I'll admit it, I expected this game to be a bust. After the travesty that was Gothic 3, I had little hope for any product Piranha Bytes put out. But I was dead wrong. This game is vastly superior to Gothic 3, and is comparable to the original two Gothic games, which is just about the highest praise that it could be given. It is a shame that Piranha Bytes did such a horrendous job with Gothic 3 and lost the right to the Gothic franchise to Jowood (their publisher), but it seems that the kick in the pants put them back on the right track.
Just to set the record straight, this game is nothing but a shameless rip-off of the previous Gothic games. And I mean shameless. The world looks exactly the same, the enemies are all the same, the towns look the same, the atmosphere is the same, etc. The scavengers are back as "sea vultures," the goblins are back as gnomes, the bloodflies are back as "grave moths," the boars are back, the pickable plants are all back, the dock in town was lifted right out of Gothic 2, the chapter system is in place again, etc. There are three camps once again, and they are the same three camps; the rogues who live in a swamp, the town who works for the Order, and the monastery. The Risen title is in the same distinctive font as the previous Gothic titles. There's even an abandoned lighthouse manned by a fellow named Jack again, for goodness' sake! Either the developers are completely out of ideas and recycled everything from their previous games or (as I think more likely) this was originally meant to be a sequel to the Gothic series, but when they lost the rights they just changed the names around. I can't stress enough how similar this is to Gothic, which in my mind is a very good thing, as I rank Gothic 1 and 2 among the greatest games ever created.
As far as gameplay goes, it is relatively smooth. There are some bugs (such as randomly teleporting to the roof of a house when you attempt to sneak in the doorway, or getting stuck in zoomed-in mode after using the crossbow zoom function), but they aren't game-breaking and are quite rare. The combat is something of a cross between Gothic 2 and Gothic 3 combat. It's a lot of button mashing until you get the hang of it, but once you do it has the rhythmic quality present in Gothic 2 that I loved. Your character has the unfortunate tendency to continue to attack after you stop hitting the buttons, which leads to opening yourself up for an enemy attack or smashing one of your allies in the face, which is very annoying, though it doesn't happen all the time. It is certainly better that the atrocious combat system from Gothic 3. And, unlike previous Gothic games, you can block animals, which is handy. Combat certainly isn't easy, though. I frequently have to flee from opponents too strong for me to face, and I get beat up or die constantly. There's none of that pansy scaled leveling that many other RPGs have, where your enemies strength is relative to your own so that you can do anything at any time. In this game you just can't go to certain areas until you are a high enough level, and there are some enemies you just have to flee from until you level up enough to take them on. I like that in a game; I don't want things handed to me. There's a certain degree of satisfaction when you can finally stand and face the ghoul you've been fleeing from the past ten hours of gameplay.
The world itself is very large, though smaller than previous Gothic games. I'd say it's about the same size as the Gothic 2 main area (not including the Gothic 1 area you fight the dragons in or the Night of the Raven expansion area), and it takes forever to explore. Like in previous Gothic games, exploring is rewarded, and you'll find all sorts of interesting and useful things in random locations in the wild. The world looks like Gothic 2 created using the Gothic 3 engine. While it looks very pleasant, it also looks outdated. It certainly isn't as pretty as other current games. However, in an RPG people are looking for content more that graphical superiority, and Risen's defects are more than outweighed by its strengths. The storyline is good, though it will be the massive amount of characters and sidequests that really get your attention. There are an incredible number of unique characters who all play some part in some quest or another (and from what I can tell they all have their own voice actors, unlike the previous Gothic games where you could tell several characters were voiced by the same person). The sheer scope of the game world is incredible. It's a bit shorter than previous Gothic games, which took a good 50+ hours to finish. This one takes around 30 hours, but it has a very high replay value since the entire game will be different depending on which camp you join. If this game is at all successful, I expect to see an expansion similar to Night of the Raven being released, as it could be very easily fit in to pad out the game length.
This is one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and while it isn't quite as good as the original Gothic games, it comes closer than any other RPGs I've played. Piranha Bytes clearly hasn't lost their touch. The few small problems (a few bugs, twitchy camera, etc.) are no more than minor annoyances. I only wish they hadn't messed up Gothic 3, so that we could be playing this game with all the original Gothic characters.
