Did you ever hear the tragedy of Risen? I thought not, it's not a story Piranha Bytes would tell you...
RISEN 3: TITAN BALLS
Or something like that. With the... rousing end to Risen 3, my Risen journey is now finally over and if it ever sought to assuage an aging gamer's debilitating jadedness, it failed miserably. With the first Risen we had a sort of return to form for PB, where they obviously attempted to recapture the old wisdom and magic of Gothic I/II. While not perfect, it's a game well worth playing for any fan of the formula. Then came Risen 2 and comprehensively defecated over everything that was pristine and promising, hurling the ravaged carcass overboard so that the frenzied and invasive console school could chow down. What the fuck am I on about? Nevermind. The point is that we now had a franchise with no real identity, barely held together by borrowed and bland elements from games such as The Witcher and Skyrim. QTE bosses, twitchy combat designed for controllers and an overbearing sense of mediocrity. The quintessential PB experience has to be the in the value of exploration and while they never nailed down combat you could ignore it in favour of the world-building and the characters therein. Risen 2 and 3 has none of that. These games have plenty of people to talk to and do quests for but it's never interesting. It's just bland, almost aggressively so.
Risen 3 is like one of those weak farts that tries to slip under the radar but you can still smell that shit. Risen 2 was a whole shart committed right in the open. I can't really decide which is worse. The cardinal sin that was Risen 2's excuse for a combat system carries over to Risen 3, except now it seems worse somehow. The completely unreliable soft lock-on targeting system with roll dodging, a retarded corruption of Arkham's rubber-banding fighting mechanics, with a cyanide sprinkle of Skyrim (kill cams and all). The best way to describe the clusterfuck that is the combat is that it's the AI's world and you're just living in it. Add some of the worst and laziest AI programming you'll ever see in a game with any kind of budget and you have the perfect manifestation of Decline. Monsters, for example, will only ever notice you - even if you have several henchmen with you. The number of times I've seen monsters run past my entire team just to get to me is mind-boggling. However, if they're hit twice they will immediately switch focus. This goes for every hostile thing in the game. Additionally, I've seen enemies block attacks with their backs to me simply because they're in "block mode". Not to mention the innumerable times I've got stuck in the terrain while rolling around like Sonic. Things like that. Maybe there's some rhyme or reason to it but it's simply not worth the bother. The only reason I was able to get to the very end was because I was playing a magic-user and could often bypass melee. Companions will gladly watch on the sidelines as you get your ass kicked simply because their AI is broken. Anyone who wants to play this game has to install some kind of AI mod. Seriously. Not that the combat in itself is all that challenging, mind. Nothing is challenging in this game, apart from keeping your patience intact. Exploration is boring despite the pretty visuals simply because there's nothing interesting to discover. Chests contain random useless shit. The best weapons are all purchased. Buried treasure mean just more money, not that you'd actually need any more. Healing is trivial because there's so much food and drink available.
The voice acting is decent, I guess, but there's only so much you can do with a weak script. The voice actor for the main character speaks with a cartoonishly raspy voice, delivering an acting performance straight from 70's porn. The strange thing about that is that I actually started to appreciate it after a while. The grimdark voice acting seemed to channel my own feelings and it's obviously quite self-aware. The gameplay consists of travelling between boring islands - just like Risen 2. This routine is sometimes interrupted by so-called boss fights like fighting monsters out at sea and ship battles - which are all identical to one another and never deviate from the norm. There's really nothing to say about these events. Even the final boss was like an afterthought and then the game just ends abruptly. No fanfare or closure. Nothing. Just credits. Maybe that's for the best.
You know, people like to talk shit about Bethesda and BioWare which is fine, but they are mere acolytes compared to what PB exhibited with Risen 2 and 3. The sad thing about this is that PB actually has the ability to create something special. They obviously had the budget but maybe they were hamstrung by the publishers, I don't know. It is a tragedy nonetheless that the Risen series went down the latrine like it did, because it's easy to sense the potential when you play these games. They're very pretty games and sometimes immersive but when there's no depth to those visuals - what's the point? At the end of the day, Risen 2 and 3 are mere distractions for the very bored and the one positive thing I can say about them is that they're mostly SJW free. I'm a completionist at heart and that's the only reason I've seen the end of these titles. Now there's only ELEX left and by all accounts it seems PB has done some soul-searching and is heading back on track. Still, it's impossible to escape the fact that Risen 2 and 3 are without a doubt some of the worst entries in RPG history.