Risen (Xbox 360)

Animations

The animations in Risen are a little on the stiff side and there are often misfires where you can coup-de-grace a guy on the ground and your character stabs the earth beside him. Overall though, they’re not eye-bleeding bad.

Physics

There’s a rag-doll physics system in play but again, things seem fairly stilted and a couple of hilarious physics bugs caused a flight of Stingrats to come at me and the dreaded Tree Leaping Wolves return from Gothic, where a monster spawns in the trees above by accident and drops on your head. In this case, I survived the attack this time. The Stingrat flight caused the game to slow down and judder quite badly.

AI

It’s fairly decent in combat, it will block, it uses tactics when in a group and several battles play out differently each time. Out of combat the NPCs follow their own lives, engage in conversation, eat, cook meals and do their day to day job. This concept drawn from the original Gothic really made the game feel alive and it does so with Risen this time as well.

Music

A pretty good musical score accompanies the game, shifts in mood and ebbs/flows when the tide turns to battle. All in all, it does a good job of providing an excellent atmosphere.

Sound

The sound design is not bad at all, there are nice ambient effects, some creepy spot effects in certain places and the rumbles as the land shakes from time to time add something of a sense of urgency to the game. Sword fights and the clash of steel and steel or flesh are rendered in a nice manner and the various taunts from combat don’t get annoying.

Dialogue and Voice

The good news is that the game has a much better script than Gothic, and certainly a much better script than Two Worlds. There’s not a verily or a forsooth in sight and the dialogue is fairly well written. The voice acting isn’t too bad, it’s a bit off and stilted in some places and the regular cast don’t hold a candle to the likes of John Rhys Davies and Andy Serkis who both lend their voices to certain NPCs in the game.

Multiplayer

There is none, sorry.

We are Risen

Despite those annoying bugs and some short comings, Risen is a pretty solid RPG that deserves at least a place on your shelf. You won’t be done with it any time soon and it’s a pretty big game in terms of things to do and quests, whilst the actual land isn’t massive really it’s still packed with content and should keep you occupied slaying monsters and rescuing dragons from damsels for quite a while.