A challenging hardcore RPG that doesnt hold your hand.
Piranha Bytes is a German developer who is famous for their Gothic series especially Gothic III. Gothic III was a disaster of a game with unsatisfied gameplay and major performance issues giving the developer a sore spot to their name. Risen, thankfully, have redeemed the German developer's name by offering a game that has competitive graphics, fun combat, and no real performance issues with consistantly high frame rates.
Unlike Oblivion, Risen does not hold your hand by giving out arrows or waypoints on the ground to guide through every single quest. A lot of quests require the player to hear what the quest giver is saying, reading the quest logs, and explore the world to be able to complete quests. The player coming into contact and fighting enemies while trying to complete a quest is inevitable.
There are many types of enemies the player will encounter throughout the game. All the enemies will have a set difficulty level and will not decrease or increase with the player. There are a few enemies, mostly at the beginning, will very challenging to nearly impossible to complete. It would be wise to advance through the game by completing quests and fighting enemies will the players character have the opportunity to get stronger. The once challenging boar and hungry wolves, will be easily beatable by one or two hits.
Risen will offer many more advance and challenging characters to fight, such as gnomes, skeletons and other humans. These characters will have body armor, sword and shield making combat more challenging. Active use of a shield to provide a defense to enemy blows and timing just right to return a hit. This kind of interactive combat gives Risen more realistic feel and slows down the tempo of the game.