Risen 2: Dark Waters Previews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on February 27th, 2012

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Eventually, we were assigned to follow one of Steelbeard's crew, who wandered to a nearby bay for an illicit rendezvous with a Sunken One - a half-man, half-sea creature, seeking information about Steelbeard and his crew. After being spotted, a swordfight ensued, and having dispatched both parties, we returned to the village, to claim some respect from Steelbeard. But we still had to perform further tasks to prove our pirate credentials.

A spot of exploring led us to a hilariously deaf old codger who was also a musket expert. This gave us the chance to investigate the game's skills-learning mechanic. Once we had managed to communicate to the old git that we wanted him to teach us how to handle a musket, we were given the chance to impress him by playing a simple shooting-gallery mini-game, in which objects like coconuts and bottles were thrown from the left-hand side of the screen, and we had to hit them in mid-air. Once we'd done well enough in that, some gold changed hands (in Risen 2, you invariably have to pay to learn skills), and we could now shoot muskets. We also bought a musket from the old guy, and could even have purchased blueprints for building our own guns.

On returning to the village, we had to wrap up a couple more missions before gaining Steelbeard's acceptance, one of which involved swordfighting a notably pugnacious pirate (from whom extra swordfighting skills could be learned) and the other involving stealing some rum. Finally, Steelbeard was prepared to grant us the status of fully fledged pirate.

The first thing to note about Risen 2 is the way it handles its RPG elements. Your character is set in his physical appearance, and is fully voiced. Customisation fiends need not fear however as along the way you can customise Jim-lad with different clothing and a variety of suitably piratical headgear. Along with the weaponry which covers swords and guns and throwing weapons, clothing has different stats that give additional bonuses to Jim-lad's skills and abilities.

These cover five areas: cunning, toughness, voodoo, swordplay and gunplay. Levelling up is accomplished by gaining glory points killing wild animals, exploring the islands and completing quests all add to your total, which you can then spend on upgrading your skills. Higher skill rankings open up the opportunity to learn more talents, which can be bought from the plethora of teachers that make up the NPC's. An imprisoned pirate will pass on his knowledge of stealing (perhaps not the soundest advice), and that lovely lady in a tavern will help you improve your um, silver tongue. But new skills do not come cheap! Risen 2 puts you firmly in pirate shoes, making you obsess over every scrap of gold that comes your way, reluctant to give it up for anything! Ever had too much money in an RPG and had nothing to spend it on? Well that certainly won't bug you here. Should you buy a pistol so you can start shooting things? Or a pick axe to mine some gold? What about learning to pickpocket to steal back a pirate's black pearl and complete a quest? But you need that money for a stake in a drinking contest to win a treasure map! Arrrr!

Several facets of the game seem to be tied to which faction you side with the natives or the Inquisition. Going native means that you'll have access to the Voodoo talent (one of five main talents that you can develop your character in), and the Inquisition will allow you to develop firearms and the Firearms talent. Now we're not sure exactly how much you can dabble in both, but we were told that using firearms too much will lock you out of the Native '˜path', so we assume it works both ways. The way you approach certain quests, and which faction specific quests you receive will also depend on this choice.

The combat system hasn't evolved much and is still quite difficult. Blocking is key in sword fighting and additional skills like kicking or riposting must be learned from trainers for large chunks of gold. This isn't the type of game where you can just hammer the attack button and expect to come out on top. Taking on one wild boar may not be too hard, but wandering into a group of three wild boars can leave you lying in the dirt if you're not careful. You also won't be able to stock up on healing potions, like some games, and rely on them to save you in battle. Drinking rum or grog will heal you instantly but these drinks are costly and sometimes hard to come by. Provisions are plentiful, however eating only heals you slowly over time.

A word to the wise, this is a deep RPG, you will need to listen to the dialogue during conversations and talk to as many people as you can. Pretty much everyone who you can have a conversation with will have something useful to say, so if you skip out on this you will be left feeling lost and without a bearing. Its something we don't see enough these days, there are too many games that class themselves as role-playing but you never get to really (play) as them, you just get your hand-held throughout. Risen 2, fortunately, is different you get a real sense of depth when playing the conversations actually mean something and you feel like your choices actually affect the world around you and what the locals think of you. The pirate theme is integrated throughout the entire game, it's not just a small part of the game that crops up every now and again its at the heart of the game and you get to act out your life in more detail than any other Pirate focused RPG has done before.

Even in its current state, Risen 2 still looks pretty good though, yet it's evident that there's some way to go before it'll look exceptional. And as Risen 2 plays pretty well, features distinctive characters, some humorous dialogue and the requisite RPG depth, the graphics let it down despite being a marked improvement over the console port of its predecessor, which wasn't exactly a looker. Slashing through the undergrowth, carving up exotic firebirds, more monkeys, giant termites, warthogs and vicious jaguars however, we soon forget the current graphical shortcomings and enjoy the multi-directional combat, which enables you to deploy a parrot as a distraction, whip out a flintlock pistol, throw salt into an enemy's eyes or just slice away with your trusty sword, getting a slow-mo payoff for flashy kills. It's yet another improvement over the first Risen and further indication that the sequel should be a step in the right direction.

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