Risen 2: Dark Waters Gold Edition

I have a soft spot for games that swing for something genuinely unusual and partially whiff. Risen 2: Dark Waters is exactly that kind of game - a pirate-themed open-world RPG from Piranha Bytes, the studio behind the Gothic series, that drops you into a sun-drenched archipelago of tropical islands, native tribes, and sea monsters. You reprise the role of the nameless hero from the first Risen, now a one-eyed, deeply alcoholic member of the Inquisition, tasked with recruiting a crew of pirates and hunting down four pirate captains who hold the secrets to slaying Mara, a titan-class sea monster. The premise alone - assembling a crew, island-hopping, juggling Inquisition politics with pirate loyalties, and dabbling in voodoo magic - is the kind of setup that should have produced a stone-cold classic. It does not produce a stone-cold classic. But it does produce something worth talking about. The world is the game's genuine strength, and it is hard to overstate how well Piranha Bytes builds a sense of place. Each of the seven islands has its own identity, its own layout you learn by sight, and its own web of characters with distinct voices and attitudes. The dialogue is consistently witty, and the voice acting lands more often than it misses - the hero's deadpan irritation at being asked to save the world (again, while hungover) generates genuine laughs. Companion Patty, returning from the first game, has more personality than most RPG companions released that year. The ambient audio, the colonial-meets-tribal music score, and the lush hand-crafted environments all reinforce the sense that someone on this team really cared about the fiction. That atmosphere carries you through a lot. The progression system uses "Glory" as its experience currency, distributed across a classless skill tree that spans sword fighting, firearms, cunning (covering lockpicking and pickpocketing), voodoo magic, and toughness. On paper, this sounds like genuine build variety. In practice, the balance is heavily skewed. Voodoo is gated until island three at the earliest. Lockpicking and pickpocketing are nearly mandatory for completing quests efficiently, and Glory is scarce enough that going wide leaves you underpowered for longer than is fun. The better play is to lean on firearms early - a pistol shot mid-swordfight is genuinely useful - and invest in cunning skills to smooth out the economy. The actual swordfighting, by comparison, is a button-mashing slog for the first dozen hours, and monster encounters in particular have almost no tactical depth. The creature AI circles, charges, or simply stands still while you chip away at health bars. Some patches post-launch added a dodge roll, which helped, but the combat never rises above functional. If you are here for the brawling, manage expectations hard. The filler-quest problem is real and I will not pretend otherwise. The main objective - collect four artifacts to kill Mara - is padded with an exhausting chain of sub-objectives that frequently loops back on itself. Quest bugs exist where completing missions out of sequence can lock dialogue options and block progress, so saving often is less a tip and more a survival skill. The Gold Edition includes three DLC packs (A Pirate's Clothes, Air Temple, and Treasure Isle), which add content but do not address the structural repetitiveness of the core questline. Ship sailing, a feature any reasonable pirate RPG should build its identity around, is reduced to a world map fast-travel system with no actual navigation involved - a legitimate disappointment. And yet. Spend thirty-plus hours with Risen 2 and something clicks. The world rewards curiosity. Side characters have real texture. The writing, for all its rough patches and occasional bad-faith humor that will genuinely put some players off, has a sardonic charm that feels authored rather than assembled by committee. Fans of Piranha Bytes' older Gothic titles will recognize the DNA immediately, and that audience specifically is the one most likely to forgive the rough combat in exchange for a world that feels handmade. As one of the only pirate-themed open-world RPGs that takes its setting seriously at all, it occupies a niche that remains stubbornly empty. That alone earns it a look - just go in with eyes open and firearms ready.

Monika · Scout Team

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