Risen 2: Rise Harder

[Erkki]

Sadly, this is not the title of the game, just the RPS post.

Risen was my first or second favourite in the Gothic legacy (except for the boring final third and godawful ending), I will play whatever they do next.

The game is pirate-themed and is actually subtitled Dark Waters. As I understand it, there are going to be islands that you can travel between and sea monsters.

Edited February 21, 2011 by Erkki

[Orv]

Consider me on board. Risen is good stuff. Certainly my favorite in the Gothic tradition, slipping just past 2.

[Irishjohn]

I've never played a Gothic game but this looks really interesting. Considering reading through some of the RPS diaries on the first Risen, although I'm currently sinking into Two Worlds II and I don't know when I'll be in the mood for a "flawed but fun" game again soon.

Also, despite it being borrowed from RPS, my favourite thread title in quite a while.

[Erkki]

The game world of Risen 2 has several islands the size of the island in Risen 1.

Here we go again. And they even admit there might be a problem with that, and then cocksurely wave it off:

And no, bigger is not always better, but the way we've done it ...

I hope it doesn't turn into Gothic 3. Man, I'd be glad if it was smaller than Risen 1 but more packed.

Quotes were from Eurogamer interview.

[Erkki]

I missed these behind the scenes videos earlier:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/16/risen-2-creators-on-exotic-pirate-setting/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/23/the-drunk-the-orderly-risen-2s-factions/

Getting excited about this. I hope it will be smaller than Skyrim, but I doubt it if they have several islands the size of Risen 1.

[Erkki]

So, it's out. Is anybody Rising Harder yet?

I doubt I will buy this in the short term, since I don't have much time to play right now and still have lots of unplayed/unfinished games from the 2011 holiday sales.

[TheLastBaron]

I never played Risen 1, but I watched a German Let's Play of it with the vain hope that it would make me better at German and allow me to not study for the German class I'm taking in college. It did not help me at all, but the game looked really cool, and I might check this one out too after playing the first for myself.

[Ninja Dodo]

You should try playing their older games in the original German if you want to pick up some language. I now know useful phrases like:

"Zeig mir deine ware" and "Du dreckiger dieb!"

[Erkki]

I bought this on a Steam sale and while I liked all the Gothic and Risen games before, this one did not start off with a good impression. I can't say exactly what makes it feel really different even about moving around and controls, but it somehow appears a whole lot sloppier already in the beginning sequences:

• characters wave their hands around in inane gestures and poses
  
• camera keeps jumping around mid-dialogue
  
• horizontal and vertical mouse sensitivity is off: horiz too fast, but if you make it slower, then vertical will be awfully slow
  
• the very first tutorial keeps reminding me to open my logbook after i've done it several times
  
• there seem to be lots of notifications by default
  

Anyone else played it? How well does it compare to Risen 1?

[Roderick]

Is the jumpy dialogue cam perhaps inspired by Outcast's, that would pick cinematic angles at random?

[Erkki]

Maybe, but I don't remember Outcast's being so bad.

[Erkki]

deleted

[Erkki]

Outcast:

Risen 2:

(that isn't the worst, but I can't be arsed to look for other videos) Also does the embedding not work because I added the time?

[Erkki]

For some reason I now resumed playing it after several months. I forgot a lot of what happened in the beginning already, my savegame was just as I got to the second island (I think). Things started feeling more like the Risen and Gothic games on that island. One interesting thing is that you start out pretty much as a wimp, and mostly I have gotten beaten in duels that I've started for various reasons, but the game acknowledges that somewhat. For example, I stole a hat from somewhere, then a pirate wanted it back, I refused, had to fight, lost and had to give the hat back, which he is now wearing. Later, I fought for a bandana and somehow won, and now I assume most of the fighting in the game will be over headgear.

 

The controls still feel somewhat crappy though. It's interesting to compare this to The Witcher series, which made quite a jump from 1st to 2nd game in how the combat and everything played, and looks like will make another jump in Witcher 3, but Risen 2 still plays a lot like Gothic 1 from 2001.

 

There's an annoying thing about the day-night cycle which makes the shadows jump after every few seconds. It looks quite annoying in dialogues.

 

Quite early on you get access to trainers that require lots of gold to train you in specific skills. It's a bit annoying to seemingly have access to so many skills but not have the money to buy them.

[Erkki]

God dammit, I think I might give up before I get to the good parts of the game. I'm definitely seeing some of the charm of the previous ones, but also all of the problems ... that they haven't managed to fix in 4 games (counting from Gothic 2) are still there. No real evolution seems to have happened. I've been playing the island I'm on for several hours, and am still no better at fighting the warthogs, which was my first enemy on the island. And what's worse, when they started appearing as 1 or 2, now I'm often finding 3 or 4 of them. And the game really sucks bad when you fight multiple enemies.

 

I might keep playing, we'll see. Or maybe I should just admit that it might have fun moments but I don't want to waste time levelling up to the fun level (jesus how the hell? I forgot the word for when you just trudge through more and more fights for the sole purpose of leveling up). Maybe I should play Dark Souls instead, which I still haven't started.

[Erkki]

The game gets better when you get to the Sword Coast. Fights are still hard, but now I've learned the parry skill, which at least makes fights with humans a bit easier. I've put most of my glory points into Cunning to make better use of thievery and silver tongue, so I imagine someone who upgraded differently could be a decent fighter at the same point in the game.

[Erkki]

This game is probably the best Gothic / Risen game! The fact that it's separated into islands helps -- instead of one huge world, there are distinct smaller areas, each with its own theme, and they are still packed with lots of things to do. You can travel between them at will later in the game. Too bad it takes about 20 hours to get to the point where it Rises that high.

 

[edit] I don't want to keep bumping this thread so I'll just edit.

 

Just finished it! I think it is the best Risen / Gothic yet, but it still has the same problems. And the ones I mentioned about dialogues and animations -- I don't remember how bad it was in previous games but this time it was pretty bad, although I got used to it enough that it didn't distract much.

 

The quests are mostly boring or lacking inventiveness. There were at least 3 separate quest where you collected lost cargo crates or flotsam from the beach. Apparently nobody else was qualified to do that, including the merchants/storehouse keepers who desperately needed those crates and the soldiers with them.

 

But otherwise, the game did a nice job of matching the pirate theme to an RPG, with the monkeys and ships and treasure maps and crews and rum and voodoo and so on. Although voodoo was something I only used where the story or quest required it. Oh, and some of the Gnome characters are pretty cool!

 

For my playthrough the game actually seemed balanced (I started with putting most points to cunning, later upgraded blades and toughness). Sure, there's that huge boring part in the beginning where you are weak and can't improve quickly enough, but it actually makes sense! Only by the very end did I become so tough that I could take on almost everything, and even then fights drained me of resources (though I had some cash left over for selling final loot) -- and considering the story that makes sense. So it really gives you a feeling of moving from being a relative wimp to an epic hero. But on the other hand, didn't that exact story already happen to this character when he killed the titan in Risen 1? How did he become a wimp again?

 

Anyway, it was still good just for old times sake, but I'm not sure I would play another of these games (this one took 50 hours!) if they won't make any substantial improvements -- it's still pretty similar to the first Gothics in many ways.

[SilentBtAmazing]

Just started this, two hours in and it seems better than the original Risen. Playing on 360 so the graphics are horrible though.

[Ucantalas]

Bumpity bump.

Just got this a little while ago for PC, I've been playing it off and on for the past few days. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Just one question though: Is there any point in the game where you don't feel like you are completely broke and constantly scavenging everything for a little more cash? Its starting to get tiresome.

[Tanukitsune]

If memory serves me well you do eventually don't feel broke, but I can't remember when though.

[twmac]

Seeing Erkki's change over the series of posts has made me kind of excited to open my collector's edition of Risen 2 (I am playing it on X360 so I expect it to look poor).

 

I actually really liked the little I played of Risen and was charmed by its weirdness.

[SilentBtAmazing]

I loved Risen but I found the x360 version of Risen 2 broken / unplayable

Edit to explain: Dodge and Block were both inexplicably left out of the Risen 2 x360 port and they chose not to patch them in. I found that eventually the game was just unplayable without those, they were key parts of my Risen gameplay. Also: w t f