Risen

2025-07-23
When Risen came out everyone said I was daft to play a Piranha Bytes eurojank game but I played it all the same. Just to show ‘em. I bounced off from the jank. So I played a second time. That time I bounced off from the jank. But the thiiird time I did it. I beat the final boss and got to see a confusing black screen with 3 different music tracks playing incoherently over one another which I assume was the credits. Yay, my very own castle in the swamp.

And you know what for the first 5 or 10 hours I was having a blast. They do such a great job setting up a world that seems worth exploring. The progression of taking a character who gets dicked down by rats and vultures and building them up into someone who can 1 shot almost everything due to spamming strength potions is wonderful. A variety of mutually exclusive factions forcing you to pick sides and changing how you interact with the world. A windy map you have to really fight your way to explore with goodies hidden in every corner. Hell, I even loved how much of a pain in the ass it was to unlock magic. Why shouldn't becoming a mage be a whole journey to unlock unspeakable power? All of that is so much potential, so much good raw dough to be working with. And it's all squandered.

We can skip over the basics like the atrocious voice acting, the physics bugs like every time I jumped on slopes of a certain angle my character got yeeted off the map and I had to reload, and the weird character models. For me the thing that just destroys it is the combat. It’s not that it’s just clunky with weird timing and a general floatiness–no, no I’m a Morrowind combat apologist so that’s fine. No it’s how incredibly unbalanced it is on top of the jank. For starters enemies attack with the speed of Turbo Satan on meth. There's no wind-up, there's no telegraph, they just BAM have attacked you. Past tense. It's so fast you can easily be stunlocked by trash mobs if you make the mistake of fighting more than one at a time. Not only that but most enemies block constantly so you end up in this teeeedious back and forth till you fuck up and inevitably die or they fuck up and you do maybe 1/5th of their health. “Well, what about that magic you spent all that time unlocking?” What about it? It's garbage. You have to dump all your skill points into making your spells do any respectable damage and then you have to deal with using mana potions constantly and hopefully not getting stabbed in the meantime anyway. Swords just do more damage and you don't have tedious mana micromanagement.

What a frustrating game. I legitimately went from "This game is actually really great" to "Fuck this I'm turning on god mode because this combat is putrid" and then still getting stunlocked while I was invincible. What a missed opportunity.

At least I’ll always have the “UH-AHHHHH” stuck in my head from hearing the protagonist die a million times. I’ll always have that.

???
“UH-AHHHHHHHHH”. Will never forget that fucking noise when the guy dies. This game was kind of trash but I enjoyed it for its difficulty and its general weirdness. It was open world and you were free to go and get your ass spanked by buzzards. Of course if the combat engine was actually good this could have been an amazing game. (Vid for noise: https://youtu.be/d2hp41zhUMY)

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12/26/2021: Updated after finishing back in November. Pasting my steam review.

Game with wonderful ideas utterly marred by a horrific combat system and dumb bugs. Aka a classic Piranha Bytes game.

I played this game back when it came out and bounced off due to the general clunkiness. I tried again in college and bounced off for the same reason. I came back nigh on a decade later and was commited to finishing this game. And I did it, I beat the final boss and got to see a confusing black screen with 3 different music tracks playing incoherently over one another which I assume is the credits. Yay!

And you know what for the first 5 or 10 hours I was having a blast. They do such a great job setting up a world that's worth exploring. Building up a character who straight up gets ♥♥♥♥♥♥ down by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rats to someone who can 1 shot almost everything due to spamming strength potions is wonderful. Hell, I even loved how much of a pain in the ass it was to unlock magic. Why shouldn't becoming a mage be a journey to undertake for unspeakable power. And all of that is so much potential, so much good raw dough to be working with. And it's all squandered.

We can skip over the basics like the at times atrocious voice acting, the physics bugs like every time I jumped on a slope my character went off the map and I had to reload (yes, every time), the weird character models. For me the thing that just destroys it is the combat. Enemies attack so fast it's unreal. There's no wind-up, there's no tells they just BAM have attacked you. It's so fast you can easily be stunlocked by basic enemies like the gnomes or whatever the hell they're called. Not only that but they block constantly so you end up in this teeeedious back and forth till you ♥♥♥♥ up and inevitably die or they ♥♥♥♥ up and you do maybe 1/5th of their health (if you've built your character correctly). And maybe you'd say well what about that magic you spent all that time unlocking? What about it? It's garbage. You have to dump all your skill points into making your spells do any respectable damage and then you have to deal with using mana potions constantly and hopefully not getting stabbed in the meantime anyway. Swords just do more damage and you don't have tedious mana micromanagement.

What a frustrating game. I legitimately went from "This game is actually really great" to "♥♥♥♥ this I'm turning on god mode because this combat is putrid" and then still getting stunlocked while I was invincible. What a missed opportunity.

Avoid unless you're one of the blessed few who love these absolute jankfests.