PepsimanVsJoe talks about random games.

Risen is the spiritual sequel to the Gothic series and you all know what that entails. In this grand adventure our hero washes up on an island without so much as a pair of shoes. The quest to get pair of shoes takes close to five hours by itself. Also this game starts off brutally, as casual run-ins with warthogs may as well be final boss affairs in any other RPG. Still, provided you rub the right backs, dip into enough dungeons, and occasionally cheat the glitchy weed-dealer, you'll be an unstoppable mage-warrior...

...Or so one would assume. Risen has a nasty habit of gifting enemies with the ability to insta-kill the player. Now in my play-through this happened less than ten times but it still gives me reason to save before most encounters. Off the top of my head these particularly dangerous foes include certain types of giant insects, gnome chieftains, and Lizardmen. First of all gnomes, chieftain or otherwise should be lucky if they can insta-kill an ant, not some Ewan-Mcgregor sounding-dude with a sword and a pair of shoes. Still it happens and I always gotta save when I see a couple of the little pieces of trash. Also Lizardmen make up 60% of the game, thanks a lot Risen.

Anyway on my quest to find some shoes and possibly a helmet I run into a lot of guys complementing my looks. They keep talking about my pretty face and uh...it's more than a little concerning. Eventually I discovered that it's very understandable when out of the three towns in the game, only one of them has a somewhat reasonable female population. The Bandit's Camp for example is home to nothing but Warriors, Hunters, and Thieves. The sole woman who lives there is thankfully the leader's wife. The Monastery has not a single lady inhabiting it, not at all surprising. In any case a single night spent with an escort is the closest this game gets to "romance" options.

Risen is a very dirty game, like actual muck and grime. It's like those movies based in the Middle Ages and all the peasants do is roll in the mud. Just getting a new set of clothes involved killing a dozen men and half the time the first thing that happens is that I end up in a swamp or knee-deep in wolf crap. There are places to take baths but the water looks like it's gone unchanged since I don't know when. It is very amusing when I get in the bath anyway with my clothes that reek of sweat and filth. Apparently the only other people that use them are the escorts. Now that I think about it, maybe I should have dumped this nonsense "save the island" quest and became a man-whore. I bet if any of the quest-givers found out that I take baths they'd never take me seriously.

The best part about Risen is the exploration and the thrill of finding something useful. This isn't one of those RPGs where the next giant rat you squish might pop out flaming swords and ancient mystical armors. You have to bust your ass in the most forgotten crevices of this strange land just to find half-decent stuff. It reminds me of King's Field, warts and all(especially the warts). Granted like that game it gets easier as you progress (aside from all the insta-death occurences). It's also a fairly short game, or at least shorter than I expected. This may have something to do with the complete lack of random encounters, respawning enemies, and random loot.

There's also a cute scene late in the game which I'll spoil for you right now because I'm a bit of a jerk. Early on while I'm still slumming it in the swamps I have to deal with some prick who is trying to take over as leader of the Bandits and get his hands on his wife. At this point all I had was a sword I found in an abandoned house but I still whooped him without any trouble. Some 20 or so hours later after I'm all decked out with most of the best equipment I get challenged by this giant tool in a fight to the death. Unfortunately for him he's still swinging around a stick with a few nails in it. He still puts up more of a fight than the second to last boss at least.

Oh and yes I suffered through the Xbox 360 version. When everyone is going on and on about how much Skyrim is a broken pile of whatever I have to keep my mouth shut and my hands tied because after playing through this mess I have no room to complain. Risen on the 360 is just awful. There are frequent hitches and pauses during combat, particularly when you or the enemy gets hit. The load times upon starting the game and reloading a save are ridiculous. The frame-rate is absolute horse-nuts though I guess I'd be shocked to expect otherwise. All I can really be thankful for is that the game only froze twice. One of those occurrences gave me a red screen of death, just wonderful.

Even with everything running so poorly and the final leg of the game being somewhere between mediocre and garbage I still played through this game. I'm not sure what this says about me or the game but I'd like to think that the experience was enjoyable enough for me to put up with all its issues. So I'll give Risen a pass, but please please PLEASE make sure if you give it a go it's the PC version.