"Risen" is, for all intents and purposes, a fun, enjoyable RPG. It's not going to win any awards for originality (think "Fable" meets "Morrowind") nor will you be particularly bowled over by the voice acting (half the world is voiced by a Ringo impersonator), but the graphics are pretty solid and the game mechanics are straight-forward and easy to grasp.
Which is why it's such a shame that it did not transition well from the PC to the Xbox 360. From all accounts the PC version was a solid "B" game, where as the 360 version seems to garish anywhere from an "F" to a "C" at best. The reason for the discrepancy is what feels like a thrown-together, hashed-out conversion to the 360.
On the opening screen the menu bars are partially cut off by the bottom of the screen. As are any captions like, say, your location. On one map transition the words were almost completely cut off, save the first letter which I guess was "T." The key bindings are, at times, counter intuitive and feel as though they were mapped by a person who has seen a 360 controller but never actually played a 360 game.
The worst transition is the engine, which feels sluggish at times. When in crowded areas everyone suddenly slows to a crawl. This isn't such a bad thing when in cities or camps, but in combat it makes some encounters nigh-unplayable.
Even with some hiccups and bugs the game is still a solid role-playing experience and worthy of any RPGer's time. But add it to your GameFly queue, or pick up a used copy; while the issues do not completely diminish your game play, they do make the $59.99 price tag look quite steep.
No comments:
Post a Comment