Great review; I have to admit that I almost want to bother with buying and downloading Mysteries of Westgate now. This whim will probably pass in an hour or two, though.

Is Risen really that good? I haven't heard anything but negative things about it so far.

@Talonfire: It really is that good. Risen is basically a sum of the best parts of the whole Gothic series, with surprising improvements to writing and voice acting, superb faction play, and the best combat system Piranha Bytes have done so far. Plus, it runs smoothly, it's not littered with bugs, and the menus are perfectly usable for once.

I've noticed it got slammed by mainstream media, from what I've read it was mainly for not being 'accessible' enough. And you should also consider the fact that many reviewed it for the XBox 360, which seems to be a lousy port job compared to the PC version. I guess once the poor scores started rolling out it created a snowball effect. Shame, Risen deserves much better.

My main complaint is that the last two chapters of the game (which are considerably shorter than the first two) are quite linear. Still, I've spent over 40 hours in chapters 1 and 2, just to give you an indication of what you're dealing with here. And I mean proper 40 hours, spent exploring every corner of the gameworld and doing delicious quests, many of which were packed with multiple choices and multiple outcomes.

Yeah, it's basically Gothic 4. It's the old formula polished and refined.

I'll have to check it out sometime then; I'm not one to shy away from inaccessible RPGs.

@Talonfire: But... but the game makes you buy a map! It doesn't give one to you from the start! How dreadful is that, eh? And there's no quest compass, it only marks important NPCs on a rudimentary map which is impossible to navigate! And the tutorial doesn't tell you that double-tapping left or right makes your character dodge! And enemies gang up on you and kill you a lot! Seriously, I thought we'd abandoned such antique design long ago. That was so '90s, man! This gaem suxxx, avoid at all costs!!!111one

WTF! No compass markers, no map from the start, no hand-holding? What kind of garbage is this? Oh, it's an RPG and they aren't supposed to have these things anyway, right? I guess I have played too many Bethesda/Bioware games lately. It's become second nature to look at the compass marker and attack anything that moves because of the level-scaling system. I'm not sure I'm able to play an old-school RPG anymore - my mind has been corrupted and twisted and I can only play RPGs from developers that begin with a B.

Sadly I don't think I will play MoW simply because I still need to slog through Nwn2 (still in the Bonegnasher Lair) plus the first 2 XPs. Oh, how I fear of having to play Nwn2 again - the game bores me to tears.

I'm currently trying to finish Gothic 3 and Sacred 2 at the same time. They are both okay games but I am looking forward to your Risen review. It looks like a good game but both Borderlands and Dragon Age also looks good. Oh well, so many games and so little time. :-)

Great review btw!

@jepsen1977: Hey man, thanks for dropping by. Seriously, I told you before and I'll tell you again, don't slog through NWN2 campaign if you can't get into it. I understand your pain here, I've been through act 1 as well. Just go straight to Mask of the Betrayer. If anything, I guarantee you'll at least enjoy it.

Still going through Gothic 3? That game is pretty good but the quests aren't very interesting, and the combat is seriously screwed up. Also, even after I got 2GB of RAM and patched it to version 1.7 (that unofficial patch) it still stutters every time I turn more than 90 degrees. Shame, it could have been great.

Anyway, see you around man!

That's actually not a very inaccurate commentary on the modern RPG gamer. You have no idea how often I hear things like that on the Bethesda forums.

Now as for NWN 2; The Orc caves (and most of Act I) was quite tedious I agree. Though I thought that the NWN 2 OC got a lot better after Act I myself. The actual story behind Act I is that the developers wanted the player to feel like they actually earned a high reputation in Neverwinter as opposed to the NWN 1 OC where your level 1 character was held in high regard right from the start. There's plenty of other ways they could have worked around that though.

I agree with fastpunk that Mask of the Betrayer is definitely worth playing even if you don't want to finish the OC. It's a great story with interesting characters if nothing else. Some aspects of it won't make sense if you don't finish the OC though; because MotB assumes you know what happened and doesn't go into detail about returning elements like the Sword of Gith.

Storm of Zehir is also pretty good if you go into it expecting a dungeon crawler with a few experimental gameplay mechanics, and not a deep, epic story. A lot of people went into SoZ expecting something like MotB and came out disappointed, but I thought it was very good myself because I knew what I was getting into.

I know, I know but like Talonfire says, then it should get much better when you get to chp 2, but I still have Old Owl Well to slog through before I get to the good stuff. I keep telling myself to do it - next week or perhaps next month. I have the game and my saves on my PC so when I finish Gothic 3, Sacred 2, Fable (horrible) and Oblivion/SI, then I will finish Nwn 2 OC + 2 XPs. I really look forward to MotB and MoW but not so much SoZ.

Yes, Gothic 3 runs slower than molasses even with my 4GB RAM and 8800GT and this is after 1.72 fan patch. It stutters like crazy from time to time but because it's an RPG it doesn't matter quite as much as with shooters. Combat is a mess and is nothing more than frantic clicking but I like the skill-progression and the open-world aspect of the game. I hope they have copied the good things from Gothic-series into Risen.

@Talonfire: I guess that a slow start isn't entirely unheard of in an RPG so you are correct that I should just suck it up and get through it. It is nice that Obsidian wanted to avoid the stereotypical start with the lvl 1 hero that everyone treats like a God for some reason, but like you said they probably should have avoided some of the more tedious parts of chp 1 that just bog the game down. But the game itself and the system behind it (3.5 rules) are actually well implemented and the game (today) runs well enough and is enjoyable.

I have heard so many good things about MotB that I'm really looking forward to it. It sounds like the tone is much more mature and dark and I like that. As for SoZ I am looking forward to see what they have done with the Overland map and the skill checks there. But SoZ wasn't received as well by the fans as the others and it could be due to unrealistic expectations like you said. Still I'm not sure I like the sound of a dungeon crawler but sometimes they can be quite fun like in Icewind Dale.

I think I will continue with Nwn2 OC when I finish Gothic 3.

@Talonfire: You hang out at Beth forums? How have you managed to not get banned? I swear, the mods there are the definition of uptight.

"Though I thought that the NWN 2 OC got a lot better after Act I myself." - Same here. Basically, after the confrontation with the Gith things just improved, and the story actually picked up the pace. Act 1 is just unfortunate.

@jepsen1977: Well, if you're determined to finish NWN2 OC then I won't keep you from it.

About Gothic 3, I have noticed that the alternate A.I. and the rebalanced character system brought by the 1.7 patch do a fair job of improving the game (and make it considerably harder). Still, bad performance ruined the experience for me, the amount of stuttering is irritating. It's clear that there's something horribly wrong with the game engine. Thankfully Piranha Bytes is a learning creature, they took optimization seriously with Risen, as that game runs smoothly and looks great.

I have no idea why I haven't been banned on the Bethy forums yet.

I'm waiting for the New Vegas forums to come up. I foresee a lot of folks from the Obsidian forum community clashing with those from the Bethesda forums.

@Talonfire: Ah, New Vegas, I completely forgot about it. You'd think they'd have released some details by now. It's all very quiet.


Dammit, I don't want to go to the Beth forums to discuss this one. Many of us on the OEI forums were requesting a FO:NV subforum on Obsidian.net. Request denied thus far. I guess Beth wants to keep a tight leash on this one.