ok, so it turns out that this game if pretty fucking awesome.
I'm still only a few hours in so things might change. but they'd really have to take a really bad change for the worse for me to change my mind at this point.
this is the most intriguing and entertaining rpg I've played in a very long time. hell, I might even enjoy this more than I did Witcher and Mass Effect, and I enjoyed the hell out of those two. that might not say much though, so let me put it this way instead - Risen is exactly the type of game I've been longing to play for years.
I'm just gonna do sort of a bit for bit write-up here on what I think so far...
story - like I said, I'm not that deep into the storyline yet, but so far I'm really enjoying it and it has a lot of potential. the way the story unfolds with people only telling you what they think is necessary and not just blurting out random information is great. it'll be really interesting to see where the factions go and something tells me it's not as black and white as it first appears.
quests - quests so far are very varied and revolve a lot more about talking to the right people than killing monsters or fetching items, and that is obviously awesome. it's too early to tell if there are several ways to go about completing your goals, but unfortunately I felt a little bit disappointed that there didn't seem to be as much freedom with the problem solving in Don's camp for example. at first it seemed like there would be several ways to get a meeting with Don, but I ended up completing every quest I got and never felt like I had any real choice. the process was still really fun and different from what you usually see in rpg's these days though - I just loved how I spent pretty much the first entire evening with the game just talking to people in the camp to learn about their situation and try to help them out. if this type of dialogue based questing keeps up, I'll be a happy camper even if it leaves little room for own personal choice.
combat - at first combat felt a bit clumsy and rough, but soon I realized it's just because my character wasn't much of a fighter and I hadn't learned good tactics yet. I'm pretty much only doing melee combat so far, but it's turned out to be among the best 3rd person melee combat I've experienced. every type of enemy have their own fighting style so you really have to adapt and learn a few tricks. and just by being smart and careful you can beat someone much stronger than you, even with a crappy weapon - the same way a much weaker enemy can easily overcome you if you get careless. I'll have to play around more with ranged weapons and spells to see how combat is in those situations too. I need to mention the level of difficulty here as well - the game is really tough at first if you don't stick to your path and do what you're "supposed" to do. exploring the wilderness without some armor, a crappy weapon and no combat training is pretty much suicide. it feels so good to play a game that doesn't scale the challenges with your ability all the damn time.
graphics - the scenery is amazing, especially during the day when the lighting is just perfect. textures look really good and the blur effect when looking into the distance works really well. at first I really hated the character models, but I've ended up really liking them despite the bad animations and horrible faces. it's simply become part of the overall feel of the game and I like it. it makes the game world feel a bit more real when everything isn't just awesomely pretty everywhere you look. and so far I've had zero issues with the game running slow or anything like that, so the engine seems pretty well tweaked.
sounds - voice acting is great. sure, they seem to have a very small voice acting team, but the variation in characters makes it work anyway. sound effects are pretty much as good as they come, no complaints there. and the music is really good. when you recognize and feel at home with the music in a game by the third time you start it up, you know they've done something right.
all in all, I'm really glad I checked out Risen and if things don't suddenly take a very ugly turn, this is easily one of the most pleasant surprises I've had in years, gaming-wise.
