Risen

[Darth Roxor]

p sure you wont miss anything altho i havent played risen in nazi

 

[Nim]

Unlikely because the Inglese script is different from the German one altogether iirc.

Should I become a Nazi or I miss nothing by playing the English dub?

It's better in english imo.

 

[Eirikur]

Nazism is ideal for the Gothic series, since it takes place in a Germanic setting. It sounds a bit off in a tropical one though.

 

[Old One]

I finished it.

Of course the ending makes no sense at all for a mage, since you're forced to wear heavy armor and swing a gigantic warhammer. The ending is also extremely unsatisfying because your actions don't solve any of the underlying problems of the island. Imagine that the way to complete Gothic 1 was for your character to keep the barrier intact. That's what the ending to Risen is like.

It's really a game undone by its own story. The Gothic-esque elements are all there, for the most part, and they work pretty well until the story kicks in.

If it were up to me, I'd go back and rethink that, but more importantly I'd remove all the magical barriers that prevent you from exploring everywhere until the end. At heart it's an exploration game, and it works very well on that level. I'd try to solve the linearity issue by linking all the temples together underground. That would make logical sense for the setting too.

One thing I was going to mention but forgot before - in the English version the protagonist sounds just like Ewan McGregor, which is not bad.

Anyway, I liked it overall in spite of its serious flaws. It's still the only game you can play that's in the same tradition as Gothic 1 and 2.

 

[Zombra]

Sorry to hear the game fell apart for you, PorkyThePaladin, once you deconstructed the combat. Some of us are just lucky, I guess - I never found the magic buttons to mash and the combat kept me riveted up to the final act. When of course everything fell apart anyway, but that last part was short enough that I was at least able to finish the game for closure.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Sorry to hear the game fell apart for you, PorkyThePaladin, once you deconstructed the combat. Some of us are just lucky, I guess - I never found the magic buttons to mash and the combat kept me riveted up to the final act. When of course everything fell apart anyway, but that last part was short enough that I was at least able to finish the game for closure.

I don't know if it fell apart completely for me, I am still playing it, in Chapter 4 right now. I still think it has great world design, and is mostly excellent in the first chapter, but it's just that PB games aren't like PS:T or Obsidian games, they can't rely on transcendent writing to hide bad gameplay, but are instead good as a result of excellent all-around gameplay. So when the combat system doesn't work that well compared to their earlier offerings, it's just hard to enjoy it the same way.

 

[Zombra]

Well, Chapter 4 is when the game loses its shit in my opinion ... and the very end is what the fuck bad ... but I hope you stick with it, at least it's short.

 

[Old One]

Well, Chapter 4 is when the game loses its shit in my opinion ... and the very end is what the fuck bad ... but I hope you stick with it, at least it's short.

Even after the debacle of Chapter 4 onward, I had an urge to replay it after I was finished because the beginning is quite good.

 

[Orobis]

the beginning is quite good.

Yea the beginning is really good. If i ever replay this im going full on mage but i want to join the mafia too, would be cool if you can somehow do both in the same playthrough.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Just finished it as well, after about 43 hours. Ok, so now I understand what you all meant by lizardmen. I think I killed about several thousand of them (at least that's what it feels like) in chapters 3 and 4. And chapter 4 was pretty bad. By the time I was done with it, I half expected Eldric the Druid to tell me something like "oh yeah, i can reforge the armor of the titan lord, but first I ll need you to collect the 25 pieces of me magic hammer spread around the island in lizardmen towns". At which point, I would have probably reverse engineered the game just so I could kill him. But on the bright side, chapter 4 didn't seem so bad once I made it to the final boss fight. Once the blinding effect from lava everywhere wore off, I could've sworn I was playing some "dance-dance revolution" type game, stepping on certain blocks, avoiding others in rhythm, trying to figure out why the titan doesn't take any damage while he is barbecuing me with his emissions. Good times...

At this point, my tolerance for dumbass final boss fights designed by devs during crunch time when they haven't slept for 2 weeks and want to exercise their inner sadism on the player is pretty low, so after I fell into the lava a few times, I went straight for an online guide, which mentioned the whole reflecting his shit with shield then hitting him when he goes down thing (I am so glad they decided on this obscure mechanic, and even more glad I looked it up before figuring it out by trial and error 400 times), so after that the fight was merely annoying, instead of mindbogglingly badly designed. But anyway, Risen isn't the only RPG that goes full retard in the end, although for the life of me, I can't figure out why so many do.

So, overall impressions of the game:

- the overall world design of the island, the major settlements, the factions, and the quests through chapters 1-2 is outstanding, on par with Gothic 1 and 2 (you can argue with is better, but they are all in the same ballpark in this sense)
- chapter 3 goes into collect mcguffin mode, and chapter 4 takes that to the next level, turning what was an open world RPG into a dungeon crawler. Now Gothic 1 and 2 did this as well, but not quite to the same extent. In those games, you finished playing around with the sandbox and went on a linear (and not too long) journey to finish the game, in Risen this part is overly long, and actually contains a bunch of different slogs, which start getting really old way before you are done with them. I don't get what PB's fascination with this is, I guess it's cheaper to make these dungeons instead of open world content, but come on... At least make it relatively short as in Gothics.
- the game is breathtakingly beautiful with its vistas and landscape, and because of newer technology, obviously looks much better than Gothics, and has nicer animations and physics.
- as I already went over in detail, the combat unfortunately is a major step down from the Gothics, with elegant time based parrying replaced with the two headed monster of Oblivion style blocking (holding your shield up and trying to get an attack in after the enemy strikes) and button mashing (spamming parry or dodge).

So all in all, a decent RPG I guess compared to what's out there, but makes me sad, because I imagine it with Gothic's combat and a less tedious end-game, and it would be one of the all time greats.

 

[Gord]

At this point, my tolerance for dumbass final boss fights designed by devs during crunch time when they haven't slept for 2 weeks and want to exercise their inner sadism on the player is pretty low, so after I fell into the lava a few times, I went straight for an online guide, which mentioned the whole reflecting his shit with shield then hitting him when he goes down thing (I am so glad they decided on this obscure mechanic, and even more glad I looked it up before figuring it out by trial and error 400 times), so after that the fight was merely annoying, instead of mindbogglingly badly designed. But anyway, Risen isn't the only RPG that goes full retard in the end, although for the life of me, I can't figure out why so many do.

Same here. The final boss fight is simply bad on several levels:
Introduce completely new mechanics in the last 5 minutes of the game (well, if you know how to fight him it's 5 minutes)
Resort to immersion-breaking overlay messages to explain the mechanics, because you failed to introduce anything similar in the 40hours of game before
Render practically every game mechanic you used to rely on before moot - equipment, spells, combat mechanics, etc. are actually not needed for the fight
Conveniently forget about the reflect-projectiles-back-to-him-thingy, since the big McGuffin hammer alone isn't enough to kill him
Makes you wonder whether you are playing an old japanese shoot'em'up or jump'n'run at that point.

 

[Kahr]

So... when do you start the sequel?

 

[Old One]

So... when do you start the sequel?

Ha! That's exactly what I thought when I finished Risen it a couple of days ago. "Hmm...I guess I should replay Risen 2 now."

Luckily I can conjure up my memory of Jaffar the cute gnome companion and it dispels such foolishness. It's like remembering how it felt to have the flu.

Although who knows? I still might actually do it some time.

 

[adddeed]

, because I imagine it with Gothic's combat and a less tedious end-game

Gothic 2's endgame is worse, and Risen combat > Gothic combat. You're being way too harsh.

 

[Sigourn]

I'm playing Risen 2 after I play Risen 1.

Which will happen once I play Gothic 3.

Followed after I play Gothic 2.

Asuming I get to finish Gothic 1.

Spoiler

Maybe I will reinstall the game to play with German audio.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Does anyone know if Gog version of Risen is compatible with the unofficial patch?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

What do we need an unofficial patch for anyway?

 

[Nim]

What do we need an unofficial patch for anyway?

Pallas bug, open the great gate <> the tunnel quests problem, exp cutoff on level up. Can all be avoided if you know how of course.

Otoh making the amulet of the holy flame mage exclusive and having Enrico teach prospecting have no place in a patch.