Acey.

 

[Gargantou]

A gamer cannot possibly be challenged in Mass Effect? **** are you talking about Mika?

Did you even try playing Mass Effect with a new character on the Insanity(hardest) difficulty settings? It really is what it calls itself, insanity.

Anyway, I've been pondering getting Risen, but frankly I have so many damned games I need to finish, I try to avoid adding new ones to my ever-growing list unless absolutely necessary.

 

[Shakermaker]

Stopped reading there.

And rightfully so, since you have such an open, non-dogmatic mind yourself.

 

[Gargantou]

And rightfully so, since you have such an open, non-dogmatic mind yourself.

Guys, guys, there's no need to fight over me! There's plenty of this boytoy to go around!

Anyway, I've been pondering getting Risen on the 360 for "YAY-ACHIEVEMENTS!" but have also been told the 360 version is substantially more buggy than the PC version and does in fact look like a crappy XB1 game rather than a 360 game on the 360.

 

[CptStern]

been playing it for the last week or so. it's almost identical to Gothic 3 without the mindnumbing suck. the devs simply copy pasted most the gameplay elements and improved on them. the combat is fun as is exploration ..it's a little too muich like an mo at times (quests) but for the most part they're fairly well written and fun. my one big disappointment is the lack of clothing/armor. I'm easily 5-10hours into the game and I've only just picked up a set of clothes. I grew tired of looking at the clothes I washed up ashore with

 

[Tagaziel]

A gamer cannot possibly be challenged in Mass Effect? **** are you talking about Mika?

Did you even try playing Mass Effect with a new character on the Insanity(hardest) difficulty settings? It really is what it calls itself, insanity.

I'm not referring to the difficulty, I'm referring to the fact that you can't make bad choices or bad builds. You can't possibly fail, which is very much possible in Risen. There's also very little ambiguity in the games I've mentioned, since you're always the "good guy that saves the day", while in Risen, well, the island's inhabitants get screwed over either way. There are no good choices.

And before anyone asks, no, Renegade/Paragon ratings aren't ambiguous in my book, since your character is still the good guy.

been playing it for the last week or so. it's almost identical to Gothic 3 without the mindnumbing suck. the devs simply copy pasted most the gameplay elements and improved on them. the combat is fun as is exploration ..it's a little too muich like an mo at times (quests) but for the most part they're fairly well written and fun. my one big disappointment is the lack of clothing/armor. I'm easily 5-10hours into the game and I've only just picked up a set of clothes. I grew tired of looking at the clothes I washed up ashore with

I kind of wish it was more like NotR, where you could get a complete set of townsman outfits. I usually also inserted a blacksmith outfit for smithing work and (occassionally) the Shadowlord armour, to wear in place of my standard Knight Armour.

 

[MRG]

been playing it for the last week or so. it's almost identical to Gothic 3 without the mindnumbing suck. the devs simply copy pasted most the gameplay elements and improved on them. the combat is fun as is exploration ..it's a little too muich like an mo at times (quests) but for the most part they're fairly well written and fun. my one big disappointment is the lack of clothing/armor. I'm easily 5-10hours into the game and I've only just picked up a set of clothes. I grew tired of looking at the clothes I washed up ashore with

Having a hard time of finding a listing online of all the armor types/sets for Risen, so I went in-game & simply counted the armor types that are listed via the console that you can spawn.

I counted: 44 types of armor listing. I spawned a random number & could either equip them or needed higher stats.

It's cheating, but if you are concerned, you can check for yourself:

1) While in-game type "minsky" fast. Your Inventory will open. Close it.
2) Press the tild key "~" which will bring down the console.
3) Type "give It" & then press the TAB key, which will then start from the very first item in the game & list out the next item every time you press the TAB key or hold it down. To spawn the item listed, simply put a space at the end of the item & enter the desited amount. For example, "give It_Shovel 5" will spawn 5 shovels.

-MRG

 

[Paulaner]

Resurrecting the thread to say that I just finished Risen. Some brief mixed pros and cons on the game:

- great graphics, lighting, dynamic shadows and breathtaking night/day cycle
- good music and sound effects
- exploring and wandering looking for stuff is immersive, funny and rewarding
- combat is hard but overall balanced
- voice acting is good
- the story is quite unoriginal and some events are contrived and, imho, illogical
- they added too much humor to conversations. It kills drama and pathos.
- a lot of sidequests are silly and totally disconnected from the main storyline
- I didn't like the final moments of the game: sketchy and uninspired

Overall I liked it. Not a masterpiece, but a good, honest game.

 

[Tagaziel]

- they added too many humor to conversations. It kills drama and pathos.

That's the saving grace of an otherwise blatantly unoriginal story.

Hey, it's Rhianna Pratchett. It's awesome by definition.