RISEN 3

Well, I have to say I have not been so pleasantly surprised by a game in a LONG time.

It's a bit rough around the edges combat-wise, but other than that, its very hard to find fault with the game.

The game is HUGE! The tutorial and 2 DLC islands took me the guts of 9 hours! I am now on the first island proper (Kila, but you can go to any other island if you wish it), and it can be a bit confusing it's so big. I am exploring everywhere, trying not to miss anything and I was pretty sure I hadn't, until I popped up out of a series of spider infested tunnels, to find myself in an area I had thought I had fully explored, but yet, I had missed the entrance to the tunnel.

While I have been saving my points, I do tend to spend some randomly if I need to loot a locked chest for example, or I need a skill for a quest. I just bought the Monkey Trainer Skill, which spawns a little monkey that you control as a character, the monkey can sneak into tiny little access points and loot the beejeesus out of an area without guards spotting it.

I did a quest for a Voodoo shaman, which allowed me to control another person to progress a quest, which was quite interesting, I have also been able to turn into a parrot and fly into hard to reach areas (I believe that this spell can be gained as a faction spell, with unlimited usage, so you can fly over whole islands for exploration and finding secret areas).

There are three factions, each gives you a new character model and a different pirate ship, they all have different combat approaches ( AFAIK Melee, Melee/spells/ and Mage).

You can also acquire crew members that will accompany you into combat, I have only used one so far (Bones)because he is so entertaining, best sidekick since Morte in PS:T.

So far I am 13 hours in, I'm about halfway through this island and I have 4 more islands left to which I can travel.

On a sidenote, the music is pretty awesome as well.