Risen 2: Dark Waters Review: A Pirate's Life For Me

Story
The ancient gods or "Titans" have taken to battling one another, and their quarrel has devastated the land. The Titan goddess of water, Mara has set loose the Kraken, crippling trade, cutting off emergency supplies and stopping refugee's from fleeing the Old World. The ever opportunistic pirates have take advantage of the chaos to conduct their nefarious deeds unchecked. Then rumors start to circulate of an infamous pirate captain by the name of Gregorius Emanuel Steelbeard who has found a way to safely sail the seas. Desperate for a solution the Inquisition (a military group) sends the Hero to infiltrate Steelbeard's crew and uncover his secrets.

The nameless protagonist starts off with virtually no skills - not even the basics! Skills are learned through trainers, provided you have the gold and required level in the appropriate ability: blades, firearms, toughness, cunning or voodoo. Many of these are superficial and don't actually offer much of an advantage or any sort of usefulness. For example, there is the ability to shoot someone in the middle of a conversation or the chance to kick someone away. Both of these options hardly ever appear once you have acquired them, and in the rare instances when they do appear they almost always offer nothing meaningful or effective to the gameplay. They are ideas that sounded good on paper, but in practice are just a waste of your scarce skill points.

 

Gameplay 

There are approximately five or six port towns and pirate hubs to travel between. Travel between these area is not done by helming a ship, but with a cut-scene and a load screen. The Hero's ship is basically just for show, or a waiting room for companions not in use. Did I mention the Hero can't swim? In true landlubber fashion, your plundering will have to be limited to land. The arduous combat will make it tempting to pour stat points into blades, but then the payer is left with no way to pay the trainers - literally halting character progression. With gold being as hard to come by as it is, the best thing to do is to invest points into the cunning skill first. This enables thieving abilities, allowing the player to filch enough gold to pay trainers. Without thieving skills there are few ways to make money.

 

 

Battles are difficult, but not because they require any skill or strategy from the player. Combat is straight up hack-n-slash without any fluidity or proper control of your character. The absence of a lock-on feature makes it hard to target specific enemies, resulting in attacks that never gratifyingly connect with opponents. And without any way to dodge or block an attack, it is all too easy to get caught in an enemy stun-lock with no way of escaping.

 

Eventually you will reach a point where you must choose to side with either the "Inquisition" or the "Natives". This choice impacts whether you gain access to muskets or voodoo magic. I played through the game twice and gave each side a try. The "Inquisition" gives you muskets, which are insanely overpowered. This is a surefire way to ease the unfair toughness of the game's combat. The "Natives" offer voodoo magic that lets you to frighten, confuse, or curse foes. It also opens up the option to brew potions or possess people. Like many of the abilities available to the player, voodoo was largely ineffective. Only a handful of people (approximately three or four) can be possessed in the entire game, and enemies were always better off stabbed or shot than cursed or confused. Its such a shame, because as feeble as the voodoo was, it still offered up some of the most enjoyable moments for me.

There are plentty of side quests and mini-games, such as drinking, shooting and digging up buried treasure. A pet monkey or parrot is also available but they are expensive and unlikely to survive long. The monkey is the most useful since he can pull levers or squeeze through small gaps in temples and ruins, offering access to places that were previously off limits. The parrot takes up either your blade or pistol weapon slot and is intended to distract enemies by flying around them... or at least that's the impression I got.

Conclusion
Risen 2 is undeniably flawed. It's dated both visually and mechanically, and there is evidence of the game having been rushed - stretched textures, missing sound effects and dialogue. One scene in particular features a part of the story that is intended to be impactful and sad, but it goes dead silent for nearly a minute. Important gameplay details are either never used or explained, like needing a skinning knife, jaw chisel or bone saw to harvest parts from animals. Provided you can overlook or forgive the frustrating gameplay, there is a good time hidden under the grime.

First posted to videogamegeek.com on December 4, 2018.

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