Risen - Review Flood #1

Piranha Bytes' RPG Risen, this time for their new publisher Deep Silver, will be released in most countries on PC and XBox 360 later this week. Only the XBox version in NA has been delayed to Q1/10. Naturally, reviews are popping up everywhere. The following articles are in German, with one notable exception.

• Let's start with the print mags. GameStar uploaded a site-seeing tour split into 4 videos. Their review, not online yet, rewards Risen with 87%. "Risen is no unofficial Gothic 4. Risen is the return of Gothic 2. [...] The best Gothic so far [...]"
• PC Games says something similar: "[...] the title is exactly what Gothic fans expect." - 86%
• 360Live gives the console version an 8.3/10. Their 2nd opinion 7.8/10. They praise the captivating gameplay but criticise the outdated graphics and the small font size.
• According to GamePro Risen deserves 80%. "A fine RPG with lots of details, but also with a few quirks blurring the fun."
• GamesAktuell thinks "Risen has become a very good RPG [...], only suffering from minor weaknesses." - 9/10
• And now online press. DemoNews offers positive first impressions without a rating.
• Gameswelt likes Risen. "At the end of the day Risen does a lot [of things] right and few wrong." They like the usual Gothic formula and criticise a thin story, a couple of logic holes and minor technical glitches like sporadic clipping errors, incorrect camera position and frame rate drops in the city. - 82%
• Xboxdynasty gets the credit for the first roasting of the XBox 360 conversion. They say the game has some interesting points, but the visuals don't reach current gen niveau, which impacts the fun. "[The] graphics clearly kill the atmosphere and the mood of the game." - 6.1/10
• And finally an English article. World of Risen published a translation of their detailed Risen review. Clever as they are, the fan site left out the rating part. The piece is relatively spoiler-free and very informative. Especially the page about the technical stuff.

First retail copies have surfaced in Benelux, Russia and the US.

On a sidenote, we've made a couple of changes to our forums. We've opened forums for Risen, Dragon Age: Origins, Drakensang: The River of Time and the indie game Tactica: Maiden of Faith. If you feel like chatting about the listed games, you know where to find fresh forums in need of traffic. ;)