A big game with lots of things to do, Risen 3: Titan Lords aims to put you on the high seas. In search of valuables (your soul, for example) your hero will cross a magic filled archipelago, exploring, plundering, fighting demons, you know, the usual.
Release Date: Aug 12, 2014
Rating: T
A pirate themed adventure RPG, Piranha Bytes seem to be aiming for a Skyrim meets, Pirates of the Caribbean, meets Fable sort of amalgam. It’s a noble aim, and one that the Risen series has met with varying degrees of success. In the middle of the pack in terms of RPGs, it nonetheless deserves kudos for managing a third game in the series. Not an easy feat.
The story works like this, while minding your business, or, in other words, searching for loot and no doubt being up to no good, your unnamed pirate character is sucked into the underworld (something I actively try and avoid) and before he can do much about it, meets one of the ominously named ‘Shadow Lords’. Well, as Shadow Lords are wont to do, he doesn’t send you off with a packed lunch so much as steal your soul, killing you in the process (see what I mean about wandering into the Underworld?) Reanimated by a helpful voodoo priest, you’re now a soulless pirate in both name and description. Now its up to you to reclaim what was taken (and probably a bunch of fetching and killing and treasure hunting along the way).
A vast landscape awaits, as it probably should if you’re going to be a pirate. What use is a grand old ship if you’ve nowhere to take it? One of its strong points, Risen 3: Titan Lords has an expansive map, full of colorful islands with varied landscape, and, how to put this… ‘aggressive’ fauna. For ardent RPG’rs who like to grind and love content, Risen 3: Titan Lords has certainly got scope on its side. Heaps of questing awaits, boasting a 20+ hour game length, and a wide range of varied terrain, enemies and characters that show an impressive level of design. Each island is landscape unto itself with secrets and environments abound, those of us who like to explore will have their fill. Risen 3: Titan Lords, like the rest of the Risen franchise, is an action RPG. Given its lengthy play time, expe
ct to build quite a quest log. Completing quests will accumulate ‘Glory’ (experience, in other words) which you will spend to enhance your characters stats, focusing on the sort of gameplay you prefer. Combat is focused in three parts, magic, swordsmanship and ranged (guns). Every character is both a trainer as well as merchant, giving you further access to upgrades and gear. Sword and gunplay will, as a pirate, be yours off the hop. To get access to magic, three factions await, Guardians, Demon Hunters and Voodoo Pirates (the choice seems obvious really, and it rhymes with Poodoo Virates). Choose your factions carefully,as the choice determines character properties (weapons / gear) and has its own quest line and requisite abilities, ‘magic’ key among them. Thus equiped, the world is waiting… go get that soul back!
Though its trended towards a middling tier in its life as a franchise, with Risen 3: Titan Lords its producers have created an appropriately large RPG that is packed with content. For the RPG fanatic, or for a person who likes some swashbuckling and would enjoy a world to do it in (seriously, why aren’t there more pirate games?) Risen 3: Titan Lords, for the PlayStation3, and the Xbox 360, is available now.
