Risen - Review | A 10-Year Retrospective 

All RPG's should aim for.

It was alot better than Elex for sure.

Yep. Same. Elex was a step in the wrong direction imo, Risen was pretty much perfect to me, just pump out more Gothic clones and I'm happy :P

See how many think like us... Still they fked up Risen 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 XD

It's my favourite game of all time :)

There's some exploit I remember where you can infinitely kick the crap out of that guy that lives in the water house above the large bandit camp. You can farm exp for as long as you have the patience for. You could try that and then run through the rest of the game and be done with it. That's what I did.

The best way to play the game!

Wow I do the exact same thing lol, I've got like 90 hours in of Risen played and I've never got past the last 1/4 or so

When I haven't played Risen 1 for a while and when I come back I play the game until it's finished. I'm good or a day or 2 or 3 with some breaks of course and enjoying the OST and story (even though I heard for 10 years haha) but still fun to listen again if you haven't played for like 6 months

@@omegasupreme5527 additionally one guy (caspar in the german version, dunno what his name is in english) up in the fortress sells (as far as i could tell) infinite apples, probably cause you "need" 10 of them for a quest up there - so you can basically get infinite strength & gold :D only ever used the weed-trick tho

i loved his music in gothic 2

Tbh i hate the TES like camera in 3rd person, like moving mouse even when standing changes your direction. I wish it could be altered

@@alkaupadhyay7650 how is it "TES like" when PB been doing 3rd person rpgs since before Morrowind

@@ivarisalie8759 you replied to a 2yr old comment, and more people have played TES than PB 's games

And then they made Risen 2... and 3. It's like they forgot again what worked with the previous games and Risen 1. I don't get it. Is there another head of the studio that fucks everything up for them or what it's really bizarre. Because I thought that Risen 1 was really fun, especially the combat compared to Gothic 3.

​@@ogdamo3167 The drastic changes to Risen 2 and 3 might have something to do with the departure of Mike Hoge.

Time wasn't technically an issue. They were late on delivering and as you said underestimated the scope of the game, but it was the Publishers looking to have that bump and make investors "happy" that it got shoved out rather than letting them actually improve it.

Yes and Gothic 3 you were able to fight Orcs at level 0/1 or something without much gear to begin with. They dumbed the orcs way down and that they had to rush the game to finish it.. they should've made the orcs the same level as in Gothic 2... you can to cities and finish some quests for the people inside and in the meantime you gain more experience and you can level up more and you can finally pay for a better gear. So before you can take over a city you have to do some serious level up... I didn't feel it in Gothic 3.. the whole leveling up and getting a better gear wasn't really that important. It was just meh

@Corristo89 unfortunately PB did not participate in the development of Gothic 3. Jowood excluded them, that shit! www.piranha-bytes.com/docs/GothicGoetterdaemmerungPM-DE.pdf

that's just because he doesn't do videos about mainstream games.

Piranha bytes is also a criminally underrated team

@@kollanyidavid4422 They made two great games 18-19 years ago..

true , didn't expect such content.

@@Watchiratzuu It should be enough to give them some credit

Thanks

I deny the existence of 2 and 3

Come now. Is not that bad ^^. It have it own charm. Who not want to be a pirate, ARGH!!!

Risen 2 was truly abysmal with that stupid Pirates odf the Carribean flavour. The third part was alright.

@@viettrungtran4500 I see it a bit like you. Risen 2 and 3 are not what I wanted the series to become after I played Risen 1. I don't understand why they changed the setting in R2. Imo it would have been much better and more interesting to explore the devistated medieval wasteland of the mainland and explore the lore of the lost kingdom than this pirate things. It just feels wrong and does not really fit with Risen 1. Why are there muskets now? Why does the Inquisition hate magic now? I know there is an ingame explanation, but come on. Developing new gun powder weapons that work this good in a time span of approximately 10 years while the world is being destroid by titans? No... That said gameplay-wise I think PB tried a lot of new things, especially in Risen 2, that can be nice. (Ingame Cutscenes, Story, new talents like silver tongue or monkey trainer) I think Risen 2 has the best directed story of all PB games with many twists and really interesting gameplay mechanics like the voodoo dolls. But on the other side they abonded too much of what was the soul of their previous games. Risen 2 feels completely different. Questmarkers, quick travel, you CAN'T loot defeated human NPCs and you CAN'T kill them (WTF), no interaction with the world (You can't sit on chairs etc.), no eating and drinking animations AND a paused inventory, minigames (although I found them to be quite funny), quick time events, a really REALLY linear game world, no free climbing, an even more simplified magic system than in Risen 1 (You can't even call it a proper magic system. There are only like two permanent spells and no mana bar), a strange combat system (muskets were broken in Risen 2 and melee combat was buttonsmashing) Risen 3 tries to be something between Risen 1 and Risen 2 and gameplay-wise I think it is better than Risen 2. But it is still too similar to please the oldschool PB fans and somehow it is also in a weird spot where I think it does not really know what it wants to be. Oh and the story is just uninteresting and has logical errors. (Why does Mendoza have a completely different character now? Why is Patty looking completely different?) But the world itself was much more interesting to explore and had really cool locations and loot. But still I had fun when playing these games and I could still feel the charme of PB here and there. But I never got myself to play them for a second time. Maybe in the future.

Risen 2 and 3 are not at all bad. They did mess up with the combat system, especially in 2, but the part that always mattered for PB, the world design, is as good as ever. I would, in fact, say that Risen 3's world design is better than 1, because the locations are highly diverse and you don't spend as much time in dungeons. They also have much better main characters after the bland blank slate of the first game, and better characters in general. In fact, Risen 2's version of the nameless hero is leagues above even the Gothic's version, let alone the first game's. Also, the setting in 1 is extremely vague and undefined, while in later games they did a lot to make it distinct. Risen 2 also has some of the best quests in the series, and I'm of course talking about the voodoo possession ones.

To be clear, my complaint isn't just "they don't follow any sort of predictable pattern," but that their animations are so fast and so incredibly random that you can't make informed decisions during the battle, because there's barely any warning of what they're going to do, or that they're even going to do anything at all. In other words, it's one thing for enemies to do different things and be unpredictable, so that you can't know in advance what they're going to do, before they do it, but it's another for everything to be so fast and so random and so unpredictable that you can't even tell what they're doing as they're doing it. As such, the learning curve and skill threshold are lowered significantly because the game simply doesn't give you enough information to take advantage of the combat system as a player, so that you can make smart decisions or quick reactions; against certain enemies, everything feels like a wild guess, which makes landing hits and taking damage feel random and unsatisfying. In short, the enemy AI can be as random and variable as they want, following no discernible patterns whatsoever, as long as there are sufficient "wind up" and "cool down" animations that you can learn how to read as a player, to be able to perform better at the combat system. That's what makes the Souls combat so satisfying for so many people; because enemies give subtle little tells indicating what they're about to do, and so there's a learning process with each enemy where have you have to learn how to recognize and differentiate different types of animations, and then pair those animations with their subsequent attacks. Enemies typically have enough different types of attacks, with similar-but-different-looking wind up animations, that it takes several encounters with them before you can even start to see the full picture, and it takes trial-and-error thereafter to really get the hang of things, but then the level design and enemy placement continually changes and evolves to put you in different scenarios where those enemy attack patterns will play out a little differently. Plus, they have enough different types of attacks that they can do different things in different orders so you can't know exactly what they're going to do a few seconds in advance, so that a similar fight against the same enemy will still play out a little differently. Point is, in the Souls games, you learn and improve as a player by deciphering the enemies' movesets -- by making keen, perceptive observations and learning to associate certain tells with certain outcomes, and using deductive reasoning to determine the best response for each stimulus. The better you get, the faster you can recognize what they're doing and react accordingly, but you're always given that opportunity to see what they're doing (or about to do) before the attack hits. As compared to Risen, where enemies just seem to launch into random attacks with zero preparatory animations that connect in only six animation frames, sometimes happening so fast that you literally can't process what's happening until after it's already finished, where your only hope is to pre-emptively guess that they *might* be attacking in the next 0.73 seconds so that your dodge move can be sufficiently out of the way of their attacks, without being 0.21 seconds too fast that their perfect tracking spins them around to hit you, or 0.21 seconds too slow that they hit before your fingers finish executing the dodge input. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but that's kind of how it feels compared to other games, and why I find Risen's combat a little lacking in comparison.

Though Risen 1 has some really good voiceacting and this is coming from a fellow german^^

@@sapiensfromterra5103 I mean Lena Heady (Cercei Lannester ) is is one of the voices which is so awesome

For me the graphics looks like Oblivion and Skyrim combined, in a good way ofc :D hell, still played it to this day just walkin around the world with some of my most fav elder scrolls ost collections, the feelings man...

You should play From Softs games lol

oh please. you got all the gears that was needed and the weapon to finish it off. Your little sword wouldn't affective... you had to search these gears and weapon for a reason. Yes the battle can be boring but at least the game has a final boss and it felt good finishing it off

I disagree though. You're fighting a Titan. With right equipment you were able to finish the boss. your mortal powers alone weren't enough. They might could've added some stats to the weapon if you had more STR points invested to beat the boss a bit faster. But if we were overleveled and finished the boss with some magic and a few hits we also would complain how easy it was. This setup was the best to end an game

@@capcom23 it was not the best setup to beat the game. A friend of mine only played bow gun and his combat skills were pretty shit. He still won against the titan because the battle was boring and not a great end to a good game.

I killed the skeleton dragon in gothic 2 with two shots with that anti-undead paladin rune.

I killed the skeleton dragon in gothic 2 with two shots with that anti-undead paladin rune.

I love how at the end of Risen your character is strong enough to fight an army of lizardmen and a Titan but then Risen 2 comes along and PUFF, magically you're useless again with no fuckin explanation. At least in Gothic 2 they explained it with the resurrection.

@@paweklejna5812 they even managed to get an explanation why it happened in Gothic 3 - where Pirates steal your ship and equipment and once again you have to start from scratch

Risen 2 was cute though and it gave me a summer feeling exploring the island and the whole atmosphere with the great OST got me there. Risen 3 didn't do anything for me.. and I was done with the pirate theme around that time and we had to go again like an annoying pirate with a lot of curse words in it. I prefer Risen 1 and 2 next to gothic 1 and 2. Risen 3 and Gothic 3 can be flushed

Rating on point. I do like the pirate theme but the execution wasn't particularly good. I did however enjoy Risen 3, it had the same feeling of exploration that I remember from older PB games. Also - being a voodoo pirate and flying as a parrot over the jungle felt awesome. Gothic 3 has one of the best soundtracks ever whether it be in games or movies/TV shows.

I love how no one even mentions Gothic 4.

Risen 3 is ok, I think they develope some style only in that game, while first was copy of the gothic 1 and 2 and second was an experiment of some sort

I love all PB games and I'm a fan of the first hour. Surprising is here for sure that Risen 2 is one of my favorite! I know this opinion is rare, but I love this flair of a lot of islands. All of this islands had another feeling.

@@adlidetstudios7889 I can't say that risen 2 is my favorite, but it's not a bad game for sure, I enjoyed it from start to the very end. I think the main problem with this game is that they switched the setting from ordinary fantasy to pirate theme very quickly. It's like a few years from the first game and everybody shooting from guns. But the game itself was pretty nice

@@MsVector666 For me is Patty the main problem. This girl is very annoying, just to bring her in the kitchen for work was a good moment 😁

@@adlidetstudios7889 that's right😂

I'm fairly sure he's on some sort of black list - black hole of youtube. We already had english(or at least english speaking) youtubers making videos about Gothic and gathering a lot of views, yet there we have TNR with his upstanding quality reviews yet not gathering nearly as much praise, which just keeps me wondering, why?

Its because he's having lets plays and video essays in the same channel.

Would be nice but it would require so much more thought to be put into level design and writing. Often quests are designed with the quest marker in mind in the first place.

Well, if he couldn't control the titan then everyone would have died.

@@thebandofbastards4934 but they all will when the titans come too.

@@HallyVee The titans didn't invade the island because the fire titan was locked inside it. Setting it free would give them the oportunity to attack.

Your comment has disappeared. Yes I understand that Mendosa knew that. He also knew the rest of the entire world had zero chance. And likely this island as well, eventually.

it is like the plot from Watchmen: Sacrifice Millions - To save Billions

and you like to use an axe? To me it felt slow... you had to gain like 6 levels at least to be able to perform fast attacks. i went back to swords due the speed

@@capcom23 played again with sword, much better indeed

Have you played Gothic 1 or 2?

CESSKAR No, not yet. I have only played Risen trilogy, and Elex.......

@@AmitDas-lz3bx Try gothic 1 and especially 2 , and u'll see even more immersion and progression than in risen

@@mariusbalan9124 That would depend on nostalgia and love for a certain game. Sometimes nothing can compete with your first love.

lul

You don't just imagine things there. It is confirmed that Risen in it's early development was meant to be a sequel of Gothic 3.

Preach baby.

Don't know, I do think Risen 3 is the worst of the series, yes, maybe it has improvements over the 2nd, but at the same time it lost all of the remaining charm of the series. Risen 3 wasn't even concludes the story, it just a big pile of mess imo.

@@Pmurder3 I never really saw Risen 3 as something that's supposed to conclude the story. Just something that implied that the Hero from Risen 1 isn't the only one capable of killing titans which solidifies the ending of Risen 1 "Humanity has Risen". Also I doubt you can make a satisfying ending to the series since there are no big stakes. There is no Titan leader, no evil gods, once you kill the remaining titans nothing will happen. Showing that there are multiple individuals who are able to lead humanity into the future is the best ending they could've chosen in my opinion.

and thats why constantino will always be a don! haha

yep... just found this out. very disappointing.

Risen would certainly fit that bill. The developers' other games (Gothic 1+2, Elex) would also be worth considering as they all emphasize a steeper progression curve with zero scaling so that you can feel more of that rewarding "zero to hero" effect as you level up and improve your character.

You can also try Chronicles of Mytrana if you haven't already. If you have Skyim I would recommend the Enderal mod as well, no level scaling and harder than vanilla Skyrim.

I'm definitely planning to review both Risen 2 and 3. I've been taking a short break from the Gothic/Risen catalogue to play a few other games lately, but plan to get back on track with some more of Piranha Bytes' games once my next review is out.

@@TheNocturnalRambler wow, I wasn't expecting a reply haha I'm glad people are still keeping the Gothic games alive and talked about. The Risen series was a... Interesting experiment, though they are personally my least favourite PB games to date. Can't wait to hear your opinions on Risen 2 and 3. So far many of your reviews have echoed my own thoughts.

@Whitie me to there is one more youtuber that does piranha bytes games in same order

Yeah, that review was the first one Joe made that I really disliked. I remember he and Zeitgeist Reviews were like the only two english speakers to even talk about this game. Now I feel old.

Angry Juan was never good

well, in his defense he did play on the console version which has absolutely horrendous controls and bugs

Gamesweasl hated too. Said Fallout 3 was better.......I wish i was jokeing

@@nihlus9589 Not really an excuse. He didnt understand core elements of the game. He complained literally that this game made you think what to do next without a glowing questmarker and that it didnt pause when you open the map. Overall he strongly damaged this franchise by also later becoming devoted to always trash on these games which most likely strongly affected the sales of these games negatively in the west.

Lol that's super specific.

@@FranzBinder20 it's always good to be precise, my friend.

Show me your wares!

I enjoyed it, on 360 at that!

Ahh If you mean the lizards then yes, Ursegor controls them. It is said so when you meet him.

Risen 2 was definitely a step down from the first game. It really seemed like they had a good foundation with Risen, and could've just taken the Gothic 2 approach and kept the same basic gameplay and simply expanded the scope of the game, polished up some of its rougher design elements, and added some new features, and it would've been great. Instead they decided to scrap basically everything from the first game and reinvent the wheel with Risen 2, which turned into more of a clunky octagon than a wheel. I was so thoroughly underwhelmed by Risen 2 when it first came out that I couldn't even write a proper review of it. Risen 3 gets a bad rap from people, but at the time it came out I actually thought it was fairly decent -- definitely not as good as Gothic 1 or 2, or even the first Risen, maybe, but it was certainly an improvement over Risen 2. The biggest issue is that it felt like it was still retaining some of the Risen 2 influence, and therefore felt more like a better version of what Risen 2 could've been, as opposed to what Risen 3 should've been. It's been so long since I've played Risen 2 or 3, though, that I don't remember too much about either one, and those opinions may not be entirely accurate. I plan to replay both games in the near future, though, so we'll see how well they hold up on replay and further scrutiny.

@@TheNocturnalRambler Well, I´ll have to play risen 3 and see for myself, the gameplays I watched always looked fairly good. It doesn´t look so bad so, we´ll see!!

and the OST. Will take you into the whole island spooky atmosphere. That's why I like Risen 1 and when you enter caves... some dark OST playing totally captures the amazing game atmosphere. I play each year

It constantly feels like you're going down a corroder even in the so called "open areas." Definitely was developed with the limitations of the xbox 360.

I was playing both games with DX11 mods installed, which greatly enhance the lighting and apparently also come with higher-resolution textures. I thought they made the games look a lot better while still retaining the same visual style of the originals -- a lot of other graphics overhauls change so much that it stops feeling like Gothic. I eventually had to uninstall it on my Gothic 1 playthrough, however, because somewhere around Chapter 4 or 5 it started causing the game to crash any time I warped anywhere, so unfortunately it's not exactly stable.

Got the entire OST on my phone :) So atmospheric.

@@dailywarcraftreforged9816 Hey, sorry but what is OST? I´m german, so sorry for my english :)

@@TheWave0fDoom89 Es bedeutet: Original-Soundtrack :)

Daily Warcraft Reforged na gut dann auf deutsch, danke 😅🙂

@@TheWave0fDoom89 No problemo, I taught myself Deutsch when I was 10, but never been there :D

I recommend you patch it to 1.10 (official) + 1.3 (unofficial) for lesser amount of bugs.

Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed it. As for your question: In this specific example, "an enemy that is unpredictable and keeps you on your toes the whole fight." However, that comparison is disingenuous to Souls combat because it takes A LOT more than 10 seconds to learn enemy attack patterns in those games (some bosses take people an hour or more to get the hang of), and the enemies have enough different types of moves that you can never be 100% certain what they're going to do until they do it, with also enough different types of enemies placed in unique combinations in unique level designs that lessons learned in one encounter don't necessarily carry over to future encounters, such that you're always encountering new things and thus having to learn new things. In reality, MOST fights in Souls games keep you on your toes the whole fight, anyway, but they at least give you the ability to be able to learn and improve against them as opposed to just being completely random the whole time.

@@TheNocturnalRambler risens combat isnt random tho, there is a certain set of moves an enemy has at their disposal that you need to look out for, and there are things they tend to do in tandem, like counter---> combo. and yes, the animations are super fast, but I didnt find em too fast to react if you try real hard. its fun and exiting to me, unlike Souls where everyone moves like theyre trapped in jelly and does these wide overswings that just look dumb. this would imo be even more out of place in games like gothic 1+ 2 + risen that value immersion a lot. are you sure youve put the same effort into mastering this combat as you have with Souls? because I remember clearing the pass to the valley of mines on lvl 0 with a stick back in the day, or beating Sentenza on lvl 5.

Predictability certainly CAN be an issue, but I think that being able to learn enemy attack patterns so that you can react appropriately and make smart decisions makes combat more inherently satisfying because there's an actual learning process where you, as a player, improve as you learn how different enemies act. There *should* be an element of player skill involved in action-based combat systems, and the personal skill threshold is significantly lowered if things feel too random and unpredictable because there's less information to learn. Gothic 1 and 2 strike a pretty good balance because the AI has enough exploitable movesets that, once you learn how they work, you can handle most enemies reasonably well, but they still practically require you to be certain levels with certain stats to handle tougher enemies by virtue of the extreme damage thresholds that cause you to do zero damage unless you're above the threshold. The Soulsborne games, for instance, can all be beaten at level 1, but only if you're REALLY good at them and REALLY understand the enemies' movesets. Those games are immensely popular, mostly because of how satisfying the combat systems are, which is in large part because of how responsive everything feels -- they reward smart play specifically because of how predictable the enemies are once you've actually learned their patterns. When you die or get hit, it's usually your fault, and you can improve your play by learning from the experience. It's satisfying when you do well because it's a direct result of your skill and input, and when you die there's usually a lesson learned about what NOT to do. In Risen, success and failure feels much more random, and therefore less in your control, because enemy attacks are so fast and inconsistent that you don't get enough information to see what they're doing to be able to react to them in time, or to learn what not to do when you die. Obviously, you don't want things to be so predictable that they lose any degree of challenge, but you also don't want them to be so unpredictable that the player can't learn or develop a skillful rhythm.

@@TheNocturnalRambler I disagree. Gothic 1 and 2 were both hard.. even the early monsters on your path they could kill you with just a few hits. You don't need to learn the enemy move of course... it's all about power in these series. you will be rewarded for your level up and getting better gear. This is surely not a game for noobs.. go play oblivion or skyrim.. there is no need to level up at all since all monsters scales with you. I would hate Risen/gothic series as oblivion. You will have to know when you can approach a monster or not. you will learn it the hard way and that's by attacking a random monster (on your first try) you will be killed. You will be more aware and more focused. I love the risen/gothic series for this reason alone. You have to finish quests and join a faction to get better armour and you will be rewarded later since you will be ready and kill every monster you come across

They're on my to-do list, but I've been taking a short break from Gothic/Risen to play a couple other games. Once I get reviews out for those other games I'll get back on track with the rest of the PB catalogue.