Risen lacks the ambition and groundbreaking design of previous PB titles, but still, it provides a solid RPG experience.
Risen starts with the unnamed hero of the game waking at the shores of Faranga ( The island which the game takes place in ) after a ship-wreck. He is completely a stranger in the island. But soon he finds out some strange temples are risen from the ground and there is a character named Inquisitor Mendosa who is very eager to open the doors of an ancient temple and to reach his goals, he occupied the harbor town ( only city in the island ) and the monastery . So the nameless hero should decide which side he takes to affect the current situation . He can join the inquisitor's warriors, he can join the mages of the island or he can join Don Esteban ( the former leader of the island ) and his gang.
Risen's story is good. Although it can't reach the quality of Gothic's settings , story and character development at all and aslo it's a bit cliché ridden and predictable , but it's good enough for the kind of game it is.
Risen uses the same role playing system of Gothic. You kill monsters and do quests, get XP, level-up and then get learning points. Then with the learning points, you can go to a tutor and improve or learn skills like Sword fighting, bow and crossbow, staff fighting, lock-picking, alchemy etc.
The number of LP's you can get is limited, so you can only master few skills and that gives a good amount of role playing depth to the game.
The combat is fast-paced and fun in Risen and strangely, never gets old or repetitive. Although it sound like absolute click-fest sometimes, especially after you get strong and you have to fight with monsters far weaker than yourself.
Also the magic system is a bit different compared to previous Gothics. There are three types of magic: Scroll, Crystal and Rune. Crystal magic acts as the offensive magic with three different crystals: Fire, Frost and Magic bullets. Each one is a bit different than others, but it's good to only focus on mastering one of them. Most of the Rune magic are functional , supportive or defensive and except Inferno, there are no offensive magic between them. Scrolls are basically the rune magic, but everyone , mage or not , can use them, though they can be used only once.
Wisdom , the attribute you need for casting stronger rune magic cannot be improved by spending learning points. You have to look for Book-stands and stone tablets for improving it instead. So as a mage, you have to do your exploring with more care and attention.
Although unlike Gothic 1 & 2, magician is a very powerful class in Risen, when you reach the highest level in a crystal magic ( and that can happen very soon if you don't spend your LP much ) , you become nearly unstoppable. You can kill every creature before they can even reach you. I personally played the game as a mage and although I put the difficulty on hard in the whole game, but I really didn't feel challenged at all.
Risen visuals are disappointing somehow. Especially comparing to how Gothic 1-3 looked at their time of release. Faranga looks like a beautiful mediterranean island at first glance with all of those green trees and vegetables, but when you explore the small island a bit and see there is no variety at all, all of those trees and vegetables become boring.
One of the points of criticism to all of the previous Gothic games were voice acting for the English version, although I personally didn't have any problem with the voice acting, but some people were very concerned about it, so Risen uses some famous voice actors like Andy Serkis (Gollum in LOTR trilogy ) as the inquisitor and John Rhys-Davies ( Sallah in Indina Jones and Gimli in LOTR ) as Don Esteban to prevent any criticism concerning this matter. I personally preferred if the budget went to making a bigger Farnaga, ( it's very small ) but still, using these kinds of voice actors is a big feat for such a cult-favorite game.
Although Kai Rosenkranz, the composer of previous Gothics is still in charge, but the soundtracks of Risen are pretty disappointing compared to Gothic series ( especially Gothic 3 ) They don't sound epic, memorable and heart-warming as them. Although if we judge Risen soundtracks on their own, they are pretty well done. Especially the dungeon theme which is pretty moody and sometimes scary.
Although Risen can't reach the same level of previous Piranha Bytes titles and it looks like a limited more linear version of Gothic 1, but looking at what studio went through after the release of Gothic 3, it is a very respectable product which delivers a solid role playing experience.