Risen Review

Another review of Piranha Bytes’ Risen has trickled onto the Internet, and this time it’s coming at us from over at Gameplay Monthly. The game scores a solid “B”, along with the following conclusion:

Despite its shortcomings, I thoroughly enjoyed Risen. That old-school feel coupled with a vibrant beautiful world make for a compelling game. With a player and character skill-based combat system and lots of exploring to do as well as alive-looking cities and communities of npc with a lot of quests, it can offer many hours of fun. It suffers from the fact that it’s not original, being very similar to the first two Gothic games, while on the same time not as good. Still it’s very polished, has very few bugs (I haven’t encountered any game-breaking ones), it looks great and plays great even on a mid-range gaming computer.

I recommend it to any RPG gamer. Those who have enjoyed the Gothic games and want more will find something very similar. I’ll even dare to make the prediction that it’s gonna be closer to the Gothic games than the official sequel (Arcania: A Gothic Tale). As for those who haven’t played the Gothic series, it’s a fun game, offering a lot of depth that it’s hard to find in RPGs nowadays. It may feel a bit inaccessible at first but after a couple of hours it will start to pay off. Personally I consider it the best game of the year so far and it’s the first in a long time that I’ve enjoyed so much.