Risen

THE MOST UNINTERESTING / UNINSPIRED BORING PIECE OF TRASH I HAVE PLAYED YET!!!!!!!

nothing cool happens in this pile of crap. fetch quests and i could barely stay awake playing this. i only bought to make fun off cheep games but this one is so bland there is no possible sorce of dowpameen. its not even its age thats the problem cuzz this game was shat on when it launched back in the day

GOOOD!!!

If you are a fan of THQ Nordic and of Gothic1&2, play this game!

Very nice classic RPG, decent story, challenging, nice range of options to finish a quest. Immersive (albeit small) open world, atmospheric, especially when you see the npc's having dedicated cycles. A lot of good work went into making this a living world, where npc's remember your actions. For instance, when you kill someone on the street, bystanders will remember this and stop talking to you, which can ruin some quests. This is an immersion level which even some modern games lack.

I was surprised the game has full controller support, this makes it a perfect game for the Steam Deck. If you're playing this on PC, you can slightly improve the graphics by forcing FXAA in the Nvidia control panel (the game has no AA otherwise).

My only con is that the combat is a little clunky. Thankfully you can put anything on the hotbar, including potions and such, but using them locks you into an animation cycle, which can feel a little frustrating when you're being attacked. Also npc's can dodge lightning fast, which sometimes feels a little too fast. Also using spells is a little inconsistent as using the hotkey sometimes instantly 'unequips' the spell.

still works, big fun. me likey.

Chapters 3 and 4 discourage any desire to continue the game and reach the final, the most interesting chapter is only 1.

A worthy successor to Gothic.

Good melee combat, good follow-up on the "3 camps" Gothic formula, good exploration (not quite as good as Gothic 1 and 2, tbh, but still good), mostly good dialogs and voice acting and characters, pleasant background music, a different protagonist but still working out well, and some welcome improvements to QoL.

And speaking of VA, it has Cersei Lannister speaking as Patty.

The overall story isn't as good as I'd hope, and the very last stretch of the game including the boss fight is not the climax we'd hoped for. But the journey to get there is worth it.

(Unfortunately, it's the only game in the Risen series worth playing. Risen 2 has the distinct honor of being the only game that has ever managed to truly piss me off.)

Fair warning, I can't vouch for the Steam version, as I only ever played retail and GoG and I heard there's been some patch since then. Hopefully they didn't screw up too much.

Awesome open world exploring game

good game well played

I really like the Piranha Bytes games. I played through both elex games and risen 3 but the first risen was hard to get into. The start was rough and I was almost quitting. If I didn't know what to expect, I would never kept playing. But after a couple of hours the game opened up and I it was a great experience.

masterpiece

Fantastic game.
The combat is a bit bad, but the music, design and atmosphere reminded me of a time when games had soul.

This game released over a decade ago, and in my mind, it still holds up today -- provided you like janky old-school RPGs in the vein of the Gothic series. I'm too lazy to structure this like one of my normal reviews, and besides, there are probably 500 amazing YouTube videos on this game that you'd be better off watching. So I'll just make a bulleted list of some of the highlights.

The TL;DR, though? This is a damn good game if you like the Gothic series or Elex, and it recently got an update (enable the 'publicbeta' branch in the game's Steam settings -> Betas) that makes it work properly on modern systems.

Here's what I like about Risen:

- The game, even all these years later -- it was first released in 2009 (!) -- has impeccable atmosphere. The world feels dark, brooding, and moody. Rain and thunderstorms buffet the island on a daily basis, lending an oppressive, dangerous feel to your journeys.
- Exploration is awesome. You never know what's around the next corner; what's hiding in the next cave.
- Gear progression is simple and handcrafted. By this I mean every single piece of gear in the game has been manually placed throughout the world; there aren't RNG chances to get them, no varying quality levels, just simple, straightforward "You get this piece, you do this to get the next, better version" and so on.
- A real 'zero to hero' journey. As is the case with many PB games, you start out as a castaway; washed up on a remote island after you happened to stow away on a passing ship. You have no way of leaving the island due to the storms that terrorize it, and you have no money or equipment. Even an overgrown chicken or hedgehog can (and will) tear you to shreds. But, by the end of the game, you are overpowering all the foes that stand in your way (you'll still die; the game does not pull its punches in the damage department) and challenging the most powerful enemies in the realm with your weapon of choice. Personally, I favored 2H axes and crossbows, but swords and shields are fun, too.
- Surprisingly good english voice acting. I remember not liking it, for some reason, 10 years ago, but now...? Everyone honestly sounds really on-point and thematic for the world. Sometimes the delivery doesn't fit the tone of the situation, but just the quality, accents, etc. of the characters is very solid.
- Quests and reactivity. The quests in this game really rely on you to use your head. While they will occasionally mark things on your map (if they didn't, you'd never find certain key objects), they don't give you any quest arrows, and the marked locations aren't always exact -- sometimes it only points to the ENTRANCE to an area, and it's on you to figure things out from there. You'll also find that many quest-like sources of experience aren't even listed in your quest journal. Did you save somebody or find some item that you think could help someone you've met? Go talk to them -- there's a damn good chance they'll agree, and give you some unique dialogue, XP, and gold for it. You can also follow-up certain quests by returning to their quest-givers later, or going and tracking down people associated with it that may have moved around in the world. Usually the rewards for this are minor; just some minor XP or gold, but it's still cool to have so much unique dialogue.

That's about it. Hope this was helpful.

Very fun and involving, above all for the landscape and architecture that remind a Southern European country as Italy or Spain.

I have more hours than it shows since I played this offline when I had no internet for a while. I wanted to like it. There's good ideas here but it's too generic and too buggy to be worth the time investment it asks of you. I frequently had to reload my game because characters, including the main character, would turn invisible (but their weapons stayed visible). Combat isnt great either. It overall just feels like I'm playing a much worse version of Fable.

легендарная игра, надеемся на ремастер

Recommended only for hardcore RPG fans.
Otherwise the combat system is terrible and the quest system is frustrating.

Unfortunately Risen has not aged well, even though developers released major patch for game in Jan 24th, 2023. Nothing was adjusted or fixed gameplay wise.

I have played Risen back in 2009/2010 and back then I did not realize how bad combat really is, at least for melee character / warrior.

Right of the bat when player starts his journey there are 2 types of animals that their attacks cannot be blocked by pure weapon, they will always hit through if player tries to block with just sword, and in order to block these animal attacks you must find shield, in case you cannot find shield you will be able to purchase one in Don's camp only, but there is bit long road ahead to get there and there are plenty of these animals that can easily hit the player.

Alright so we established that these animals can get player, but worse to come, usually and in most cases these said animals are always in packs, that's right - in packs. Just in case you thought - "oh! lets use bow and kite them out one by one!" in that case I have to say that this strategy does not work in Risen, once you agroed one enemy rest will come in aid and player must fight 3 - 5 wolves at once which by the way can easily hit the player because their attacks cannot be blocked without shield.

Side steps!!! In Risen side steps and back steps are equivalent to dodge roll from Dark souls, this however does not help much because once you start to side or back step your camera will mess up your "locked on" target and will switch to different enemy with full hp instead of staying on the one that is already damaged. And there is no way to turn it off, so the game really screws melee characters. Lock ons are automatic.

You know which character can cake walk entire game? Ranged bow/crossbow or rather Mage character, mage can barrage enemies before they even get to you, does not matter how strong the enemy is, it will die in half way. Really balanced game.

Character calls out misleading information such as "I have to pick this or find a key", lets make it clear that this sentence is false because once you hear it, it only means that you have to find a key from somewhere because even with level 3 lock picking (max level) is not possible to pick that lock, why the hell he is saying "I have to pick it" if he actually can't pick it.

If you have decided to play purely as melee character you actually can't because game will force the player to use magic, which is stupid, more precisely craft scrolls which is considered magic otherwise player cannot progress into the game, why the hell I have to spend my learning points and gold to learn how to make scrolls and then purchase required tools for making scrolls? That is so stupid. Yes, i know you can buy them from mages but that also costs gold. Still it counts as using magic.

End game enemies such as lizard men are far too difficult because their AI is made to make player rage, when player attacks they block and right after they attack and hit the player, this is stupid as well, some enemies can break your block and sneak next hit while player recovers from broken guard, but the player cannot break guards for enemies, I even maxed out my sword mastery and there is nothing like that.

Some enemies can 4 hit combo the player, i mean if they can combo player with hits and player gets staggered while combod then why not just kill the player with infinite hits? Not a single enemy can be staggered while player can be, is that fair and balanced?

Yeah, I used to like Risen but now that I came back to it and realized how bad combat is for melee character I don't like it anymore.

Game crash at one point and cannot continue

Classic Game. I really liked it uo until the section where you have to gather all the Armor Parts for the final boss battle. After having countless hours of fun in funny conversations and battles around the harbor, all ur left with now is crawling through the same looking copy pasted Dungeons to get the armor parts. Game stops being enjoyable here. IDK why the devs decided to stop the roleplaying game right there and just let you crawl through dungeons and traps for the next 10 hours. Up until there its a really great RPG.

My all time favorite fantasy RPG. I really enjoy the story, map design, atmosphere of the game. You get several different options how to build your character. Great voice acting and soundtrack. Overall great experience, highly recommend to all RPG fans.

Best Gothic Game besides Gothic 2

mix of gothic 1, 2 and 3 with new graphic bit dumbed (gothic 3 fight mechanics - i prefer #1 & #2) except that new "unnamed" story looking at start in somehow gothic 1/2/3 setup with different names

One of the best Games on Steam

LATEST PATCH broke the game. Cannot hold block without going into parry right after.

Solution: Change to public beta branch, it fixes this issue.

Otherwise, fantastic game :)

Great game all around!

Игра хороша всем, все замечательно, кроме дизайна. Интересный сюжет, сложные бои, нормальная экономика, боссы в меру сложные. Но орги с волосатыми торсами, как у мужиков, и рядом диснеевские, мультяшные персонажи волков. Дамы с грудью, вываливающейся из корсета и бормочащие гномики, кидающиеся селедкой. Как говорят, или крестик, или трусы.

The best game in the series, must play.

Terrible old ui ruins the game. I could appreciate the old jank of the game if it wasn't so difficult to navigate the frickin menus.

Good old gothic game, better than most of these type of games in 2024. Ending is a little hokie.

This is my childhood game. I remember very fondly my father buying me a physical disc of it and I would spend the next New Year's Eve trying to speedun the game and getting into the bandits faction. Yes, the game is janky, story is full of plot holes, but I still replay this game like crazy, because it has soooooo much charm.

Look, it's an old game, but it's fun. It doesn't hold your hand, presents interesting puzzles, the story is interesting, and even though the graphics are 15 years old, it's fun.

Nice game!

while the new "update" kinda broke it by make you have to hold down the block button for over 2 seconds or else it just makes you parry and has you'er inventory all wonky it is still a game i have played and loved since i was ten and will forever have a place in my hart as one of the best RPG games i've ever played in one of the best RPG series i've ever played and should definetly be one of you're next wishlist games even if you'll definetly want to wait to see if they fix these critical issues

Before I played Risen, I had a small ******, no friends, depression and absolutely no life.
These things haven't changed, but the game is pretty good.

[quote]Fell free to visit my curator page for more charming games
“Don't Ask Questions, Just Consume Product and Then Get Excited”

Good: Compelling story and atmosphere, skilled realtime combat.
Bad: Cringe portrayal of women, lots of walking.

Absolutely

Changed my life.

2024 & still holds up.

Gut animals, prospect minerals, write spells, make jewelry, cook stews, craft potions, forge swords...

a neat little do-it-all rpg.

They don't make em like this anymore. Just finished my second playthrough, this time on controller; the game is absolutely great.

• Essential Zero to Hero power fantasy
  
• Funny dialogue (german VA is best)
  
• Challenging gameplay
  
• Atmospheric Music and FX
  
[*]Interesting setting and story

The same rough Diamond I remmeber so fondly.
Magic is OP, Melee is OK and DEX is useless...
Reading some of the negative reviews however,
shows the ignorance and stupidity of most "modern gamers".
Some complain about bugs that have been fixed in the beta pach, which you can download.
Others tell you to buy the original disk instead of the "broken" Steam version, even tho the OG 2009 release can also be downloaded over that same Steam beta function...
I remmember being told the joke "the only difference between an IT guy like you and other people, is that you know how to use google" seems all the more fitting these days.
The only legit new complaint of mine is, that the Gold Achievments cant be earned in a legit way.

All in All...
Great game, stupid players.
Nothing new.

This game got upgraded with controller support!
Pros:
+ beautiful artstyle, game environments, and visually pleasing graphics,
+ exploration, character skills, combat skills, looting, cooking, and more,
+ controller & SteamDeck support (DualShock4 using Steam Input).

Cons:
- combat will seem a little stiff and limiting at the start,

Classic. If I want a guilty pleasure and a creature comfort rolled into one - this is what I turn to. It's a bit antiquated but that's part of the beauty. There are no additional costs or any hidden expenses - its not paid to win, you buy it you get it. The story is incredible, the voice actors might be recycled a few times but you have an all-star lead, Andy Serkis, John Rhys-Davies, Lena Headey, etc.

It's a fun fantasy tale, with multiple options to chose through your play-through so you can come back from another style or story angle.

10/10 would recommend.

"Go on then, a beer, someone to punch, life doesn't get much better."

Gothic nostalgia hits hard

Played a lot of it in 2009 on my first Laptop. Holds up even today, although the best content the game has to offer is in chapter 1 & 2.

Rank gods-awful combat offset by climactic mood, quests, and strong, solid RPG foundations. 8+/10.

Rating: They didn't even try out of The company has fallen apart

gerat gam woud recomnd

Far and away the best of the Risen franchise. Highly recommended for RPG fans.