Risen Review




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Developer: Piranha Bytes Publisher: Deep Silver
Release Date: February 23, 2010 Available On: PC and Xbox 360

It seems that this generation of consoles has ushered in an era of massive, open-world games. Enter Risen, a massive, open-world RPG where “every decision counts and every action continuously shapes a player’s reputation”. Available on PC and the European Xbox 360 since October 2009, Risen finally comes to American Xbox loyalists who are not at all deprived of RPGs. Promising great replay value and all the RPG essentials, is this story driven solo quest worthy of entering your collection?

The story of Risen is slightly clichéd but does well enough keep the game moving along and keep you interested. You play the role of nameless stowaway having survived a shipwreck and washing up on the shores of a mysterious volcanic island named Faranga. The local human inhabitants are isolated from the world by an inexplicable force and the island is torn between two factions. The island’s previous protectors, the Mages, have been taken over by a group of soldiers called the Inquisitors. A group of rebels previously controlled the island until the Inquisition exiled them to a swamp area. Early in the story you learn that mysterious ruins have been unearthed and both factions seek to acquire the riches and secrets found within. In the first hour of playing Risen, you are prompted to choose between the rebels and their leader Don Esteban or the Mages lead by the Inquisition.

There are some game concepts in risen that I enjoyed very much. You encounter only one loading sequence throughout the entire game whenever you fire up your disk. After that, you will not be interrupted with loading screen for as long as you continue playing, unless you load a save. You have a bottomless inventory bag that deals away with limited inventory space and the often overused weight limitation. You are able to save anywhere. Although you are free to roam and follow quests at your own leisure, Risen’s difficulty and issues will not allow you to stray too far from the beaten path. Risen is a slow paced game overall. There are numerous activities you can partake in including thievery, alchemy, iron smithing, cooking, prospecting, and a few others. There are plenty of in-game references to alcohol use and drug use.

The greatest feature in Risen is how your actions affect the overall game. Every quest has rewards or repercussions which you may feel immediately or later down the road. There are numerous NPCs for you to interact with at your own leisure. There are numerous conversations to be had and many stories to be learned about. The many characters in Faranga appear complex and their stories often interweave. Just as you are free to quest at your own pace, you can also attack and possibly kill any NPC you wish. Of course, doing so will probably set an entire horde of NPCs against you. All of these decisions dynamically impact the story and affect your overall experience. Every player will essentially progress through Risen differently, making every play through unique.

Risen for Xbox 360 has a decent presentation if somewhat generic looking. The world is brought to life by varied vegetation swaying in the wind, long day and night cycles, the occasional rain, and frequent earthquakes. The character models are a bit low on the polygons and the textures are could be much better. The environments are large, dense with flora, animals, and rock formations and riddled with side paths and caves. Twilight drapes the sky in wonderful color gradients and the sun rays on the horizon coming through the foliage are a pretty sight. Overall, the environments are large and despite the texture issues, they look pretty decent. There is popup at a distance but nothing that will catch you off guard. You may experience a considerable amount of slow down when there are many NPCs and enemies on screen. There is also the occasional pause when the game auto saves. The musical scoring is well crafted and effective. There is a wide range of melodies that evoke a range of emotions and produce appropriate ambiance. The world feels alive with various accompanying sound effects. The voice acting is well done. Though the writing leaves a little bit to be desired, every character feels genuine and the language is appropriately filthy at times.



The controls are similar to FPS controls than console RPGs. If you ever played Fallout 3 with the third person camera, Risen is similar in handling but with much more trigger action. There is some responsiveness issues related to mapping combat onto the triggers. I often felt that I had to press and depress the trigger very fast to combine hits. Sometimes the triggers seem to require a full depression in order to solicit a response which is a much slower physical action than pressing any of the face buttons. The third person camera is completely dead and requires your constant attention. It will not move on its own. It will not swing around automatically or reposition itself for the best angle. You can change the camera’s distance from a distant third person to something closer to over the shoulder. There is no way to instantly reorient the camera directly behind your character. The camera will lock onto your target but there is no simple way of switching between targets.

The controls and dead camera work against you during Risen’s combat which is generally lackluster. Combat is comes down mostly to well placed hits and constant blocking. Enemies in Risen feel artificially stronger and faster. Aiming with ranged weapons is loose and generally feels like a mess. Most combat in Risen feels like a chore. Some armed enemies can also take you down with only a couple of well placed hits. Forget trying to take on 4 enemies on your own, sometimes 2 is more than enough unless you have a lot of patience. You will suffer numerous cheap deaths accompanied with frustration and frequent reloading of your game. The funky controls, dead camera, and lackluster combat are the greatest issues in Risen and perhaps what will keep many from enjoying this game on the Xbox 360.

The fact that this is a PC port is almost painfully evident. Your inventory, stats, map, and quests are all presented in separate popup windows. Each window requires pressing the up, down, left, or right inputs on the directional pad similar to how these are mapped to different keys on a keyboard in the PC version of Risen. I could never remember which window is mapped to which direction on the directional pad. There is no way to customize the button mapping. There is not even a screen that shows you the game’s button mapping. Besides the brief tutorials as you progress through Risen, you are mostly left to learn the controller on your own. Of course, you could read the manual to figure out the controls but you should not have to.

The developer professes graphical improvements in the North American release of Risen for the Xbox 360. That is improvements over the European version of Risen. Without a European copy of Risen, I cannot attest to such improvements, but the difference between the console and the PC versions are still very pronounced. The visual differences come down mainly to better texture quality and better lighting on the PC version. Risen will always look better on the PC. Overall, Risen does not feel like a proper console game but rather a PC game forced to run on the Xbox 360.

Risen is a decent game sporting some tried and true concepts that make RPGs the fun and time consuming genre that many of us love. That is, if you can look past the issues, Risen for the Xbox 360 is a decent game. You will encounter bugs and the controls are “iffy” at best. My main issue with Risen is that is feels like a PC game that has been downgraded to run on a console. Some games are better left in their original form, in Risen’s case being on the PC. German developer Piranha Bites certainly has given itself an okay start at developing for the Xbox 360 as I am sure porting Risen was no small feat. I can only see improvement coming from them from now on. If you are willing to deal with the issues in Risen’s Xbox 360 port, then you will no doubt derive some enjoyment from the RPG elements that lie beneath. If you are interested and Xbox 360 is your only way to play, give Risen a rental first.

Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Gameplay: 7
Creativity: 7
Replay Value/Game Length: 7
Final: 7 out of 10
Written by Angel Cortes Write a User Review

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