Risen

Review - All rise for Risen. Or don't.

Shipwrecked upon the inhospitable island known as Faranga following a ferocious storm and an attack from a mysterious sea monster, you enter the verdant world of Risen with nothing but the tattered rags on your back and a hungry sea vulture preparing to peck at your eye sockets.

Arming yourself with a makeshift driftwood club, you bring around fellow survivor Sara, before boldly venturing into the dense forest ahead. But not before foraging for coins, mussels, berries, mushrooms, herbs and more. Risen's protagonist hoards more forest flora than Ray Mears with a serious case of the munchies.

The introduction to Risen might be scant and tutorial free, but it's enough to gently ease you into a deceptively intricate RPG game, throwing you straight into combat and exploration with a swift kick up the arse.

Learning via your actions is the way Risen works and happily, this is made far more acceptable thanks to the game's accessible controls and only slightly fiddly interface that have been well adapted to the Xbox 360 controller from the PC version.

Your menus are accessed via the D-pad and navigated using the analogue sticks, which is nicely streamlined and intuitive. Your bland, shiny-faced character is less effective in combat however, despite having the ability to dual wield a sword and bow. He prances around like an inept gimp when fighting, exchanging weedy blows with very little feedback.

Flailing around with a sword and shield, you're able to parry and defend against attacks - if you can time your button presses properly, which is nigh on impossible. You can also execute quick steps in any direction by pressing X, which is much more useful, helping to evade strikes if you're sufficiently fast enough.

When you finally feel your way towards the island's first inhabited area, you can talk your way into gaining credibility and trust among the locals, meaning that they'll rush to your aid whenever you're visibly under threat. Therefore the best thing to do when a Grave Moth or Bog Body starts laying into you is run away like a little girl and get behind any nearby NPC.

You can then stand back and observe as the fight unfolds, before wading in to deliver the final killer blow and collect the experience points. Trouble is, the lack of an enemy lock-on function makes accidentally hitting your helpful friend a frequent occurrence, at which point they'll instantly turn on you and give you a sound kicking and loot your unconscious body. Irritating.

This wouldn't be a problem if during the early stages of the game we were well enough equipped to take on the nasty creatures that surround the village, lurking in the fetid swamps. Finding armour of any description seems to take forever and learning abilities of any kind takes both reams of conversational text and hundreds of gold coins, which are a scarce commodity. Rewards come very slowly in Risen.

Although levelling up proves a frustrating grind, obfuscated by a decidedly dodgy system, there's plenty to see and do within such small populated areas and there are loads of different characters to chat and interact with, keeping you well occupied until you manage to make sense of it all.

Each character has a different, eccentric personality, speaking in varying (mostly) well-voiced regional British dialects too, making every NPC a distinct individual despite the majority owning substantial face fuzz and hazy, wonky features. Risen's deep and involving story is almost entirely related through its interactions with the island's inhabitants, with members of the village filling you in on the power struggle between their simple way of life and the fearsome Inquisition, as well as their own internal issues with the brutish Brogar and the village's reclusive leader, Don Esteban.

It's a shame then that the characters are so poorly realised from a visual standpoint, symptomatic of the rest of the game's graphical presentation, which is mired in blurry, smeared textures accompanied by shonky, floaty animation. While the graphics may be somewhat lacking in finesse, they adequately serve in building a tangible fantasy world filled with imaginative creatures like giant rot worms, slimy bog creatures, aggressive gnomes and towering, violent ogres that smack you around the chops with a giant bone as soon as look at you.

Risen's volcanic Faranga island is rich and captivating enough to keep you unequivocally hooked for hours. The sheer wealth of activities and quests on offer is staggering if you possess a sufficient tolerance level for the clunky, scrappy combat mechanics and slight interface issues. Persevere though, and you'll be rewarded with a game world chock full of opportunities for adventure and intrigue. Whether you're foraging for buried treasure, poking around gloomy caverns or repeatedly thwacking a gnome with a club, Faranga is an expansive location that rewards the patient in spades.

Riding on the success of Gothic - Piranha Bytes' quite similar first title - the German developer has crafted a worthy new IP that provides an enormous amount of depth and scope that any RPG fan will duly appreciate. Unfortunately, Risen is plagued by a number of technical shortcomings that tarnish the overall experience.

Lacking in polish and attention to detail, Risen still stands up as an absorbing and hugely playable RPG title. The PC version is inarguably superior to its console counterpart, boasting infinitely better visuals and controls.

By comparison, this Xbox 360 port feels somewhat unfinished and unrefined. Yet in spite of this, Risen remains a solid sophomore console effort, Piranha Bytes doing a decent job in adapting a fairly complex and PC-centric role-player for Xbox 360, which bodes rather well for any future projects the dev team might consider for the console.

Only the truly dedicated RPG player will persist through to the bitter end of Risen, as there's a great deal of perseverance required to even make it through the first section without tearing your hair out. The combat really lets the side down and the 360 visuals leave a lot to be desired, but stick with it and Risen will eventually suck you inexorably into its uniquely absorbing fantasy world.

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