| BASIC GAME INFORMATION |
Year of construction: 2012
Genre: RPG, 3D, 3rd Person
developer: Piranha Bytes
Publisher: Deep Silver
Risen 2: Dark Waters is built around a pirate theme. Therefore, get ready for a salty breeze, a parrot on your shoulder and a crutch instead of a leg. The island of Farang from Risen is left in the distant past – it will be replaced by a whole string of new islands that we can easily visit by ship. Each piece of land is endowed with its own unique climate, relief pattern and flora and fauna, which should spur players’ interest in exploring all the islands.
However, even during sea voyages there will be something to see – for example, strange monsters that can attack a peacefully sailing ship.
| THE GRAFICAL PART |
This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.
| Supported OS and graphics API |
This game is supported by the main Windows operating systems, which include Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The developers from the Piranha Bytes studio ignored other operating systems. Which is basically what most developers do…
The priority and main graphics API is only DirectX 9, which is not surprising, because the game is being developed not only for personal PCs, but also for game consoles.
| Game engine |
The game engine is a proprietary product of the Piranha Bytes studio. As we can see this can be seen in the visual style, which is very similar to previous games from Piranha Bytes – such as Gothic 3 and the first part of Risen. Of course, progress is obvious compared to its predecessors.
Unfortunately, we were unable to find more detailed information other than visual observations.
| Advanced Game Settings |
The game has a fairly impressive arsenal of graphics settings. Thus, each user has the opportunity to flexibly adjust the visual component of the game to the performance of their gaming equipment. Graphic settings are divided into two sub-items.
In the first, we can change the resolution and refresh rate of the screen, and in the second, we can flexibly manipulate the main visual effects.
Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphic settings so that our users can see for themselves what they will have to sacrifice if the performance of their home PC is insufficient.
| Minimum quality settings |
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| Low quality settings |
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| Medium quality settings |
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| High quality settings |
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As we can see the difference between high and low settings is quite high. At low settings, the game does not even reach the high settings of Gothic 3, which is quite outdated today.
| General visual design and game physics |
If we talk about the overall impression, about the graphic design, then our opinions are quite positive. The game world is quite saturated with bright colors and detailed textures. Finally, the water at Piranha Bytes looks like water, and not some blue halo on the horizon. User feedback has finally been taken into account.
As in previous games in the series, the development team relies on an open world with a dynamic change of day and night. It is clear that they are constantly improving their skills and in all lighting conditions the game looks simply great. At night, perhaps, the game looks even more colorful and beautiful…
Physics in Risen 2 is mainly extended to the player characters. You will not find total destructibility of the game world here. The maximum that we can see is a torch or some other object falling from our hands and rolling along the ridge.
Well, then we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.
| TEST PART |
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Test configuration |
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test stands |
Test bench No. 1 based on the Intel Socket 2 platform011 Test bench No. 2 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 3 based on the Intel Socket 1366 platform Test bench No. 4 based on the Intel Socket 115 platform6 Test bench No. 5 based on the AMD Soket AM platform3 Test bench No. 6 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 7 based on the AMD Soket AM platform2 Test bench No. 8 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 9 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 10 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform+ |
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Multimedia equipment |
3D monitor LG W2363D Monitor LG E2750 Dell U3010 monitor product provided by the company AMD 3D Vision Kit product provided by the company Nvidia |
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Software configuration |
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Operating system |
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64 SP1 |
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Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 301.24 AMD Catalyst 12.4 |
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Monitoring program |
MSI Afterburner v2.2 |
| GPU test |
All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The minimum and average FPS were taken as performance indicators.
Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes of 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by the game. SLI and Cross Fire is currently not optimized for Risen 2: Dark Waters and does not allow video cards to reveal their full potential. Although at some points SLI works, but in some it doesn’t…
Testing at maximum quality settings 1680×1050
At a resolution of 1680×1050 at maximum settings, the minimum level of performance was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 5830 or GeForce GTX 460 level. The optimal solutions for these settings would be the Radeon HD 5850 or GeForce GTX 560Ti.
Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080
At a resolution of 1920×1080 at maximum settings, the minimum performance level was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 7770 or GeForce GTX 560 level. The optimal solutions for these settings would be the Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 480.
Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600
At a resolution of 2560×1600 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5870 or GeForce GTX 570 level showed the minimum level of performance. The optimal solutions for these settings would be video cards of the Radeon HD 7950 level and higher.
| VRAM test |
Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.
Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings
The optimal amount of video memory for this game is its amount in the amount of 512 to 1024 MB.
| CPU test |
We tested processor dependence on 12 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1024×768 with maximum graphics quality settings.
Testing at minimum quality settings 1024×768
At some points, Risen 2: Dark Waters makes rather inadequate use of CPU resources and pushes them to the edge of comfortable performance. The most optimal solution for the game is the second generation Intel Core i line.
| RAM test |
Testing of the RAM consumed by the game was carried out by monitoring directly through the Windows task manager. The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 8GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed video memory.
Testing at various quality settings
As we can see, with different quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in Risen 2: Dark Waters ranges from 750 to 1024 megabytes, which is quite normal.
| Тeating 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 92% |
Graphics 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 70% |
Optimization 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 42% |