Risen Review

RPG’s are somewhat neglected on the Xbox 360 in my eyes. The console is dominated by FPS and action games so when I heard that Risen was hitting the Xbox, I got pretty excited. It’s fair to say that RPG’s are my genre. A good story and engaging game play will grab me hook, line and sinker.

Risen promises open ended game play, with the ability to do as you please, choose your cause and what you want to fight for. I looked forward to playing a deep, involving and innovative game but I was disappointed.

Risen brings you the story of the protagonist, who has no name. He is a stowaway on a ship transporting the antagonist, known only as the Inquisitor. Unfortunately on this journey, the boat is attacked and you end up ship wrecked on an island called Faranga. Ancient temples have risen around the island and it’s your job to join a faction to investigate.

As you look around you for the first time you realise there are no survivors besides you and one other. Your first mission is to grab a weapon and defend the young lady survivor, you scout around and find a stick to beat things with and you set off with your damsel in distress Sara to find an appropriate place of safety.

Once this is done she asks you to look about and see what else is around the island. This is the last I saw of Sara.

As I was wandering around, I wandered into somewhere I shouldn’t have been, got my ass thoroughly kicked by a soldier and woke up having been signed up to one the two opposing forces on Faranga island, the Warriors of the order. A faction comprising of mage knights whose primary weapons are staves.

This is the moment warning bells started ringing for me, the stone walls and castle design of this camp really highlights how flawed the graphics are, from flickering white dots in the environment, to some of the worst lag I have encountered in a console game.

It looks like a PS2 game, I played Final Fantasy X on the PS2 recently and believe that this actually looks better. Facial animation and character design is so bad, even funny. I was presented with three Chuck Norris look-alikes stood together which made me giggle to myself. Everything looks so dark and dank, when night falls or you go into a cave it’s all so dark, you can’t see anything at all.
This really surprised me because the standard of the opening cinematic’s were incredible, the screen shots of the game look beautiful too. I guess the camera really does lie after all.

On the subject of cameras, the moment camera is awful. It’s clunky and gets in your way constantly, that and jerky character movements makes it feels like this game has been ported over from a last generation console.

Moving on from the graphics, The game play is described as open ended and full of choice, the game so far to me is pretty linear, it tries to act as though its endlessly open ended and free but in reality its not. From the get go, you were always going to make you choose who to pledge allegiance too.
Once you’re in, you’re stuck. After joining the Warriors of the order, I have not been able to leave the camp and if I want to, I have no choice but to follow exactly what they want me to do i.e. – basic training and all of their quests. A true open ended game would let me sample their ways and let me walk away if it’s not for me.
Once in this camp you are to complete basic training, which comprises of beating the same person over and over. Oh no my mistake they are in fact different members of the order they just all look exactly the same.

Battles are really uninspiring with a simple 3rd person view, pick up a stick and mash the A button until their dead, a system that just feels terribly dated. Especially when you think of the many epic battle systems in the RPG world they could have used. Lost Odyssey had one of the best battle systems I have seen in recent times, with complex systems like this, why are mash the A button battle systems still around?

Another thing I noticed about the game play is that, from the beginning you are left to figure out the bewildering menu system for yourself.
Each button on the D Pad leads to a different menu. The right button leads to a menu showing you what items you have equipped, but can you change your equipment from there? No you cannot. To do this you need to open up another menu on the Up button, locate which item you want to equip an amongst hundreds of other items you have acquired and then go back to the first menu to see what effect this change of equipment has had on you.

The menu system is poorly executed and complicated, to have all this without a single hint of how you use it leads to a lot of frustration.

Another part of the game which is completely infuriating is the levelling system. You have to fight hundreds of battles to gain levels. The even more annoying thing about this levelling system is once you level, you aren’t given any statistic boosts at all, you are handed some measly learner points.

You use these learner points with various NPC’s to buy yourself some new stats, this is all well and good and it does give you some control over what stats you choose to level but as well as spending Learner Points, you also have to spend gold on upping your stats. What’s a couple of gold pieces here and there eh? Well let me put some perspective on it.
You have to pay 100 gold pieces for a stat boost of +1 strength, which means you have to rob literally everything in sight to afford it. The contents of someone’s treasure chest will typically only bring you 10 gold if you’re lucky so that’s a lot of pillaging.

Despite these issues I managed to pull myself through the basic training, and had one NPC left to talk to before I graduated. I thought I would also complete some of the quests in the camp, as I may not get another chance to do so. One of which was the story of a murdered gentleman. It was my job to find out who had done it, to do this I was told I would have to check every room for clues so this is exactly what I did when all of a sudden, one of the leaders of the camp came running into a room yelling thief and gave me yet another ass kicking.

I awoke and thought right sod it, I don’t want to do the quest any more ill just talk to matey and be on my way, and by this point I had more than a gutful of this place. I went to speak to him and he wouldn’t talk to me because I'm a thief (apparently).
This is where my game ended. I restarted my game thinking that the NPC may forget about the whole sorry incident and let me pass the training.

I was mistaken. I tried speaking to everyone and realised that I was stuck so I had to restart the game. This is appalling; bugs like this should have been completely ironed out by now.

I am currently in my 2nd play through and am really not enjoying the game, it all feels very unfinished. The graphics are terrible, and the world designs are boring. It looks like the developer team were trying to play it safe with locations, grey and simple brickwork castles to grey and simple brickwork houses. The most colourful parts of the game being the fields you have to traverse to get to your next grey and dank location. It feels like Risen has stolen parts of other successful RPG games such as Lionhead studios Fable 2 open ended fight for good or bad system, and Bethesda’s Oblivion’s well everything, just done badly.

I really am struggling to say anything good about this game. I think my only praise would be the voice acting, this seems to be very genuine and believable, it’s a shame it wasn’t used in a better game.

In conclusion, I can see where the development team were trying to go with this game but boy did they miss the mark.
The story, whilst being somewhat clichéd has potential and if a little more time was taken over the rest of the game i.e. graphics and menu systems, this game could have been a very good one.
Sadly we have ended up with a half finished looking game that is pretty unbearable to play, a poor effort.