Gaming Risen 2: Dark Waters Preview

What's Kraken in this pirate RPG? We find out in our Risen 2 preview.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2012/03/09/risen-2-dark-waters-preview/1

 

Really looking forward to this, I guess I am one of the few people who actually played the first one.

 

Had you considered the turkey may have eaten a chicken? Hmmm? Open your mind and you will see that it is not the game that is bland, only yourself!

 

Very much looking forward to this the first game was really good although a little confusing in places.

 

Well, obviously the author has never played a Piranha Bytes game before.

Also, I'm not sure how you can say the game is bland and generic and features button-mashy combat. Quest design is the game's major strength, with lots of solutions for just about every task, interactions between different quests, and a full faction system. Combat, by all accounts, is like the first game's - that is, it's about positioning, strafing enemies, parrying, and making use of the reach of your weapon to get past enemy defenses. If you are madly clicking your way through then you're probably Doing It Wrong.

That said, it's interesting to see an outsider's perspective on Risen. Piranha Bytes games have always been very janky and awkward in some ways, but a lot of the core mechanics, systems and the quest design and writing have always been far, far more solid than anything put out by bigger RPG developers. Perhaps it's fair to say some players have grown a bit too used to those negative qualities.

 

Loved the first 2 Gothic games, Risen improved the combat and I enjoyed that as well.

These days the formulas are really starting to look outdated, and I will be interested to see how this holds up to games like Kingdoms Of Amalur which have really stepped up the combat aspects in the RPG genre.

 

Really enjoyed the first risen, remember well thinking damn that was expensive but I totally got my money's worth from it, excellent game & the 2nd one would have been be a day 1 buy but need to complete my new project first.

 

looking forward to this!

 

I've always hated this company's games purely because the combat is so bad. It's even worse than the Elder Scrolls games, especially if you try to make a Wizard/Mage type character. It's a shame because they do some things so well, like characters and quests and puzzles.

 

I personally found the combat really well implemented, like others said, it's not a button masher but I never bother with magic in these types of games unless it's just to get past something which really needs it, always swords & bows & using your reach, parrying, going in at angles, blocking & timing works awesome in risen, very enjoyable battles in it.

 

Yeah it works almost like real jousting. Big improvement on their previous games, although I still hoped for more than that in an RPG. It just makes me miss the old school RPG's with lots more going on.