 Risen is an action RPG that fails in the action department while excelling as an RPG. The problem is that the two are so intertwined that the overall experience comes out a bit mixed. Waking up shipwrecked on an island beach, character generation is completely forgone in favor of dumping you straight into the story, which has an immediately immersive effect. The graphics themselves aren’t initially impressive, nor is the combat, but at the start of a journey with such promise these things are momentarily forgiven.
What stands out more, and makes the sixty-hour journey ahead of you seem so promising, is the richly detailed world you find yourself a part of. Combing the beach for some sort of weapon and anything else washed ashore, you take the role of escorting a female survivor through the slightly hostile jungle. In seeking help you’ll come across your first ruin, one of many that have suddenly risen out of the ground as the gods were recently driven from the world.
Nearing civilization introduces you to the game’s two primary factions: The Order, led by the newly arrived Inquisitor (whose ship you stowed away upon), and a troop of rebels led by the recently deposed leader Don Esteban. Of course, whether you consider the Don’s men bandits or freedom fighters will depend entirely on your perceptions, and your subsequent decision on which political faction you will support will likely be a difficult one, given all the grey areas that exist between the two controlling powers.
So where and when does Risen go wrong? Only time (and the rest of the review) will tell after the jump…
One of the biggest problems that Risen faces comes from its pacing. You won’t spend long outside the first town before realizing you aren’t strong enough to face most of the dangers in the woods, as straying from the beaten path most often results in your death. No amount of leveling up will do you any good at this point either -- every time you gain a level you earn Learning Points to spend which can only be distributed amongst stats or skills by speaking to certain trainers, most of whom live in town.
Whether you choose to visit Harbor Town, the Monastery or the Bandit Camp first, you’ll find plenty to do inside the confines of the walls. Quests abound when speaking to each of the NPCs that litter the city streets, and within the span of a few hours you’ll have your strength or dexterity up enough to take on new challenges. Of course, that won’t mean a great deal unless you can manage to find a decent weapon, and upgrades are few and far between. In fact, the best and most reliable way to increase your killing/survival capacity is to create your own gear through smithing or alchemy.
 After spending several hours in town you will invariably crave the thrill of exploring, and heading off into the wilderness will prove a bit more fruitful this time. Here you’ll have a better chance to look at the combat system and experience many of its flaws. With the basics of block, parry, dodge and swing all in the mix, combat here ought to have turned out better, but the way the system actually operates leaves a great deal to be desired. When fighting larger opponents the tactic you’ll typically resort to is backing them against a wall or another piece of scenery while you continuously swing away, relying on the stumbling animation to prevent the enemies from counter attacking. Sure it’s cheap, but these are the same sort of underhanded tactics the AI will try on you, especially when facing down several of the smaller, quicker foes.
When coming on a pack of wolves or moths (or any other small, fast-moving creature for that matter), it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The targeting system is slightly worse than non-existent. When going toe to toe with an enemy the camera will lock onto the target directly in front of you, even when that means the rest of a pack of wolves is circling around to your sides. While it is possible to snap the camera onto another target, you are just as likely to overshoot your mark and completely spin around, exposing your back to sharp teeth. At this point you realize just how helpful it would be to have some way to control the camera sensitivity.
The cheap deaths in the game aren’t strictly related to combat either. When exploring the newly risen ruins it is a virtual guarantee that you will end up squished or impaled on more than one occasion, regardless of how careful you are. Luckily the autosave feature does fairly well at ensuring you won’t have to do much over again, but that hardly lessens the impact of dying at the hands of unseen traps.
 Given the restrictions of the maps you eventually find, and the lack of any mini-map at all, exploring the rest of the wilderness is a daunting task. Though the game itself is split up into different chapters, they all take place on the same island, so the territory you cover will eventually become familiar. But until that happens you will have a distinct feeling of wandering aimlessly. Even once you figure out how to find quest markers on your map, that doesn’t necessarily help all that much.
The game itself is technically messy. The camera often times will shake continuously and it’s never quite clear whether this is a glitch or you’re actually supposed to believe that deep inside the island some volcano is threatening to erupt. When wandering around at night the environments are overly dark and nearly impossible to navigate without a torch or a light spell, and during the day time you can often see a strange halo of light surrounding the main character. There are some otherwise impressive lighting effects filtering through the trees, but textures are bland across the board. But still, it’s hard to appreciate the look of the enemies or environments when engaging multiple foes at once is so likely to lead to sudden drops in frame rate.
If there is one thing that Risen gets right (apart from a strong narrative and intricately detailed worlds) it is that the game rewards patience and endurance. Eventually you can earn enough skill points in strength or swordplay to counter the shortcomings of the combat system, but that won’t happen until ten or more hours into the game. And in those ten hours the game will do nothing to hold your hand. It won’t teach you what button to press to jump, or that the purses you pick up in your inventory need to be specifically opened in order to plunder (as do the mussels, which potentially contain pearls). But from the makers of the Gothic series this is evidently par for the course.
Ultimately the game has narrow appeal. It isn’t simply the hardcore audience that will enjoy this game, but specifically those with a great deal of time and patience on their hands. And while there is reward to be had in playing the game, it will come primarily from the story and character interactions rather than the combat. Those who favor the action aspect of an action RPG may find themselves disappointed enough not to forge on. But gamers willing to be forgiving and accept the game’s shortcomings may see a bit of shine.
Final Score: C-
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