Why Risen 2 is shit?

[Gnidrologist]

Btw, is Hawkins supposed to hang around kitchen all the time? He doesn't have option to take him along as combat buddy.

 

[Celeb]

One thing i like about this game is really fun and colorful dialogue. Even the cliche pirate shtick is done well. The pirate captains are peculiar and all have their own interesting personality. Lots of funny well written banter all around, but not too funny like with some Larian games. Of course it's shallow, but works very well for a swashbuckling adventure story. Also some nice attention to detail like, when i released a steal monkey to wonder around the woods and it came across a campfire with some guys sitting around, they immediately noticed the monkey and one of him said something like "where did this fellow come from" and another one was like "hey, maybe it's thirsty" and they kept watching how the monkey makes somersaults and stuff.
Even combat isn't as bad as i thought it would be. The weakest point of the game compared to other Piranha titles is exploration. Not only more linearity, which i can deal with, but kinda meh world outside of major hubs. Especially dislike the endless "jungle" areas.
Anyhow, much better game than Codex would lead you believe.

Well, this opinion came as a surprise. I also find dialogues good (mostly funny and/or down-to-earth) but the pirate captains are a mixed bag - some of them are okay but others did not spark interest in me. Crow is meh, Steelbeard disappointed me. Slayne is alright. Piranha fucked up by letting the player solve Garcia's quest without talking to him so I lost some interactions with the guy.

Melee combat is absolutely atrocious. At the beginning, it comes down to spamming one button and hoping that the enemy won't riposte your ass. Later in the game, making counterattacks requires good precision which is not satisfying with the presented control scheme. I especially dislike how your inputs are "queued" - if you press the dodge button too many times within 1 second but want to switch to attacking, the character will proceed to do more rolls. I do not remember ever experiencing such a phenomena in other games. Also, undodgeable dirty tricks are absolute bullshit, I can't believe the enemy can just take 30-60% of your health almost instantly.
A lot of the things I mentioned are partially my fault for refusing to learn the system properly, however, after Gothic 3 and Risen, I was sick of bullshit melee that just doesn't work.

I found most of the available islands open. The only bigger, linear map I remember is Maracai Bay with its numerous corridors and platforms. Either way, jungle theme gets tiresome so I just turned off vegetation at some point to make the exploration more bearable.

Btw, is Hawkins supposed to hang around kitchen all the time? He doesn't have option to take him along as combat buddy.

It is a mystery. I remember seeing many sites mentioning him as a companion but the option was not in my game. Venturo is the best anyway.

 

[adddeed]

Rreally bro? You think Gothic 3 and Risen have the same melee combat? Risen is some of the most fun i had with melee combat period. Not even comparable to the mess that is Gothic 3.

 

[Celeb]

Please learn to read, adddeed.