Risen Reviews

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Written by BuckGB on March 20th, 2010

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I could go on, but over the course of this review I've already described a litany of qualities that should win over players who appreciate mature RPG experiences with quality commensurate to the amount of time spent in them. However, there's no getting around the fact that first impressions will likely turn a lot of potential adventurers off. Clearly, another few months polishing rough edges would have been a worthy investment. That said, I'm not the kind of player who's blinded by low polygon counts and low-res textures. It didn't take long for me to appreciate the true value of Risen, and I have a feeling that those (like me) more concerned with options, abilities, and events instead of how shiny something looks will likely agree.

Tiresome sums up a lot of my feelings about Risen. There's some genuine, classic RPG fun to be had here, and once you commit the time and energy to get your character going, the Pavlovian need to grind for XP and gold kicks in. But with its clunky combat, endless wandering back and forth, and dull storytelling, I don't think that it's worth the time or effort.

Risen is a solid game brought down by a shoddy port to consoles. While there's still a lot of fun to be had with the deep missions that foster exploration, the game's technical presentation is subpar and there are some gameplay issues as a result of the move to the Xbox 360.

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