Junmarko
† Cristo è Re †
Couldn't get into Risen, it felt like a husk of a game - almost like it was done by another developer wanting to imitate Gothic.Welp, being midway into a re-play of G1 on the hot heels of having re-played Risen, after not having touched either of them for a few years, here are some observations:
1) G1 is really unpolished and uneven in terms of ingame content distribution, something that was fixed and not an issue in G2 and R1.
The placement of the monsters was very strange, they were very tightly packed together. It reminded me a lot of an MMO in that sense, and appeared like they were pushing the concept of grinding more than ever - to make up for lack of interesting side quests. I know it's nitpicking, but the art direction was also terrible and uninspired. Character design is hideous and has a Fable look to it...bleh. The aesthetic of the inventory icons has also clearly been traced from WoW - awful. The limitations of console hardware haven't helped it either, the island was the size of a golf course with pointless exploration and not helped by the lame pirate theme.
I'm sure Piranha Bytes went into the project with good intentions, but it seemed like they lost motivation early into development. They clearly took "bits" of Gothic 1 and 2 that people liked, peppered them into Chapter 1...and that's it. As soon as you leave Harbor Town, the fun ends. Your character's motivations are also just fairly non-existent, I liked that they alluded to the world being linked to Gothic, but other than the brief moment where it's hinted, nothing else story-wise is grabbing.
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