Risen 2: Dark Waters

[Gorgon]

Is there no way to have both, say if you forego lockpicking and swords, since melee seems to be just button mashing and not something you would want to do the whole game through.

 

Or is it a faction thing like Risen.

[Tigranes]

It's a faction thing. Muskets can replace swords entirely though, even without coconut-throwing dirty tricks, and I've heard voodoo is very powerful as well, though more intended to complement swords. I thought swordfighting gets better with parry, riposte, kick, etc., but if you go for muskets you can spend the second half of the game never waving a sword.

[Gorgon]

Not getting killed so much after I invested in a shotgun. Haven't learned any skills aside from kick which I never use. Hoping there is an option to travel back to previous islands for trainers, but for now the plot seems to have taken over. Looking for the great temple and a missing scout.

 

The towns could be a bit bigger, or at least have one. Still it's enjoyable enough.

[Tigranes]

Kick is pretty good. Use it on warthogs to disorient them and then deliver a series of attacks; they're critical for killing giant crabs; useful also to get some distance on an enemy then use a power attack in sword duels. (Invest in skills, by the way.)

 

You can travel to any island once you get a ship, i.e. after the first island. And towns don't get bigger but there are a lot of them.

[trulez]

Feels and plays like Risen 0.5, did they run out of money or why did they release the game when it clearly isn't polished enough.

 

I gave Risen 10/10, this abomination they call Risen 2 only deserves 6/10.

Finished Risen 2 after 33h of gameplay. Found all legendary items, did all quests (1 bugged, 1 failed), explored every inch of every island. Didn't receive many of the achievements like "use parrot 5 times", "win 10 drinking games", "hit 10/10 in shooting game", "earn 100,000 gold" even though I met the requirements.

 

After the fact I'm still standing by my initial assesment and Risen 2 simply did not rise to the level I expected from a sequel to Risen. The pirate theme got old pretty fast (if they'd done it more seriously it might have not lost it's shine), same thing with killing monsters and NPC faces, not enough variety there. Graphics where horribly outdated (just look at Witcher 2 or Skyrim compared to this) and the UI was clearly designed for console and not for PC.

Edited May 7, 2012 by trulez

[Gorgon]

How do you fast travel between islands. My ship is on the horizon. There is a rowboat, but it has no usable ability. Maybe you need maps of the islands you want to go to ?

[Tigranes]

My mistake. I just got to the second island, and it seems you need to finish the second island before you get free travel, due to the plot events. You get your own ship at the end of the plot events on the Sword Coast - then you can go back to Tacarigua, Sword Coast, the Crystal Fortress (opening area), etc.

 

When you CAN fast travel, (1) you can always fast-travel back to your ship by going to the map, then pressing E (or the button at the bottom); (2) on your ship, speak to Patty to set sail somewhere new. (3) Yes, you would need to know where you are going, by talking to someone or something.

[Labadal]

I tried doing the quest to find Venturo for some time now. Didn't find him anywhere near the Earth Temple, and one time when I went back to the Port town in Sword Coast he's near the shop keeper drinking. I guess the quest is failed, but it remains in my log. I'm now done with the Earth Temple, so I doubt I'll be able to complete it. Oh well, not much to do about it.

[trulez]

I tried doing the quest to find Venturo for some time now. Didn't find him anywhere near the Earth Temple, and one time when I went back to the Port town in Sword Coast he's near the shop keeper drinking. I guess the quest is failed, but it remains in my log. I'm now done with the Earth Temple, so I doubt I'll be able to complete it. Oh well, not much to do about it.

That's the one and only quest that bugged for me too. Venturo is in the town and I can't talk with him and I can't finish the quest either.

[Tigranes]

Is this when you side with the Inquisition and you need to follow the signs in the jungle? He should be standing

 

 

pretty much right outside the Shaganumbi village, at the top of the waterfall that you climb up as you approach the village. There's a chest by the waterside, Venturo is on a tiny hill around that area.

 

 

If he's not there... bug?

[Gorgon]

He wasn't there to begin with for me, I only found him after I had done a few tasks for the witches. Maybe you have to click a few of the markers first.

[LadyCrimson]

So....did anyone else experience the game becoming "chunky" in terms of running? Where it feels like there's lag as you're exploring? It's not microstutter, it's like swimming through jello. The fps goes up and down but it's still plenty high enough (doesn't drop below 40). When I first started it seemed nice and smooth, but the longer I play (which hasn't been all that long really) the "chunkier" running around feels. It's becoming aggravating. (edit: I've tried turning some settings down a bit, which increases fps but doesn't help)

Edited May 8, 2012 by LadyCrimson

[WorstUsernameEver]

The game's optimization sucks. The engine is full of quirks. Risen was much better tech-wise I'd say, even if a lot of the art was worse and it wasn't as nice-looking.

 

EDIT: By the way, RPGWatch says there's a mod to fix the "shrinking and growing" problem with plants.

Edited May 8, 2012 by WorstUsernameEver

[LadyCrimson]

Well, since I'm lazy and like mods I can just click on, I tried that. It's nice for the trees, but then the constant pop-in for objects and cliff textures becomes more eye-catching since you aren't staring at the growing/expanding leaves anymore.

 

Anyway...if I turn water reflections off and keep shadows to medium it helps the most. Tried turning shadows off but ack, that looked bloody awful. AA/AF didn't seem to change the slow/lag sensation at all. But I still feel like I'm running in jello fairly often - even in 80-100fps areas - the jello's just not quite as thick. Still...not sure I can stand it. I mind poor graphics a lot less than this weird slo-mo sensation.

[Gorgon]

I left everything on 'high' maybe you are using some options on ultra and it just doesn't work as well regarless of how good your box is. The texture swapping as you move closer to objects is quite intrusive though.

 

I will say that I have not had a single crash either. So whatever else it is it's at least very stable.

[Gorgon]

I'm thinking now that II should have gone for Vodoo. Firearms adds nothing new except more damage, and muskets are already extremely overpowered. Shoot, take two steps back and shoot again, for tough ememies repeat the process. This will get rid of anything I have encountered so far.

[Labadal]

The only reason I chose Voodoo was to be able to brew potions.

 

Finished the second island and got my ship.

[Labadal]

New patch released. Can't link atm, but it adds dodge using arrow keys and you can now block monster attacks. Has lots of other improvements. Will download tomorrow.

[LadyCrimson]

I left everything on 'high' maybe you are using some options on ultra and it just doesn't work as well regarless of how good your box is. The texture swapping as you move closer to objects is quite intrusive though.

There's a only 2 or 3 that go up to Ultra, everything else just has "high" I think. Anyway, that's not it either since I've turned down everything at one point or another. Maybe it doesn't like my 590/dual GPU or something, even tho it's not 2 separate SLI'd cards, who knows.

 

New patch released. Can't link atm, but it adds dodge using arrow keys and you can now block monster attacks. Has lots of other improvements. Will download tomorrow.

Oh, awesome. Maybe that'll help my jello-movement issues. Plus only 10 autosave files created, I like it.

 

Features

- Players can now block most attacks by monsters

- Player has a "dodge" move in the fight - double press the arrow keys while holding the right mouse button / goose-mode Y + stick right / left / back to controller

 

Balance / Tweaks

- Are created only a maximum of ten autosaves

- Improvement in the attack behavior of the monster AI

- Improvement in attack behavior when characters were attacked from behind

- Improvement in the representation of vegetation

- Improving the visibility of objects

- Improving the representation of the terrain

 

- Guns sabotage in Puerto Isabella is now much simpler

- Dealer of the Sword Coast now sells rum

- Exploit removed while shooting mini-game

- Increases hit points of Mara

- Steelbeard's Hat can no longer be sold

 

Bug fixes

- Trees flicker in the distance is no longer on NVidia cards

- Solve problems with video cards in SLI

- Fixed crash when using a 7.1 sound system

- Fixed rare crashes occurring when climbing

- Fixed bug with "return to the ship" option

- Fixed an error when it rains indoors

- Crew members can no longer be killed by monsters

- Players will now receive the item-Fools juice after brewing

- Fixed an error in the learning of specific skills

- Various exploits removed

Edited May 9, 2012 by LadyCrimson

[LadyCrimson]

Downloaded. Only 43MB off of Steam.

 

And YAY the slo-mo jello run is gone. Pushed everything but AA (off)/AF(4x) back to max available and it's fine. They must have optimized it better or something. That 3rd party tree pop-in patch didn't seem to like it, however...the game wouldn't launch with it installed (would go black/back to desktop and not run).

 

So no 3rd party patch, game launches, slo mo gone...the foliage/plant pop in seems a bit less bad than it was before but still noticeable. Just not quite as much of the close-up "magic growing bushes" effect. Happens little further away.

[WorstUsernameEver]

They updated the mod so that it works with the latest patch. And yeah, it's cool that they actually optimized the game and added dodging to the combat. Not really sure why it wasn't there in the first place, but better late than never!

[mkreku]

****.. maybe I do have to replay this game after all. Maybe even buy the DLC (that wasn't included in my Collector's Edition, grr).

[SadExchange]

****.. maybe I do have to replay this game after all. Maybe even buy the DLC (that wasn't included in my Collector's Edition, grr).

 

I can't believe that the DLC was not included in your collector's edition. That just seems crazy to me that release date DLC was not an added bonus as part of the CE.

[Gorgon]

Probably because they want to milk people who are willing to pay extra, extra.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Lololololol gimmicky boss with QTE. What happened to you Piranha Bytes? You used to be cool..