Risen Review

Unfortunately the Xbox 360 version of the game suffers from graphical glitches and terrible slowdown

If the framerate doesn't shock you, then the graphics surely will. From a distance Risen looks impressive in parts. Settlements are well populated - indeed perhaps Risen's greatest achievement is its success in nailing that coveted living-and-breathing feel. There are loads of NPCs simply living their lives - blacksmithing, farming, guarding, whoring themselves (that's right, there are prostitutes in Risen). Everything and everyone looks worn. Faranga Island is a lush place, with some nice vistas, although it's such a death trap that you'll be too busy running away from beasties to enjoy it.

When viewed up close, however, Risen reveals itself to be one of the ugliest games of 2009. NPC faces are laughable. The lighting, especially from torches, is terrible. In one room we explored, our torch cast a light on the walls, as you'd expect it to. But moving a fraction to the left caused the lighting to completely disappear, despite our character still holding the burning torch. It was like turning a light switch on and off.

There are hundreds of noticeable graphical glitches. The running and jumping animations of the main character seem to be lifted straight out of a PSone game. And in some cases, especially on rock formations, there are what looks like missing textures - the game development equivalent of an own goal. Risen on 360 looks like an outsourced hack-job.

Then there's the menu system. Again, it's worth stressing that this is in reference to the Xbox 360 version of the game. The menus are so poorly designed that every time you use them if feels like the game is tying your hands behind your back and punching you in the gut. Up on the d-pad brings up your inventory, left brings up your quests, down brings up your maps and right displays your character stats. It's terribly clunky to navigate. Simply scrolling to the quest you want to deal with seems to take an age, because the game doesn't remember what quest you looked at last.

Navigation in general is incredibly frustrating. The various maps just confuse the issue. Blue and red dots show you relevant NPCs, but there's nothing displayed to tell you where you need to go next to get on with a quest. A simple mini-map would have helped enormously. It might not have been a particularly realistic addition, but that's not the point. Risen's a video game, and video games should be fun, not feel like pulling teeth.

The 360 version looks and feels like a poor quality, outsourced port.

When Risen decides to break out into a walk, it's usually because there's some fighting to be done. Don’t hold your breath though - it's hard to describe just how bad Risen's combat is. The A button hacks. The B button blocks. There's a ridiculous dodge move and a near impossible to nail parry/counter. That's your lot for the first 15 hours of play, during which you'll dread having to unsheathe your sword because you're weaker than an amoeba. Faranga's giant wolves and other fantasy beasts tear you a new hole without so much as breaking a sweat. The only way to win a fight is to turtle behind your shield and to take occasional swipes. You'll be knocked out a hell of a lot in combat and when it happens you'll curse the developers - since NPCs nick your cash, swords and shields. It's soul destroying - a game design relic of a bygone era - and it'll make you want to rage quit the game every time.

Key to any good role-playing experience is the ability to level up your character, tailoring them to your play style and micro-managing every last detail. It's surprising, then, to find that for such an unforgiving, hardcore game, character development feels automatic. Bar a decision about whether you fancy specialising in magic or traditional weapons, Risen keeps most of the good stuff to itself. For a start, you level up so slowly (after 10 hours I was only level four, not for want of trying) that you never feel motivated to complete "just one more quest", since there's nothing good to come of it. In fact the only thing you feel like you have any influence over is improving your skills, like sword fighting, magic and thievery. But to do so, not only do you have to spend Learning Points (gained when you level up) with trainers, but give them gold, too. And gold, in Risen, is as scarce as water in the desert.

All these issues conspire to enclose Risen in an impenetrable brick wall with a tiny door that only a select number of people who own the special key of doom can open. I hit the wall after about 15 hours of play, as I simply couldn't work out what I had to do next to progress the story. You may well end up as an absolute bad ass by the end game, but why should I suffer to get there?

I know what you're going to say. "So what? The game's supposed to be like that? It's a hardcore RPG! You just don't get it. Go back to playing WoW, noob!" Well in this post Oblivion, post Fallout 3, post Fable II world, Risen's got no excuse, especially on the Xbox 360. As an Xbox 360 RPG, even as an Xbox 360 fantasy RPG, it's so unpolished, so devoid of the oomph demanded of current gen games, so inaccessible and needlessly punishing, that it's offensive. The issue is not time: Great role-playing games are always huge time sinks, and Risen is no different - it'll easily last you 60 hours. The issue is enjoyment. If Piranha Bytes hadn't designed Risen while giving accessibility the finger, then it would have had a chance of being a slow burning but absorbing RPG. As it is though, it's impossible to recommend. You're better off playing through Bethesda's Oblivion, even if it's for the 50th time.