Thoughts on the Risen trilogy?

[Miserable Panda]

Hey guys, just read that a new studio will be working on the Gothic remake. Although I don't really have any thoughts on the matter, it reminded me that I never finished the Risen trilogy. I really enjoyed the first one, as flawed as it was, but I keep reading that the rest of the trilogy (especially Risen 2) is...not so good.

Wanted to know what you think, as you rarely failed me before. I've already played Elex, and it was a blast. Want to feel something like that once again.

 

[Jezal_k23]

1st one: good.
2nd one: shit.
3rd one: shit.

 

[JDR13]

I think most people would agree that Risen 2 & 3 were a bit of a decline from Risen. They're still worth playing though.

Risen 2 has the worst level design of any PB game, and the exploration isn't up to their usual standards. Risen 3 improved on that, but I thought it felt a little generic overall, and it's kind of bloated too.

 

[Murk]

1: good
2: not worth unless you're going through withdrawals; actually has some decent jokes though
3: actually pretty decent game (good for what it is with a little bonus) but not quite up to par with g1/2, r1, or elex.

Things I liked about Risen 3: parrot flight, most of the magic system ("melee magic" was neat, hope to see more), bright and colorful world (mostly), Patty not being a cunt, Bones, dank voodoo pirate vibe, the unlocking spell which works tremendously well in this game's setting/system, Calador island.

 

[Tigranes]

G1, G2, R1 & Elex are the golden ones. The other PB games will give you fleeting momentary glimpses of what they offered, but never consistently. That may or may not be worth a playthrough depending on how you're feeling.

R2/3 I did enjoy playing through once as a kind of... it's like someone made a Piranha Bytes spinoff with some entertaining over-the-top stylisation with PIRATES!, but suffers from kind of broken, messed up mechanics. The stew looks the same as the recipe and it has all the ingredients it's supposed to have, but everything about it is a little bit off....

 

[Ravielsk]

The whole Risen trilogy is a exercise in "Dont fix what isn't broken." The first game was a solid start, it was effectively both a reboot and a continuation of Gothic(PB at this time lost the rights to the IP) both mechanically and story wise. In many ways Risen 1 was effectively the game Gothic 3 was supposed to be. Yes, it was rough around the edges in places but still it was a solid foundation for future... or it would be were it not for the Xbox360 port. That port was just objectively bad, filled with both visual glitches and bugs it was just a terrible version of the game and became the source of pretty much 90% of the criticism the game received(I recommend watching Angry Joe review to get a fell for how busted it was). Also this was happening in 2009, so whole 2 years before it Dank Souls made it cool for games again to expect the player to play them so much of that criticism was also about the difficulty.
This caused the subsequent sequels to take on a dramatically different direction that was... well lets not mince words here a objective failure. Mainly because they were effectively handled the same way as shadow of the Raven was handled in G2, or more specifically as the pirate sections of that expansion were handled... as a joke. The games are written with this I dont even know what to call it "wannabe cheeky" tone that completely undersells the actual plot. Which was fine for a small sub-section of a smaller expansion but when you stretch it out across a whole game it stops being charming and becomes tiresome. Every character is essentially a caricature, a parody but a incredibly basic one even the main villains come off as disingenuousand and non-threatening(the cheap voice acting really did them no service here).

 

[luj1]

Risen is skippable trash

Waste of time

 

[Old Hans]

the first game is fun. I never played the others.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Risen 1 is okay, but repetitive compared to Gothic 2 especially. In Risen 2 the pirate setting finds its distinct voice. The game is linear and exploration is worse, but the story is stronger and the dialogues are hilarious (Jaffar, fuck yes!).

I did not play Risen 3 yet, but from what I've read it's a synthesis of 1&2. Will have more to report in a month, when I get to try it out.

 

[Darth Roxor]

r1sen is p good

however ri2en and ris3n are both abominations that should be purged from memory

and before some idiot talks you into trying them because lol woss the worst that can happen i recommend my revios on the matter:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8277
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9614

 

[True Ukrainian]

Risen 3 is Gothic light. It has most of the elements present in Gothic, but also with a much lower difficulty. There's very little challenge in the game.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Risen 1 is okay, but repetitive compared to Gothic 2 especially.

It's a perfectly servicable game, but it's basically just Gothic 2 only with a far less interesting (in fact, generic) setting, a smaller world, and slightly better graphics. More Gothic 2 is probably what people wanted after Gothic 3, but I remember almost everything about Gothic 2, yet have nearly forgotten most of Risen 1. It's not a terribly original or memorable game.

Never played R2, R3, or Elex because I'm kind of bored with the PB formula. Elex is one of those games I always think I might play at some point, but I always push back to play something else.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Risen 3 is Gothic light. It has most of the elements present in Gothic, but also with a much lower difficulty. There's very little challenge in the game.

Is there challenge in Gothic? The biggest issue I have with the Gothic games is that their ostensibly open worlds always end up being pretty linear, it's just that their linearity is enforced by difficulty level of enemies as opposed to barriers or walls. Yes, most of the enemies in the game will insta-kill you at first, but you quickly figure out that's only because the game doesn't want you to fight those enemies yet. Frequently in Gothic, a single level up is all it takes to make the difference between beating a monster endlessly to no effect, and dispatching it fairly quickly.

The end result is that you end up being railroaded along a fairly contained path which is actually pretty easy as long as you stick to it, as the game really doesn't require that you handle anything before you are able to.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Risen 3 is Gothic light. It has most of the elements present in Gothic, but also with a much lower difficulty. There's very little challenge in the game.

Is there challenge in Gothic? The biggest issue I have with the Gothic games is that their ostensibly open worlds always end up being pretty linear, it's just that their linearity is enforced by difficulty level of enemies as opposed to barriers or walls. Yes, most of the enemies in the game will insta-kill you at first, but you quickly figure out that's only because the game doesn't want you to fight those enemies yet. Frequently in Gothic, a single level up is all it takes to make the difference between beating a monster endlessly to no effect, and dispatching it fairly quickly.

The end result is that you end up being railroaded along a fairly contained path which is actually pretty easy as long as you stick to it, as the game really doesn't require that you handle anything before you are able to.

Risen 3 tries to use the same system, but because of how easy to bait the AI is, you can easily thrash enemies at a much higher level than you. This effectively allows you to go wherever you want.

 

[Sweeper]

The first one was fairly good, until the last chapter. The character progression and itemization kinda sucks, but it has a fun open world with excellent design.
Also, if the Gothic remake ever sees the light of day, I'm calling it right now, Risen is better.

 

[Joggerino]

Really liked Risen 1. Due to a bug i did both story lines in a single play-through and really enjoyed the magic academy one. Unfortunately i found Risen 2 to be so shit that i didn't even try playing Risen 3.

 

[Nikanuur]

I love all that PB did. All their games have their soul-print. Risen 1 was arguably best, but I really liked Risen 3. Mainly because of Bones. That guy's voiceover and humour elevated any situation.

 

[Nikanuur]

Risen 3 is Gothic light. It has most of the elements present in Gothic, but also with a much lower difficulty. There's very little challenge in the game.

Sadly this may be somewhat true. It wasn't very hard once you got more into fights.

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

Risen 3 is Gothic light. It has most of the elements present in Gothic, but also with a much lower difficulty. There's very little challenge in the game.

Sadly this may be somewhat true. It wasn't very hard once you got more into fights.

It was pretty easy to max all skills in the game and make the combat completely pointless (I killed the last boss before he could even attack me by blasting his ass non-stop with my guns), but it is definetly a fun game.

 

[Dodo1610]

There is really no need to call it a trilogy since the PB clearly never plans ahead. Most of from Risen 1 plot gets ignored and they even change the Setting. Even the protagonist looks and talks completely different in Risen 2 for absolutely no reason. They are 3 games with a few returning characters and ideas. Just start with Risen and try Risen 2 if you really want to, it's not like these games are expensive or hard to get today.

 

[ㅤㅤㅤ]

Thanks to the Elex 2 hype I have picked up the Risen trilogy and just finished the first game. It's vaguely like I remember Gothic being in 2001 but the scope and ambition is off the rails. Risen came out after Piranha Bytes had gotten a bad reputation due to Gothic 3. The premise and setting is far too much for the devs to chew, they went from an isolated prison colony to these huge ideas. It's set after the götterdämmerung, mankind has kicked the Olympian host off the mountain but the magic used has awakened the titans that had previously been sealed away by the gods. That's not a story you can tell with what is practically the same mechanics as in Gothic 1, but here we are.

Even if that is mostly used to give context to the plot and keeps to the background I liked the more pulpy presentation, ancient temples shooting up through the ground like mushrooms and spewing out the ancient lizard lords who have come back to reclaim the surface world. I went for the mage route since I had a feeling that it would end up with grindy and samey enemy spam towards the end and was proven right. Becoming a mage scales perfectly with the quality curve of the game, at the start anything can beat you up easily and you have to take full advantage of the combat system to prevail. Towards the third chapter you get your mage training and then quickly fuel up your very own magic machine gun and mow down all the lizards that either hide in their temples or invade the surface.

There were three issues I found with the game, the first being a bug that would launch the player up into the void so hard you couldn't even launch the pause menu and reload a save. The other two relates to the ending, there seems to have been some kind of cut choice towards the end, because you're led to believe there will be a final choice but it never comes. Either Piranha Bytes ran out of budget or they got enough pre-orders that a sequel had been greenlit and they didn't want to offer branching endings. The second issue with the ending is that the end boss is terrible. I remember the sleeper being underwhelming, but it might actually have been better than whatever this was.

The game world size also gets in the way towards the end, there's not much new to do in most places, you only fight off lizards in the monastery when the gates open and that's pretty much it. The player might as well have been locked up in the lizard fortress at the end-game.

Despite the flaws it was a fun and solid game, just like in Gothic you feel very vulnerable at early levels and it does character progression in a way that is felt. Let's see if Risen 2 shits the bed or not.

 

[Falksi]

• Risen 1 is decent enough, but I struggled with it as it just felt like an inferior version of Gothic to me.

• Despite the hate it gets, I think Risen 2 is fucking brilliant. It's not a well designed game at all, and to get much out of it you have to play it like a shooter choosing the gunplay path. But the humour and banter are absolutely bang on, as are the characters too. It helps that it has mild sexism and racism thrown in there for good measure. Meeting Jaffar is a great moment.

• Risen 3 is shit as it loses all the funny dialogue and takes itself way to seriously, but forgets to improve the gameplay too.

 

[NerevarineKing]

I thought Risen 1 was great and a lot better than Gothic 3 at least. It has a lot of the stuff that I loved about Gothic 1/2, but it doesn't quite reach the quality of those games. Risen 2 is a good game and at least better than G3. I lost interest in Risen 3 after a few hours.

 

[Nikanuur]

• Risen 1 is decent enough, but I struggled with it as it just felt like an inferior version of Gothic to me.

• Despite the hate it gets, I think Risen 2 is fucking brilliant. It's not a well designed game at all, and to get much out of it you have to play it like a shooter choosing the gunplay path. But the humour and banter are absolutely bang on, as are the characters too. Mild sexism and racism get thrown in there for good measure too. Meeting Jaffar is a great moment.

• Risen 3 is shit as it loses all the funny dialogue and takes itself way to seriously, but forgets to improve the gameplay too.

Let me call my friend Bones. He will make you make amends for your saying, you'll see. Through the sockets of a hollow skull, you'll see, muhehehe MWAHAHAHA.

 

[ㅤㅤㅤ]

Update: They shat the bed hard in terms of combat in Risen 2, but they have turned up the charm when it comes to the characters. I'll try to stick with it despite the game devolving into a roll and shoot simulator instead of having surprisingly good melee combat.