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Review Risen scores 7.4 on the Kharn-o-meter

Jason

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Tags: Piranha Bytes; Risen

Official Friend of the Codex <b>Brother None</b> whipped up an in-depth <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/95723-risen.html" target="blank">review of Risen</a> over at GameBanshee. He had complaints about some of the core aspects of the game, including the character system and quest design.
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<blockquote>The ridiculousness of combat being a primary solution in a town setting is exacerbated by the location's stress on order and peace (this holds less true for, say, the Bandit Camp, where combat is also a primary solution to your problems), but its general shallowness is a bit of a letdown after PB's previous games. Bribe, kill or steal seems to be the general rule of quest-resolution in the game, and that's not very satisfying. It's especially a letdown when an opportunity for more comes along: one of the better quests in the game involves uncovering clues to track down a murdered in the Monastery. But even this quest, a nice little detective-side track, is more shallow than it first seems, as the player is given almost no options in the path of his inquiries, and his hand is held in uncovering clues almost the entire way. </blockquote>
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But of course, he still found things to make the RPG faithful all warm and fuzzy.
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<blockquote>That freedom to screw up has always been one of the core strengths of Piranha Bytes and it remains in Risen. PB, unlike many cRPG designers, understands one of the core principles of RPG design lies in tangible progress. Level scaling and overly linear chapter progression both destroy tangible progress, as you are always matched up to your enemy. There is nothing quite as satisfying as returning to the ogres you had to run away from in desperation earlier to defeat them in a hard fight. The challenge is hard and unforgiving, but it's only through the lack of handholding that Risen can offer a real feeling of accomplishment many of its cRPG contemporaries can not. Challenge rules heavily in this school of design, and it's exactly on points where Piranha Bytes does this well that they get lambasted – the slow, steady progression of available armour works because it makes the armour feel that much more valuable, yet cRPG players used to recent, loot-centric action RPGs will lament the lack of character customization and “phat loot” in general. </blockquote>
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In the end, Risen was given a modest score of 7.4/10.
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<blockquote>Gothic 3, the precursor to this game, was overly ambitious and suffered from it. In response, it feels like Piranha Bytes has gone completely the other way and made a game that was under-ambitious. Risen is a remake of Gothic made slightly more accessible. Enjoyable, but hardly inspiring. </blockquote>
 
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Very nice review.

Queue fanboi rage:

OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT WASN'T AT LEAST A 9.8!!! MAINSTREAM GAMING JOURNALISM SUCKS!!!
 

sqeecoo

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Everything he says is quite true, but he should still have noted that the game is better than 90% of the crappy RPGs that come out each year.
 

ghostdog

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Well, Fallout3 scored 8.4 in gamebanshee, but we can't blame Brother None for that. Anyway, the review of Risen is pretty accurate and I mostly agree with it.
 
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If I were to write a review, I would pretty much be saying what he says word for word. His arbitrary score based rating of it even agrees with my own arbitrary score based rating (I said 7.5)
 

dragonfk

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sqeecoo said:
Everything he says is quite true, but he should still have noted that the game is better than 90% of the crappy RPGs that come out each year.

+1

Oblivion or Fallout3 don't even come close to Risen.
 

Gragt

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So, ignore the score — it's too lowest common denominator anyway — and just read the review?
 

dragonfk

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Definitely Dragon Age is much better game than Risen. It is also a very different game. DA concentrates on the story whereas Risen on the explorations. It's a shame though that Chapters 3&4 are so uninspired. I still have to finish DA but from what I already saw(about 15 hours into campaign and about 20 hours into playing - been dying alot on few occasions) it's the best since...well I don't know really. Only contender for it seems to be Bloodlines, Baldur's Gate 2 and maybe Witcher.
 

dragonfk

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Sorry but the camera and obscure engine of NWN2 killed MotB. And I don't rate games by hearsay of anyone. Not even Codex denizens or maybe especially not them.
 

Xor

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Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
NWN2's camera wasn't that bad. It didn't give me any problems once it was properly configured. And I'm having trouble grasping how the aurora engine could be considered "obscure."
 

dragonfk

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My main gripe is/was the camera. Properly configured? It was impossible. I've struggled with it through main campaign and I did not find strength to do the same with Ex1. It was supposed to be fixed in the expansion but it as it seems it never was. Engine was atrocious, period.
 

Xor

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Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
I see people make that claim all the time. What was bad about the camera? You move the mouse to the edge of the screen, and it rotates in that direction. Zoom out and change the angle with the middle mouse button. Nothing impossible, "obscure," or atrocious about it.

The combat is another story, but with tony_k's AI it's at least bearable.
 

dragonfk

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Hmm. Try to play any of the BG2, KOTORs, Dragon Age etc. and then launch NWN2. And then tell me there's nothing wrong with it.
 

Gragt

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Same here. I'm not fond of NWN2's camera system, as it requires too much fiddling to get it working the way you want it and you often have to switch between different modes, but it still allows you to get the job done. It also lacks some conveniences to make your life easier, like different autopause or feedback options, but again it still works.
 

bat_boro

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I'm currently 50 hours into the main storyline of DA, and although I really like the impressive visual presentation (very dated graphics, though) and nice art direction in some of the locations, I find it very uninspired story-wise. Everything seems just so predictable - we got the same Tolkien elves, dragons, dwarfs and so on, this time with a slight twist, but nothing more. The Darkspawn is the same ancient evil we've been seeing since I don't know when. Even that assasin guld - the whatstheirname Crows seems like copied from Feists books, although there it was called Night Hawks or something. Grey Wardens seem like Martin's Night Watch, etc. The characters also seem like they follow the cliche, maybe with the exception of Loghain, possibly.

So yeah, it's a really impressive game overall, really huge it seems, offers some nice C&C and twists (the situation with the arl of that village comes to mind) but not enough to overlook the abovementioned things. But not bad, not bad at all, I really think this is the best Bioware game in the last years. Maybe they'll do better in ME 2, where they won't have to follow the fantasy standard, I don't know.
 

dragonfk

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@Xor:

4 games, 10 minutes and you're already here with an opinion? Not very likely.

@Gragt

I didn't say you can't play the game, I only said it's dissappointingly inconvenient to play with its camera. For some it may be of no problem, but for me it's simply very tiresome. But let's not spam with offtopic this thread anymore, let's stick with Risen. For those who are offended my word of advice: add MotB to TW and Bloodlines.
 

Gragt

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In other news, is Risen closer to Gothic or Gothic 2? I finished Gothic a few months ago and really enjoyed it, despite the last chapters, and I'm now going through Gothic 2 and OHGAWDITZHEAVAN! I do not plan to play Gothic 3 at the moment so I might pick Risen up before, once I'm done with G2, but I'm curious to see what model they went after.
 

Darth Roxor

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Gragt said:
is Risen closer to Gothic or Gothic 2?

Elaborate, bitte, 'cause I don't really find Gothic 1 and 2 too different.

But still, I'd say it's similar to G1 in terms of the gameworld size.
 

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