Home Risen Risen2 Risen3 Forum English Russian

Registrieren Hilfe Kalender Heutige Beiträge
Ergebnis 1 bis 3 von 3
  1. #1 Zitieren
    Local Hero Avatar von Darksword
    Registriert seit
    Sep 2015
    Ort
    London
    Beiträge
    251
    Hi everyone

    I am a die-hard Gothic fan who is really enjoying Risen, and am wondering whether Risen 2 is as good a sequel as Gothic 2 (especially NotR) was to Gothic?

    Would be great to hear people's thoughts. Thank you.
    "All that matters is Strength." (Mercenary who hangs out in Onar's house)

    Healing potions: the case for addiction (Book title in Divine Divinity)

    "I've seen better times. Too little to live on, too much to die." (Farim, Gothic II Night of the Raven)
    Darksword ist offline

  2. #2 Zitieren

    Metasyntaktische Variable
    Avatar von foobar
    Registriert seit
    Sep 2004
    Ort
    Direkt hinter dir! Buh!
    Beiträge
    24.009
    Personally, I think R2 is a mediocre game. There are worse games on the market but there are also better games on the market (even from the same developer). It suffers further from the fact that it doesn't really continue the setting which was established in R1. It's no longer medieval-type fantasy, now it's basically Pirates of the Caribbean. But if you think pirates are cool and don't care about cross-title continuity, you can probably still have fun. For me, it was a bit difficult.

    For a more detailed criticism, I'll just copy&paste some stuff from previous posts and add a little bit here and there. I'll try and keep it to mild spoilers, and put the major ones (about story elements and such) into additional second-level spoiler tags.

    Spoiler:(zum lesen bitte Text markieren)

    Things about the story I did not like:
    • The entire story is practically revealed in the first 10 minutes of the game.
      Spoiler:(zum lesen bitte Text markieren)

      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.
      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.
      Spoiler:(zum lesen bitte Text markieren)

      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:
      Spoiler:(zum lesen bitte Text markieren)

      • The world gets destroyed by Titans, everything is falling apart, and what happens? The world's technology suddenly jumps forward at least 200 years. You'd expect the ongoing apocalypse to destroy civilisation, not cause a renaissance. Yet, that's what's happened. It'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 choose one of three factions. There are only two real factions, and clear membership is not a thing anymore. 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 around in a mage's robe? Or heavy plate armour? There are some customization options, both in character skills and equipment. But in the end, it'll always be variations of the cliché pirate from the Halloween party.
    • The game now has QTEs. Which 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 the other'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 actually does tell 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 you 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, a simple story, good level design, and a bit of PB-style able to shine through every now and again. It 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.
    foobar ist gerade online Geändert von foobar (20.06.2018 um 12:13 Uhr) Grund: typo

  3. #3 Zitieren
    Local Hero Avatar von Darksword
    Registriert seit
    Sep 2015
    Ort
    London
    Beiträge
    251
    Fantastic! Thanks for all this, Foobar. What a pity - but I think you're right about the console thing. You know, I was so excited when Gothic 1 came out. I didn't have the time back then to do more than dip a toe in it, but it captured me right from the start. So as the sequels came out, I bought them blindly. Also the three Risen games because of PB and what I'd tasted in Gothic 1. I put them aside, to be played when I was no longer working 14 hour days. For years, the mere thought of them kept me going.

    So, finally the time came. I played G1 and NotR, the former twice, the latter many times, I just couldn't get enough of them. Meantime, I discovered the forums, and was learning that G3 was a disappointment. Still, I eventually tried it and played for a month or so. It should have been great, not sure why it failed, for one thing the story wasn't immersive somehow. So I started Risen 1, and was caught up again. And thought I might still have a treat to come in R2.

    Oh well.

    I'm waiting to see what people think about Elex before I buy it.
    "All that matters is Strength." (Mercenary who hangs out in Onar's house)

    Healing potions: the case for addiction (Book title in Divine Divinity)

    "I've seen better times. Too little to live on, too much to die." (Farim, Gothic II Night of the Raven)
    Darksword ist offline

Berechtigungen

  • Neue Themen erstellen: Nein
  • Themen beantworten: Nein
  • Anhänge hochladen: Nein
  • Beiträge bearbeiten: Nein
  •