"I guess I’m procrastinating from saying what I need to say, which is that you’re better off avoiding Risen 2 than picking it up. I know full well that’s the right thing to say, but I’ve been reluctant to because it’s clearly got heart and soul, the skill tree is full of genre-unusual delights and it offers several sweet hats. If it could have worked off about 10 to 15 hours of needless flab I’d probably have taken Risen 2 to heart in the same way I did the first half of its predecessor. Instead, I feel a gentle regret for having given it so much of my time and a strong frustration that it didn’t manage to make more of itself."

"Risen 2: Dark Waters offers a lot to like taken in its parts. A competent story, a good amount of player-driven choices, and beautiful locations to explore make it one of the best (and only) pirate RPGs out there. But it fell short for me when it came to other mechanical things like combat and character development."

"Risen 2: Dark Waters is a flawed game in a lot of areas, yet it still packs a strange charm to it. The combat is indeed frustrating and fiddly, the story and quests are indeed nothing special but the charm of the game still shines through. The concept of being a pirate is quite interesting and Risen 2 captures elements of playing as a pirate but doesn’t make full use of the idea. It’s a real shame that developer Piranha Bytes didn’t make full use of the concept and instead partially touched upon it."