Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

Thunderclapped skies, misty waterfall basins, and scurvy grog-drinking fortune hunters all coalesce with terrific harmony to bring you a pirate tale of great grander in Risen 2: Dark Waters. The journey may be satisfactory and the characters that rule the world of Risen 2 are fairly interesting, but the mediums of time spent from interesting plot point to interesting plot point are arduous. The strenuous effort to play through the portions of the game that span plot points is due to bad combat mechanics, technical issues, and some generic quests, but if you ever wanted to take part in a pirate themed role-playing game, then this is your chance.

To journey through those interesting plot points in this dark fantasy tale you'll still be manning the helm of the same nameless mono-toned protagonist from the first Risen game. Now an Inquisition militant, the story begins when the inebriated protagonist is ordered from his quarters to meet with his superior officer at the city's walls. As the nameless protagonist looks onward from the city's walls to the dark stormy waters of the night sea, he becomes speechless when he bears witness to gargantuan tentacles bursting forth from the ebon waters to destroy a large, fully crewed corvette ship. As the ship is snapped in two and pulled down into the black breathless graveyard below, your superior officer informs you that the only way to put an end to this Kraken's blight is to infiltrate the organization of various pirate groups around the city to discover who is controlling the giant squid. So you set out with the hopes of recovering knowledge about who is controlling the Kraken and how to stop the great sea creature.

Along the way you'll be doing many pirate-esque things, but the game does not oversell the "yar har hars" and "Davey Jones foot lockers". Instead, it's the situations and people you meet along the way that make Risen 2 a pirate role-playing game. The tale surrounds you with strong women characters and there's men that might like rum a bit too much. You'll first meet the strong-headed, sharpe-tounged lass named Patty, the daughter of a famous pirate ship captain. You'll also cross paths with squeaky-speaking goblin-like gnomes and a man whose soul has been split in two. It's not so much how great the story is or how well-voiced the actors are that are verbalizing the characters, but rather the journey getting there that makes this pirate narrative so enjoyable. The tale takes you from a striving lowly seaman with only the shirt on his back to controlling a ship and its crew. You meet some interesting people and things, and you'll go to exotic places on your travels. It's a chapter from a great pirate epic for certain.

Your travels feed the vibe of a hungry pirate theme with great relish. Tropical vegetation creates a thick canopy of darkness in the treacherous jungle below, cascading waves of crystal-clear water tandem the beaches, and illuminated stalagmites glow with a beautiful dread as you venture into an unknown cavern. As fantastic as the environments are though, they have some serious technical issues. The draw distance is awful and objects pop in and out of existence frequently and sporadically, shadows appear and disappear with a jarring effect, and some vegetation expands and contracts as you move near or farther in distance. All technical blemishes aside, Risen 2 has some fantastic environments and they make it a delight to venture onward.

The adventure to destroy the sea creature that's menacing your nautical shipping lanes will take you on some interesting quests and those quests support a variety of ways to go about finishing your task's ultimate goal. Intriguing quest nuances can keep you on your toes and encourage many different applicable styles to play the game. You might fight a school of giant crab monsters on a beach or pluck the hair from an unsuspecting pirate so you can use voodoo to take control of his body and infiltrate an encampment of pirates. There are some questing high-points, but overall most of the quests are generic. Quests are mostly simple 'A' to 'B' or following someone to a cave entrance to venture inside and then back again. It's the different ways you can go about doing them that is interesting. To infiltrate a pirate encampment you might talk your way through the entrance with a sharp tongue, use voodoo to manipulate people, steal something, or fight your way through the doors.

These quest nuances encourage the player to try the different diverse systems of gameplay, but the idea of flexible gameplay is squandered by bad implementation. Intriguing quest nuances may be encouraged, but it doesn't work because sooner or later you're going to have to fight enemies and if you choose a path of thievery, voodoo, or anything besides fighting, then you're in for a terrible time. At some point or another you're going to absolutely need to revert to swordplay and unless you've been enhancing your combat skills, you feel like you're hitting enemies with a dull Fluffy Sword of Almost Hurts. No, a weapon named Fluffy Sword of Almost Hurts is not in the game, but it very well should be.

Fighting has changed much since Risen. The major changes are a feature called dirty tricks, lack of a true magic style, the ability to lock-on to enemies, and the fact that you have much less weapon choice. Your weapon choices no longer allows for anything in your off-hand besides something affiliated with a dirty tricks item. Dirty tricks are a spell-like feature that are usually on a cooldown timer or require a reagent to activate, or both. A dirty trick could consist of throwing a handful of sand in an enemy's eyes, spellbound confuse enemies, throwing a coconut to stun, or firing your flintlock pistol from close-range. Meaning, your off-hand must be equipped with the associated pistol to shoot the gun, coconut to stun, a staff to confuse, or handful of sand to blind.

Also, voodoo, the game's magic route, is no longer a truly viable combat option. Voodoo is more of a utility sub-class, like lock-picking, silver tongue, or picking pockets. It's more of a means to the end of being an alternate route to complete quests with a different style of gameplay than it is for combat. Offensively with voodoo you can confuse enemies into fighting one another, summon a spirit to help fight, and make an enemy run in fear. So, besides the spirit helping you fight, nothing in voodoo causes damage to enemies. You'll need to go in and use your sword to cause damage regardless. Again, Fluffy Sword of Almost Hurts.

Although some things have changed in Risen, some things have not. You still come by gold extremely slowly and you'll need gold to pay a teacher to train you to enhance your abilities. You'll also get glory (XP) which can then be used to up-grade your general schools of discipline like toughness, voodoo, thievery, swordplay, and so on.

With the absence of magic being a truly viable combat option, Risen 2 leaves you with firearms and or swords to dispatch foes. Both of which are much more enjoyable than any other route of gameplay. As you level your sword skills you'll be able to kick people to knock them back when you're outnumbered or tip-over a giant crab to expose its vulnerable underbelly, parry enemy's sword swings, lengthen your combination of sword volleys, and even riposte an attack to do devastating damage. Although these routes of combat make you feel like you're at least hitting an enemy with some gusto, it's still problematic.

Combat never finds a good rhythm. Enemies attack belligerently and often, which can lock you into an inescapable loop of damage. Also, every hit from an enemy staggers you, but your attacks usually do not stagger them. So, when you've found the opportune time to attack, you might strike them, connect, stagger the enemy, and continue your combination of attacks only to have the enemy decide they don't want your attacks to stagger them anymore and they'll start swinging through your attacks that are still connecting. They begin to hit you while you're in the middle of cutting them with full blade swings. You might find yourself exploiting enemy with geometry or bad game mechanics to kill them instead of trying to enjoy the combat because the systems of battle feel very cheap.

===============ALL IN ALL==================

Bad combat mechanics made it dreadful to explore and actually had me trying to avoid combat because of how frustrating and unenjoyably it truly is. A lack of choice in how to go about combat does not compliment your ability to choose how you wish to execute a quest. Instead, combat pigeon-holes you into making a sword or gun related class if you want to do any damage. Many features of Risen 2: Dark Waters take a lengthy period of time to come into their own, but there are some really great moments in this pirate PRG. The game is not awful in its entirety, but it definitely needs some more attention to some of the core aspects. If you're a fan of the Gothic or Risen franchises you'll probably enjoy this game, do not be dissuaded by the score of the game. Risen 2: Dark Waters is not better than any of Piranha Bytes' previous works and it's not bad by any stretch, but I cannot recommend it for everyone. My best advice to you is "know thy self".