This blog is basically just a diary of my journey through video games, and the latest oasis is Risen 2. This game has completely surprised me by appealing to my inner old school RPG fan. The game has gotten some pretty lukewarm reviews, so I wanted to point out a few little things that this very difficult game do to make the experience so very fun instead of so very frustrating.
The fast travel system in Risen 2 is perfect. When you arrive to a new location, you don't even have a map. Getting this map becomes priority #1, and then you must discover each important place to unlock it for fast travel. Remember, this is a game that can kill you quickly and without warning, so standing in front of a dense jungle for the first time, knowing you must comb through it to find the important locations is always scary. The feeling of dread is great for the first time you trek through the thick jungle, but if there was no fast travel, you'd have to traverse wide, deadly areas multiple times with repeated deaths a guarantee. I heard that the first Risen did not have fast travel, I'm glad they showed some mercy and corrected that.
The buyback system in this game is AMAZING! Risen 2 allows you to sell almost anything, but later on you start discovering quests and find blueprints for crafting weapons that require items you had previously, but dumped on some merchant ages ago. Every single merchant in this game has a list of everything you've sold to them. Unlike other similar RPGs, the items on these lists do not expire or get wiped clean when a new chapter begins, or when the story progresses. Every item that you have sold to any merchant stays on the buyback list for the duration of the game, and the best part? The buyback cost is what you sold it to them for, not the retail price. Brilliant.
You have a crew. They stay on your ship while it is in harbor, and you may take one of them with you at any time to help you fight. The story isn't affected much, sometimes they throw a joke or two into the middle of a conversation, but their combat AI is truly impressive. I take Venturo mostly, and he does exactly what I need him to do, stay back, and snipe with a rifle. When you take Patty, she jumps into the meat of it with you, swashbuckling and taking aggro. Your party members do not need healing, cannot die (if they take enough damage, they just drop to the ground until the fight is over) and actually make a difference. Can't kill the Grave Spider on the first island? Come back with a shotgun and a party member who also has a shotgun and fix that.
Risen 2 is mainly about exploration, and the game loves throwing secret areas for you to stumble upon. What I love about this game is that every cave, every suspicious path leads to something worthwhile and meaningful. While just returning from a fetch quest, I stumble into a tiny little cave, not even on the map, that has a huge voodoo altar, a 12 foot zombie guard that I have to shoot, and a huge amount of l00t. This is also a great way to find the greatest of all video game finds, permanent stat boosts!!
Every game has a lock picking gimmick now. Some of them make you want to kill yourself (Bioshock 2). Risen 2's lock picking system is better than most, you just slide your pick left and right until every tumbler is elevated, and you're done. It usually takes about 3 seconds. There are a lot of things to unlock in this game, and I'm glad they didn't a big fucking deal about it.
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