Risen 2 Benchmarked

One of the biggest strengths of Risen 2 lies in its fantastic atmosphere. Whether you choose to we walk along the beach or through the jungle or visit a village, you will immediately notice that every scenery has been meticulously developed with passion. While you'll face disorientation after a few minutes in some titles, Piranha Bytes manages to design every detail to be easy on the eyes. A small cave here, a hidden chest there - there is always something to explore. In other words: It's always worth leaving the main path.

In general, scenery and vegetation along with the local fauna and flora all look impressive. The in-game villages have also received a lot of attention including creases and marks on clothing and fish in the background (see below) and other small additions that really liven up the setting. We don't really mind that interactions with the doodads are limited, especially when the coming of dawn or dusk brings about some of the best play on colors we've seen in a game. In terms of atmosphere, the Pirahna Bytes title is definitely on par with Skyrim or The Witcher 2.

The soundtrack deserves some praise, too. Similar to its predecessor, the very pleasant and never obtrusive background music matches the scenery and are charming as well. Although some effects have been rehashed from the original, they have been enhanced with new facets in order to match the pirate theme. Voice synchronization is also convincing as in-game models do an excellent job on both the German and English language settings. 

How about the handling and gameplay? Game control has not been one of Pirahna Bytes biggest strengths in the past. The implementation of the inventory, for example, was terrible in Gothic I and II. Fortunately in Risen 2, the inventory functionality has now been reasonably partitioned into well structured  menus. A horizontal bar allows changing between ship logs, sea charts, inventory items and the character menu with further subcategories depending on the focused windows. User-friendliness and complexity seem well balanced.

If you do not want to walk around all the time, you can use the quick navigation tool to instantly teleport to key locations that have been previously explored. Nevertheless, the overall control and UI are not exactly perfect.

If you run through the game world and get in contact with objects, it becomes obvious that motion is not flawless. As the collision detection is not perfect, you'll sometimes get stuck or step through otherwise solid objects. Animals and opponents sometimes suffer from coordination problems and run in circles or take unintuitive paths. This is likely due to the rather poor AI of the series, not to mention the once again ridiculous jump and fall animations of our hero.

As a result, the animations are no longer up-to-date and cannot compete with the current batch of action RPG titles. People move clumsily and dollishly and their facial expressions are hardly recognizable. Many titles are much better in this aspect. Risen 2 is also outdated in terms of polygon sets and texture quality. Close objects often look edgy and surfaces are partly blurred. In addition, the implementation on background objects is not flawless:  objects pop up, quality changes are visible and textures often flicker.

However, our main critique is the strange fighting system. Piranha Bytes have always had problems here, but at least the predecessor had a fighting system with a few highlights. Risen 2, though, is a step backwards. While fights with human opponents work somewhat decently as you can engage in some strategy and tricks, fights with animals can more often than not be won simply by repetitive clicking. This is mostly due to the fact that animals are unable to block most attacks, meaning you'll end up beating the poor things into a coma most of the time. The overall gameplay experience isn't as bad as Gothic 3, but we feel that certain enemies should have been made more challenging.

The story of Risen 2 is entrenching. Although it never reaches the level of  something like Mass Effect 3, it motivates enough to keep the player playing. The same is true for the quests: passable, but not earth-shattering.

We think that Risen 2 is a successful sequel that Gothic fans can enjoy. For better or worse, the sequel inherits many of the designs, virtues and concepts that developer Pirahna Bytes is best known for.

Depending on the environment, the frame rate can fluctuate quite noticeably. Locations with sparse vegetation (like the beach) often run significantly smoother than when in the woods or in inhabited settlements simply due to the increase complexity of nearby objects and items.

To ensure that the title runs decent in every situation, we choose a demanding scene: the island of Takarigua where the hero finds himself following the tutorial. See our following video for the complete benchmarked scene. The path leads through a settlement, which we walk across straight away. Afterwards, we climb up a small hill with a sort of prison on the peak. As soon as we are in front of guard Carter, we stop recording with the FRAPS tool.

During this scene, the recorded values are about 10-20 FPS lower than the otherwise usual average frame rate. As a result, you can generally still play smoothly even with only 20-25 fps in our benchmark scene. However, we still suggest consistent frame rates of above 30 per second for an optimum gaming experience.

Risen 2 may not be the perfect example of an action RPG, but its existing scenarios and gameplay are unique enough that users should give the title a try. We feel that the atmosphere especially is top tier and somewhat compensates for the weaknesses. Just keep in mind, however, that Risen 2 can only live up to its full potential on a powerful multimedia or gaming notebook.