What's your opinion about Risen 1 guys? There is a huge discount on GoG for all Risen games, if you use my code. The link: cutt.ly/QCrZjeg The code is : "CLICK4RISEN".
Risen doesn't QUITE reach the heights of the classics that are Gothic 1 and 2, but I think it's a very good game nonetheless. In fact I liked it so much back in the day (when it was released during a very painful RPG drought) that I even played through the entire game on the horrible 360 port because my shitty laptop couldn't handle it. It does degrade in quality in the last chapters, but that's only a fairly small portion of your time on the island.
+ Best melee combat PB has ever made - Faction are not interesting enough - Second half is just fight against lizardmans ? You can get overpower like getting Don to train you to sword level 9 before join any faction
I think it has the best Combat System of all PB games and its my favourite PB-World to explore. This Island is so beautifully crafted. I dont mind the hackn slash part in the end as I'm also used to ARPGs. It only went downhill from here for PB. Elex is almost unplayable to me.
You make it sounds like there are only 2 factions to join (Bandits and Inquisition), but there are 3! Number 3 is The Mage. If you get captured by the warriors outside the town, and send to the monastery, then you have no choice left: you can only become a warrior of the inquisition. But if you help the mage in harbor town, you can get a letter of recommendation from the town boss. With that letter you travel to the monastery yourself, without being captured, and when you knock on the gate, you get the choice between mage or warrior. There are a lot of differences between playing mage or warrior, and not just the combat style. There are also unique quests for each faction.
30:40 There are actually 2 more helmets you can buy throughout the game: The leather helmet (seems a little ridiculous) and the helmet of the city guard. The only trader who sells them though is the weapons' trader in the harbor city by the Don's house. That's why you might not have found them yet.
There is also a third helmet (the Warrior's Helmet). It gets sold by the smith in the volcano keep, during the final chapter of the game. Its very easy to miss, since that smith is only useful for Staff users.
I love the first 2-3 chapters, murder in monastery, getting to town and many great little side quests, awesome soundtrack, great combat....but then it become only Lizard slicer simulator, many of that great things left and in the end it was really hard to finish the game
I have this gripe with many games. They start out with a nice balance of exploring, fighting, talking. But in the end they becoe too combat heavy. And my biggest pet pieve is a final boss that's a huge difficculty spike and has like 3 forms.
@@wd2729 there are ways around it. It's been around 2 years since my last playthrough but I remember toeing the line with each faction up until about the end of the 2nd chapter or so. Learned alchemy and swordfighting, so I crafted a ton of strength potions, dumped my learning points into swordfighting at harbour town, and the lizards were annoying but certainly manageable.
The music in Risen 1 is great! I used to have a job that started at 11 AM, so I spent many mornings playing Risen before work. The music and general atmosphere of the Harbour Town was a great way to start the day!
Same here, I play it often, finished as archer, fire mage, sword and shield. Probably will try again with 2h axe and other mage types, also with the monastery stick.
Mnogo je cudno videti Baku Praseta ovde, pogotovu sa obzirom na to sta se trenutno desava sa njim i masnokosim. Super video, igrao sam Risen davno kao klinac. Dobio si sub od mene!
Well, I think we just won't see Elex 3 at all. After very average Elex 1 we got somehow much worse Elex 2... Now when PB is basically dead will anybody continue such small and badly rated game series?
Did that much time have passed that we are now dissecting Risen 1 as a classic? I still remember poring over teaser screenshots of Gothic III and just being amazed at the leap of graphics (compared to G1 and G2).
36:30 the Holy Flame is something that probalbly was lost in translation. Never played Risen in english but in german (spoilers I guess) is part of the fire Titan and the main reason why other Titans didn't attack or come close to Faranga since Titans don't want to get close to each other for some reason Ursegor never explained that part though.
At Risen 2 you see the shift of quality of Piranha Bytes. During Risen 1 Michael Hoge was in charge of the game who was deeply involved with the creation of the Gothic games. After Risen he left and Björn Pankratz got in charge who had a much smaller position during the development of the Gothic games, which was more involved with the marketing.
The parry mechanic quickly became my best friend as soon as the Saurians started pouring out of the ruins. The quick change to extremely agressive combat style they exhibit usually means a lot of deaths if you are not familiar with them. Unless you are fighting a leader, a successful parry will almost always let you land a free hit. If you pull off a successful parry at the second last blow in your combo, you can squeeze in an even more powerful blow.
19:34: Telekinesis is not necessary to get through the tunnel. You can just wait for the trap to come down, and when it goes up again quickly go through (I think you don't even need sprinting). The winches can also be triggered by bows/crossbows, so once again, telekinesis is not necessary for them. You are correct about the needed transformation and levitation spells though.
okay well, thank you for reminding me that this game existed. I remember trying to play the xbox 360 version when I was a teenager and my stepdad had the game, I got trapped in the monastery and didn't have the patience to get out of it despite loving the game until that point. As a relatively young adult now, I'm hoping to actually get into the game more and enjoy it for what it actually is. Thanks again!
had the whole series in my steam library but never played after the starting area finished it a few months ago got to say by far the best in the series, yeah the combat is not that great but the world building the quest everything just clicks, loved the vibe of harbor town, love your videos man keep it up.
I loved the first half of this game, sadly it becomes empty later on. The combat was great, they nailed it, even though I have some criticism about the super speed of animations, most of times is unpredictable, like almost instant. I wish this game was longer and with more content, I simply lose my interest trough half of it, because once you done the quests, youre all done
@@anduril38 Well I think that while making the first 2-3 acts of a game they still have a lot of energy and the deadlines are far away, while during the later acts they are just trying to finish the project before running out of time and money. But on the other hand a game with a strong beginning will get more people into it than one that only really gets good after 20+ hours.
Alright y'all, I have some combat tips. • If you wanna use your first preset strike over and over again but very quickly. You strike first, block second and strike again, and if you time these two core moves you can strike very quickly with the same strike. • If you wanna strike faster with your entire preset, you time the strike button once a strike has ended, your strikes will become very quick. • if you have to fight with your fists, you can spam block, strike, block strike, or dodge left and right after every punch, you confuse the enemy AI when you do this and you can interrupt their strikes no matter how fast or what weapon they're using. • if you're out numbered by two people, force them or manipulate them into lining up, and you can go for a strike that hits both of them. And or spam block, strike. • If you're out numbered by three people, fight like Muhammad Ali, circle, strike, dodge and repeat. • Collect every "conjure skeleton" spell, because if you're having to fight four people, you're definitely going to need them. • if all you have is a sword, a staff and or an axe, and you're fighting a wolf or a stingrat dodge after every strike, because you can't block their attacks unless you have a shield to dual wield. • if it's a wildboar you just dodge and strike because they can break your block. • let's be real here, ghouls sound like honey badgers and don't give a flying FUCK if you're blocking don't try to run because they'll catch your ass. So really how you fight them is you need a conjure skeleton spell and shoot them in the back.
I was today years old when I found out the Inquisitor was voiced by Andy Serkis, Don Esteban was voiced by John Rhys Davies, and Patty was voiced by Lena Headey (Cercei Lannister). Some serious heavy hitters were a part of the voice cast.
I absolutely love this game and it is one of my favourites of all time. Although I agree that later parts of the game feels little bit unfinished, but eveything else is great and all other problems are minor and forgivable. I got goosebumps everytime I hear that ingenious OST and almost cry in nostalgia when I feel the overall atmosphere of the game. By the way - the combat system is unforgettable - that almost instant reaction on players intentions.! Piranha Bytes is a legend and their games are one of the reasons I love RPGs nearly 20 years. Thank you for your work and for sharing this great retrospective :)
I managed to turn off this "film grain" effect you are talking about at 17:20, easiest way to do it is set shadow quality to "low", otherwise there is a particular option in config files which is causing that. I believe it was: ScreenSpaceAmbientOcclison="false" or SoftShadows="false"
To this day, my review quote remains on the Steam store page for the game, and at the time I had quite a few comments deriding this opinion. But it's nice to see that the game aged so well. Even if it does require a few tweaks and fixes to get it running properly at this point...
Its incredible how much work you put into your videos, really enjoying it. Risen 1 is amazing i have finished it so often, lots of nostalgia involved. You brought back some great feelings with your retrospective. Greetings.
I love every minute in Risen1.Sure it got old and looks outdate but it can captured what i love in Gothic series, the musics ,the environment.It feels dark,dirty,bloody,dangerous and hard combat.Only thing i feel disappoint is the lastboss is so easy.
Besides of the "final helmet" there are another two more in the game, if I'm not remember bad, one of them was in a tower with skeletons and you can get it during the "Patroclos" mission and the other one is in Harbor Town and you can buy it but only during chapter 3 or 4.
Was about to comment that - one you can find where you said, one you can buy in Harbor Town in Chapter 2 and one in Volcano Keep in Chapter 3. The ones that you can buy look really cool as well.
@@Jedrex899 yeah, actually I feel like He miss some aspects of the game Wich make it even better, not only the detail of the helmets. He forgot to mention that there are a lot of small secret areas where you only can access using the levitation scroll and other secret areas in the woods behind the trees, actually I completed this game a lot of times and in every gameplay I always discover something new.
I've beaten Risen 1 a few times over the years. I definitely enjoy it similarly to Gothic 1. It's a shame about Risen 2, which I feel may be Piranha Bytes' weakest game. I had not remembered how yellow the game looked until I watched this video. Definitely some questionable graphical design decisions. It's been years, but I remember feeling like enemies always attacked way too suddenly in Risen 1, which made it really hard to properly time counters and the like. This led to me abusing the lunge attack and dodging backwards, over and over again. However, when comparing the combat to Risen 2, Risen 1's is an absolute masterpiece. Whatever my complaints, I really liked the system of gradually learning new combat maneuvers as you increase in skill. I feel like it's a refinement of the weapon skill system in Gothic 1 and 2 and wish other games would adopt the same idea. There are helmets other than the endgame helmet, but they're quite limited. The final boss wasn't awful as far as boss fights go, but IMO the biggest failing was that your character build has absolutely no bearing on how you fight it. You ALWAYS use the Titan Armor and ALWAYS use that Hammer to hit the boss until you win, focusing completely on platforming to win.
it's really odd that you enjoy gothic 1 more than gothic 2 considering that gothic 2 is a game the action of which mainly unfolds in a harbor town, just like in risen 1
@@gegi4577 True, Risen does have that similarity to Gothic 2. The atmosphere of Gothic 1 is always what did it for me, so while I like both of the original Gothic games, I prefer 1.
My one critique is this video makes it sound like there are only two factions to join, but there are actually three. The bandits in the swamp, the inquisition in harbor town, or the fire monks in the monastery. The fire monks versus inquisition make for very different character builds, with the monks being more pure caster and the inquisition being a caster-melee hybrid.
If I remember correctly there was a levitate spell (playing as a mage) which I often overused simply gliding over the landscape (cliffs too). Ah, good times... And the guy voicing the hero is Sam Worthington of Avatar fame.
I personally love how improving your skill with a weapon just gives you more things you can do with the weapon, rather than just being a numerical upgrade to damage.
The only thing I have always hated about Risen is that Sarah (the woman you find on the shore in the beginning) gets immediately irrelevant. That's like making Diego the first character you interact with and then cutting him from the story.
The texture issue mentioned in 39:55 has nothing to do with texture resolution, but rather with texture mapping. They probably simplified the mesh without updating texture mapping to accomodate for that.
I love Piranha Bytes games; especially the ELEX series. I never beat Risen, but loved what I played originally, so I’m super excited to see a Remaster coming next month which I’ll be buying for sure and playing the heck out of… 😊
Same here for the Risen remaster! Hope it will be fixed without the original X Box issues... i never really got into Elex but I played a lot of Gothic when I was younger and it was awesome for its time
I did enjoy ELEX quite a bit - only played the first one. I felt like there were some pacing and/or balancing issues in the beginning, it felt a bit hard to me to really get going. But once you grasped the game it quickly changed and I quite enjoyed it. There was also kind of the "obvious" choice for your faction that was close to where you start the game, but you had the option to explore much further into the world to join other factions, which could be more of a challenge. Quite interesting overall in my opinion.
I only have fond memories of Risen 1. It's been a long time, I only remember getting pissed off -once; mastering the combat in the very first part of the game, after that.... the experience was amazing !
Gothic 1 was pretty much my introduction to rpg style games, it set the baseline standards for me. I liked it a lot. Gothic 2 was better i suppose but my PC couldn't handle it at the time so i played it at a friend thus my whole experience lacked because i couldn't sink in so many hours as i liked. G3 was weird and had to install community patches to make it playable. It and "Pirates of the Carribean" game, the one based on Sea Dogs game were the two game i remember fiddling the most as both were vastly improved by the community. Maybe that bother made me hate now any game that relies on mods to fulfill its potential. I expect that initiative from the developer not years after launch from people that don't really get payed for their work but just love the game. I think it's not too much to ask from a dev to love their game at least as much as its community. Risen 1 is the best in the series, the followers kind of suck. From Risen 1 and Gothic 1 i really started to expect other rpg's to give a similar experience regarding skill development. I like that the character learns skills it is seen in the ease and speed of the action and the changing animation from novice to expert. The only other game i can think now that kind of touches on this aspect is Fable 1 where your character with a low strength drags a big heavy sword and can't swing or barely swings it around but with investment in strength he can t swing it around like it would be a toothpick. Those aspects make the immersion for me. The little things count and when you have many of those in different systems the whole world seem alive. If i remember correctly in Risen 1 i first encountered the best shield combat systems too. I always wandered after this game why don't other devs just take the system approach from this game to apply it in to them. I remember saying that the graphics are enough, you don't need photo realism, just take the core systems, add some more on top from you and present whatever story you desire. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just improve on it. It didn't quite happen then but it also kind of did where standards of the industry adopted some Ubisoft approaches like towers and some pretty bad Rockstar approaches, the ones regarding monetization shark cards and whatnot while kind of ignoring the ones regarding product quality. So in the end it did happen just in a very different and bad way. I guess, be careful what you wish for.
Give Elex a chance. Risen has a middle age fantasy setting and Elex a post apocalypse fantasy one. Both games working with more or less the same mechanics.
32:05 Alchemy is super useful. You can brew permanent stat potions. There are 20 hero crowns so it's like +100 attribute points of your choice. You should definitely invest in lvl 3 alchemy :)
I love this game. Risen 2 was very meh, Risen 3 was great IMO, but the first one is just the best. From a technical point of view it's probably best PB game. Loved the combat system, quests (monastery FTW), magic (I generally do not play as mages, but here it is so fun to use), soundtrack (so calm and mysterious)... I've replayed it many times, beaten - 4 times (last one just two weeks ago) and I'll probably never stop doing so. Amazing title. BTW great content man! I've been watching you for a couple of months and I'm always happy to see new vid. Keep it up!
As someone who only ever got the chance to play Risen on the Xbox 360, I still really adored it. Yeah it had problems, but when it came to quality RPG worlds for the console, there just weren't many that could compete, outside of the elder scrolls and dragon age.
It's pretty easy to recognize the dialogue segments by the audio peaks, that helps a lot. But yea, I always remember some specific, goofy dialogue lines by npcs, and there is plenty of that in Risen games, lol.
There is one helmet I found besides the mandatory one and it was called Hunter's Helmet or something like that. I found it near the broken tower next to the swamp area south east of the monastery
While in the grand scheme of things I prefer the thrid game (less piratey and with better maps design than the second one), first one is superb as well. Exploration in PB games is amazing and Risen 1 has stellar map design. I loved randomly stumbling upon Lord Patroscon at some point and how some dungeons are connected. I'd say it is the best introduction to PB games - not as dated as Gothic games, but preserving their best qualities.
I only discovered piranha bytes games some months ago when I bought Elex 2. This game absolutely blew my mind as I usually don't enjoy rpgs. After that I moved on to Elex 1 (had a blast there as well) and with some hesitation started risen 1 some days ago (cuz it looked very old and outdated). Risen 1 has me hooked atm. Even though it looks and plays outdated, it was a one of a kind experience no rpg was able to offer me. I enjoyed Risen 1 much, much more than triple A rpgs like witcher 3 or skyrim.
*LOVE* this game so much, it was the *first rpg game* I ever played and it's probably the reason why I like rpg games so much, too bad that the sequels ruined the story and the vibe, they should honestly unmake them and create a different continuation or remaster the first game ^w^
Some time ago, I got into Gothic 3, due to your videos Marko. (and I loved it instantly). Morrowind, Skyrim, Oblivion and Gothic 3 are very similar but different games, and I dont like to compare as they have their strengths and weaknesses, but I have to say, Gothic 3 is my favourite above all the Elder Scrolls. Piranha Bytes are definitely pioneers of this genre. And now I can say the same for Risen. Just bought this thanks to your video, and I think it's awesome! I kept hearing of it, but never realised it was a PB game. It's pretty much an upated version of Gothic 3 (perhaps the way it shouldve been back then) but with beautiful graphics and smoother animations. The similarities between Gothic 3 and Risen are really nice but subtle. Both games start at sea, and have have the same machanics. I really love the graphics of games released between 2005 and 2015. I dont need all these hyper realistic visuals. I find the graphics, like seen here in Risen, to be far more appealing to me. Risen Gothic 3 and Dragon's Dogma 1 have go to me my favourites of all time. I would even add Bannerlord: Mount and Blade to that list too, as it can be played as a pretty decent RPG that can go on for years (I still have a game going that has lasted several generations of rulers)
I hope you make a retrospective on Risen 2 and 3. I have seen that they go in a different direction from Risen 1 so I would like to hear what you think about those games Edit: Nevermind just hit the end of the video lol
the name of the island was never mentioned in risen 1 at the start of risen risen 2 Patty refers to the event of risen 1 in a dialog option and that's were we learn the name of the island
For some people Risen is the real Gothic 3 but for me is the real Gothic 4, I've never had a single complaint about Gothic 3, I don't even know how many times I completed both games. Risen is PERFECT, my only complaint about it is that I wish that game could be a 200 hours game cause I never got boring of it.
Thank you again for great video. I played Risen 1 when it comes out and it was good, just like you say, quite like Gothic series, but I lost interest pretty soon, so maybe it is time to revisit now ...
Risen 1 is a game which I can put right next to Gothic 1 & 2, which means it's one of the best RPG games out there. If you haven't played it, WTF are you waiting for?
Risen was one of my first RPGs I played as a kid (still remembering getting my mohter to buy it at the store and then excitedly stuyding the manual on our car ride home. :D), so the nostalgia levels are obviously through the roof for me but I still objectively think this is a pretty good game, especially for its time. - The exploration is pretty nice and actually rewarding because you get scrolls, potions, gold, powerful alchemy ingredients for permanent stat buffs that really make you strong. - The story, quests and characters are... okay. Some parts are great, others more meh... - What I really like in the game is the combat system though. Once you get the hang of the controls, got some combos and know the enemies' moveset it's quite fast complex, and almost rhythmic. Some enemies you can only attack once before they retaliate, some you can sort of stagger with a combo if I recall, some enemies usually do a full combo so you can decide whether to block/dodge all of it or try to interrupt their combo by dodging inbetween the right attacks (but not between any attacks because some attacks have better tracking/reach) and so on. Makes you fight almost all enemies in a slightly different way and the quick movements and attacks make it quite exciting and fast-paced. Or you invest all your points into the magic missile crystal as a mage/inquisitor and just bust out the magic gatling gun to mow down everything that moves. :D Risen 2 and 3 might be more "modern" and maybe the characters/story is a bit better but their new engine and combat system lost everything that hooked me in this game, so I still consider Risen 1 the best of the series.
What's your opinion about Risen 1 guys?
There is a huge discount on GoG for all Risen games, if you use my code.
The link: cutt.ly/QCrZjeg
The code is : "CLICK4RISEN".
Risen doesn't QUITE reach the heights of the classics that are Gothic 1 and 2, but I think it's a very good game nonetheless. In fact I liked it so much back in the day (when it was released during a very painful RPG drought) that I even played through the entire game on the horrible 360 port because my shitty laptop couldn't handle it. It does degrade in quality in the last chapters, but that's only a fairly small portion of your time on the island.
+ Best melee combat PB has ever made
- Faction are not interesting enough
- Second half is just fight against lizardmans
? You can get overpower like getting Don to train you to sword level 9 before join any faction
I recently played a couple months ago for the first time, it was a fantastic game they dont make them like they used to
I think it has the best Combat System of all PB games and its my favourite PB-World to explore. This Island is so beautifully crafted. I dont mind the hackn slash part in the end as I'm also used to ARPGs.
It only went downhill from here for PB. Elex is almost unplayable to me.
Let this games live is my opinion !
Around 10 years ago I started the Risen wiki. Nice to see how it evolved over the years
Jetzt gibt's was mit der groben Kelle 🥄 🗡️
One of the best RPG I've played, one of the very rare ones I've replayed. The real, in your face, "from zero to hero" formula.
somebody should show this guy gothic
@@erko948 Played it. Risen 1 is what's closest to it in that sense.
@@PaStef37 yeah i figured. it was a “joke”
It's the second best after Gothic 2.
Have you played dragon age origins?
Despite its flaws, Risen contains some of the finest _dungeons_ ever designed by Piranha Bytes.
And I thought temple of adanos and sleeper temple is better
@@mynameisstepon7860 don't forget the Orc Cemetery!
Gothic 1 and 2 had great dungeons that were environmentally well designed. They look like what you'd expect a crypt to look like.
The monastery introduction, training with staves and magic, solving the murder mystery are the most memorable moments in the game.
That was my favorite too. Great atmosphere and location. Kingdom Come Deliverance had a similar part but this did it way better.
You make it sounds like there are only 2 factions to join (Bandits and Inquisition), but there are 3! Number 3 is The Mage.
If you get captured by the warriors outside the town, and send to the monastery, then you have no choice left: you can only become a warrior of the inquisition.
But if you help the mage in harbor town, you can get a letter of recommendation from the town boss. With that letter you travel to the monastery yourself, without being captured, and when you knock on the gate, you get the choice between mage or warrior.
There are a lot of differences between playing mage or warrior, and not just the combat style. There are also unique quests for each faction.
This game was so good when i first played it as a teen. Story, combat, map, enjoyed it all.
30:40 There are actually 2 more helmets you can buy throughout the game: The leather helmet (seems a little ridiculous) and the helmet of the city guard. The only trader who sells them though is the weapons' trader in the harbor city by the Don's house. That's why you might not have found them yet.
There is also a third helmet (the Warrior's Helmet). It gets sold by the smith in the volcano keep, during the final chapter of the game. Its very easy to miss, since that smith is only useful for Staff users.
I love the first 2-3 chapters, murder in monastery, getting to town and many great little side quests, awesome soundtrack, great combat....but then it become only Lizard slicer simulator, many of that great things left and in the end it was really hard to finish the game
Typical PB. Great 2/3 of the game and then last 3rd is just killing huge amount of mobs...
I have this gripe with many games. They start out with a nice balance of exploring, fighting, talking. But in the end they becoe too combat heavy. And my biggest pet pieve is a final boss that's a huge difficculty spike and has like 3 forms.
@@shady8910 I never finished Gothic 1 and 2 becouse of that, I did hate last dungeons in both games. Same with Risen. Fucking lizards
@@wd2729 there are ways around it. It's been around 2 years since my last playthrough but I remember toeing the line with each faction up until about the end of the 2nd chapter or so. Learned alchemy and swordfighting, so I crafted a ton of strength potions, dumped my learning points into swordfighting at harbour town, and the lizards were annoying but certainly manageable.
The music in Risen 1 is great!
I used to have a job that started at 11 AM, so I spent many mornings playing Risen before work. The music and general atmosphere of the Harbour Town was a great way to start the day!
I really liked risen.
It was like playing Gothic 2 but with a coat of paint.
That was all I needed, back then
risen 1 is one of my favourite games of all time. i play it once every 1 or 2 years to this day. the atmosphere is amazing. everything is great.
Same here, I play it often, finished as archer, fire mage, sword and shield. Probably will try again with 2h axe and other mage types, also with the monastery stick.
Mnogo je cudno videti Baku Praseta ovde, pogotovu sa obzirom na to sta se trenutno desava sa njim i masnokosim. Super video, igrao sam Risen davno kao klinac. Dobio si sub od mene!
"We can say for sure that Elex 3 is inevitable" - well, that aged like milk... Sadly...
That entry thing about Elex 3 being "inevitable" didn't age well :P
Yeah, it's sad how Piranha Bytes ended... in this year 2024.. 😢😭 Probably now we'll never see Elex 3 game, at least from PB studio...
Well, I think we just won't see Elex 3 at all. After very average Elex 1 we got somehow much worse Elex 2... Now when PB is basically dead will anybody continue such small and badly rated game series?
I really like this channel. Your honest reviews of these old gems really feels fresh. Keep it going!
I was waiting for that video 🙏🏻
Did that much time have passed that we are now dissecting Risen 1 as a classic?
I still remember poring over teaser screenshots of Gothic III and just being amazed at the leap of graphics (compared to G1 and G2).
36:30 The holy flame springs from the imprisoned fire titan in the volcano temple.
36:30 the Holy Flame is something that probalbly was lost in translation. Never played Risen in english but in german (spoilers I guess)
is part of the fire Titan and the main reason why other Titans didn't attack or come close to Faranga since Titans don't want to get close to each other for some reason Ursegor never explained that part though.
At Risen 2 you see the shift of quality of Piranha Bytes. During Risen 1 Michael Hoge was in charge of the game who was deeply involved with the creation of the Gothic games. After Risen he left and Björn Pankratz got in charge who had a much smaller position during the development of the Gothic games, which was more involved with the marketing.
thats explains a lot, sad that risen 2 and 3 had to be such shit games
Fun fact : Lena Heady (Cerci Lannester) is voicing Patty in this game
The parry mechanic quickly became my best friend as soon as the Saurians started pouring out of the ruins. The quick change to extremely agressive combat style they exhibit usually means a lot of deaths if you are not familiar with them. Unless you are fighting a leader, a successful parry will almost always let you land a free hit. If you pull off a successful parry at the second last blow in your combo, you can squeeze in an even more powerful blow.
19:34: Telekinesis is not necessary to get through the tunnel. You can just wait for the trap to come down, and when it goes up again quickly go through (I think you don't even need sprinting). The winches can also be triggered by bows/crossbows, so once again, telekinesis is not necessary for them. You are correct about the needed transformation and levitation spells though.
24:13 you missed a king's crown! Awesome video as always, keep up the good work!!!!
okay well, thank you for reminding me that this game existed.
I remember trying to play the xbox 360 version when I was a teenager and my stepdad had the game, I got trapped in the monastery and didn't have the patience to get out of it despite loving the game until that point.
As a relatively young adult now, I'm hoping to actually get into the game more and enjoy it for what it actually is. Thanks again!
had the whole series in my steam library but never played after the starting area finished it a few months ago got to say by far the best in the series, yeah the combat is not that great but the world building the quest everything just clicks, loved the vibe of harbor town, love your videos man keep it up.
I loved the first half of this game, sadly it becomes empty later on. The combat was great, they nailed it, even though I have some criticism about the super speed of animations, most of times is unpredictable, like almost instant. I wish this game was longer and with more content, I simply lose my interest trough half of it, because once you done the quests, youre all done
I find the emptiness and poor late game a huge problem with nearly all PB's games. It's something they've never really learned how to fix
@@anduril38 I think gothic 2 barelly suffer with this, the world keeps interesting until the very end
@@anduril38 Well I think that while making the first 2-3 acts of a game they still have a lot of energy and the deadlines are far away, while during the later acts they are just trying to finish the project before running out of time and money. But on the other hand a game with a strong beginning will get more people into it than one that only really gets good after 20+ hours.
Alright y'all, I have some combat tips.
• If you wanna use your first preset strike over and over again but very quickly. You strike first, block second and strike again, and if you time these two core moves you can strike very quickly with the same strike.
• If you wanna strike faster with your entire preset, you time the strike button once a strike has ended, your strikes will become very quick.
• if you have to fight with your fists, you can spam block, strike, block strike, or dodge left and right after every punch, you confuse the enemy AI when you do this and you can interrupt their strikes no matter how fast or what weapon they're using.
• if you're out numbered by two people, force them or manipulate them into lining up, and you can go for a strike that hits both of them. And or spam block, strike.
• If you're out numbered by three people, fight like Muhammad Ali, circle, strike, dodge and repeat.
• Collect every "conjure skeleton" spell, because if you're having to fight four people, you're definitely going to need them.
• if all you have is a sword, a staff and or an axe, and you're fighting a wolf or a stingrat dodge after every strike, because you can't block their attacks unless you have a shield to dual wield.
• if it's a wildboar you just dodge and strike because they can break your block.
• let's be real here, ghouls sound like honey badgers and don't give a flying FUCK if you're blocking don't try to run because they'll catch your ass. So really how you fight them is you need a conjure skeleton spell and shoot them in the back.
I was today years old when I found out the Inquisitor was voiced by Andy Serkis, Don Esteban was voiced by John Rhys Davies, and Patty was voiced by Lena Headey (Cercei Lannister). Some serious heavy hitters were a part of the voice cast.
I absolutely love this game and it is one of my favourites of all time. Although I agree that later parts of the game feels little bit unfinished, but eveything else is great and all other problems are minor and forgivable. I got goosebumps everytime I hear that ingenious OST and almost cry in nostalgia when I feel the overall atmosphere of the game.
By the way - the combat system is unforgettable - that almost instant reaction on players intentions.!
Piranha Bytes is a legend and their games are one of the reasons I love RPGs nearly 20 years.
Thank you for your work and for sharing this great retrospective :)
Great timing, just started playing it the other day!
I managed to turn off this "film grain" effect you are talking about at 17:20, easiest way to do it is set shadow quality to "low", otherwise there is a particular option in config files which is causing that. I believe it was: ScreenSpaceAmbientOcclison="false" or SoftShadows="false"
I remember watching my dad play this game and had no idea what was going on except him fighting with a stick.... good memories.
Really enjoyed Risen and Risen 2 also! Right now I'm in the middle of Elex 2 and I've had great time with it. PB RPGs really hit me
Risen is indeed a good game. It's a solid playthough that indeed made me wish there was more too it but I liked it for what it was.
My most fav piranha game. And my first rpg. Oni love to this day.
Did you play gothic
Awesome Video C4G (as always)
Great Job :)
What are your favorite Rpgs outside of pranha bytes games? im curious to know
To this day, my review quote remains on the Steam store page for the game, and at the time I had quite a few comments deriding this opinion. But it's nice to see that the game aged so well.
Even if it does require a few tweaks and fixes to get it running properly at this point...
I'm at 2:44 and I'm really digging what I'm seeing xD you earn a sub ! Let's watch it all!
Its incredible how much work you put into your videos, really enjoying it.
Risen 1 is amazing i have finished it so often, lots of nostalgia involved. You brought back some great feelings with your retrospective. Greetings.
I love every minute in Risen1.Sure it got old and looks outdate but it can captured what i love in Gothic series, the musics ,the environment.It feels dark,dirty,bloody,dangerous and hard combat.Only thing i feel disappoint is the lastboss is so easy.
This game is coming out on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch next year. It’ll be the perfect time to play this!
My favorite from PB. I love this game. Such a great inspiration for my work.
Besides of the "final helmet" there are another two more in the game, if I'm not remember bad, one of them was in a tower with skeletons and you can get it during the "Patroclos" mission and the other one is in Harbor Town and you can buy it but only during chapter 3 or 4.
Was about to comment that - one you can find where you said, one you can buy in Harbor Town in Chapter 2 and one in Volcano Keep in Chapter 3. The ones that you can buy look really cool as well.
@@Jedrex899 yeah, actually I feel like He miss some aspects of the game Wich make it even better, not only the detail of the helmets. He forgot to mention that there are a lot of small secret areas where you only can access using the levitation scroll and other secret areas in the woods behind the trees, actually I completed this game a lot of times and in every gameplay I always discover something new.
I've beaten Risen 1 a few times over the years. I definitely enjoy it similarly to Gothic 1. It's a shame about Risen 2, which I feel may be Piranha Bytes' weakest game.
I had not remembered how yellow the game looked until I watched this video. Definitely some questionable graphical design decisions.
It's been years, but I remember feeling like enemies always attacked way too suddenly in Risen 1, which made it really hard to properly time counters and the like. This led to me abusing the lunge attack and dodging backwards, over and over again.
However, when comparing the combat to Risen 2, Risen 1's is an absolute masterpiece.
Whatever my complaints, I really liked the system of gradually learning new combat maneuvers as you increase in skill. I feel like it's a refinement of the weapon skill system in Gothic 1 and 2 and wish other games would adopt the same idea.
There are helmets other than the endgame helmet, but they're quite limited.
The final boss wasn't awful as far as boss fights go, but IMO the biggest failing was that your character build has absolutely no bearing on how you fight it. You ALWAYS use the Titan Armor and ALWAYS use that Hammer to hit the boss until you win, focusing completely on platforming to win.
You can change colour settings in game main menu
@@karimghazal1531 I'll be sure to check that next time I play.
I don't know what they were thinking with that last boss fight/design. Does he even attack?
it's really odd that you enjoy gothic 1 more than gothic 2 considering that gothic 2 is a game the action of which mainly unfolds in a harbor town, just like in risen 1
@@gegi4577 True, Risen does have that similarity to Gothic 2.
The atmosphere of Gothic 1 is always what did it for me, so while I like both of the original Gothic games, I prefer 1.
My one critique is this video makes it sound like there are only two factions to join, but there are actually three. The bandits in the swamp, the inquisition in harbor town, or the fire monks in the monastery. The fire monks versus inquisition make for very different character builds, with the monks being more pure caster and the inquisition being a caster-melee hybrid.
If I remember correctly there was a levitate spell (playing as a mage) which I often overused simply gliding over the landscape (cliffs too). Ah, good times... And the guy voicing the hero is Sam Worthington of Avatar fame.
Underrated advice xD
*RISEN 4 LIFE*
My favorite role playing game of all time.
I fucking love Risen 1
RIsen was one of the games that defined my childhood, a shame the rest of the series and elex isnt so great. Still PB was my childhood studio.
15:32 "Such a great atmosphere" said walking through brothel. Well, can't argue with that
I absolutely LOVE the vertical world and the atmosphere thats so dense you can almost grab it. Just like Gothic 1 💪🙏
I personally love how improving your skill with a weapon just gives you more things you can do with the weapon, rather than just being a numerical upgrade to damage.
The only thing I have always hated about Risen is that Sarah (the woman you find on the shore in the beginning) gets immediately irrelevant. That's like making Diego the first character you interact with and then cutting him from the story.
- That was such an awesome game, I went full mage with that fast mana gun skill and had so much fun in it.
The texture issue mentioned in 39:55 has nothing to do with texture resolution, but rather with texture mapping. They probably simplified the mesh without updating texture mapping to accomodate for that.
Giving Elex another chance right now, and beginning to enjoy it. First Risen is fantastic, music and atmosphere is great.
I love Piranha Bytes games; especially the ELEX series. I never beat Risen, but loved what I played originally, so I’m super excited to see a Remaster coming next month which I’ll be buying for sure and playing the heck out of… 😊
Same here for the Risen remaster! Hope it will be fixed without the original X Box issues... i never really got into Elex but I played a lot of Gothic when I was younger and it was awesome for its time
@@marchcavrecs6933 yea I need to play Gothic one day. 🤘
I did enjoy ELEX quite a bit - only played the first one. I felt like there were some pacing and/or balancing issues in the beginning, it felt a bit hard to me to really get going. But once you grasped the game it quickly changed and I quite enjoyed it. There was also kind of the "obvious" choice for your faction that was close to where you start the game, but you had the option to explore much further into the world to join other factions, which could be more of a challenge. Quite interesting overall in my opinion.
@@maxmustermann3938 ELEX 2 was Amazing. Highly recommend playing it friend. 🤘
This Game is truly a Masterpiece. I Play it every Year, and i Love it. Send you all Love from Germany ❤️
I only have fond memories of Risen 1.
It's been a long time, I only remember getting pissed off -once; mastering the combat in the very first part of the game, after that.... the experience was amazing !
Gothic 1 was pretty much my introduction to rpg style games, it set the baseline standards for me. I liked it a lot. Gothic 2 was better i suppose but my PC couldn't handle it at the time so i played it at a friend thus my whole experience lacked because i couldn't sink in so many hours as i liked. G3 was weird and had to install community patches to make it playable. It and "Pirates of the Carribean" game, the one based on Sea Dogs game were the two game i remember fiddling the most as both were vastly improved by the community. Maybe that bother made me hate now any game that relies on mods to fulfill its potential. I expect that initiative from the developer not years after launch from people that don't really get payed for their work but just love the game. I think it's not too much to ask from a dev to love their game at least as much as its community.
Risen 1 is the best in the series, the followers kind of suck. From Risen 1 and Gothic 1 i really started to expect other rpg's to give a similar experience regarding skill development. I like that the character learns skills it is seen in the ease and speed of the action and the changing animation from novice to expert. The only other game i can think now that kind of touches on this aspect is Fable 1 where your character with a low strength drags a big heavy sword and can't swing or barely swings it around but with investment in strength he can t swing it around like it would be a toothpick. Those aspects make the immersion for me. The little things count and when you have many of those in different systems the whole world seem alive.
If i remember correctly in Risen 1 i first encountered the best shield combat systems too. I always wandered after this game why don't other devs just take the system approach from this game to apply it in to them. I remember saying that the graphics are enough, you don't need photo realism, just take the core systems, add some more on top from you and present whatever story you desire. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just improve on it. It didn't quite happen then but it also kind of did where standards of the industry adopted some Ubisoft approaches like towers and some pretty bad Rockstar approaches, the ones regarding monetization shark cards and whatnot while kind of ignoring the ones regarding product quality. So in the end it did happen just in a very different and bad way. I guess, be careful what you wish for.
I'm really unsure if I should start in Piranha Bytes games with this game or Elex I. Both seems to be really good entrypoints.
Give Elex a chance. Risen has a middle age fantasy setting and Elex a post apocalypse fantasy one. Both games working with more or less the same mechanics.
Just started risen last month. I played Elex first and really liked it. I always had a curiosity with risen but never acted on it. Glad i finally did
32:05 Alchemy is super useful. You can brew permanent stat potions. There are 20 hero crowns so it's like +100 attribute points of your choice. You should definitely invest in lvl 3 alchemy :)
man, you are a legend
I love this game. Risen 2 was very meh, Risen 3 was great IMO, but the first one is just the best. From a technical point of view it's probably best PB game. Loved the combat system, quests (monastery FTW), magic (I generally do not play as mages, but here it is so fun to use), soundtrack (so calm and mysterious)... I've replayed it many times, beaten - 4 times (last one just two weeks ago) and I'll probably never stop doing so. Amazing title.
BTW great content man! I've been watching you for a couple of months and I'm always happy to see new vid. Keep it up!
As someone who only ever got the chance to play Risen on the Xbox 360, I still really adored it. Yeah it had problems, but when it came to quality RPG worlds for the console, there just weren't many that could compete, outside of the elder scrolls and dragon age.
How do you go back and find all those one liners from gameplay? Good memory?
Amazing work, love your content!
It's pretty easy to recognize the dialogue segments by the audio peaks, that helps a lot. But yea, I always remember some specific, goofy dialogue lines by npcs, and there is plenty of that in Risen games, lol.
There is one helmet I found besides the mandatory one and it was called Hunter's Helmet or something like that. I found it near the broken tower next to the swamp area south east of the monastery
While in the grand scheme of things I prefer the thrid game (less piratey and with better maps design than the second one), first one is superb as well. Exploration in PB games is amazing and Risen 1 has stellar map design. I loved randomly stumbling upon Lord Patroscon at some point and how some dungeons are connected. I'd say it is the best introduction to PB games - not as dated as Gothic games, but preserving their best qualities.
Risen 1 is my favorite Piranha Bites game. I love everything about it.
I only discovered piranha bytes games some months ago when I bought Elex 2. This game absolutely blew my mind as I usually don't enjoy rpgs. After that I moved on to Elex 1 (had a blast there as well) and with some hesitation started risen 1 some days ago (cuz it looked very old and outdated). Risen 1 has me hooked atm. Even though it looks and plays outdated, it was a one of a kind experience no rpg was able to offer me. I enjoyed Risen 1 much, much more than triple A rpgs like witcher 3 or skyrim.
*LOVE* this game so much, it was the *first rpg game* I ever played and it's probably the reason why I like rpg games so much, too bad that the sequels ruined the story and the vibe, they should honestly unmake them and create a different continuation or remaster the first game ^w^
playing this on pc for the first time after playing pretty much all pb games on console. this is amazing wow like a whole new game!
Risen and gothic 3 will always be in my top games of all time
3:03 The NA version on XBOX 360 was improved over the EU release. I still play it every so often on console.
Some time ago, I got into Gothic 3, due to your videos Marko. (and I loved it instantly). Morrowind, Skyrim, Oblivion and Gothic 3 are very similar but different games, and I dont like to compare as they have their strengths and weaknesses, but I have to say, Gothic 3 is my favourite above all the Elder Scrolls. Piranha Bytes are definitely pioneers of this genre. And now I can say the same for Risen. Just bought this thanks to your video, and I think it's awesome! I kept hearing of it, but never realised it was a PB game. It's pretty much an upated version of Gothic 3 (perhaps the way it shouldve been back then) but with beautiful graphics and smoother animations. The similarities between Gothic 3 and Risen are really nice but subtle. Both games start at sea, and have have the same machanics. I really love the graphics of games released between 2005 and 2015. I dont need all these hyper realistic visuals. I find the graphics, like seen here in Risen, to be far more appealing to me. Risen Gothic 3 and Dragon's Dogma 1 have go to me my favourites of all time. I would even add Bannerlord: Mount and Blade to that list too, as it can be played as a pretty decent RPG that can go on for years (I still have a game going that has lasted several generations of rulers)
C4G:How did gerald get all of this High tech stuff
My thoeiry:Gerald could be a Time traveller
I hope you make a retrospective on Risen 2 and 3. I have seen that they go in a different direction from Risen 1 so I would like to hear what you think about those games
Edit: Nevermind just hit the end of the video lol
I'm so happy this game got a much needed patch and controller support.
I played last year's for 2 playthroughs, still want to go 2 more. Felt like a second gothic 1, and hit all the nostalgia buttons.
Just finished Elex 2. About to start Risen...do you recommend and mods? Visual or community patches?
the name of the island was never mentioned in risen 1
at the start of risen risen 2 Patty refers to the event of risen 1 in a dialog option and that's were we learn the name of the island
My second go to after Gothic 2 + the addon. Man I got so many good memories about those two games.
One of my favorite rpgs ever, I comeback to play this every year or 2 again. It is my 2nd favorite PB game after Gothic 2 :)
For some people Risen is the real Gothic 3 but for me is the real Gothic 4, I've never had a single complaint about Gothic 3, I don't even know how many times I completed both games. Risen is PERFECT, my only complaint about it is that I wish that game could be a 200 hours game cause I never got boring of it.
I like the athmosphere in Risen1, especially in Harbor Town.
Hyped! I’ll be buying it to play on PlayStation 5 due in part to your objective review.
This reminds to go back play again, I remember finish with the bandits, I will try the inquisition path. Ca I do the city quests as an inquisition?
25:25 Play Axe... it's literally the first you learn :) That makes axes the BEST weapon!
Thank you again for great video. I played Risen 1 when it comes out and it was good, just like you say, quite like Gothic series, but I lost interest pretty soon, so maybe it is time to revisit now ...
Risen 1 is a game which I can put right next to Gothic 1 & 2, which means it's one of the best RPG games out there. If you haven't played it, WTF are you waiting for?
Last PB game that i finished. Liked the combat though it was rough around the edges.
this game was amazing
I wanna play one game like skyrim or something like this game on xbox 360, do u recommend me this one on xbox 360? Or another similar
Risen was one of my first RPGs I played as a kid (still remembering getting my mohter to buy it at the store and then excitedly stuyding the manual on our car ride home. :D), so the nostalgia levels are obviously through the roof for me but I still objectively think this is a pretty good game, especially for its time.
- The exploration is pretty nice and actually rewarding because you get scrolls, potions, gold, powerful alchemy ingredients for permanent stat buffs that really make you strong.
- The story, quests and characters are... okay. Some parts are great, others more meh...
- What I really like in the game is the combat system though. Once you get the hang of the controls, got some combos and know the enemies' moveset it's quite fast complex, and almost rhythmic. Some enemies you can only attack once before they retaliate, some you can sort of stagger with a combo if I recall, some enemies usually do a full combo so you can decide whether to block/dodge all of it or try to interrupt their combo by dodging inbetween the right attacks (but not between any attacks because some attacks have better tracking/reach) and so on. Makes you fight almost all enemies in a slightly different way and the quick movements and attacks make it quite exciting and fast-paced.
Or you invest all your points into the magic missile crystal as a mage/inquisitor and just bust out the magic gatling gun to mow down everything that moves. :D
Risen 2 and 3 might be more "modern" and maybe the characters/story is a bit better but their new engine and combat system lost everything that hooked me in this game, so I still consider Risen 1 the best of the series.
Ok, that Geralt joke was pretty good :)
i loved risen and the atmosphere