Ser Pounce-a-lot
Risen is good for what it is™, and that's an ARPG with fun combat (and it keeps that way til the end of the game, quite an accomplishment, many CRPGs don't get that right, become too easy or too repetitive) and rather intelligent enemy behavior, good character progression at least for a pure fighter, entertaining dungeon crawls (I like the traps and the little spell use puzzles even though these were pretty obvious) and a nice atmosphere.
Everything else was mediocre at best:
- boring recycled/relabeled factions (naming Don Esteban's men bandits was particularly derpy) recruited from the usual poser faggots with the occasional embarrassing caricature of a female now and then, PB guys are clearly either gay or manchild virgins
- too many little treasure chests and other loot spots spread over the game world, with nearly nothing worthwhile to find, finding pieces for 2 unique swords doesn't count, these swords are not that special and that would still be only 4 loot spots among several hundreds containing nothing but trash or things you can buy easily, loot progression isn't that great here overall, and I really I wished I knew before, would have saved me a lot of time
-derpy story with uninteresting characters all over the place, PB clearly cannot into story telling, their settings are nice, but the stories
... Gothic 2 story was good enough though
-magic doesn't seem that great either, too few combat spells
-the endgame although somewhat salvaged by the dungeon crawling is still linear as fuck and full of derp, every twist is forseeable far too early
Didn't really care for the C&C (too much derp, so who gives a fuck), but I guess they are a plus too.
Still, I had a lot of fun with this game, if only because of the combat mechanics and the high combat difficulty. Refreshing experience after playing several newer AAA titles with zero challenge.