As someone who played all Risen games I'll jump in...
Fans of Gothic know who Piranha Bytes are and how much they've influenced open world WRPGs - including upcoming Witcher 3....alas, Risen is not as good as Gothic.
First game is very much Gothic alike, though much smaller in scope - PB parted their ways with JoWood after Gothic 3 and Arcania: Gothic 4 was not even made by them (nor considered to be Gothic at all by many fans). So they've went on and made Risen 1, which was pretty much Gothic, but on smaller budget...which honestly shows from time to time after Gothic 3. Still, very good game.
Risen 2 was quite different though, and though still running Gothic DNA, it changed quite a bit, both the setting (focusing more on pirate themed part of the universe) and, to a certain degree, gameplay - for Gothic and Risen 1 fans it was either love or hate thing.
Risen 3 was pretty much made cause they had contract with Deep Silver for 3 games, so lot of assets from Risen 2 are used...which doesn't mean automatically it's a bad game, it's just not that much different from Risen 2.
As for combat - ok, there's that video of Angry Joe playing it and going apeshit-crazy and only thing I can say is...he's a fucking noob, and no amount of "I'm Gothic fan" from him can justify his incompetence. Combat is not perfect, but it's nowhere as hard or punishing as Gothic's combat system.
All in all, Risen 2/3 are decent games with a lot of stuff to do and ways to play them, as all PB games. Though nowhere as good as their classic predecessors. I've enjoyed them quite a lot, but I'm not completely objective since I'm biased toward anything that PB makes. Depending on the price and your love for, what is usually called Euro-RPGs, you might want to check them out.
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