It is so hard to like this game...

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

I keep trying to like it and I'm determined to play it through. I have only the best memories of gothic 1 and 2, which is why I decided to play through all the risen games now. I've owned them for many years, but never really finished any of them.

But to be honest, I'm just hoping to be through with part 1 as soon as possible, and that 2 and 3 aren't as broken as this one...

The dialogues and side-stories still seem like they were written (and often also spoken) by children, at least in the german version. The characters act and talk so unbelievably, you can't take the game seriously. And there's no lore at all or anything. I mean I'm not one who reads all the books in a TES game, but you don't even get the illusion in this game like the devs had some kind of concept for the world they are making and it shows in the dialogues.

Every time you try to move up or down an edge, there is a 50/50 chance that your character disappears and you have to reload your game... I mean, what the hell. Releasing a game with game breaking bugs like that is kinda shameless. Never fixing them is just criminal.

The combat is so utterly bad. It's all just 30% timing and 70% randomness. Impenetrable blocks are annoying and test nothing but your patience all the time, waiting for the game to "intentionally" fail a block. Fighting groups of enemies is a pain in the ass, because the game clearly doesn't have the mechanics for it. And some enemies (like ghouls) are just so unfair, that you are regularly forced to re-load a dozen times until you are happy with the outcome. It's not difficult, just random and unfair. Sometimes enemies counter all your attacks and sometimes they don't, even if they could - pure randomness.
And since re-loading is a must in this game, it's a fricking insult how quickloading works. Every time you load, the game starts running for several seconds before the loading screen even disappears. So when there's an enemy close-by (with or without your knowledge) at the moment you quicksave, you will just get insta-killed 9 out of 10 times you are trying to load that save, without ever being able to do anything. So, then you sit there, loading the fricking game 20 times, once or twice even getting close to surviving, and then finally decide to load the last auto-save, because there is only ONE quicksave slot...

Sorry, but it's really hard to recommend a game that so needlessly slaps you in the face like that again and again.

I'm inside that volcano now and hope it's done soon. If Risen 2 is just as bad, I guess I'm gonna cancel my plans for a complete Risen playthrough...

Gothic 1 and 2 will always be among my favorite games. They were so ahead of their time with their detailed, breathing worlds, their slowly unfolding story where decisions actually mattered and changed the world and how it reacts to you. It was easy to forgive certain "flaws" and rough edges. But now it's almost 20 years later, the game concept is pretty much exactly the same and the flaws are rather getting worse than better...

[alvx]

What is forcing you to play a game you don't like?

[Taiwan Number One]

The combat isn't great, but it's not that bad once you learn enemy attack patterns and make liberal use of slide ability. Backing an enemy into a corner or ledge also does wonders as you can then chain-stun them.

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

Originally posted by alvx:

What is forcing you to play a game you don't like?

I dunno, what is forcing you to reply without reading? First paragraph already makes it sufficiently clear why I want to play through the Risen series, I think...

Originally posted by GodOfHeWhoSleepsOnRailroads:

The combat isn't great, but it's not that bad once you learn enemy attack patterns and make liberal use of slide ability. Backing an enemy into a corner or ledge also does wonders as you can then chain-stun them.

Yeah well, I just finished a fight against 5 elite lizard men in the open, after quick-loading about 2 dozen times. I have the best possible armor and equipment for the time being, and lots of strength and sword skill. Still I die after a few critical hits and there's nothing I can do to handle the fight better. I can just hope that enemies won't manage to surround me and not attack while I'm attacking, until I finally have enough luck to make it through...
And of course a favorable critical hit ratio helps, too. What the purpose is of having 2 (completely random...) kinds of hits, where one deals virtually no damage, and the other kills you in 3 or 4 hits, I have no idea.

[Oneeyed]

Watch the Speedrun of Thewonderer on youtube. He is not cheating when he is fighting against lizardmen. And he does all that without using a shield. The key to his kind of success is steping back and then use power attacks.

Of course that is not easy to learn. But you can always use scrolls e.g. summon skeleton to distract enemies, berserker for increasing your own combat strength, magic protection for higher armor or inferno for damaging multiple ememies.

Or you could just adapt hit and run tactics.

And I don't know how high your strength is but in Risen 1 it goes up to 200 if you use permenant potions and power-ups.

And if that is not enough just lower the difficulty especially if this is your first playthrough

[Taiwan Number One]

Listen to Oneeyed. Step back + power attack was my bread and butter for most of the game. What exactly are your stats and equipment?

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

I am currently gathering the pieces of titan equipment, just found the first one. I became a member of the order. Actually, I wanted to go mage, but realised too late (after entering the volcano for the first time) that apparently I couldn't for some reason and I didn't want to reload at that point. After doing all except one order-quest in the city (because stuck...), I actually made my way to the fortress and talked to the guy at the door to recruit me, but I guess that wasn't the correct way. So, I am now running around in inquisitor armor, I've got a helmet of the order, a very nice protective amulett from one of the mages and 2 self-made protection rings (small diamond). Strength is 160 and sword skill must be 7 or 8 at the moment. I wanted to get as many of the crafting skills as possible to see how good they are. Smithing seems rather pointless to be honest. And I'm waving an obsidian bastard sword most of the time.

I'm gonna try, if stepping back is gonna make it a little easier. My only usable exploit so far has been to find a door or narrow passage to have groups of enemies get stuck in, so they can't move around and rape me.

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

Lol, censorship is getting worse all the time here on steam. Ok, my sword is really a "hybrid" sword, born to a married couple of swords with approval of the church. And the enemies I was talking about were not trying to force themselves on me in a sexual way, they were only trying to kill me violently in a morally acceptable way.

[Oneeyed]

The only difference between mage and warrior of the order is that mages can learn use rune magic and use runes directly instead of making scrolls. And you have learn 4 seals in order to use every rune. And for learning seals you have to have certain wisdom levels. Imho the 3rd and 4th level comes so late in the game it's just not worth it.

For enemy groups: Just run away until the stop following you then run back to the last enemy and mostly only one of them will pursue you then. That way you can take them one by one.

[Taiwan Number One]

Luring enemies into chokepoints is a good tactic, but you can also use the slide/dodge to keep them in front of you and/or herded together. Another thing I found helpful was to bait an attack, quickly dodge to either side, then follow it up with a combo.

[alvx]

Originally posted by Electronic Old Man:

Originally posted by alvx:

What is forcing you to play a game you don't like?

I dunno, what is forcing you to reply without reading? First paragraph already makes it sufficiently clear why I want to play through the Risen series, I think...

Originally posted by GodOfHeWhoSleepsOnRailroads:

The combat isn't great, but it's not that bad once you learn enemy attack patterns and make liberal use of slide ability. Backing an enemy into a corner or ledge also does wonders as you can then chain-stun them.

Yeah well, I just finished a fight against 5 elite lizard men in the open, after quick-loading about 2 dozen times. I have the best possible armor and equipment for the time being, and lots of strength and sword skill. Still I die after a few critical hits and there's nothing I can do to handle the fight better. I can just hope that enemies won't manage to surround me and not attack while I'm attacking, until I finally have enough luck to make it through...
And of course a favorable critical hit ratio helps, too. What the purpose is of having 2 (completely random...) kinds of hits, where one deals virtually no damage, and the other kills you in 3 or 4 hits, I have no idea.

You long-ass troll post is enough reason to skip everything after the first sentence.But still I read it all and honestly you gave no good answer to my legit question. If you don't like it go play another game franchise. Coming here and whinning like a little girl won't make the game better for you

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

Do you even know what trolling is? I posted some very "legit" criticism, including the presence of a bug that breaks your game almost every time you are trying to climb up an edge, which is completely unaccaptable. So much for the "whining like a little girl", LOL. I just finished the game a couple of hours ago and started with Risen 2, which already looks smoother and a bit more mature.
When you were ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in your diapers almost twenty years ago, I was playing Gothic 1 and had a blast. Then I played both 1 & 2 a few more times over the years to follow, and if you are too dumb to understand that I want to continue with the Risen series now, partly out of nostalgia, even though there's lots of stuff that is poorly done, it's your own problem. It doesn't mean you have to come trolling here like an angry little girl, lol.

[Compufreek]

Hello!
Myself for once am in love with this game, i think it is a masterpice of the studio. I love all the details studio is able to produce to acomplish such high detail and alive game. It has always been their strong point and the game imerses me like no other ...i have played the game trough several times and it has always been a different experience. Gothic 1/2 inspired me to fall in love with computers and programming and it has made me what i am today... And that is this games strong point, the imerssive world. Now why you are so repulsed by this game .... its becouse you dont like bugs ... funny enough the climb bug you mentioned ... i have encountered that for the first time in this last playtrough ,at least 4 times have i played the entire thing trough and once on xbox 360 and this time its the first time i have encountered this bug(only on newer systems ?) Myself i enjoy breaking the game or spoofing bugs into faster or imposible game progression, that is why i enjoy these series so much, they are bugged but in a good way, like selling wed to rhobart and then killing/looting him and repeat the process, climbing on a ledge and shooting arrows at an oggre for 7 minutes :), stealing stuff that you should spend long time to acuare trough quests. In my recent play i killed every animal/creature i could acess and opened all possible chests and did all posiible quests on chapter 1 so when i got to chapter 2 i was running around empty map and here and there encountered a lizzard man XD.
With combat system i agree its a pain, but when you level sword or staff you can break trough defenses but sooner you can summon trusted FRED (summon skeleton scroll) adn he can acompany you for mst of the game , you block until fred takes agrro and then you smash the enemy easily (just be carefull as he can kill NPS and you loose quests)
About risen 2 like i said im in love with the franchise but risen 2 was a pain in the... well... you know ... its really bad for the first part and untill about 10 hour of the game it doesnt get better, but even then its hard to swallow, if risen 1 is not your cup of tee then just skip the 2 and go directly to risen 3, its probably not the best but its rich, vivid and has really great world. Besides if you are in volcanoe then you are pretty much done with risen 1.

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

Well, I don't necessarily share your love for exploitable bugs, but Gothic 1 and 2 also made a lasting impression on me :p

What I find a bit disappointing overall, is that PB have never tried to improve on what made the original Gothic games so amazing: the dynamic world with people following schedules, doing all kinds of "cosmetical", immersive things and reacting to where you go and what you do. The AI needed to create a breathing world like that is still exactly the same as in G1. I wish they had tried to build on top of it and give it more depth.

I'm not "repulsed" by Risen 1. I'm just VERY annoyed by some of the bugs and imbalances. The game-breaking climbing bug happened ALL the time for me. I had to save and usually reload several times on every edge. It happens "only" underground (when there is still a "layer" somewhere above you) though, I think.

I'm almost done with the "sword coast" in Risen 2 at the moment. So far, I have enjoyed it more than R1. Dialogues and characters are more credible. There are virtually no bugs and glitches. Combat still isn't great, but it feels much smoother. And I also like the pirate theme. Where R1 has a setting and factions that are very similar to those in G1&2, R2 feels kind of fresh and new (although pirates already played a big role in "Night of the Raven").

[jedi72]

Abusing the same combination of moves for consistently win combat demonstrates how bad it is in this game.

I would prefer a Batman or Witcher or even a Sleeping Dog system.....but this is just terribly annoying and clunky...