There is something inherently special to me about the role-playing game genre. RPGs tend to connect with me on a deeper level than any other genre. I think the ability to choose your path and direct actions that help shape the world are what vibes with me. On the downside, I think I have a hard time giving a bad review to any game that provides that experience. My dilemma is Risen, a game that has as many good points as bad. But which points are the most important to you?

Risen is an open fantasy RPG, allowing you to explore your surroundings at your own pace. During the introduction sequence, you witness a violent storm and a creature that comes through the storm to destroy your vessel; washed up on shore, you are now stuck on some island. Over time, you’ll learn there are two factions (but three combat paths) on this island that are battling over access and control of ancient ruins that have recently come to the surface. The “bandits” were kicked out of the only town by the invading forces of the Inquisition and are now trying to gain enough power to take it back and free the people of the island from oppression. The Inquisition is broken into two segments: the mages and the order. The order keeps the peace by using a mixture of magic and staff combat. They control the town with an iron fist but are under orders from the mages, who guard the monastery. The mages have been acting suspiciously lately and are recruiting heavily to shore up their defenses. However, nobody seems allowed to leave their compound. In any case, you start with nothing to your name, stuck on the shore of the island. You have to explore and work your way inland to find people. You’ll soon learn of the factions and make your choice of which route you want to follow — quite possibly by accident.

The early part of Risen is quite heavy on the role-playing. You’ll gain most of your experience through quest completion rather than combat. This is a good thing, because combat — even in the later stages — can be annoying, but in the early stages, it is hair-pulling, anger-inducing frustration. The M rating for Risen probably isn’t because of the content but because of what you are going to be yelling while playing the game.

Risen is played in a third-person perspective, and combat uses left clicks for attack and right clicks for parry/block — if you have a shield. Oh, and you better have a shield. At the start of the game, that is pretty much all you can do in combat. As the hero gains experience, he will be able to buy into more advanced melee skills that allow for counterparrying, different swings, power blows and more. The problem with the combat is that until about skill-level seven (out of 10), your character is pretty helpless. Mostly I would just hack and slash while hoping to hit something. Enemies can parry, dodge, block and strike a hell of a lot faster than your character, with a far greater attack power. I was sick of reloading the game soon after playing. I could go on for another page about how badly combat is broken in the early levels, from getting stuck on small bumps in the ground (and smooshed) to nearly impossible blocks and timings (and, of course, smooshed some more) to very sluggish controls (of which — oh, yeah — get you smooshed some more). In the later levels, the hero can accomplish a lot of the same maneuvers your enemies can, allowing him to effectively defend instead of cowering behind a shield.

As I said earlier, the start of Risen is frustrating and just not all that interesting. This was the first time I’ve tried to dive into an RPG and walked away after just 30 minutes. It actually took me about five hours until I got into the game — far too long. After playing Risen for more than 40 hours, I still can’t tell you what snapped and made me want to keep playing, but even at the height of my interest, I still got annoyed and walked away because of the need to constantly reload saved games.

As you advance in Risen, you’ll find the world, people and choices actually start to matter. I found myself wanting to help certain people, and as I pursued those goals, I saw the world start to change around me. It was nice that the doom and gloom of the bandit camp in the swamp started to disappear, and soon, they were talking about retaking the town because of my actions. No matter how well I did in the game, though, it was rare for me to spend more than a couple hours playing Risen; the combat always forced me out.

Besides combat being such a disaster, there are a very large number of items in Risen that I just feel are a letdown. The entire game just doesn’t feel polished, and RPGs need that polish to let their magic work. The sneak skill feels like it was finished quickly so someone could go for a smoke, and pickpocketing is not skillful but rather just a dialogue option. The game has a crafting system that is very basic, hindered by limited resources, and is just not interesting because nothing very special is ever made; there is little point to its existence. The whole game has NPCs griping about money problems, but even the poorest vendors have unlimited money and supplies, even if they tell you they have no supplies. Get the idea? You can extend the lazy design of the game to just about every other aspect of it I haven’t yet mentioned.

The technical aspect of Risen is just as disastrous as the every other feature that was added into the game. I could write a page just on how wrong the sound, graphics, lighting, game performance, and yes, even the user interface is done. To be fair, it isn’t all bad; most of these areas have a lot of good points, but it is the negative impacts we remember, and those are the things that distract us from actually playing an RPG. There are also a large number of graphical glitches and at least one pretty devastating bug that requires a patch.

The voice acting in Risen is another mixed bag. A lot of well-known actors are doing the voices, but all too often I noticed a complete lack of emotion in the acting. Even though I’ve already mentioned that the sound is pretty poorly done, I need to vent. Risen is a game with a good number of caves/dungeons and the same music and effects play in those caves constantly. Each time you pass by a cliff, it is the same rock falling noise. Was there really no budget for a third sound effect? The sound makes the game feel like a $15 direct download, not a full-priced game.

Risen is a single-player RPG that feels as buggy and incomplete as an overhyped MMO in the first week of release. The game does have a great story and a good bunch of a characters to go along with it. It really is a shame that just about everything else in the game feels incomplete or broken. I can’t recommend Risen to anyone because of the frustration you will experience while playing it. However, I did feel the pain of the beginning of the game was offset by the enjoyment of the later parts. Risen really needs to be polished; it had the potential to be memorial, but as it stands, I’ll only remember it when vacuuming the hair I pulled sometime next week.