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Risen 1 vs Gothic, the eternal debate

jaydee2k

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Nov 3, 2016
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hmm skipped whole Risen series because of meh but after watching latest german previews this thing got me mildly interested...
Who knows, maybe a solid 6/10 with some of them nostalgic gothic feelz and I would be blown away. For me PB were dead.
Nothing can top world building of the first two gothic games but I don't know how many of the old folks are left at Piranha.
We will see
 

T. Reich

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R1 is basically G1 with fixed stuff that needed fixing.
I've replayed G1 right after replaying R1 last year, and boy does G1 drag on in the second half of the game! R1 mostly did away with that.
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
R1 is basically G1 with fixed stuff that needed fixing.
I've replayed G1 right after replaying R1 last year, and boy does G1 drag on in the second half of the game! R1 mostly did away with that.
wait, what, the second half of risen 1 is shit. Trashmob dungeon cavern shit with minimumo interaction with NPC and collecting macgiffins or whatever it is called.

The one where you are in lockdown in town and trainin/joinin faction was the best
 

undecaf

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Thought it didn't start dragging up until somewhere close to the last third.
 

T. Reich

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R1 is basically G1 with fixed stuff that needed fixing.
I've replayed G1 right after replaying R1 last year, and boy does G1 drag on in the second half of the game! R1 mostly did away with that.
wait, what, the second half of risen 1 is shit. Trashmob dungeon cavern shit with minimumo interaction with NPC and collecting macgiffins or whatever it is called.

The one where you are in lockdown in town and trainin/joinin faction was the best

I'm sure I've written this same thing in some other Gothic thread, but it's worth repeating...
Let's compare G1 vs R1 chapter-for-chapter:
Chapter 1.
G1 - You're a new arrival at the colony. You have to find civilisation and join a faction (3 choices). There are TONS of quests open for completion, exploration is hard but encouraged.
R1 - Same as above, but it's an island!
Chapter 2.
G1 - You've joined a faction. Some mobs respawned to keep the wilderness fresh. A few new quests have opened up (mostly faction-specific), and you probably have several quests left over from chapter 1. A bit more of the wilderness is open to you thanks to better equipment and increased skills.
The main story quests are: find a focus (short wilderness romp) - find minecrawler eggs (long dungeon romp) - find the almanac (short dungeon romp). Two of those take place close to the swamp camp, another one is in a separate mine area.
R1 - Same as above, but the main story quest is to find the 4x golden disc fragments. However, each fragment takes you in a different area of the island and is a self-contained multi-part exploration quest (a total of 3 quests, you get the 4th disc once you get the other 3). These are more similar to G1's focus stone quest line (see G1 chapter 3), in a sense that they force exploration of the island. BUT, you also already have access to some teleporter stones, so it's much faster.
Chapter 3.
There are pretty much no more new side quests from this point on, in either game.
G1 - Some mobs have respawned. A long two-part chapter. In the first part you have to deal with the consequences of the failed divination ritual - explore the orc cemetery (a medium length dungeon romp), then find the healing herbs (fetch quest that forces exploration of the swamp area), then you move on to deal with the water mages of the new camp. Second part of 3rd chapter is to find the 4x missing focus stones. This quest takes you all over the colony except for the orc lands. It's cool and all, but you have to walk on foot because there's no teleportation runes yet.
R1 - R1's 3rd chapter is very much similar to G1's chapter 5, because it's basically one big dungeon romp with a good deal of puzzling segments, and in the end you have to go back to the surface.
Chapter 4.
G1 - No more mob respawns. If you killed everything during chapters 1-3, the wilderness will be empty of life. You got some TP runes and will get the remaining during this chapter.
There are 4 main quests: find out that the magicians of fire are dead (a long walk towards and around the old camp, maybe a couple of fights vs old camp guards) -> find Xardas (a long wilderness exploration quest in the orc lands, the last terra incognita up to this point) -> find Ur-Shak (more walking...) -> free the new mine (a medium length wilderness trek followed by a medium length dungeon romp) -> make the Ulu-Mulu...
And that's the most infuriatingly time-wasting quest in the game. You have to hunt down 4x specific enemies, and you couldn't have found most of ingridients in advance because only the quest giver teaches you how to extract them.
Also, half of those trophies requires you to walk quite a bit because the closest appropriate monsters are quite a bit away from the nearest TP locations.
And then you have to walk by foot all the way to the new mine and inside to hand them to the quest giver...
R1 - This chapter is the last and is fairly similar to G2NotR's chapter 4 in some ways, but also to G1's chapter 5's last bit. Firstly, the wilderness (and some civilisation) is now densely populated by the escaped lizardmen. Some new side-quests related to them are opened up. But, basically, you have to go all over the island and complete 5 medium-sized dungeons to get the 5 pieces of the macguffin to defeat the final boss. Thankfully, there are a lot of teleporter stones available to you by now, so you can save a lot of time this way.
Then it's a quick TP to the area close to the boss room, and a very disappointing arcadey boss fight.
Chapter 5.
G1 - No mob respawns, but it's ok because you're done with the wilderness for good. It's a two-parter again. First, you have to do a quick trip to the Sleeper temple entrance and enter it. Then you're up for one HELLA long dungeon romp with some puzzle-solving to spice up the monotony of traversing the super-dungeon. Then you find the mysterious sword and an invulnerable enemy, and are forced to run away. all. the. way. back. to. xardas. Cue part 2 - sword activation, which requires some walking, then a short dungeon romp, then some more walking.
R1 - ...
Chapter 6.
G1 - Are we done yet? No? Ok, now you have to walk back to the Sleeper's temple again. Then you'll have to clear a whole TON of respawned strong enemies including the previously-unavailable part of the dungeon, but at least there's no more puzzling. Then there's a traditionally shitty boss fight from our favourite devs.
R1 - ...

As you can see, R1 follows the overall G1 game structure but successfully cuts down a lot on excessive running around (you get teleporter stones much earlier, and much more of them, too) and bothersome mandatory fetch quests (G1's chapters 2 and 4, basically).
 
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G1 was way better in second half than R1. It was worse of course by far than the first half, but you just ran around, fought some stuff, did some dungeons, collected armors and advanced the story. It wasn't great but it wasn't horrible. In R1, you engage in these endless mindless fights against lizardmen, collect a bunch of pointless crap, which drags on forever, and finally advance stupid story. It felt much more artificial and dragged on much longer. Not to mention the final rhythm boss fight.
 

T. Reich

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G1 was way better in second half than R1. It was worse of course by far than the first half, but you just ran around, fought some stuff, did some dungeons, collected armors and advanced the story. It wasn't great but it wasn't horrible. In R1, you engage in these endless mindless fights against lizardmen, collect a bunch of pointless crap, which drags on forever, and finally advance stupid story. It felt much more artificial and dragged on much longer. Not to mention the final rhythm boss fight.

Which is of course totally different from G1.:roll:
 

Tigranes

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Feel free to explain what was so wonderful about G1's endgame, where as Reich laid out you just walk around a shitload and kill monsters without the sense of exploration, precarity, faction intrigue, etc. that made the first half great. Or the second half of R1 where you murder 8000 lizardmen then play Dance Dance Revolution.

Debating which is worse seems a bit pointless to me, they're both a drag.
 

Doktor Best

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Feel free to explain what was so wonderful about G1's endgame, where as Reich laid out you just walk around a shitload and kill monsters without the sense of exploration, precarity, faction intrigue, etc. that made the first half great. Or the second half of R1 where you murder 8000 lizardmen then play Dance Dance Revolution.

Debating which is worse seems a bit pointless to me, they're both a drag.
-The orcland was a memorable and interesting area
-you got to meet xardas and explore his mysterious dungeon, which both had a major buildup to in the game
-finally overcoming the massive power of orcs, enemies that i had to run of before quite a few times and were warned about multiple times, was more satisfactory to me than killing some lizardidiots who didnt pose any major threat at any point of the game
-The dungeons were more interesting (to me) generally the exploration was done more competently and was more innovative/varied as it introduced cool characters along the way for example.
 

T. Reich

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-The orcland was a memorable and interesting area
ALL the ares in ALL the PB's early good games (G1, G2, R1) are memorable and interesting.

-you got to meet xardas and explore his mysterious dungeon, which both had a major buildup to in the game
What are you referring to as "dungeon" here? A tower, which is a glorified 3 storey house? Or his old sunken tower, which is made up of a short underwater swim section, followed by a large antechamber (several zombiers + skeleton mage) that splits into 2 small rooms each containing a chest and several zombies?

-finally overcoming the massive power of orcs, enemies that i had to run of before quite a few times and were warned about multiple times, was more satisfactory to me than killing some lizardidiots who didnt pose any major threat at any point of the game
Any lizardmen in R1 you encounter before act 3 will 1shot you and are next to invulnerable you your early feeble attacks. If you'd reskin dem lizards for orcs, you wouldn't be able to tell any difference.

-The dungeons were more interesting (to me) generally the exploration was done more competently and was more innovative/varied as it introduced cool characters along the way for example.
so, admitting a completely subjective point of view. Also, R1 does the same as G1 (varied exploration with new tricks to be used as you progress, new NPCs introduced during exploration to provide more flavour/assistance).

TL;DR:
You're a fucking retard. I'd hazard a guess that you played G1 once a long time ago (= a severe case of nostalgia filter) and probably never properly played R1. There's no other explanation to the extreme bullshit you wrote.
 

Latelistener

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Played the whole Gothic series not so long ago, and Risen is really a drag in the second half of the game. I don't even know why you argue with something so obvious.
Risen asks you you to find 5 letters of the pirate, then 5 golden disks, and after that 5 pieces of the armor. How worse this can be?
 

T. Reich

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Played the whole Gothic series not so long ago, and Risen is really a drag in the second half of the game. I don't even know why you argue with something so obvious.
Risen asks you you to find 5 letters of the pirate, then 5 golden disks, and after that 5 pieces of the armor. How worse this can be?

4 parts of a disc actually. The quest-giver already has the 5th fragment.

As opposed to:
G1 - asks you to find the focus and the book, then find the 4 healing herbs, then find the 4 focus stones, then find and kill 4 specific monsters, then find the 4 sword-staves, then do a whole lot of walking to and fro because the TP runes you have don't TP you anywhere close to where you need to go.
G2NotR - asks you to do fetch quests for 5 town masters or mercenaries, then visit 3 mining sites (actually 5 but the game doesn't tell you right away), then gather 5 stone tablets, then gather 3 high magicians, then kill 4 dragons, (edit, totally forgot about this) then gather a team of at least 6 sailors and a captain.

How worse could this be indeed?

P.S.: Nothing to say, so you go back in thread to tag my older posts, eh?:positive:
 
Last edited:

Latelistener

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4 parts of a disc actually. The quest-giver already has the 5th fragment.

As opposed to:
G1 - asks you to find the focus and the book, then find the 4 healing herbs, then find the 4 focus stones, then find and kill 4 specific monsters, then find the 4 sword-staves, then do a whole lot of walking to and fro because the TP runes you have don't TP you anywhere close to where you need to go.
G2NotR - asks you to do fetch quests for 5 town masters or mercenaries, then visit 3 mining sites (actually 5 but the game doesn't tell you right away), then gather 5 stone tablets, then gather 3 high magicians, then kill 4 dragons.

How worse could this be indeed?
It's a real shame that your amazing counting skills do not work (for some reason) when it comes to Risen.
No matter, though. G2 > G1 > R1, nothing can change that.

P.S.: Nothing to say, so you go back in thread to tag my older posts, eh?
I wanted to rate them from the beginning, but decided to give you a chance, and you wasted it.
 
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You need to put the crack down, T. Reich

While everyone will admit that late game always sucks in PB games, it wasn't nearly as bad in G1 and G2 as in R1. It was just lacking compared to the first halves, but it wasn't as ridiculously formulaic and artificial in the mcguffin way as in R1.
 

T. Reich

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I won't put my crack down in an (admittedly futile) fight against lies and falsehoods.

Anyways, to reiterate my standpoint:
1) Late game and bosses in even the best PB games suck, no exceptions. Anyone who disagrees is a retard.
2) Late game sucks mostly because it's very formulaic in terms that there are increasingly fewer things to do outside of the main quest, and the main quest in late game involves a whole lot of being an errand boy.
3) Bosses suck because they are glorified unimaginative phat mobs (all the dragons, Raven) or they are dumb arcadey things where you simply go through the motions (Sleeper, Titan).
4) G1 gets the points for originality and rich atmosphere, but is the worst offender BY FAR in terms of padding the main quest line with blatant fetch quests that require you to revisit the already-cleared ares, and it gives you NO convenient means of quick travel (TP rune locations are usually nowhere close to either quest-givers or quest objectives). There are also no side-quests in the second half of the game.
5) G2NotR somewhat reduced the quest padding and did some quality work on expanding the world in a meaningful way. It also much improved in terms of fast travel (TP runes in convenient locations plus a couple of alternative TP networks). It also somewhat improved the late-game variety by introducing more plentiful and meaningful monster respawns as well as more late-chapter side quests. however, it also introduced the absolutely disgusting combat bloat by FLOODING the world (in later chapters) with tons of tough enemies that get in your way. At least you can ignore a good deal of them since they are mostly related to side-quests, but it's still annoying.
6) R1 took the premise of G1 and "remastered" it. Zero originality (none was promised though). Fairly polished and generally "good feeling". Combat imechanics are different, but not dumbed down. Much less late game padding while retaining the richness ofthe exploration (My competionist walkthrough of G1 clocked in t 35 hours; it took me less than 25 hours to complete R1; the whole of the difference can be accounted for the late game acts). Much easier fast travel via TP runes that puts even G2 to shame (bonus points for having to work to get them). A fairly compact world with very little backtracking (once you've finished up the story quest in some remote part of the island, you're likely not coming back again). Dungeon exploration (comprises most of the late game) was made more fun by means of adding more (and varied) puzzles and vertical exploration. However, R1 committed the same grave sin as G2 - it added a whole fuckton of same type of enemy to fight over and over again. Which is a shame because R1 had a farily varied bestiary that required different tactics in melee to beat easily.

G2 >> R1 >= G1.

But I fucking can't stand the false statements that G1's endgame is better than R1's endgame. Because it's the same fucking thing, but R1's is over much faster.
 

Doktor Best

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-The orcland was a memorable and interesting area
ALL the ares in ALL the PB's early good games (G1, G2, R1) are memorable and interesting.

-you got to meet xardas and explore his mysterious dungeon, which both had a major buildup to in the game
What are you referring to as "dungeon" here? A tower, which is a glorified 3 storey house? Or his old sunken tower, which is made up of a short underwater swim section, followed by a large antechamber (several zombiers + skeleton mage) that splits into 2 small rooms each containing a chest and several zombies?

-finally overcoming the massive power of orcs, enemies that i had to run of before quite a few times and were warned about multiple times, was more satisfactory to me than killing some lizardidiots who didnt pose any major threat at any point of the game
Any lizardmen in R1 you encounter before act 3 will 1shot you and are next to invulnerable you your early feeble attacks. If you'd reskin dem lizards for orcs, you wouldn't be able to tell any difference.

-The dungeons were more interesting (to me) generally the exploration was done more competently and was more innovative/varied as it introduced cool characters along the way for example.
so, admitting a completely subjective point of view. Also, R1 does the same as G1 (varied exploration with new tricks to be used as you progress, new NPCs introduced during exploration to provide more flavour/assistance).

TL;DR:
You're a fucking retard. I'd hazard a guess that you played G1 once a long time ago (= a severe case of nostalgia filter) and probably never properly played R1. There's no other explanation to the extreme bullshit you wrote.


1) But the orcland is still something special among PB-game-areas and therefor carries the "slog" of the fetchquest part of the game with its mysticism and well crafted areadesign.

2)yeah sorry, ofcourse i meant his tower. Yes it was not a long dungeon romp, but it was an iconic moment, a landmark of each playthrough. Risen lacks those.

3)well no, and i played the game on hard. Maybe im too much of a completionist but i never had any troubles with lizardmen. There are only 2 or so at the campfire anyways. And people dont mention them before, theyre no prevalent threat. They come out of nowhere and are cannonfodder.

4)Ofcourse its a subjective point, doesnt make it invalid does it? Risen simply doesnt have a cast of companionlike characters that was as memorable as Gothic in my opinion. I mean i remember that Pirate and Patty, thats about it. I even remember more companions from Risen 2.

Listen, i'm not trying to hate on Risen1. I think its a great game and the lategame finds often overly harsh criticism, especially here on the codex. But i simply think Gothic's endgame and also Gothic as a whole is a more well crafted experience. I played through Gothic 5 or 6 times and Risen 2 times. I replayed the whole PB series about 2 years ago.
 

Kahr

Guest
4 parts of a disc actually. The quest-giver already has the 5th fragment.

As opposed to:
G1 - asks you to find the focus and the book, then find the 4 healing herbs, then find the 4 focus stones, then find and kill 4 specific monsters, then find the 4 sword-staves, then do a whole lot of walking to and fro because the TP runes you have don't TP you anywhere close to where you need to go.
G2NotR - asks you to do fetch quests for 5 town masters or mercenaries, then visit 3 mining sites (actually 5 but the game doesn't tell you right away), then gather 5 stone tablets, then gather 3 high magicians, then kill 4 dragons, (edit, totally forgot about this) then gather a team of at least 6 sailors and a captain.

How worse could this be indeed?

P.S.: Nothing to say, so you go back in thread to tag my older posts, eh?:positive:
Right. You're exaggerating here to provoke a little bit.

But really you can only compare the foci to the crystal shards and killing the beasts for the Ulu Mulu to finding the Titan weapons/armor.
After i read a walkthrough right now i have to say that the crystal shards weren't the annoying point of it.
The annoying thing is finding the Titan stuff, because the lizard dungeons look almost all the same and are pretty boring.
Allthough the sleeper temple was boring at least it got a few different enemies (reskined orcs, orc shamans, templars, skeleton, skeleton mages) instead of just lizards which you have encountered
an eternity before.
In the sleeper temple you have to walk out because of Uriziel and the ore armor, but that's pretty short and quite interesting compared to the lizard temples.

Finding the beasts for the ulumulu also takes much less time than the whole lizard stuff.

4) G1 gets the points for originality and rich atmosphere, but is the worst offender BY FAR in terms of padding the main quest line with blatant fetch quests that require you to revisit the already-cleared ares, and it gives you NO convenient means of quick travel (TP rune locations are usually nowhere close to either quest-givers or quest objectives). There are also no side-quests in the second half of the game.

Taking the speed potions makes the game pretty fast and much less annoying. Same in Gothic 2 with the Schneller Hering. (fast herring?)
 

T. Reich

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I wasn't as much exaggerating as simply employing the very same reductio ad absurdum method that Thelatelistener used with his argument. He wanted to count the "collect the mandatory mcguffin" guests in R1, and I obliged by counting the same in the Gothics. You can't say I lied because all that shit I listed is there.

The R1's crystal disc quests (and their G1 counterpart in focus stones) were well done because they forced you to explore every region of the game area, but didn't force you to backtrack or do it in set order. Plus, you also got to meet some NPCs that added a bit of banter and assistance.

The titan stuff was fairly boring (for me, mostly because it's lizard warriors all the way), but as I written earlier, I personally view it in paraller with G1's first visit to the sleeper's temple, except the Sleeper's temple is one more or less linear progression of puzzle trials to get the 4x undead shaman stave-swords that unlock the new parts of the dungeon. While R1's take on it is several short dungeons ranging from utterly boring to actually interesting multi-level dungeons that allowed you to get to the necessary titan part in more than one way.
They do all look the same, alright.

Actually, now that I think of it, the titan part hunting very much reminds me of G2NotR's search for 5 stone tablets in Jharkendar.

Personally, I don't mind the first time we go into the Sleeper temple. It did have a good bit of enemy variety. It's the second visit I hated. Because instead of enemy variety you got the tons of annoying skeletons and undead orcs, and then a bunch of tanky demons and templars at the end.
 

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