Risen - Early Impressions @ IGN

IGN has early impressions of the PC version of Risen as Charles Onyett works his way to a full review.  Although his tone is cautious, it's nice to see a major US site approach the game with an open mind and some knowledge of Pirahna Bytes' previous work:

Instead of simply tossing you out into the world as a low-level weakling and expecting you to just figure things out, there's a lot more direction to the early bits of Risen. I should say at this point that I haven't made it very far through yet, but have played the opening sections a few times over just to see what kind of variety is present. As it turns out, there's quite a bit.

Before describing some of the different avenues of play, I think it's worth noting just how much more user-friendly this game is compared to the studio's previous work. For one thing, you actually get a quest map in this game that marks precisely where your quest giver is and where you're supposed to go, making it much easier to keep track of things once you've taken on a significant amount of responsibility. While I can understand how some of the hardcore RPG gamers who despise direction might not like this kind of thing, you don't have to click over to the quest map if you don't want to.