[Saberstorm]

I have been playing Risen 2 for the last week. It is my first time playing it.

The game is very impressive. I love most everything about it. The story builds momentum and the NPCs are well developed. I like how the firearms are developed, very realistic and yet still playable. Overall, I think it is a very good game.

The only thing I dislike about it is the Titan battles, they are too fixed. I like the rest of it.

[foobar]

Erm... was that sarcasm?

[catalinux]

Erm... was that sarcasm?

Or maybe Reverse psychology?

[Rothinsky]

Or he really does like the game?

[Powaz]

The excitement will wear off.

[Forward]

The excitement will wear off.

haha most likely

[glumetzul]

Risen 2 is a good game. But not if compared to Risen 1 and certainly not from the perspective of a Gothic fan that still remembers how he felt when playing G1 or G2 for the first time.

[TheDarkRuler]

Why there are so many guys out there, who cannot take people liking this game for serious?
I do like Risen 2 too. Much more than Risen 1 and even more than the Gothic games.
Simply depends on the type of player... so why there are so many, who simply cannot unterstand or do not want to understand.

[Delicieuxz]

I really enjoy Risen 2 up until a certain part. I don't like the island that's just a bunch of tunneled paths, or the crescent isle that you start on and return to. Singularly-themed locations come across as really unnatural and unpleasant. I loved the first 3 islands, though I think that the pirate town in that island could've been a lot more interesting. Gothic 2's town had more variety and sense of unique buildings than the town in Risen 2.

I love Risen 2's combat, I think it's PB's best combat to date - though there is room for improvement. I wrote an in-depth post on what I think some of those improvements can be on this forum a long time ago.

I'm looking forward to Risen 3, and I think that the area which PB need to most focus on improving is the quests and dialog. There are no dialog paths with different endings in Risen 2, it's all one collection of dialog that all leads to the same result. The multiple ways which things could go in G1 and G2 are what make it feel like you are the character, rather than am just playing out a specific character's story.

[foobar]

Why there are so many guys out there, who cannot take people liking this game for serious?

I cannot speak for everyone else but my question was exactly that - a question. Before I respond to that post I want to know if it's an honest opinion or sarcasm (both options being legitimate). As you may know, intent (especially irony and sarcasm) can often get lost in a written text. So wanted to make sure I got the meaning before writing a reply.

[Powaz]

I played Risen 2 three times, so I guess I liked the game, but it was far from a really good game, and a big disappointment after the well crafted but a little flat Risen. The combat is half-baked, the story and characters a little too corny, the world and game paste quite fragmented, and there's not enough continuity of the established universe.

Enjoying something, does not make it good.

[Delicieuxz]

I cannot speak for everyone else but my question was exactly that - a question. Before I respond to that post I want to know if it's an honest opinion or sarcasm (both options being legitimate). As you may know, intent (especially irony and sarcasm) can often get lost in a written text. So wanted to make sure I got the meaning before writing a reply.

I think he's serious, and I can agree with his sentiment, but either way, I'd like to read your response to the "serious" option.

[Saberstorm]

I am serious!

I am really enjoying it. It is like reading a novel, but in an interactive form. I like how the story develops, the fighting is like a boring form of Gothic 3, not so great, but really not a distraction from the atmosphere.

I like the way everything in the mechanics balances nicely. I think it is a very good system. The way everybody hates it, I thought it would be awful, like Gothic 4. But no, it is like softer form of Gothic 2. The story is not generic. I have never heard of pirates fighting titans. (But I have played a lot of PB games that have the player run around collecting artifacts.)

I am very happy I bought it.

I think PB needs to consider their fan base as you guys seem to really bellyache about what they have done, but this is an excellent game.

[Powaz]

Pirates fighting Titans? Colonialism in a fantasy setting? All sounds quite good on paper, yet the execution is quite lacking. You see one small sugar-cane field with slaves (how is that supposed to satisfy the demands of the whole Southern Sees region?) and that's it. Believability of the world was always something PB did great. Every camp in Gothic 1 had it's own way of self-sufficiency, in Gothic 2 you had these huge fields owned by Onar, that could satisfy the demand of the whole island. With his rebellion the food prices increased, the militia began forcing the other farmers to supply the town etc. Everything in the world was interconnected. There were multiple stories going on. Different conflicts on top of the main story-line of saving the world.

Details details details.

In Risen 2 (just as in Gothic 3) they seem to have sacrificed the believable and living interconnected world in favour of a cinematic epic cliché ridden story-telling (huge scale in the case of Gothic 3). But it were the details that made me play Gothic 1 dozens of times...

The gameplay of Risen 2 is okay for me. I can enjoy it, but that's not enough.

[foobar]

Well, first of all: It's ok if you liked the game. Good for you! I can only tell you what I thought of it: It's a mediocre game. There are worse games on the market but there are also better games on the market (even from the same developer).

I don't want to write another essay (you'll thank me later) so here's in short medium-length what problems I have with the game (as far as I still remember them).

Things about the story I did not like:

• The entire story is practically revealed in the first 10 minutes of the game. We're the good guys, Mara is the bad guy gal, the titan weapons are the way of defeating her and Steelbeard knows how to get them. And that's exactly what happens. There's nothing for the player to uncover, no twists in the plot, no further truths to reveal. After that first intro scene, you just go through the motions. It's like a crime novel where you are told on the first ten pages who the killer is and what you have to do to catch him.
  You are correct that the general idea (pirates fighting titans) is not exactly your standard run-of-the-mill RPG theme. But beyond that, it's a very primitive story. Could have been a fairy tale for children.
• The characters are pretty flat. Take Mara, for instance. What is her motivation? Why does she do what she does? We may be able to speculate wildly but we don't really get an answer from the game. The Inquisitor in R1, for instance, was way better designed. We knew what drove him: He wanted to save the world. So badly that he was willing to sacrifice everyone for it. Another example of a well-designed antagonist is the King of Shadows in NWN2 who just wanted to protect his people and was corrupted by events outside his influence. But Mara? She's just there because we need someone evil to defeat. All she needs to make the cliché complete is a moustache to twirl and a maniacal laughter. Same goes for many other figures in the game. You know them for five minutes and you know what they're all about.
• The world has no background. There is no lore, no information about the world. The same depth that is missing from the characters is also missing from the world. Which makes it look like a Potemkin village. Admittedly, this was already a problem in R1 but it should have been fixed, not worsened. A story-teller (be it a book writer or a game developer) has the greatest power there is: He can create his own world. Something that draws you in, makes you want to experience and explore it. But PB just said: "Bah!" and stopped working as soon as they had what they needed for this game. Once you enter that world and look around, look away from what is happening right in front of you, you just see an empty, white void. There's no illusion that the depicted story is just a tiny window in a much larger world. What Tolkien called "Secondary World" is just not happening in R2. The entire world is not an original design but instead carried by clichés which the player has to bring with him (e.g. you don't have to explain who the pirates are and what they want if you stick to the cliché people already know from Stevenson or PotC).
• What's worse: There is not just barely any lore, the informations that are there are inconsistent. A few examples:
  
  • The world gets destroyed by Titans, everything is falling apart, and what happens? The world's technology suddenly jumps forward at least 200 years. That's as if Fallout started with: "Ok, we had a nuclear apocalypse. But now it's 5 years later so here's our fleet of space ships. Let's beam aboard and take them for a spin around the spiral arm." And it would have been so easy to avoid that.
  • Why is the central conflict between the natives and the Inquisition about sugar? The old world is collapsing, fires are ravaging half of Caldera and the people there still only worry about their sugar? Wouldn't it be much more logical and interesting if the conflict were about evacuation? The Inquisition as the head of an invasion force that has the task to prepare the new land for the arrival of the survivors from the old world? That could have been interesting. On the one hand, you are an invader who steals someone else's land. On the other hand, you don't have a choice because your own land is destroyed by the titans. It's either that or death. And who will make it to the "promised land"? Ships and time could be limited so the available seats go to the rich and powerful first and... who then? Maybe a lottery, tearing apart families and friends and... ah, I'm beginning to ramble again. Let's just leave it at: Lots of potential went to waste by using something as unimportant and illogical as sugar as the source for conflict.
  • And where did the runic and crystal magic go? The game explains why the mages are gone (and even that only with 2 sentences) but the art of magic itself? Why is it not available anymore?
  • And don't get me started with such simple questions as "What do they eat? What do they drink?"

My problems with the gameplay are:

• The classical structure we had in G1, G2, and R1 is gone. You no longer have a first chapter to explore the world and then chose one of three factions. There are only two real factions, clear membership is not a thing. R2 is closer to G3 in that regard.
• Playable character types have also been reduced. You no longer have a choice of what you want to play. A wise mage? A nimble archer? A strong warrior? No, you'll play a pirate. Period. It's Hobson's choice. And what kind of pirate would you be if you ran in a mage's robe? Or heave plate armour? There are some customization options, both in character skills and equipment. But in the end, it'll always be a cliché pirate.
• QTEs are non-immersive and annoying. In R1, one who looked around carefully was able to spot traps and avoid them altogether. In R2 however, traps are invisible. You always trigger them and then have to button-smash your way out of them. How that enhances the RP experience is beyond me.
• Where is the piracy? I mean, c'mon, I'm supposed to be a pirate, right? And contrary to popular belief, pirates aren't people with funny hats, eye patches and wooden legs who drink rum and say "Arr". Pirates are people who capture other ships on the open sea. But I cannot really do that. Even if it was just one or two scripted events where you capture a ship and are maybe even faced with a moral decision (do I go for it to gain Steelbeard's trust or do I hold back because I don't want to participate in something like that?), it still would've enhanced RP and the game itself. In R2, pirates are more of a romanticised cliché than anything else.
• The open world feeling from previous PB titles went down the toilet in the desperate attempt to focus on consoles. Compared to other PB games, there is very little to explore and discover. You can just follow the maze like a good little rat and eat your cheese every now and then. What's more: Initially, PB tried so sell us the tube-levels as story enhancers. They claimed that they would allow them to tell a better, more complex story. In general, that might be a valid approach (although I do have my doubts about it) but the story that R2 really tells does not need it. It would have worked fine with an open world.
• The AI is a bad joke. In Gothic, you saw wolves that hunt scavengers and people that warned you about entering their houses. In R2, animals just walk around and even if you beat someone to a pulp, he forgets everything after 5 minutes and is your best friend again. And since Gothic was 10 years ago, you'd expect the AI to evolve. Not to devolve (ask me if I think it's because of the consoles, I dare you!).
• Trainers are partially gone from the skill system. Immersion is something else.
• The combat system could also use some improvements. I realise that my opinion on combat is shared by only a small minority, so I won't go too deep into that.
• I miss a character creation. Yes, having a pre-defined character is something of a tradition for PB but so was an open world or trainers or single-piece armours. They got thrown away, why not this? I always like to customize my own character and hate it when I cannot. I can bear with it in Gothic because the hero is at least somewhat cool but the Risen hero is... erm... let's just say not exactly someone I can identify with.
• The boss-fight in R1 received a lot of criticism because it did not consider your character's skills. No matter if you were a wise mage or a nimble archer, in the end, the game put a big hammer into your hands and had you smash stuff.
  Now what did R2 make better? Right, it simply repeated that kind of boss fight. Several times. Ok, now it's a spear and not a hammer. But the same principle applies. Instead of character build or quests, you just had to throw the spear. A lot.

There are, of course, also good ideas in the game. But when I try to list them, even most of them end with a long sigh, followed by a "but alas":

• I liked the idea of a party system. Having people accompany you. Have someone with you who you can discuss your further steps with or ask for their opinion on current problems. But alas, that opportunity rarely happens. You can't talk with them about much and they can't talk with each other because there is only one companion slot. Effectively, the only real purpose they serve is as cannon fodder. They can distract enemies. Ok, thanks to the combat system, that's actually helpful but I'm not sure I'd call it a feature.
• I think it is a good idea that you can eavesdrop on other people's conversations to gain new information and new quests. But alas, since there are barely any densely populated areas, you don't get to use the feature very much.
• Although the single-piece armours from G1/G2 looked all cool and allowed a good progression, having distinct armour pieces for R2 (different items for feet, legs, arms, chest, head and so on) is not a bad idea. But alas, the armours that are there are not exactly what I would call "distinct". The equipment did not seem to matter very much.
• Voodoo as magic is an interesting concept. And I like the idea that it allows me to forcibly control other characters in order to advance the story. But alas, the rest of the magic system is underdeveloped. It has been reduced to a simple support function. You cannot really play as a pure mage, even if you want to.
• The idea of a monkey which you can control to steal stuff, flip levers and such is not bad. Gameplay-wise, it's a variation of the transformation spell (you suddenly control a different figure with different properties). But alas, since it replaces the old transformation spells, it is not really an enhancement but simply a change. Now can "become" only one type of creature instead of several.
• Social skills (e.g. silver tongue) are always a good idea. It's nice if you can solve problems in other ways than just beating people up. But alas, the skills did not really feel useful to me because the requirements seemed to be a little off in most contexts.

Now, any game has its weaknesses but most also have strengths they can play out against those. But with R2, it's hard for me to point out any clear strengths. BioWare has better characters and cinematics, The Witcher has better stories and characters, Skyrim has better exploration and world interactivity (which was a traditional PB strength before they abandoned it) and the award for the most unique setting would probably go to Fallout or Shadowrun or somesuch game.

In the end we have a stable game with few bugs and good level design that is nice to play if you just want some light entertainment but simply does not reach the heights of previous PB titles. "Mediocre" is the best I can say about it.

But again, that's just my opinion. You just go and enjoy it. It's nice that at least someone can.

[Ariogaisus]

So, Foobar, do you think that the AI in PB games has gone backwards or as some might say, has it devolved from Gothic 2?

[foobar]

So, Foobar, do you think that the AI in PB games has gone backwards or as some might say, has it devolved from Gothic 2?

All in all, yes. I mean I don't expect NPCs to show "real" intelligence. Like, coming up with non-preprogrammed tactics of their own or something like that. What we call AI in RPGs is basically just scripted behaviour. A bunch of "if this, then that" statements. But even those seem to be loosing complexity. Compared to G1 or G2, characters in R2 seem pretty dumb. Or perhaps "static" is the better word.

[Delicieuxz]

I am serious!
the fighting is like a boring form of Gothic 3, not so great, but really not a distraction from the atmosphere.

I don't see how the combat could be a more boring form of Gothic 3's. There is more timing and response-critical moves to make in R2, and I love the instances where I get to whip out a pistol.

I agree that the QTEs are not enjoyable, just as they have never been in any game, ever.

[Powaz]

There is more timing and response-critical moves to make in R2

Which are absolutely inessential. I finished the whole game without learning most of the blade skills and was still able to defeat any adversary by just clicking them to death and rolling back from time to time.

[Delicieuxz]

I think it is the exact opposite. There is no skill in Gothic 3 combat, it's just spam the buttons. This isn't Assassin's Creed "combat" that we're talking about here, where you just hit a response button, it's response in the same way that Gothic 2's combat is response based: If you time your attack incorrectly, you get walloped. That's the same as how it is in Risen 2, to a very smart degree.

Every opponent in all games are defeated through clicking them to death, but it's about what the clicks do, and how much thought it put into them that makes the combat attractive or not. You can't spam attack in R2 and survive. Unless we played different games, but spamming, and not timing, was a recipe for death when I played it. The timing is also really tight in many instances.

The ability to counter wildlife attacks was awesome, and something not before done in PB games. That's another reason why R2 is the best combat they've put out to date.