Is this game as bad as the others?

[Puntocyaim]

Same ole same ole?

[Netherseid]

Same as the others. Dreadful game. Be aware that there are some posters here (most likely devs) who swears that this is the best rpg ever and will not fail to insult anyone who criticizes their beloved game. Unlike the original Gothic 1 and 2 which were great for their time, the Risen series are a joke among a good number of reviewers.

When the game first launched, we all had a good time trying to pick someone to review it and ended up doing rock paper scissors. No one wanted to review it, but we had to.

Take the devs of Bound by flame, Spiders. Now their games aren't exactly setting metacritic on fire, but with each game they made, we could tell they really learned from the last one and really tried to improve and change.

For some bizarre reason, Risen devs dont' care about changing or evolving their outdated game design.

Boring main character
Plotlines that never pulls you in or touch your emotions
Cliched sexist characters and little to no well written female characters
same crappy combat systems and animations in all games
Bo real sense of difficulty. The only difficulty in the game is due to how severely underpowered you are, the enemy stunlocks and the terrible slow animations that screws you over and over again.

Basically, they just never learn and they fail to evolve and only stick to outdated mechanics and game design over and over again. They've been making the same games over and over again. They do know how to design beautiful worlds, but fail to add anything interesting in them.

The risen defense force will of course come in, but who gives a flying crap anyway.

[Carver]

I like how you make out us who like the games to be the anti-christ simply for being positive about it, while you are acting like this is the worst game in existence.

Going back on topic;
Obviously from the title you didn't liked previous PB games, whereas this game follows the exact same formula. You might as well skip the game.

[xsys]

I'm not sure what the hate is about but you should just ignore it.

This game was better than Risen 2 imo (and runs better as well). Give it a chance. It certainly is a good looking game with varied environments to explore. Combat is similar to Risen 2.

Not that Risen 2 was bad (per se) but it was not as compelling as this. Risen 1 I never finished but had an interesting rpg system...still have it installed and go back to it once in a while.

[Puntocyaim]

Originally posted by Darksyn:

Same as the others. Dreadful game. Be aware that there are some posters here (most likely devs) who swears that this is the best rpg ever and will not fail to insult anyone who criticizes their beloved game. Unlike the original Gothic 1 and 2 which were great for their time, the Risen series are a joke among a good number of reviewers.

When the game first launched, we all had a good time trying to pick someone to review it and ended up doing rock paper scissors. No one wanted to review it, but we had to.

Take the devs of Bound by flame, Spiders. Now their games aren't exactly setting metacritic on fire, but with each game they made, we could tell they really learned from the last one and really tried to improve and change.

For some bizarre reason, Risen devs dont' care about changing or evolving their outdated game design.

Boring main character
Plotlines that never pulls you in or touch your emotions
Cliched sexist characters and little to no well written female characters
same crappy combat systems and animations in all games
Bo real sense of difficulty. The only difficulty in the game is due to how severely underpowered you are, the enemy stunlocks and the terrible slow animations that screws you over and over again.

Basically, they just never learn and they fail to evolve and only stick to outdated mechanics and game design over and over again. They've been making the same games over and over again. They do know how to design beautiful worlds, but fail to add anything interesting in them.

The risen defense force will of course come in, but who gives a flying crap anyway.

Thanks for the truthful advise.

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Originally posted by Darksyn:

When the game first launched, we all had a good time trying to pick someone to review it and ended up doing rock paper scissors. No one wanted to review it, but we had to.

Describe what you mean by "we."

Boring main character
Plotlines that never pulls you in or touch your emotions
Cliched sexist characters and little to no well written female characters

I actually agree. Thankfully, none of these issues does much to taint the actual gameplay, which is the main reason one, ya know, plays games.

same crappy combat systems and animations in all games

This is objectively wrong.

Bo real sense of difficulty. The only difficulty in the game is due to how severely underpowered you are, the enemy stunlocks and the terrible slow animations that screws you over and over again.

Congrats at proving you have absolutely no idea how to play the games. If you actually paid attention to the tutorial, you'd know that "getting stunlocked" and having "terrible slow animations" is punishment for playing the game wrong. You win the prize.

The risen defense force will of course come in, but who gives a flying crap anyway.

By which you mean of course, anyone who doesn't hold the exact opinion that you have. Go back to casual aRPGs like The Witcher; you're obviously out of your depth here.

[Nessajia]

If you didn't like the previous games then why are you even considering playing this one in the first place?

[Sceles]

It's like Risen 2 but with many times more freedom and content.

But I don't think "as bad as the others" is well-phrased because Risen 1 was really a good game and completely different from 2 and 3. There's a good reason why it has the highest metacritic user scores of them all. See:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/risen
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/risen-2-dark-waters
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/risen-3-titan-lords
They basically redid everything in Risen 2 and made it worse: combat, character development, spells, UI, characters, plot, setting, EVERYTHING! Then Risen 3 kept everything from Risen 2. It's the same situation as with Gothics; 1 and 2 > 3 and 4. Or Dragon Age and Fable, only the first game in both series was good. I don't get it why do some game developers always want to change what works, it makes no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense.

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Metacritic scores mean precisely nothing; we really need to dispense with pretending that they mean or are indicative of anything at all.

[Lock]

Risen 1 was actually a decent game with a fairly interesting combat system that was difficult to master, but once you did, became something special and different. It also became way too easy. It had a very bad story with quirky characters and a horrible ending, but decent graphics.

Risen 2 was downright atrocious in every conceivable way. The controls, the story, characters, quests, ... everything.

Risen 3 is the worst in the series, because it makes the exact same mistakes as Risen 2, while trying to pretend it's Risen 1 (and fails at every turn). They even marketed it that way: "Going back to it's roots.". Horrible. The graphics are outstanding though.

The Gothic series started out alright with Gothic 1, improved a bit with Gothic 2, and went straight downhill once Gothic 3 and those atrocious Arcania sequels came out. None of these games hold anything against The Witcher series, and that's coming from someone who loved Gothic 1 and really disliked The Witcher 3.

All of these games are completely subpar to their AAA counterweights and shouldn't even be put in the same category. To compare them to any Bioware game is just...odd. There's no other word for it. It's like saying Dora the Explorer (Piranha Bytes/Deep Silver) is better than Lord of the Rings. If anything, I'd say the Gothic and Risen series are for people who don't want to worry themselves with keeping up with any story beats, control schemes or common sense and who just want to look at pretty colors on a screen. All of their games look okay though.

Some people might get excited for ELEX, but we should all know better by now:

"ELEX is going to be edgy, dark, uncompromising, complex, and we love it already," - dev.

If they would focus their attention on making an actual good game (for the first time since 2002), and hire a new marketing team, we wouldn't have to deal with this 'Wow, such edgy"-crap.

[Sceles]

Originally posted by ydraig:

Metacritic scores mean precisely nothing; we really need to dispense with pretending that they mean or are indicative of anything at all.

I were talking about user scores though, they're usually pretty accurate(on Metacritic, not on Steam).

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Originally posted by Lockmort:

Risen 2 was downright atrocious in every conceivable way. The controls, the story, characters, quests, ... everything.

I'm replaying it right now and I couldn't disagree more, except to say that the main narrative is indeed pretty awful; the actual dialog and voice acting is charming, though. The combat is absolutely brutal early on (talking about the melee combat here) and extremely newbie unfriendly, but very fair, consistent and reliable once you learn how to do it. It's based around parries and ripostes with NPCs that have to be absolutely perfectly timed or else you will die... fast, and you have to mix in kicks and heavy attacks when facing monsters.

Risen 3 is the worst in the series, because it makes the exact same mistakes as Risen 2, while trying to pretend it's Risen 1 (and fails at every turn). They even marketed it that way: "Going back to it's roots.". Horrible. The graphics are outstanding though.

No, the combat was completely redesigned from Risen 2 (only one animation remains in the entirety of Risen 3's combat) and made much too easy even on the highest difficulty setting. Combat is primarily based on DPS magic, btw. Exploration was greatly expanded in R3, though, which almost made up for the serious hit in writing and voice acting the series took with R3.

All of these games are completely subpar to their AAA counterweights and shouldn't even be put in the same category. To compare them to any Bioware game is just...odd. There's no other word for it. It's like saying Dora the Explorer (Piranha Bytes/Deep Silver) is better than Lord of the Rings. If anything, I'd say the Gothic and Risen series are for people who don't want to worry themselves with keeping up with any story beats, control schemes or common sense and who just want to look at pretty colors on a screen. All of their games look okay though.

Given that each of the Risen games has significantly less handholding than any BioWare game since KOTOR and is far more newbie unfriendly, your analogy is as absurd as it is pretentious.

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Originally posted by Sceles:

Originally posted by ydraig:

Metacritic scores mean precisely nothing; we really need to dispense with pretending that they mean or are indicative of anything at all.

I were talking about user scores though, they're usually pretty accurate(on Metacritic, not on Steam).

I am too. Do you know the sort of person who signs up for metacritic accounts? The sort of person who watches Angry Joe, that's who. Serious population bias.

[kaay]

Don Quijote is one of my fave characters and i love him deeply...and you ydraig, remind me of him.
You are trying to explain things to people that are not interested to understand and you know it, you are valiantly fighting the windmills.
On one hand i respect that, on the other i cant help but see how this is a futile endeavour.
The effort is worthy of respect but the end result is predictably nil.
I guess thats why i love the Don, he knows he cant win but he keeps fighting, its something that always fascinated me.

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

What about Don Esteban? :)

[kaay]

Originally posted by ydraig:

What about Don Esteban? :)

lol i saw that coming, i swear i did :P