Risen Reviews

Two more reviews and a couple more sets of firsthand impressions are now available for Piranha Bytes’ latest RPG offering.

Orange starts us off with a 7/10:

There are a few other issues which span the platforms, such as poor voice acting and too-similar character designs. The epicness of Risen’s size and scope overcomes most of our gripes, though, and on the PC this could be a 9 out of 10 but since we reviewed the game on the Xbox 360, our score reflects the failure to implement console-friendly interface and controls.

Xbox Gaming in South Africa goes with a 1/5:

What we have is an RPG with a rather boring plot, terrible graphics, lifeless voice acting, and more bugs than you’ll find under a fallen tree in the Amazon. Its ugly, too many of the quests simply don’t work, the sound is choppy and bland, and the combat is like swinging a moist towel at a cactus. Besides being an extremely frustrating way to kill time and brain cells, there is absolutely nothing I can recommend about Risen, and playing it was a painful experience from start to finish. One which I do not wish on my worst enemy. The market for this game extends only to those who enjoy self-abuse, and I can only hope that its creators are soundly whipped for this atrocity.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun continues their multi-part impressions piece:

I’m enjoying the constant moral-greyness of Risen no-one’s an out-and-out good guy, and bribery, corruption and self-interest inform and, most interestingly, can subvert everything. There’s also scope of organic problem solving for instance, waiting for the ogre-protected guy to wander into a warehouse, then knocking seven shades of pixel-shader out of him. By the time his ogrish mate arrives on the scene, it’s all over, and I’m wandering over to the chest, key-in-hand.

While Gear Diary enters the ring with their own:

From the moment I was wandering the world and found that I could use the Q & E keys to turn and leave the mouse alone for a good chunk of the time, I felt like I had gone home to the classic feel of Gothic 2. The names and enemies have all been changed, of course, but the there is definitely the same feel but in a good way. Combat has been optimized and works much better than in Gothic 3. There are choices and consequences and you can actually make other characters mad at you to the point where they won’t deal with you anymore!