A brave pirate captain sails together with Patty, the daughter of the famed Steelbeard, in search of riches and adventure. Despite a menacing dream that keeps haunting the hero, the two head to Crab Coast, where they explore an abandoned temple. Suddenly, a ghostly creature appears and kills the captain. Stricken by grief, Patty buries him and departs; however, shortly afterwards a strange man named Bones revives the hero and tells him of a few possible ways to restore his full humanity and avert a great danger threatening the region.
Risen 3: Titan Lords is a direct sequel to Risen 2: Dark Waters , set in the same fantasy archipelago world. The player gains access to almost the entire archipelago right after the prologue mission and can explore any island in any order, unlike its predecessor where exploration was limited to one island at a time. The game combines elements from the previous two games, with alliance with different factions playing an important role in making the main plot more freely structured.
There are three factions in the game: Demon Hunters, Voodoo Pirates, and Guardians. These factions have less rigidly defined combat specializations than in earlier games. The player can access all the quests of all the factions only with multiple playthroughs, but there is still a vast amount of faction-unrelated side quests scattered across the world. The protagonist also commands his own crew and can choose companions to aid him in combat during land exploration.
Combat has been slightly upgraded from the previous installments by introducing more special moves. Dodging is now more prominent, and powerful charged melee attacks can be executed. The player character can learn other moves if he finds the corresponding trainer. Experience points are manually allocated into main attributes, while trainers have to be paid for their work. The character growth system follows that of Risen 2 , with social skills introduced in the previous game, and the magic system has been enhanced with special abilities and traditional crystal-based spells.