by I was prepared to very much dislike this game, especially after playing a bit of Risen. And in the first few minutes, it felt like all my fears were confirmed. The main character is cliche and unlikable. The sidekick is cliche and unlikable. I decided to be a jerk, since my character is supposed to be a jerk. But then I found out that if you kill people in this game, they just become “offended” and stop fighting you.
If you’re wondering why my character is walking around with no shirt or shoes, it’s not because I didn’t have clothing. It’s because my clothing was pirate clothing, which my character refused to wear until he was actually a pirate – as he reminded me every time I tried equipping it. He persisted in saying this even when we were trying to enter the pirate camp so he could become a pirate, where I would have thought pirate clothing might come in handy.
And if you’re wondering why I tried to kill the fellow in the screenshot, it’s because he wouldn’t let me into the pirate camp. And to be fair, killing him wasn’t my first choice. First, I tried to bluff my way in. Well, I say bluff – I was actually telling what I believe was the truth. But my Silver Tongue skill wasn’t high enough – so even though the option was there, I was unable to use it. When I tried, my character just told me he wasn’t good enough to do that.
Maybe it’s a lot to expect. But when you have an RPG, you kinda expect some amount of RPG-ing to go on. Not an open world where only very specific things are allowed. Where Risen seemed to have at least some number of choice and decisions to be made, Risen 2 feels like every other boring open world game out there. Where Risen had you eaten by sea monsters when you tried to swim (which, hey, was at least an effort), Risen 2 just backs up the game about three seconds every time you enter the water. When you can entertain yourself more by repeatedly jumping into the water while NPCs continue to talk like nothing happened, it’s a little silly. You can also attack pretty much anybody and they’ll be fine with it ten seconds later. So maybe I just played the game in all the wrong ways in my first hour, but most good RPGs at least give you the option to be a terrible person.
This review started out by putting Risen 2 into Tier 2, since it is pretty, fixed a bunch of issues I had with Risen (except the combat), and seemed to have at least some amount of interesting story. Those were the reasons I didn’t feel like playing more of Risen. But the more I think about my time playing, the less I want to return. The more I think about it, Risen 2 seems more and more aggressively mediocre. So Tier Three it is.