

Risen
Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyPrices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.

01About Risen
On Faranga, your choices shape the fate of a harsh fantasy island. Explore an open world, find side quests and creatures, and choose how to fight: with a sword, a staff, or magic. Steam player rating: 89% positive from 7,920 reviews.
Credits
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$1.712025-06-20 · WinGameStoreBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| German | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 4 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Mode and controls
The Steam PC version is single-player and has full controller support.
Languages
English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Russian have full audio and subtitles; Spanish and Portuguese have subtitles.
03Frequently asked questions
Where does Risen take place?
The story unfolds on Faranga, an island whose fate is shaped by your actions.
What combat approaches can I choose?
You can fight with a sword, learn staff combat, or become a mage.
What is there to explore?
The open world includes side quests and creatures to discover.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
The last old style hardcore rpg like Morrowind... Tha "real" successor of Gothic III made by their original creators. And with quite beautiful graphics in spite of its age. - Badass difficuty, learn to fight and learn to run away or get eaten by ostriches, or even worse, smashed by gnomes ! - No arrow on the mini map, no map at all if you don't acquire one. - Factions and related quests... Be smart when or what to do. - Very fun & interesting dialogues made by good actors. - No auto level, find a teacher or stack your xp points (The teachers really teach you each skill with a tale or advices on each step of the skill leveling) Danger & Exploration... Immersive world and storyline... Castaway on an island of the pre-console era... The last real "PC RPG" in my point of view ! A great adventure.Show moreShow less
The Piranha's finest and maybe their best title. Despite a rather small size of the island, every location brims with love and effort spent into creating it. The world feels complete, no unnecessary detail, no location out of place. The combat is engaging and the progression keeps this going well into the endgame, where you might get tired a bit from the final enemy types, particularly if you want all experience. Why a thumbs down, then? The game is abandoned and unoptimized for newer versions of OS. This becomes particularly evident on the second playthrough, when you can run out of memory. The only way to fix it is to patch the executable with a program, which will bring it's virtual memory use potential up to 4 GB, in line with 64-bit systems. And guess what, you can't do that with a Steam Risen executable. People on the forums tried to contact the devs/publishers about the issue without success. There are still some very annoying issues in the game, that could be easily addressed by the devs, but never were. I highly suggest you get the unofficial patch from the World of Risen website. A lot of users on the forums report being unable to start the game due to gfx-related problem. I had it too, I think you manually have to change the resolution in the ini file to match your monitor's to make it work, but I'm not completely sure. No support, no Steam cloud, existing in-game achievements never mirrored. You get the picture. So, would I recommend you play Risen, especially if you're Gothic fan - oh God, yes, absolutely. There is no need to get Steam version for that, though.Show moreShow less
I did not know what I was getting myself into when I first started this game. Not at all actually, as I had no knowledge of what the game even was apart from being an RPG. I hadn't read any sort of reviews, seen movies, or anything of the sort. This is far less impressive than it might sound, as I had gotten the game through a bundle (humble bundle) with a bunch of other games, and if I'm being honest I only started playing for the trading cards I would get. The original plan I had was just to play for a few minutes to see what it was, and if it was anything worth spending time on. I fully expected just to tab out after a few minutes and let it run in background until I got the card drops, and then proceed to uninstall and never touch it again. What I found though, was something I could not put down. 37'ish hours later and I've completed the game in just a few short days. It was one helluva experience. The game started out quirky in that combat was not really that good, but since I was just playing for a few minutes anyway, I decided to roll with it, and slay a few monsters. I barely survived the first few encounters, and had to scour the beach where you start for supplies to munch on in order to regain some health. After 30 minutes of game time, I was hooked. Not since Gothic had I played such a game that was this punishing yet satisfying. I found I could go anywhere, but quickly learned what monsters to stay away from. In the beginning I could hardly kill the most simple monsters, and I couldn't understand why when I leveled up, nothing happened and I apparently couldn't put points in anywhere. Having played Gothic, I figured I'd stumble upon the solution before long with some sort of trainers, and as it turns out, that was exactly the case. You see, skills have a set number of levels, and you need to put a big amount of points into them to become truly good at something, be it using a bow, casting a spell, using a sword, or sneaking, pickpocketing and so on. The only problem is, there isn't enough points for everything because monsters don't respawn, so what you see is what you get (with a very few exceptions between chapters), so there's no grinding in this game, which is great, but also forces you to choose a few skills and stick with them, because being a jack of all trades in this game just isn't as good as a specialist. Fast forward 24 hours of gameplay time and I'm still in the first chapter, and had explored most of the island and killed most of the available mobs instead of going to the first town and progressing the story. It was tough, but I learned a lot about combat, and how to fight the various monsters. Speaking about combat, when you decide upon melee weapon style (staff, axe, sword), you can level it up to level 10, and with each new level you gain faster speed, or more manuerability, and learn to make consecutive swings. This allows you to string together a flurry of combos which makes short work of enemies you had previous thought were neigh impossible to deal with. I played 26 or so hours with no armor at all, as there was simply none available until a certain point in the story (chapter 2). This meant the game was a lot tougher than it needed to be, but also a lot more rewarding, as I had to master the not so easy to learn intricacies of combat in Risen. However, even with armor, I found the monsters a challenge throughout the game, and at no point did I find I could just rush through any opponent. Some block, some rush, some dodge your attacks and leap towards you, and some sidestep you in the middle of your attack and come at you from the side. Some still parry your blows and counter them. And of course some just use brute force. The game also likes to throw packs at you, almost never allowing you to fight a single monster at a time, but often up to 6 or even 8. It forces you to plan ahead, and know your terrain and so on, which makes for a great and memorable experience. The game lasted me around 37 hours, and I am blown away over how great it was. There were hardly any bugs. In fact the only bugs I came across were me getting stuck on terrain after having jumped where I shouldn't jump, or just getting unlucky with landing a couple of times. I could count the number of times it happened on 1 hand though, and with the amount of quicksaving this game forces you to do, it was never a problem. I'm amazed how well polished the game was. You could argue that it's an older game, but that doesn't mean anything in terms of bugs. Most games never fix even the most horrendous bugs if they don't catch it in the first few patches, so this was both surprising, and gratifying. I could write volumes about the story and the locations you visit, but as I don't want to spoil things, I'll just say that it's one of those stories that starts you off with a blank slate, where you don't know anything about anything to begin with, and you soon have to rescue the world type of scenarios. Don't get me wrong, the story was actually ok, and the game forces you to choose sides rather early in the game. I did not regret my decision, but I do kinda wish I could see the other part. I have read it makes very little difference, and it's just a few quests which all end in chapter 1, but I'm not about to replay the game just to experience an hours worth of quests, so no matter. All in all it was a really enjoyable experience, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. Just be warned, it is not one of those mainstream games where you can breeze through. The combat is tough as nails, and nobody is going to hold your hand. If you played Gothic and liked it, chances are you will love this game.Show moreShow less
In my opinion most should ONLY play this game if they've already finished multiple playthroughs of TES 3, 4 & 5. If the fantasy setting and roleplaying are what you're looking for, add Witcher 1&2 and Dragon Age Origins to that list, and if open-world gameplay is what you're after, add Fallout 3 and NV. This game is one of the most solidly "slightly below average" games I've ever played. No aspect of this game is better than the equivalent mechanic/quality in Elder Scrolls Oblivion, and many aspects are worse than even Morrowind, a considerably older game. On top of that, there is plenty of plain old BAD DESIGN in the story, quests and levelling that shouldn't be excusable, but are unfortunatly trademarks of Piranha Bytes. STORY is sparse, forgettable and poorly told. While the setting is an interesting one, the story just isn't really there, the end villain seems added on at the last minute, and none of the characters are memorable, except maybe the player chacter. GRAPHICS are ok, around Oblivion quality but with much better lighting for the most part. A big issue, though is that there is no Gamma slider. The Devs, apparently wanted nighttime/caves to be REALLY REALLY DARK as some form of "realism", but this makes sections of the game unplayable if your computer isn't located in a very very dark room, unless you make use of torches/light spells, which in turn make gameplay even more clunky. BAD DESIGN CHOICE! SOUND - some better-than-average voice acting mixed with some really amateurish voice acting. Totally forgettable sound effects and music, compounded by a bug (fixable by fanpatches) that breaks music in-game due to some sloppy sound file editing by the devs. GAMEPLAY: COMBAT is quit punishing/unforgiving early on due to the BAD DESIGN CHOICE of making armor only upgradeable at the end of each chapter. Enemies don't respawn, and the game is "Open World", but if you try to explore in the first couple chapters when decent armor isn't available, you'll be killed in 1-4 hits from most enemies. The combat system seems "deep" when you first start playing, but in reality each enemy type follows a set pattern and once you figure that out and have some ok armor, they are universally easy and actually don't really possess any sort of AI. OPEN WORLD really is open and you can basically go everywhere on the island from the get go. I like the fact that enemies don't respawn, which helps in the exploration process. I pretty much explored the entire island in "Chapter 2" out of 4, which made Chapters 3&4 only a couple of hours long each. The world is relatively SMALL, and there are only 3 real "types" of environment besides dungeon/caves, so there isn't so much variety. CHOICE is poorly handled. The story is almost completely linear, and dialogue options aren't really options, as no branching conversations are possible, and you end up getting 100% of dialogue no matter what order you ask your questions. All conversations could in reality have been non-interactive cutscenes. WITHOUT A WALKTHROUGH IT'S ALMOST PURE CHANCE WHICH CLASS YOU'LL END UP AS, which is frustrating, and the only real choice in the game only affects a small part of the early plot. THIS CHOICE IS EASILY BROKEN if you do a few quests for both factions. In my playthrough, I did some of each factions' quests, and ended up members of "both" which broke certain aspects of the game and made parts of the game not make sense. Only after this started getting weird, when reading a walkthrough for the first time to try and figure out what went wrong did I find out that PIRANHA BYTES simply DID A HORRIBLE JOB PLANNING AND EXECUTING THE STORY STRUCTURE AND DESIGN. Judging from most internet forums on the matter, most people who didn't use a walkthrough got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in some way while playing the game. OTHER BAD DESIGN DECISIONS BY PIRANHA BYTES about in Risen. Stats can be boosted up to 100 by trainers, but well over 100 by potions. The game doesn't tell you this, though, so if you find and use the potions before training up to 100, you basically waste them. And if you have stat-affecting items on while training, you actually break the training process and LOWER how high you can train your stats. HORRIBLE DESIGN THAT WAS LEFT UNPATCHED BY A BAD DEVELOPER. THE ENDGAME IS A LAZY BOSS FIGHT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REST OF THE GAME IN TERMS OF GAMEPLAY. It is followed by the games only pre-rendered cutscene followed by a black screen with a short voiceover, the credits and BANG - back to the main menu with no option to further explore the world. Anyways, I should mention that I inadvertantly left the game running for a little over a day in the background, so while my record says over 50 hours played, I actually finished the game in about 25 hours and did pretty much everything possible in a single playthrough. I enjoyed the first 10 hours or so in which I was exploring the island and not really advancing the main story, but after that, the horrible, sloppy design and gameplay elements began to manifest, and the last 10-15 hours were quite a grind. I honestly wish I'd just given up and had a 3rd playthrough of an Elder Scrolls game or the Witcher instead. Piranha Bytes should be ashamed that most of their games are broken/buggy and that they rely on fan patches and walkthroughs for players to be able to finish their games. I know they don't have Bethesda's kind of budget, but that isn't an excuse for releasing broken, mediocre games.Show moreShow less
===[ Audience: ]=== ☐ Kids ☐ Everyone ☑ Casual players ☐ Pro players ===[ Graphics: ]=== ☐ Potato ☐ Really bad ☐ Bad ☐ OK ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful ☐ Masterpiece ===[ Price/quality: ]=== ☑ Full price ☐ Wait for sale ☐ Average ☐ Refund it if you can ☐ Don't do it ===[ Requirments: ]=== ☐ 90' PC ☑ Minimum ☑ Medium ☐ Fast ☐ High end ☐ NASA computer ===[ Difficulty: ]=== ☐ You just need 2 arms ☐ Ez ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☑ Hard (first few hours) ☐ Dark Souls ===[ Game time/length ]=== ☐ Really short ( 0 - 2 hours) ☐ Short ( 2 - 8 hours) ☐ Few hours ( 8 - 12 hours) ☑ Long ( 12+ hours) ☐ Endless ===[ Story] === ☐ It doesn't have ☐ Still better than Twilight ☐ Average ☑ Good ☑ Fantastic ===[ Bugs ]=== ☐ Game itself is one big BUG ☐ Bugs destroying the game ☐ Lot of bugs ☑ Few Bugs ☐ You can use them for speedrun ☐ Nothing ===[ Overall ]=== ☐ Bad ☐ Ok ☐ Good ☑ Nice ☐ PerfectShow moreShow less
I try to love this game. Yet I just can't. I had already played it some, the leave it right after exiting the game. But, after noticing the sequels for Risen, inevitably I told myself, Maybe the story is good, since it spawned up two sequels. So I gave the game another try, searching for any redeemable quality. I have to say I really like the alchemy system, smithing, and how the game make use of magic. Creating scrolls yourself and whatnot. It is a hassle, but a rewarding one. I like it how you can use a 'Joke' spell to make up with a character you previously angered. That's about it, I guess. Moving on. Halfway inside the main quest, I sighed in despair. Realizing that I don't even care for the Main Character for me to start caring for any its secondary characters. And that's a huge flaw, considering I play RPGs for its main content: the storyline and a good vast of characters to help strengthen it. Though some RPGs are lacking in story, they backed it up with an amazing combat system, for instance. Or its huge amounts of loots. Risen lacks both. So, unless you're a die hard of fan of RPGs, with sole purpose in life to play every RPGs out there is in the face of the earth, give it a try. But I can't recommend it in full price. But I'm only a voice, telling my own experience with the game. And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.Show moreShow less
I think my hours speak for themselves.Show moreShow less
Flaws: -NPCs do not develop personality or a relationship with the main character throughout the game. There is not a single word I can say about any of the NPCs that interacted with me. -Combat system is abysmal -Difficulty curve is broken. You start out at super hard mode, only to reach piss easy point-and-click gameplay by the end of the first chapter, which continues to the end of the game. -Throughout the whole game you fight the same monsters over and over and over and over again. -glitches and crashes -Main quests are tedious and repetitive -No incentive to explore the world. In my all adventures I have only once found something useful in the side ruins and chests. There is just no point of exploring for two potions and 50 gold. -What is even the motivation of the main character? To get off the island? To save the island? To escape the mainland? Why am I even doing anything? In their past games Piranha Bytes was able to build a main goal from the beginning even though the main protagonist was nameless. Gothic 1 = escape the barrier. Gothic 2 = kill the dragons. Here? Nothing. -Magic system consists of having ONE offensive spell of your choosing. ONE SPELL. Pros: -Nice aestethic.Show moreShow less
Will update as I progress What I Like? - RPG: Inventory, Trading, Dialogue, Enemies, NPC, Collecting herbs, Cooking food, Lock-picking, etc - Pirate-Themed: Ship-werecked, pirates, ships, etc - Combat: Enemies have unique fighting styles; some melee fights can require endurance and patience (defend, watch, attack), where one false move may finish you off, but you may need many more hits - Graphics: The landscapes and environment look beautifully designed - Audio: The sound and dialogue is fun and interesting; plenty of options to choose from - The characters seem well integrated into the environment and adds to the atmosphere; You really feel that it's an organic community with power struggles, issues and people living their daily lives. Neutral - High Inventory: This may be a con for some users, but sometimes I prefer a game where I don't need to agressively manage inventory; I am not entirely sure whether its "unlimited" - Steamworks Integration: Steam Trading Cards, etc What I Wish it Had : - Shorter Loading Times: It takes relaively long to load up saved games - It's a pretty refreshing RPG - it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, I was pleasantly surprised by a number of elements and the way the characters were developed, they feel and sound like "real" people - thus at times you can really relate to the NPC (Non-Player Characters), and you feel part of the community.Show moreShow less
First let me just say; The first 2 chapters are great, and screams spiritual successor to Gothic series. However, past Chapter 2, the game just turns awful. Lots of enemies in between the quest location you need to go to, and you, easily 15 - 30 minutes of just pure fighting, and it never lets up(Not fun challenging fighting, just tedious dragged-out ones for the sake of dragging out the clock). Chapter 3\4 has noteable amount of anti-magic crystals in key locations, requiring you to keep a bow for puzzles, making playing as a pure mage impossible(certain locations will also prevent you from fighting with magic, but thankfully they are rarer), siding with the don\bandits is therefore a 'smarter\better' choice, as it'll give you level 3 lockpicking(as there are locations that have anti-magic crystals around). You also won't have access to Circle 4 rune seal until well into Chapter 4, meaning the only way to use Circle 4 magic, is scrolls(which defeats the purpose of being a mage, warrior of the order will have access to all the same things). So by the time you have free access to using the Circle 4 magic, you won't need it anymore. Basically, Chapter 3+ was clearly rushed and they went out of ideas on how to end the game, making it into an hack and slash game, with clunky RPG mechanics(contra to an pure action oriented RPG, as it is for the first 2 chapters, or the Gothic series is), and horrible collision detection(projectiles will often pass right through enemies). So I'd recommend it if one is a big fan of Gothic 1 & 2, and want something like that, and is willing to accept Chapter 3+ is horrible, but the last chapters really drag the entire experience down IMO.Show moreShow less
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.