Once I got over my bitter disappointment it was ok at times. Some tragic design decisions.
I'm going to relate this game to Gothic 3, which despite all of the bugs and whatnot I actually adored as a game. Gothic 3 was a vast game, a huge completely explorable area where you could go wherever you want and do whatever you want with consequence. Gothic 4 is well, none of those things.
Let's start simple...
The Musical Score - Where is it? Is what I'd like to know, yes I can hear the occasional tune and sound but it seems to have completely disappeared. A Gothic game with no real musical score? Ugh. Gothic 3 had arguably the best musical score I have ever heard in a game. Honestly it was truly superb, created fantastic atmosphere. So much so that even thinking about the score makes me want to go back and play that game just to immerse myself in the atmosphere again. This was a terrible terribly mistake. I guess they didn't really think it mattered, well it absolutely does.
The Combat - If I wanted to take part in button mashing I would buy a console and play any of the thousands of button mashers around. Gothic involved blocking, tough combat and edgy situations. Let me just suggest to the developers that the people who complained about Risen's combat being 'too hard' are not the people who will remain loyal to the franchise. It's very easy and is more reminiscent of Diablo than Gothic. I can't even block and move around, it forces me to roll everywhere or actually turn round rather than continue to face my opponent like previous gothic games.
Also, apparently it would seem my arrows have a non existent parabola and are capable of not succumbing to gravity even over large distances, which is just swell...
The Graphics and other Sounds - Well the graphics are a cross between terrible and pretty decent in places. The facial animations are non existent, when someone laughs they do nothing physically. The range of animations is extremely limited, I can't remember how many times I've seen a character in this game giggle into their hand whilst talking to me. The female characters in this game are horrendously ugly, obviously this isn't a big deal but really good god they are. Ivy who I am marrying early on in the game has to go down in history as one of the ugliest female gaming characters I've ever seen. It's not like her personality makes up for it, the voice acting is pretty bad and the dialogue is substandard at it's peak. The fact that every time you speak to someone you get to see their name printed in luminous coloured type doesn't help much either. Some of the world is decent enough graphics wise, still considerably weaker in comparison to Gothic 3 in my opinion most of the time though.
The Length and Linearity - For me these are two of the most major issues. The game weighs in at 20-25hours for a full play through, all side quests +exploration etc. That is just awful. I mean come on. To cap that off the areas are small, linear and extremely limited. Unlike Gothic 3 which was vast, expansive, had so many areas, places, towns etc etc I don't believe this game can even claim to have 10% of the world content Gothic 3 had. It really is pitiful. I can't tell you how disappointed I was in this. To take the Gothic name and give me a game this small and linear is bordering on criminal.
That's enough really, I've covered the main issues here. The game isn't that bad, it is ok, if it was a non Gothic game I'd probably score it slightly higher. However it isn't, it is a Gothic game and in that regard it completely and utterly fails in virtually every way imaginable.
I hope that Risen 2 is made as large and detailed as the original Gothic games. The 'Gothic name' has been transferred there, for good.