Mac Gaming

I came late to the Gothic series of RPGs, having only played Gothic 2 in February of this year. I really enjoyed that game, however, so I bought Gothic 3 a month or two ago when it came on sale. While enjoyable, Gothic 3 was a bit of a departure from the second game (bigger world, less story) and left me wanting something more in line with Gothic 2. Enter Risen.

Risen, while not part of the Gothic canon (the developer lost the rights to Gothic), is, essentially, a Gothic game (a rose by any other name, etc.). Moreover, it’s a lot more like G2 than G3 in the size of its world and how it plays. In short, it’s a great game. It also runs pretty well on my iMac. Details below:

My Settings

The Verdict

So, at 1024×768, I get about 17-20fps out of Risen. That doesn’t seem that great, but it’s generally pretty smooth and I was never frustrated by the frame rate. The game is also quite solid, only crashing once or twice in ~50 hours of play.

Risen is the game I hoped it would be — enjoyable combat (way better than that of its predecessors), interesting quests, story and characters, and enough loot to sink a battleship. I’m on my second play-through (the first was as a Bandit, the second as a Mage), and I’ve easily poured around 50 hours into the game. My favourite aspect of the game is that the early part plays quite a bit differently depending on your faction and some of your choices, so the start game feels new each time. So, if you like the Gothic series or action-oriented RPGs in general, you probably can’t go wrong with Risen.

Metacritic.com User Score

8.2/10