The Good,The Bad, and The Ugly ...is the best western ever made.So don't let a description like that keep
*This game is lacking in the visuals department so much so it will put off a great deal of people from the get go.
*It's short.Which if you don't like it,is a good thing.If you do you'll probably play through it more than once so...
I can't really knock it for that.
*The ending.Like a bad Michael Crichton novel,except for a few lives lost,your right back where you started from.
As you can see "I" don't have a whole lot to complain about here,hence the nine.
O.K. on to all the good stuff.First let me give you little background on me.I play a lot of FPS but my favorite is a good ARPG(has been since Zelda).I'm a console gamer so Piranha Bytes and the Gothic series has always been something of a "gyger" to me.Now I know.These guys are good.Really good.You slap some fresh paint on this,give me a brief cutscene at the end with some sort of resolution and it's a ten.I would like a bigger game world to keep the great exploration going a little longer.Without that element I rarely play through an rpg twice.
It's the exception that makes the rule and this is it.Risen is a small tight package that is balanced the whole way through.The quests,npcs,voice acting are all excellent.You have to be thorough,if you have loose ends that need tying up the games not going to tell you.You'll have to scroll through your quest log and try to figure out what you missed and sometimes it's a different quest.I was "stuck" in harbor town for two days in my first play through (jumping the wall to get out)and I steamrolled it the second go around.
The combat...sure you can employ hit and run ranged tactics but eventually you'll come across something that hits back...hard.If your like me you like to get up close and personal with the beasties.Give me a sword and a shield and I'll lay waste to all that oppose me.Unless it's a small shield,a rusty sword,I have no armor,and said beastie is a "ninja" war cricket.The enemies in Risen go from tough,to tougher,to "what the fu_". Guards must be broken and openings exploited and you will pay for every mistake.This ain't Fable boys...time to man up...and "save your game".Your not going to cruise through this one without ever getting "knocked out".
Obviously I highly recommend this to any fan of ARPGs.It's German ;) what else do you need to know?Hopefully you'll buy this new so the next time P.B. makes a game Deep Silver will be just that and we can get a better looking game.