Risen Reviews

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Written by BuckGB on October 8th, 2009

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If you're a diehard fan of WRPGs (specifically the Gothic series), and are willing to sift through the muck in order to find a decent core game, you might want to give it a try. But at $50, I can't in good conscience recommend Risen to anyone else.

...the combat is functional and smooth, though not the most complex experience, and weapons feel satisfyingly heavy. All in all, there's little to find fault with here unless you have a grudge against the Gothic series, or the occasionally naff voiceovers inherent to such games. Risen is a solid, engrossing and beautifully presented RPG that's well worth your time and money.

That way turns out to be a frying pan lurking in a chest within an abandoned house. Once I have that, I can click on the weirdly huge firepit outside the house and fry my pocket-meat into something edible. She's happy. I'm happy, because it heals the hitpoints I lost beating up giant birds and porcine gnomes. I'd previously tried to heal them by drinking from a barrel full of rainwater, like a dog, but gave up because each time I did, it involved a five-second animation but only refilled my health bar by a fraction. Click, click and click again. Booooring.

Risen does a lot of things like this taking away your control and making you wait for a preset animation to play out for a few seconds. On their own, I wouldn't notice, but I'm reaching the point where I don't want to open a chest or drink from a barrel because I know I'll have control snatched away just so the game can show me something boring for a just a little too long. I'm certainly not going to take 12 seperate drinks from the barrel just to refill my health bar why can't the game either spot that, quite obviously, I want to restore my HP and thus give me the lot with one click, or allow me to hold down the button until I'm done drinking? It's unncessarily obstinate and time-consuming.

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