Or is it just me. I have just started play, gone from the beach up to a Wolf and there is a cave to the left, tried jumping up on the ledges and get stuck in the scenery each time. On other things, the camera seems to get all stuck up sometimes, jumping is incredibly badly animated etc. Does it get better than this, or should I just give up on it now?

Getting stuck in the scenery happens. To me it doesn't happen that much, but when it does, arrgh. I'm usually already quicksaving a lot, so I don't end up backtracking much.

If you're trying to grab a ledge, stand up against the wall facing the ledge, don't move, and hit space. You should automatically grab onto it and hoist yourself up. It's a different animation. If that's not the problem, not sure what to tell you. You don't really need to do the generic jump that often.

Thanks, that forcing VSync on in Nvidia control panel really worked. I can now jump and mantle!

Uninstalls game after getting stuck in cave walls once too often...

...finds thread with a solution.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's a good game though, might be worth installing again. Risen 2 also good, 3 got a bit long for me.

I did give it another go and am up to chapter 4 now. Enjoyable now with the VSync fix applied.

Only thing that has me wondering, though, is the lass that I was washed ashore with... Kept popping back to check if she was OK, then about chapter 2 the little house was deserted aside from a pack of wolves, which I promptly killed. Would be a shame to think she became a light snack for those hungry wolves, but I'm guessing she shows up again later in the game?

http://risen.wikia.com/wiki/Sara

Check the swamp farmer.

As far as fixing the ledge problem, I found a thread in steam forums that suggested something. I tried it - it works: go into the "ini" folder, find "timing" (or something similar). Change each of the four fields to 60.00000 (just change the left of decimal number). It seems to have speeded up movement and fighting too.