Recent reviews by DeathBySquirrel

After a little over an hour of play I got stuck on the levels geometry and was forced to quit and reload, this lost me the last 20-30 minutes of relatively tedious "puzzle" solving ("Find something that glows and click it with the matching colour" or "press all the buttons quickly") I may simply not have reached the interesting puzzles yet, but an hour in I would have expected to at least have to engage my brain a little, it felt like I was on autopilot through an exceedingly long and tedious tutorial.

If the game had a more active save system or was a little faster to start, I would probably continue playing to give it a chance. But faced with a slow and monotonous walk, matching colours to get back to where I was, I'd rather just do something else.

I started Risen 2 straight after completing the original Risen, which I greatly enjoyed. First off I'd like to point out that Risen 2 has made some vast improvements in certain areas: the graphics, layout, fast travel and I haven’t got stuck in a jump animation once (Which was a regular occurrence in the original) Along with a range of other things.
But despite all of the improvements that have been made, one thing lets this game down for me. The combat. In Risen 1, the combat was difficult, but once you got the hang of each type of enemy it was a difficult but rewarding system. Risen 2 handles human combat (player vs human AI) well and is a little reminiscent of Risen 1 (Maybe even a little better) But the animal combat (Player vs anything non-humanoid) is painful. There's no better way to describe it, you cannot block or interrupt animals attacks, you're forced to either dodge and bunny hop around like crazy or just burn through health items simply to stay alive.
I really would like to recommend this game, but it's just not enjoyable having to fight packs of wild boar while getting rammed repeatedly by whichever one you’re not currently dodging.
I would suggest you try Risen 1, which has its own flaws, but I still found significantly more enjoyable than this.