Risen 2: Dark Waters

To preface, I have actually played through the game as it's been out via Steam since last week.

The developers of this game, Piranha Bytes (PB), are a German developer known for creating the Gothic series, and now the spin-offy Risen; they are remarkable – in the good and bad – for how extremely similar and distinctive in design their games tend to be. They make games most people either love or hate.

Risen 2 in the end is still recognisably a PB game, although it is their most simplified one, made one supposes to appeal to a wider audience. A nice thought, but most of the universally well-received aspects of their previous products – a living, breathing world inhabited by artificially alive characters – are missing from this game, for reasons unknown.
Gone is sitting on a bench; nonsensical NPC banter; a wealth of miscellaneous items; hidden caves with surprising treasure; and most egregiously, roaming monsters. Instead, you get a rather static world where monsters stand around their designated spots in small groups waiting for someone to come and skin them and most NPCs stand in one spot or wander from A to B when night falls.

I could expand on this and other aspects of the game, but from a general buyer's perspective the most important thing you should know is: the combat is really, really bad. Fighting humanoid enemies is all right (although frustrating occasionally because of cheap spear throws and musket shots), but against monsters any semblance of a ‘system’ goes out the window. Because there's no way to dodge or block attacks from creatures, you will find yourself stupidly mashing your mouse button in the hope you'll get lucky and due to bad AI your target will just stand there and take it, because once they attack you you just take it until it stops (often when you die). It's either that, or exploiting the bad AI by running circles around it shooting with your auto-aimed pistol.

I had fun playing this game, but only when I wasn't playing the central feature. Which is to say, it wasn't very fun. Make sure you know what to expect going into this.