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 The texture quality is totally outdated, a lot of textures and animations looks like to be from 2002.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!

[Macgyverthehero]

Ignore this post. I TL:DR'd.

[Googolplex]

I've watched AngryJoe get frustrated while playing this on Twitch and Youtube, so I can agree with you.

Risen 3 was crap, looks like the last game anyway.

You have not red my review. AngryJoe makes money with his channel and he is not someone who has knowledge about game design. He is a clown who makes games ridiculous so that other people watch his videos.

Risen 3 is one of the best modern RPGs nowadays. But how the game started is the worst crap I ever saw in a video game.

[Cuyir]

Lel.

I expected as much from you Goog.

[Googolplex]

Lel.

I expected as much from you Goog.

What do you mean you expected as much from me?

[Tiger]

I love how to environment looks. I haven't seen any gameplay though, and it's pretty expensive right now. Maybe i'll buy it sometime.

Edit: Saw some gamplay. Except for the (sometimes) bad textures, voice acting, the dull animations and what seems like a pretty boring plot, it seems like a cool game. Honestly, I'd probably buy it only for the vibrant nicely done world, but it's not worth 49.99€ to me.

[Googolplex]

I love how to environment looks. I haven't seen any gameplay though, and it's pretty expensive right now. Maybe i'll buy it sometime.

Edit: Saw some gamplay. Except for the (sometimes) bad textures, voice acting, the dull animations and what seems like a pretty boring plot, it seems like a cool game. Honestly, I'd probably buy it only for the vibrant nicely done world, but it's not worth 49.99€ to me.

The world design is always gorgeous in a Piranha Bytes game, as I said every single grass holm was drawn and placed by hand, nothing is generated.

The original german voice acting is also pretty good, but not as perfect as it was in the Gothic series. Most NPCs have too friendly voices. The international synchro seems to be always bad in this games, because there are other people working on it - not Piranha Bytes.

A lot of textures are like from 2002, but look at Amnesia. A good game doesn't need ultra realistic graphics. But nevertheless it's a bit disappointing when it could be better. Same for the animations, but Piranha Bytes "wanted" to create an Old-School style. NPCs are OK, but some monsters have really bad attacking animations. Gothic from 2001 has better (probably the best) monster animations and acting I ever saw in a game. They are still old-school, but looks extremely suitable. So Risen 3 has only some monster animations that are in no wise credible.

The plot is boring - yes, but the story TELLING couldn't be better. The story is 08-15 standard, but it is told very good. The counter example is BioShock Infinite, which have a fantastic story, but it got told extremely bad (too much repeated shooting sequences). So I think it is better to have a bad story which is told right instead a good story which is told bad.

The game has its faults, but it is still one of the best modern games you can get for full price. Just for the reason that it is not an action game. It is just a decent old-school RPG.

[Cuyir]

Lel.

I expected as much from you Goog.

What do you mean you expected as much from me?

I just knew you were going to enjoy every single bit of it and talk about it lol.

[Googolplex]

I just knew you were going to enjoy every single bit of it and talk about it lol.

Yes, that's what I expected. But the problem is that most developers today wants to make their games easier and more accessible for newcomers to get a greater audience even in the international market. This is not only a problem of Risen 3 and the predecessor, it's a general problem of almost every modern game series.

Instead to stay true to the fans and create a game what they want, they always try to make it more suitable for the mass. And this is what NOBODY want.

This doesn't mean Risen 3 is a simplified game, but it has a lot of simplified elements in the beginning. The tutorial is extremely dull. Absolutely not immersive!

I'm so much angry about that, because I'm a big fan of this great RPG series. And I always praised Piranha Bytes, because normally they always were the masters of excellent design.

I'm talking mainly about the beginning of Risen 3. The whole game becomes better.

Piranha Bytes growed up to 25 people before they started to work on Risen 3.
There are a lot of fresh young people in the team which replaced some of the good old Gothic and Risen 1 workers.

[Googolplex]

Looks terrible.

Right, there are a lot of elements that are terribly bad.
But that doesn't mean the whole game is bad.

Tell me a game where are no bad elements! There are only one hand full of titles in the world.