Risen 2: Dark Waters First Impressions Review

Introduction

The game is heavily built on MMO-esque action RPG elements, exploration, and character development, with the world split up into various islands for the players to explore. Piranha Bytes is developing the game for PC, while French development firm Wizarbox handles the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions concurrently. All three versions of the game are currently slated for a release this Spring, with the PC version hitting April 27th, and console versions dropping May 22nd (North America) and 25th (Europe).

Gameplay Overview

In playing Risen 2 at PAX East, we found that the gameplay alternated from intriguing to repetitive, with occasional bouts of frustration. It's clearly a game with the spirit of the first Risen and Gothic games within it, and there are some spectacular ideas driving the game forward. Unfortunately, those ideas don't always come off with the level of polish you'd expect from a game like this.

A perfect example of this lack of polish is the game's combat; fighting looks good in short bursts and select moments, offering a true degree of variety in a genre where variety is often limited to nothing more than what buffs you want your character to enjoy. In Risen 2 you are essentially placed in the boots of a pirate, meaning when it comes to a fight, nothing's off limits. Want to use your parrot to distract your opponent? Done. Want to just "Indiana Jones" and shoot that sword-wielding goon? That's an option.

Often, however, the animations don't line up, or the damage being done doesn't equate the action on the screen. The main issue is that enemies take a ton of damage to go down. The result is a challenging combat system that's often a matter of proper health management and knowing when to retreat, but instantly breaks your immersion in the game once you've stabbed a single pig 40 times with the same cloud of blood popping up each time. Voodoo, off-hand firearms, fencing mechanics, birds as distractions—these ideas are fantastic, but the execution in the demo we played were too-often lacking.

With the unnamed hero thrown into this lush, new pirating world, exploration is obviously a large part of the gameplay. In our demo, the player character was given free reign to roam around a small island looking for supplies. We found exploration to be hit and miss. On the one hand, the environments looked great. The Xbox 360 version suffered from plenty of aliasing, but we expect the Piranha-developed PC version to be graphically superior. The island itself seemed to encroach the player on all sides, immersing you in the environment. As such, stumbling onto a native temple was legitimately enjoyable.

On the other hand, though, falling into what looked like chest-height water two feet from shore resulted in our battle-hardened pirate instantly drowning. The only indication of this was the slightly darker hue of the water's texture. That may be a function of the demo, but it's something that absolutely shouldn't be in the final game. Dark Waters, indeed. We saw similar problems with the player models' interaction with various platforms and ledges. Climbing mechanics are included in the game, but jumping up and hanging on an edge resulted in the player grabbing an invisible edge around 5 inches above the actual platform. The first Risen game had its share of console port woes, so we're hoping this was merely the product of an early playable demo rather than a game a few months from release.

Controls

The controls on Risen 2 were complex, offering the player several options for getting out of various situations. We found them to be a little confusing at first, but we settled in quickly and were making use of the dual-wield weapon mechanics in no time. We found the inventory management controls were obtuse at best, though, as it seemed to be suffering under the weight of so many options and so many items, even those gathered in our short time on one island. While we expect you'd adjust to the level of complexity eventually, we anticipate inventory management issues would crop up once you've been bouncing around islands collecting booty for several hours.

Graphics, Storytelling, & Atmosphere Overview

While we didn't get a chance to see much of the story development of Risen 2 in our hands-on time with the game, Piranha Bytes has released a great deal of content on the story of the upcoming game. As fans of Risen and the Gothic games might guess, you're once again assuming the role of the unnamed hero.

This time, you're left disillusioned and broken following the events of the first game, drinking away your sorrows in the port town of Caldera. That doesn't mean the titans that plagued the character in Risen are taken care of—far from it. They're still pestering the world, with sea monsters besieging Caldera. With food running out, it's not long before you're sent searching for a method of subduing the sea monsters, with Patti Steelbeard from the first game perhaps knowing someone who can help.

Storytelling

We weren't able to see much regarding the various story elements of Risen 2, though in our experience it played similarly to an MMO, with the story being inched along through various NPC-provided quests. In the demo we played this merely involved searching for supplies scattered throughout an island, providing few clues about the overarching arc of the game. It's clear the writers want to involve the Steelbeard family a little more prominently in this game than in the first, though the character of those relationships wasn't really clear in our time with the game or on the videos we've seen thus far.

Art Design

With a decidedly Caribbean feel, Risen 2 has a color palette involves a substantial amount of green, blue, and other vivid colors that comprise the many tropical environments. As you'd expect in a game centered around piracy, there's a large degree of cliche pirate accessories—from eyepatches to peg legs, substantial beards, parrot companions, and even mischievous monkeys.

In the demo we played at PAX East, we saw a game that looked quite good from afar. The environmental effects, draw distance, and wider views were good, though on closer inspection we noticed heavy aliasing on most textures. Anytime you got close to the many, many palm fronds in the game, you were greated with dozens of jagged edges. We should note that the demo we played was on an Xbox 360. With the console ports handled by French developers Wizarbox, so we expect superior performance from the Piranha Bytes's built PC version.

Sound Design

Sound in Risen 2: Dark Waters was mostly limited to basic metal-on-metal clings and clatters. Given the jungle environment and the many wild beasts, we hoped for something a little more atmospheric. We should note that we were only able to play the game on a crowded PAX show floor, with noise-cancelling headphones only providing some protection from the swelling din of thousands of gamers milling about the Boston convention center.

Conclusion

Risen 2: Dark Waters, like most games by German developer Piranha Bytes, is shaping up to be a deep, complex RPG with a compelling—if occasionally cheesy—universe built on a combination of fantasy and the supernatural.

In our short time hands-on with the game, we were impressed by the ambitious complexity of the game's combat and control systems. While the developers are trying to simplify combat by reducing the types of main weapons, the sheer volume of options in combat are staggering, especially for an action RPG.

While your main attack will involve a sword (or rifle, if that's your thing) with which you can swing relentlessly, your off-hand becomes your go-to for dirty, rotten tricks. Risen 2 puts this to good use, with plenty of options spicing up combat. Despite this, we still feel the technical difficulty and high health of many basic enemies yields tiresome, repetitive battles that don't mesh with the fact you just stabbed that bird with a two-foot sword.

All in all, the first Risen game was a promising, if slightly ambitious title hampered by a poor, rushed console port for the Xbox 360. Risen 2 looks to be improving on that earlier effort, with day-one integration with the console developers Wizarbox on PS3/Xbox versions. Despite this, technical difficulties were still abundant in the Xbox demo we played just this past March at PAX East, so we're holding out for improvements in the PC version.

With the game slated for release this spring (with a possible bump to mid-summer), we're hoping that demo was somewhat older, and that the final game has slightly more polished. Otherwise, Risen 2 might be a game that is crushed under the weight of its own potential, and it may take several patches before it becomes anything close to the game that it could one day be.