Risen 3 continues Piranha Bytes’ ambitious open world RPG games that began with Gothic fourteen years ago and looks to continue with ELEX in 2017. The Gothic and Risen games have always seemed appealing to me, but massive open world RPG games tend to scare me off. Not because of their mythical creatures, unless you count the absolute Time Vampire that these games can become if they’re good enough. I get antsy anytime I break the sixty hour mark with a single game. That’s a concern I won’t have to deal with for Risen 3: Titan Lords – Enhanced Edition, though.
For one thing, the game is not that long unless you really spend a lot of time goofing off. But the bigger issue that’s going to keep me from spending that much time with it is the most important of all: it’s just not that fun or rewarding to play. The story follows a nameless, generic young pirate who is the sun of a (in)famous pirate captain named Steelbeard. Your sea-faring adventures take you to Crab Coast Island, named so because of the massive crabs that patrol some of its shores. You’re here to find treasure with your sister, but after about an hour into the story your character dies by a mysterious dark force. You’re awakened, or risen, a few weeks later, and now have the ability to see what dead people see (in a sense). The goal it to reclaim your soul before you become a slave to the dead, and just another brainless goon.
Despite the brutally generic and uninteresting character designs and voice-acting, the story is enough for me to take interest. Hell I’ll be honest; I don’t need an intricate and massive game universe or story like Dragon Age or Kingdoms of Amalur. Story and characters are important, no doubt, but if the gameplay is strong and the game is fun, the story and characters don’t have to blow me away to keep me playing. So from the outset, Risen 3 had that going for it, I was sufficiently hooked and interested to experience more.
The problems arise quickly, though. This Enhanced Edition said to have the graphical prowess of what the PC version’s Ultra settings were, and even beyond that. Higher res textures, bokeh depth of field and HDR bloom, a volumetric cloud system for better looking skies and sunsets, these are exclusively in this version. Sure enough, the graphics are pretty in many cases, on that technical level. On the other hand, what aggressively counteracts these nice environmental visuals are the animations of the characters and the general ‘feel’ of it all. It’s kind of hard to describe, but the game’s visuals translate to a strange looseness, or flimsy-ness when played. Things like clipping and awkward collision detection and spacing, or weird gliding or floaty sensations are common. You’ll sometimes get your character stuck against a wall or some other awkwardness and have to sort of dodge roll or try to jump or finagle your way out of it.
These woes are a big reason why the combat also disappoints in that it doesn’t feel refined or reliable. Controls have you pressing Circle to draw and put away your primary weapon, while X attacks. Pressed in time and without interruption, you can press X three times to do a combo, or hold X to charge up for a bigger hit. Parrying is done with R2 and the timing for this just didn’t feel right, nor did the spacing/collision-detection on attacks, I felt like I got a lot of hits with my sword that, as displayed on screen, weren’t actually quite close enough to make contact. The combat approaches the opposite of what you get with a Souls game or Lords of the Fallen, and while Risen 3 is not trying to be either of those, it would have been a much better game if the combat were tightened up and polished a lot. With as much combat as there is in the game, it’s a critical issue in the state it’s in now.
Dying is a problem because even though you can save your game at any point, and the game makes it readily apparent when it has auto-saved for you, load times are bad. I was experiencing load times upwards of forty seconds which is a big deal for a game that, like many of its class, is only fun and worthwhile when it’s going smoothly. As the difficulty ramps up and the other issues with game begin to pile up or get worse, it becomes harder and harder stick through such unacceptably long load times. You know I appreciate being able to save whenever, but when loading is such a chore it really bogs down the experience.
Another tedious aspect is all of the stuff laying around to collect. You can’t go very far without finding some random object to pick up that you may or may not use later as a consumable or ingredient or quest piece or something to barter with. I tend to pick up everything and anything I can, but the system for this could have been a lot smoother. The ‘pick up’ or ‘interact’ prompt is placed, for some reason, in the upper left corner of the screen, and it was enough that I had to routinely look up there to see the message. Just putting this information in a concise way in the main viewing area I think would have been just fine. Moreover, NPCs in your party often follow you so close, that the Talk prompt pops up in the exact same area, so often as you’re trying to interact with something, and you’ll trigger a conversation instead of the object interaction, wasting yet more time. Also, having to holster your weapon before you can interact/pick up things is silly.
As I think and look over my notes with my time of Risen 3, indeed, most of what I experienced was not encouraging, but there are some commendable things about Risen 3. The question is, are these factors enough to overcome all of the overt negative issues? That’s something only you can answer, but I’ll go back to the decent story, good environmental visuals, and large open world, as some of its positives. Other good aspects are its RPG elements, from item gathering to barter to upgrading, magic spells, and branching dialog, too. All of these are well and good, and all done better in other games, but they’re serviceable here. Ultimately, as with other games like Arcania and Bound By Flame, these lower budget open world RPGs have their merits, but also have a host of issues. Your best bet is to try them out for yourself, including a PC version if possible, since the console ports tend to introduce more issues than they fix.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
