Risen 2 appears to have good reviews. Anyone tried it? (and/or the first one)
First one's pretty good. I basically stopped playing after you get out of the town, though, once it placed me on a trail teeming with local wildlife that's way above my level.
Maybe they improved the scaling in the second, I don't know. I'd like to eventually finish the first one before starting on it.
If you've played the Gothic series, Risen is very much like those. The monsters are pre-scaled for each area depending on what your characters skill would be at that time. I can't remember exactly what the levelling system was in Risen 1 but I believe it was the Gothic 1 and 2 style collect-skill-points-and-use-at-trainers-to-level-up-abilities.
I do remember Gothic being a fair amount of; either you can barely hurt and enemy and it kills you in two hits or you can kill the enemy in two hits and it can barely touch you. While I might not like the combat much, the story line seemed interesting from what I saw (about the same as Mephisto).
Scour the land for every scrap of experience you can find I think it a good tactic. Risen is so much like Gothic it may as well be called Gothic, it even has expy characters from Gothic 2.