I have a short list of demands for a modern RPG. "Risen," an Xbox 360 port of a 2009 PC title, doesn't seem to meet any of them.
The Basics
"Risen" kicks off when a nameless, and shoeless, adventurer washes up on a tropical island beach, after his ship was smashed by a kraken. Two other people lived through the disaster: A vapid woman and a voodoo man with a ruby-eyed monocle. The latter is the more important. He's out to save the world from another big scary monster. You'll be participate in his scheme.
The Highs
'Farangian' Immersion
The fantasy isle of Faranga is open and yours to explore at will. Tons of hidden treasures and oddities lay above and below its foliage-laden earth, which is spotted with numerous crypts, caves, forgotten temples and castles.
At points you can become immersed in this strange environment, a cog in a machine-world designed to never leave you wanting for something to see or do. But this is the game's only real strength … and a tenuous at best.
The Lows
Getting Yanked Out
For all its scale and curious nature, Faranga's pull is not stronger than the game's technical and design issues. In this sense, immersion is a fleeting thing. Copious amounts of pop-in and texture issues are roadblocks. The game's tedious pace, unreliable auto-saving system, sputtering frame rates, senseless AI, muddy visuals, and spotty navigation are few of many more.
I'm Tired of Tapping This Button
The hack-and-slash combat is crucial; it's a means to progress and a key to exploration. It's also not very good. Connecting is the issue. Most enemies auto-detect melee attacks, parrying or evading 90% of the time, making the already dull all the more tedious.
Making matters worse, the ludicrous action camera needs to be baby sat, the frame rate often takes dives, and there are no useful options for crowd management.
Your Level Up Doesn't Matter
The fact that you leveled doesn't matter until you see a trainer, pick an attribute to bump up, and then pay some gold. This means you'll need to kill, loot, steal, and look about for an NPC in order to buy rewards you should have already earned by doing the billions of pointless fetch quests, culling Faranga's beasts or even just using a skill. It's a spot of design that makes you hoof it even more than you already have to.
Terrible UI Makes for Bad Adventuring
Still a PC game at its heart, you'll notice the dizzying amount of menus in the game are not only hard to access, but also hard to navigate as they require you to jump between numerous and redundant panes with the right stick. It's hard to use, unless of course, you have a mouse and keyboard.
Quests and HUD
Differentiating between what is relevant in a mess of missions tossed out by unimportant and important (but all flat) NPCs alike is nigh impossible. A simple fetch quest is often crucial to advancing the game's five-chapter narrative.
Finding where these quests start and end is also muddied. The meager HUD doesn't help you find quests, and the map's red dots are often wrong or simply not there when you need guidance the most. Even the quest logs blow.
What's Up Yellow Screen?
Technical issues riddle "Risen." The game will freeze, the frame rate will take unplayable dives, and worst of all, there are game-breaking bugs (like missing items) that will force you to restart the entire game.
The Verdict
It would have been nice to stay in "Risen" when I was drawn in, but all the bad design choices, from the leveling to the UI to the quests (coupled with the technical issues) obliterated my ability to be entertained. This is a bad port of an unpolished game that doesn't cater to the user in any respect. Stay away.