Taking a cue from Bethesda and other RPG makers, German developer Piranha Bytes introduces a new franchise to the genre in the form of Risen, having the Gothic series tucked nicely under their belts. But unlike anything that Bethesda made in the form of Fallout 3 or Oblivion, Piranha Bytes tries everything in their power to make things that sound great on paper and make them as boring as possible, even to veteran fans of Western-style RPGs. In the process, they also deemed it appropriate to add on things that nobody cares about in gaming and cut things that people actually do care about. But more on that later.

Risen starts you off as a stowaway on a ship that heads straight into a storm, flinging a (nameless, short-haired and grizzled-faced) man and his companion (whore-like copy/paste model with big breasts that does nothing but bark commands) woman onto an occupied island that just underwent a bizarre change in its geogrpahy. Ancient ruins all over the island have risen up from the ground (Clever!) and they unleashed both valuable treasures and horrible monsters all over the place. And it's up to you to figure out what's going on.

And there is way too much going on to really get most of the story. After you decide to leave your female companion behind, you'll have the option to join one of two factions, The Order--a group of militants and mages who want to take control of the ruins for treasure to fuel up the Inquisition, or The Don--the indigenous people of the island who got run out of their city by The Order and want to take control of the ruins for treasure to kick them off the island.

No matter who you pick, expect to do dozens of quests right before you even explore one of the Ruins. These all range from collecting items to collecting items. How you do it is up to you. Most of the time, people will just sell them to you for a hefty sum. Money is very tough to come by when you're starting off, so you'll often be doing the next best thing: Killing them and looting their corpses. There's no penalty for doing this since the game doesn't keep track of Good/Evil, and you can usually provoke a fight to keep it 1-on-1 so that nobody will try to off you when it's convenient for them.

You will have to keep fights 1-on-1, because the combat system is clumsy and unforgiving. Just like an MMO, you click on something to attack it, right-click to block, continue until something dies. If you want to heal, you have to open up your inventory, select the item you want to use, wait a few seconds, and then get back in before the enemy drills you with a critical hit. Kill something for Experience Points, loot their corpses for gold and items, level up for Training Points to get better stats...no that's not right. If you actually want to get better at something, you have to take training from various specialists on the island. To do this, you spend Training Points and money on these trainers to help boost your stats. That's right! You have to grind in order to grind. Which, again, hardly matters depending on whether you like to use magic or weapons, becaues Risen offers no customization--you can equip any weapon, learn any spell, master any skill, and become an ultimate being with just a huge wad of money and some experience points.

But here's a great strategy to those Level 1 Nameless Guys out there: If you are given a job to kill X amount of monsters, let them chase you back to the guy who gave you the assignment, let him kill them, and collect the money and experience anyway!

Because I'm a spineless neanderthal when it comes to playing RPGs, I tend to take the advice of whoever is giving it when it comes to directions or strategy. The very first person on the island you run into starts off by giving you a long and enduring lecture about how bad The Order is and how good The Don is, and how you should avoid The Order at all times because of their amazing magic and brainwashing capabilities, so I went along with him to try to join The Don. I was almost instantly greeted by people who gave nothing but threats and orders, and some had even picked a fight with me that I had to keep mashing "Quick-Load" until I won. As soon as I left the village, two of the drunken prostitute-beaters decided to give me chase until I died. Little did I know that the game has little quicksave barriers that automatically erase your progress and replaces it with the most recent one as soon as you cross it. So my corpse was flung through one of these barriers which effectively killed my entire game a few grind-happy hours into it. No chance to load from a previous spot, had to start all over from the beginning. Thanks, Piranha Bytes.

Risen is just filled with terrible design choices. These MMO-type flaws could have been forgiven if the world building, plot, and characters weren't all completely unlikeable. Every female in the game uses the same model with the exception to clothing and hair, and you'll notice this easily because their breats are all pointy and large. Again, wouldn't be unlikeable if a vast majority of the female characters didn't work as either cooks or prostitutes. As for the men, there are a total of three models with various hair/clothing changes and all talk about booze, prostitutes, and ripping you off before you beat their faces in. You can also buy prostitutes (but don't get to see anything and it does nothing to help your stats), smoke "weed" (but don't get any drug-induced effects and does nothing to help your stats), drink alcohol (you would think a German developer would have been more creative about this, but the same principles apply), and other naughty things.

I suppose none of this actually matters to Australians since the OFLC refused to classify it because of the aforementioned hookers/booze/weed are too scary for children under 10 years of age. The game is hardly violent, but there is a lot of cursing too. You would think that a country that's obsessed with hardcore sports like Rugby (and AFL) and allows girls to go topless on beaches would let these sort of things slide, but apparently that's just the kind of joke the the OFLC likes to play on its consumers.

Risen is so uninspired and static that these "sinful" elements do nothing to make the game better or worse...the gameplay and story does all of that for you. Piranha Bytes promised dozens of hours of gameplay, but it's all so slow and dull that it's not really worth it to stick around. If you need a fix of RPG that actually does the genre well, Oblivion can be downloaded onto your Aussie hard drives for much less. But if you've played through Oblivion and really enjoy these kinds of games, give it an import. Don't blame me if the government burns your house down over a second-rate game though.