What Gothic 3 should have been...
Graphics 10/10
I consider the graphics to be great. The forests look lush, and I mean really lush - immediately after the start you will notice the forest you wander is so thick, that sometimes you don't even know where you are going. The caves are nicely lit by crystals, while underground temples are dark, foreboding an scary. The characters are less interesting, but you cannot have everything. All in all a 9 or 10 depending on the way you look at it.
Sound 9/10
The forest sounds, the music, the town effects, spells and so on, all sound like they should. What makes the sounds great are sounds deep underground in the ancient temples you will have to go through during the game. There are distinct monster sounds and sometimes the ground itself vibrates while you hear roars down the empty halls. At times it gets scary, especially if during these some strong monster jumps at you from around the corner, and you ultimately have a feeling like you are journeying to one hell of a monster hidden deep underground...and you are.
Story 7/10
The story isn't all that bad, but frankly, has very few surprises. Even the one surprise that is suppose to be the biggest, you are expecting by a long-shot. Too bad, considering they could have made you journey, using the ancient temples that have risen thoughout the land, to the centre of earth for example. Instead they only took a humble slow pace.
Gameplay 9/10
Many people who reviewed this game, consider the combat system to be uninteresting and clunky. I strongly disagreed. Perhaps it is because they compared it to games which are more based upon combat systems, like Oblivion, while Risen is based upon carefully crafted, non-random, but large surroundings and places. Anyway the combat system is an improved version of Gothic's combat system, it merges together the fluid (but random and quick clicking based) Gothic 3 combat system with the precise and combination-requiring (but slower) combat system of Gothic 2. I would say it is the best of its kind, while of course still being way behind the awesome combat systems of other games. Also there almost no bugs here (no boars which can take down any warrior because they attack relentlessly) and the monsters each have different sets of attack types. While some jump away mostly and attack rarely, while waiting for you to make a mistake, others are more straightforward and try to attack as much as they can, while still giving you opportunities to hit them.
Replayability 8/10
The replay potential is decent. Right at the start you can choose which town to visit at first, the swamp town, the harbour or the monastery. The harbour or monastery don't make that much difference since they are controlled by the same faction. But choosing one of these two or the swamp town completely changes the quests in the first two chapters of the game. If you choose the harbor, you will have to stay in it for almost the whole chapter, and you will get a lot quest in it, but once you leave it and get to the swamp, you won't get any quest there. And vice versa. So the game is definitely replay-able, at least for a second time, since you can get a different roster of quests at the start. Still the bad thing is, from the third chapter on, its always the same.
All in all, I consider this game to be a good addition to the world of role-playing. If you like single-person RPG's with a view from the back of the character, like Gothic, Oblivion or Divinity II, you should definitely give it a try.