I don't quite know what to make of this game. This isn't a bad thing per se. I guess I could sum Risen up by simplifying it to Oblivion + loot tweaks + combat tweaks. I'm sitting here, struggling to come up with a better way to describe the game in a short, succinct manner (which, is soooo, not me).
As much as my first reaction to the game was "Oblivion, but not quite", it was the the not-quite elements that got me hooked long enough to give the game a chance. I've not gone through a lot of the game (I don't think), but it's definitely entertaining albeit a bit easy once you've figured out the game mechanics. Speaking of game-mechanics, Risen differs from Oblivion in a few ways
Mortaring arrows at targets is moderatly harder in terms of accuracy (at least with a long-bow, I've not tried it with a crossbow yet)
There's not concept of weapon degradation and coupled with invincible parrying/blocking, once you figure out the timing for your character's equipped weapon, it's damn near impossible to die (mind you, it is possible to break a parry/block, but aside from heavy axes/hammers, the right-mouse button is your god-mode friend.
There is no concept of line of sight. With the exception of mortaring arrows from a kazillion miles away, as soon as you attack something (say, a wolf), the rest of the wolf-pack will come rushing towards you. Mortaring arrows gives you a chance to prevent the rest of the pack from homing in on you, but only sometimes. By extension of this, if you sneak-kill someone in a dark corner in town, everyone knows. Same goes for opening chests/closests -- even if there's no line of sight, as soon as you open that chest/closet, they'll come rushing in.
You can't interact with the environment while brandishing a weapon (i.e. you cannot pickup loot) and conversely, you cannot hope to defend yourself without pulling out your weapon (i.e., when you go to grab the loot -- there's no way to defend against the impending ambush). Furthermore, NPCs may, depending on their disposition towards you, autoattack you just for walking around with your weapons drawn, you know, looking for trouble and all.
There doesn't appear to be a wieght/capacity limit! Yay for loot-whores. Also yay for carrying the billion and a half arrows needed for long range mortaring.
It is possible to engage multiple targets in melee in a single stroke if your weapon is physically long enough (and provided it clips through their unfortunate bodies).
Lock picking is much more straightforward, as is pickpocketing. As for pick pocketing, while it's a lot less tedious than it is in Oblivion, it's also more time consuming in between pick pocket attempts (I've not ironed out the mechanics here but there seems to be a recharge time between pick pocketing the same individual)
In Oblivion, there were dozens of 'critical NPCs' which were granted god-mode by the game engine, in Risen, definitely not so many ... so you have to be careful (or careless) before going on a murderous rampage. That being said, I'm glad I made a hard-save before going and killing everything in the second town I encountered...
Speaking of killing, it's incredibly satisfying. In combat, you fight until one party gets knocked down (i.e. 'loses'). If it's you that gets knocked down due to a 'monster' or 'animal' or 'baddie out in the wild', it's over, you gotta reload. If you get knocked down by a humanoid NPC in town (say, for starting a brawl), they simply take your weapons that you were using for that fight and some gold and you simply get back up (hopefully with some backup weapons). Now if you piss off someone really bad (say, by killing their comrade), they'll outright kill you. How do they do this? Impalement of sword through your spine/chest. And before you ask ... yes you can do all of this to them too.
If you're not interested in exploits stop reading this point. An extension of the previous line of thought.... if you decide not to kill the NPC and the NPC has a "role" to play (say, cook, metalworker, farmer etc), the NPC will simply get back up and resume their tasks. Now this leads to a very interesting sequence of events involving, for example, a metalsmith/blacksmith. There are 4 steps to this [1] wait for the smith to start working on a sword/axe/etc [2] knock him down, this causes him to drop the steel blank [3] pickup the steel blank and, if you have the blacksmith skill ... finish making the weapon [4] repeat steps 1-3 until you have a sufficient number of weapons and then go sell them for retarded amounts of money because each time the smith gets up, he magically has another steel blank. Win.
There are factions, proper support for factions in terms of aggro and mutually exclusive questlines. Yes it's possible to break quest chains by allying the opposing faction etc.
You can COOK. I'm not kidding. Sure, in Oblivion, you can use a mortar and pestle to make some potions (there's Alchemy in Risen too, along with Blacksmithing, Prospecting, Gemcraft etc) ... but cooking. Yeah, you can friggen fry your food over a fire or mess with a couldron and make soup and shit. Gimicky as hell, but surprisingly, it's significantly less tedious than Oblivion's equivalent.
There's a brothel. Nuff said.
The story seems decent although I find myself skipping through the dialog for now as I'm blitz learning the game. Just like in Oblivion, there's a retarded amount of stuff lying in random bits of forest etc and so, it definitely pays to take the less beaten path and to explore everything.
Is it worth $50? Hard to say at this point, $30? Definitely but from what I've seen, $50 is a bit much. I guess I'll find out over the course of the next month or so if the story is up to scratch. I'm not entirely convinced of the replayability factor though because there appears (at least for now), to not have a random spawn system which means there is little way of grinding and in my opinion, severely limits the 'openess' nature of both the game and of RPGs in general. Hopefully I'm wrong but for those that enjoyed Oblivion, Risen is definitely worth a look.
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