My review to Risen 3

[Googolplex]

An excellent modern old-school RPG.

With "Risen 3" Piranha Bytes, a small developer team located in Essen (Germany), wanted to go back to their roots.
The fans always wished to have "more Gothic".
After more than 50 hours I finished Risen 3 and wants to make a short review to tell you whether the game meets the good old qualities what it promises.

I started the game and I thought "Oh my god, what a crap!". How could Piranha Bytes create such a mindless designed game? It's not their style!
THIS is NOT back to the roots!!! The game started during a ship fighting scene, where undead "Shadows" are attacking your crew.
The gameplay was totally limited. The only thing you can do is to walk on track to the next scripted break. The game paused after every single action to give you the next hint of what to do.
An info text will be shown all the time to tell you the right key to press. During this time you move from cutscene to cutscene until you finally wake up in a bed - it was just a nightmare?

But thanks god this was just the tutorial. The possibly most useless and immersion killing element of modern game design.
I was really shocked and disappointed at the beginning, even more when you always praised Piranha Bytes for their eye of qualitative design.

But you have to believe me, that later the game will get really good!

Let me first talk about the graphics. The texture quality is totally outdated, a lot of textures and animations looks like to be from 2002. But the goal never was to make an other graphic bomb like The Witcher 3 - in contrary! The goal was to create an old-school style RPG with a strong focus of atmosphere, gameplay and PB charm!
Only when you finally finished the bad tutorial, the game started to open its unique qualities.

I have to say that this is still not Gothic, but there's definitely more Gothic feeling compared to Risen 2. Even when a lot of bad elements from Risen 2 were further adopted.

Now lets start to talk about the whole game.

Risen 3 is a game with a strong vision. It has its faults as I said, but it's still better than Skyrim or most other RPGs with millions of budget.
It is not just open world with a list of quests. Everything in the world makes sense so that the story always is present. Even when the story seems to be only 08-15, I have to say that it is very well implemented. Quests are intertwined and you always have the decision how to solve them. There is a lot of humor in the quests and the dialogues what often makes me laughing. Really funny stuff is there!!! I mean this is not exactly Gothic-like, but also takes a great place in a RPG. A lot of quests are simplified compared to Gothic, what means you often have to walk only 20 meters or collect some items located nearly behind you. I personally also don't need extra quest messages for that.

But in spite of all the critics I have to say that Risen 3 does a lot right. The game is a ray of hope at the modern gaming market. You really feel how Piranha Bytes knowingly worked "against" the mainstream industry.

It's the charm of always the same. With Risen 3 you get the feeling to know that most already: the crude humor, the open world full of carping bandits and philistines. The graphics are not super modern but chic enough. Small imperfections such as target acquisition while fighting, which make the game never broken, but sometimes exhausting. Even the predecessor rarely looked around, but fascinated by a mix of B-movie charm and the feeling that the game world was created with special devotion.

The combat system is not just clicking wildly on the mouse, there's a sense behind it. This is a huge improvement similar to the first two Gothic games, but just with mouse. You can manage "experience points" in a menu screen, but new skills only can be learned from teachers (other NPCs). This is one of the great qualities I praise.

Because so obviously imperfect Risen 3 is in many places, RPG fans likes to spend several evenings with the game - accompanied by the idea that actually there's not much different than its predecessors. But exactly this is why you enjoy looking the new season of some favorite series.

So for the end notes, Risen 3 is a perfect combination between "back to the roots old-school" and modern RPG. With some flaws, but also a lot of highlights of the genre. And a brillant soundtrack composition!





Anyone else who played the game? Or is nobody here interested in RPGs?

Spoiler below!