Piranha Bytes has long been known for creating roleplaying games with an unparalleled focus on exploration, and now the studio has taken the concept to the high seas with Risen 2. Does this piratical escapade sink beneath the weight of its own ambition?

Several years have passed since the events of the first Risen, and the old world isn't doing so well. It's on fire, in fact, and the fearsome Titans have pushed what remains of civilization to the small city of Caldera at the tip of the Lost Realm. The nameless hero of the first game returns as the center of the action in Risen 2, although he's now an alcoholic and a member of a militaristic organization known as the Inquisition. Once the feisty Patty shows up with word that humanity's salvation could lie with something that lowly pirates have discovered, Risen 2 takes a welcome dive into uncharted waters.

The story itself is something of a disappointment, with bursts of narrative crammed in between limited decisions and predictable fetch-and-gather quests and tied off with an unsatisfying boss fight. Instead, it's the characters and the world itself that make Risen 2 memorable, and you might find yourself remembering the quirks of, say, a profanity-spouting gnome or a man with his soul caught between two worlds more than the actual reasons you're with them in the first place. Indeed, even if it's hard to maintain a sense that the Titan threat is as dire as the opening moments make it out to be, the little touches of everyday life in Risen 2 prove that Piranha Bytes' skill at creating believable fantasy worlds is as strong as ever.

Even if you're weary of the handholding common in many of today's roleplaying games, Risen 2's stubborn refusal to give you much help will prove frankly startling. The first shock comes when you have to spend almost all of your gold in order to learn how to sneak; the next major one is when you find yourself on the game's first island with only the slightest idea of how to proceed aside from the guidance of a simple compass.

Despite such standbys from Piranha Bytes' previous releases, Risen 2 is nevertheless a tad more accessible. For one, the islands you encounter are small compared to the sprawling landmasses of the studio's previous games, and you can generally find your way around by exploration alone instead of forking over precious gold for a map. You’ll also find scattered quick-travel points that do away with much of the eventless trekking you’ll remember from previous games. Finally, the helpful menus and quest logs at least remind you of what you're supposed to be doing, if not how to get there.

Eventually you'll get your own ship that allows you to sail between the islands at will, and you'll also pick up several companions that add some flavor to the story and assist you in combat. For all their off-color humor, though, companions are basically extra targets that keep you from taking the full force of beatings. The limits of their usefulness become all too apparent once you encounter a witch who can heal you through some of more annoying aspects of the gameplay, and who proves so useful that you'll likely keep your other friends anchored on your ship for the rest of the game.

Much like its predecessor, Risen 2 doesn't have a traditional leveling setup; instead, your nameless hero acquires "glory" that can be used to augment or unlock various skills and attributes. Put enough points into cunning, for instance, and you can unlock an ability that lets you train monkeys to steal for you. It's a system that allows you mold your character into anything you want.

Combat largely revolves around learning individual moves from trainers one at a time, each costing a small fortune in gold. It's a system that makes the Risen 2's couple of hours seem a little dull, since you won't immediately have access to the tricks that morph the mindless hacking and slashing into true swashbuckling.

But once you've spent a pirate's hoard in gold on skills and put points into the right attributes, sword-based combat against human NPCs becomes a flurry of parries, ripostes, and kicks that's almost as fun as watching Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time. It takes a while, but there's a real feeling of achievement once you reach this level. If you want a little variety, you can eventually finish off your foes with a pistol after you've buckled their swashes enough with your sword. Yet all that time and gold spent on learning complex sword-fighting moves might as well be tossed down to Davy Jones' locker for all of its effectiveness against monsters. Since almost all of them can break through blocks, fighting them becomes a race to see who whittle down the other's health the fastest.

If magic's more your style, you’ll get a few kicks out of putting some points in voodoo, but don't expect it to take the place of blades and firearms in battle. Voodoo is more about casting curses and playing with the minds of stubborn scallywags. Abilities like these help to mitigate against the sloppy aspects of the sword play, but they’ll also disappoint players expecting deeper forms of magic-based combat.

Risen 2 also lets you use a musket and end the lives of most of your normal foes in one or two shots. That might be true to life, but such comparative ease ends up making the combat sequences tedious instead of annoying after only a few hours.

Whatever problems Risen 2 has, it's hard to argue that its landscapes aren’t pretty. Shafts of sunlight breaking through a dense canopy of trees achieve a degree of realism familiar to fans of Crysis, and almost every room in the game's interior settings seems to have received individual attention.

It's a shame, then, that the islands that make up the bulk of the story look so much the same. Only the flame-ravaged wastes of Caldera and the haunting expanses of the Isle of the Dead have much individuality, and if you haven't played in a while, you could be forgiven for forgetting which island you're on once you jump back in.

For all their beauty, though, most landscapes also suffer from an odd "pop-up" effect, which makes flowers seem to bloom as you approach them. Elsewhere, character models also aren't terribly impressive. Beyond that, though, Risen 2's affection for the pirate themes shines in the competent voice acting and appropriate musical score, resulting in a believable fantasy-tinged vision of the Golden Age of Caribbean piracy.

Risen 2 has more than a few issues, but there's plenty of buried treasure waiting here for players who are willing to dig for it. Unfortunately, the excavation is demanding, and the slaphappy combat and bland quest structure might prove too overpowering for players who want to sample one of the few examples of a genuine pirate roleplaying game. Suffer through the worst of it, though, and you might find that walking the plank isn't so bad after all.

(Reviewed on PC)