The original Risen was a fairly gritty, but actually pretty decent, RPG.  You would hope, then, that the sequel would be even better.  More polished, perhaps? Better combat (one of the weaker elements of the first game)? Professional voice actors maybe? You'd certainly expect it to build on the successes of the previous game in some way, especially in the light of some recent RPG game releases... sadly this isn't the case.

The setting is a little different, moving (slightly) away from the more typical fantasy setting and getting you involved with pirates and savages.  This should have been a perfect opportunity to set the game apart from the more traditional RPG settings with some gritty tales of battles on the high seas, plundering, sea monsters and treasure... sadly it seems like Piranha Bytes have just used it as an excuse to be abusive and sexist.  Not that I've got anything against a game that avoids the usual politically correct hurdles... but it seems to be there just for the sake of it.

The animations are laughable, with the main character's jump being a particularly chucklesome skip, and some really quite bizarre gesturing during conversations.  The combat is very hit and miss (if you excuse the pun) appearing to rely mostly on luck, rather than skill, although the latest patch does go some way to helping this by introducing blocking and dodging.  Quests within the game are fairly varied but often hit a stumbling block if you don't have the correct skills to complete them.  This wouldn't really be a problem if the skill trainers didn't charge such amazingly high prices.

Graphically, the game isn't actually that bad with the jungle setting offering some colourful vistas.  Night brings the necessary use of torches to light your way that then have to be dropped to engage in combat which can provide quite tense as things leap out of the darkness to attack you, which would be great if the combat was a little more skilled.

Overall, this was a missed opportunity.  Every now and then you get a glimpse of the game that should have been trying to break free... but it's simply not enough.  With titles like Skyrim, Kindoms of Amalur and The Witcher 2 released within recent memory and setting the bar so high, games like this need to have that extra level of time and polish to give them a chance to show they can compete.

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Welcome to Chaotic Good where we do our best to give you balanced and honest reviews, news and opinions of video, tabletop and RPG games, old and new.

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~ Naiboss