The things I love about Risen:

(I played as a fighter for the Don, btw, with a focus in sword)

Beautiful island with great graphics. It's great to wander around the island and see the sights, from the sunsets on the beaches to the lush, tropical wilderness, to the foggy, foreboding swamps, to the dusty Eastern peninsula. The game looks absolutely breathtaking. The island may be smaller than Gothic 3, but it seems that more attention to detail was put into it, with varied and well done design in the architecture. I prefer this over the world of Gothic 3.

The character interaction is really well done too. More mature than most RPGs, with decent voice acting, interesting characters, and some variety in how you can solve some of the quests. Some really good stuff here.

Quests were for the most part pretty decent. A lot of your typical fetch/kill quests, but they were still pretty well done, and some quests really stood out (I enjoyed the Steelbeard's Treasure quest, and the protection racket you can get involved with).

Character and skills progression is pretty good too. I liked the way that increasing your sword skill didn't just result in a modifier to damage, it actually gave you new techniques. Not sure how dexterity affects crossbow damage, but I guess they needed a skill to match to it somehow.


And on to the things I hated:

The combat has to be some of THE most frustrating I have ever experienced in an RPG. And it's not because of the system. I think the system itself is great, and adds a lot of interesting flavour with the blocking, counter-attacks, dodging, etc. I wish the Elder Scrolls series would add some of these concepts to their series to increase the depth a bit.

The problem is the extremely cheesy/cheap tactics the programmers thought wise to give to a few of the enemies. The constant interruptions that certain enemies are capable of drives me up the wall. It reminds me of playing against the CPU in the old Mortal Kombat arcade games. The enemy would sit there doing nothing until I released the block button and hit the attack button. It would then immediately counter with a faster attack that it would chain into a more devastating combo. The ghouls, lizardmen, and those brostok things are prime examples of this. The ghouls have 2 other very irritating abilities on top of that: the ability to hit you with a massive-damage, block-ignoring freeze attack that seems to have an unbelievable range on it, and they also have an attack that can hit you even if you try to dodge. Top this off with the ability to hit up to 5 times in a row and do considerable damage makes them far more annoying than even the ashbeasts or ogres.

One-on-one the combat isn't too bad (except for the previously mentioned ghouls), and fights with human opponents is really quite fun and fair. The only other enemy I despise is that brostok thing with it's ability to push your weapon out of the way as you attack, then counter-attack you. If you try to back up, it magically closes the gap no matter what speed is required for it to do so, sits just outside of your sword range (I swear it can do it down to the pixel), and if you swing, you'll miss and it'll zip in and hit you. If you try a power swing, it zips in and interrupts you first. I've even manged to have this thing push my attack aside after I've dodged to the side and I'm facing his flank. Really, now.

The main problem is when you get into fights with groups. If you can't kite them back to a hallway, bridge, or some other narrow avenue where you can take them one on one, there's a good chance you're screwed unless you're considerably more powerful. Even with the funneling though, they can pull out some annoying tactics. After blocking the guy in the front, you counter-attack, but the guy behind him interrupts you and then you can eat his attack and anyone else's in the pack too. This comes down to luck of the draw. Sometimes they'll do this constantly, other times they'll let you win. And when they do this, their attack never injures their cohort in front of them, like it does when you're fighting with others on your side.

The other problem is that the risk+effort to reward ratio is seriously out of whack. This seems to be another PB-trademark. Bust your butt defeating some big enemy and you're "rewarded" with 130xp and 5 gold. Whoop-de-doo. But oh look! There's a treasure chest behind him that requires lockpick 3! It MUST have something good, right? Hmm, let's see: an apple, a scroll of levitation, a bone, and 100 gold. Commence swearing. This isn't isolated either, this is the norm. Do not expect to get nice swords, armor, etc after putting in a lot of effort like you do in other RPGs. When I was finally powerful enough to beat the 3 (THREE!) ogres guarding the other piece of the Souldrinker sword, that weapon was no longer of any interest to me.

Anyhow, long rant, but TLDR is: Good game, some very frustrating enemies, poor loot system.

Pretty good assessment. I agree, for the most part.

I think melee combat is good, although it gets a bit worse the farther you get in the game, mostly for the reasons you mentioned. Almost any one-on-one melee combat versus a human or a humanoid is fun though.

Ranged combat is deeply flawed. Under certain circumstances you can stand behind a branch and shoot things over and over until they die. They'll never figure out where you are. I killed several ashbeasts this way.

I've always thought PB's games were a cross between cRPGs and Tomb Raider. I wish they would emphasize both those aspects, because I like all the climbing and jumping, dungeons, traps, and puzzles. More of that. I also wish they would make more skill-based dialogue options, and skill-based climbing and swimming.

I think most people dislike the ending of Risen. I know I found it disappointing for a wide array of reasons.

I never really focused on ranged combat. My character has a crossbow and basically just enough dexterity to use it. I use the crossbow mainly to alert an enemy to my presence and pull him towards me where the terrain is more favourable.

Of course, it's always a surprise when the rest of the group he's part of (and you didn't see) comes along with him. This happened to me with about 6 wolves once. I was unprepared for that and got torn apart.

I've found the best way to combat groups is to draw them out by running away with them in hot pursuit after alerting them with a fireball or the crossbow/bow. Eventually some of the group give up and the numbers thin out. This takes time, but works as a tactic without your character being slaughtered.

Ahh, but you don't need any more than that to exploit the system. For example, there's an ashbeast on the way to the gnome fortress, and if you look close there's a place near him where you can stand behind a branch. From that spot you can shoot him in the head over and over until he dies, and he'll never even see you. You could easily kill him as soon as you get your first missile weapon, as long as you have enough ammunition.

FWIW, crossbows require strength to use, but dexterity to cause more damage. They're different from bows, which use dexterity for both the use requirement and damage bonus. Just a nitpick.

I teamed up with Henrik the hunter to take down that ashbeast. I wasn't a very high level at the time (13 or 14 maybe?) so it took quite some time to wear it down. Good thing Henrik has a ton of health to absorb the majority of the damage, as do most of the NPCs, it seems. After a good 5 minute fight with both of us wailing on him, I got a measly 300xp, and that chest there wasn't very good either. I would've gotten more xp in a shorter time just killing a pack of wolves.

Fighting with an NPC by your side in that game makes a huge difference. This is why I used the summon skeleton scroll whenever I came across difficult multi-enemy encounters like with some of the lizardmen and elite warriors. I block until the enemies focus on good old Fred, then I combo them from behind. It's so much easier, it almost feels like cheating. But then I remember how much trouble those guys gave me when I was alone, and I smile as I slash them to ribbons.

Another equalizing tactic I used on ghouls was the fact that they won't drop down to a lower level if there's a ledge, so you can drop down and then attack them from below. As long as you don't get too close they can't hit you, and even if they do, it pushes you back a bit and they can't follow up with another attack. They also don't seem to use that ice magic either.

I really fancy Fred as well. He is always around, no matter what. Other than Patty or Sara, who mostly do their thing while you try to save the island.
Another good thing about Risen, many effects are not timed or have a cooldown. Like raising a skeleton until it dies and not for 5min or other timers, he follows you nearly everywhere (the ghosts in Risen2 mostly stop if there is anything quest related).

My main problem with the ending is that you're handed a new quest that takes several days of in-game time to complete just as the fate of the entire world is hanging in the balance. False urgency like that is bothersome. Also, the way the "final battle" plays out doesn't make a lot of sense for a mage character like mine.

One thing I find a bit odd about PB's games: you always start out as a weak nobody with no skills, like a prisoner or a stowaway, and you spend a large part of the game learning how to do basic things like skinning animals, cooking, forging weapons, sweeping floors, and whatnot, but by the end you're transformed into an unbelievably powerful individual capable of saving the world from destruction. There's always a bit too much incongruity for my taste. I wish they would tone down the heroic aspects of their storylines, because I usually like the earlier parts better. Maybe it would be enough just to save the island in Risen from being overrun by monsters instead of saving the entire world from eternal destruction.

That's sort of what happens though, isn't it? You've only defeated the fire titan, there's still 3 other titans out there, which I assume are the focus of the next installments?

Maybe. All I'm saying is that it starts out as low-fantasy and suddenly turns into heroic high-fantasy right at the end.