Arcania: FoS - Released on Steam

The combat was pretty good, especially melee.

Edit: And the weather effects were spectacular.

Maylander said:

The combat was pretty good, especially melee.

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Eh? I must have missed something there. Does it get a lot better later in the game? The combat in Arcania felt very "hack&slash" to me compared to the PB games.

Melee combat is pretty much like G3 before the community patch - ie spamming left mouse button is the best way to win, ignoring all the other fancy moves.

I'm playing Arcania now for the first time, and whilst I've played much worse (Forsaken Gods, hold your hand up please) it it pretty mediocre, and does indeed feel like almost everything which was "Gothic" has disappeared.

Landscapes/sky/weather graphics are possibly the best I've seen for a while, but these don't make a game especially not an RPG.

let's sum this discussion up: what better RPG than arcania came out in the last 3 years?

i think there is less than you can count in one hand, so that makes it a pretty damn refreshing game, even though i enjoy replaying all the classics, i need something new once in a while. and it's getting drier and drier every season.

rikus said:

let's sum this discussion up: what better RPG than arcania came out in the last 3 years?

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Better than Arcania since 2009?

Risen, Dragon Age, Two Worlds 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Dungeon Siege III, Mass Effect 2, Witcher II, Divinity II, Borderlands.

rikus said:

i think there is less than you can count in one hand, so that makes it a pretty damn refreshing game, even though i enjoy replaying all the classics, i need something new once in a while. and it's getting drier and drier every season.

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The problem with Arcania for me is simple. The writing. The game is silly. The dialogues are silly, the npc's are either silly or annoying, the humor is cringeworthy and too much.

I summed up my feelings towards the game in my own review;
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1061089863&highlight=arcania#post1061089863

Gokyabgu said:

I enjoyed Arcania. In order to have fun from this game first you have to forget that it's a Gothic game. I'm going to buy the expansion since I want to see the real ending of the Arcania.

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I'm sorry but the ending will severely disappoint you. It's a boring 15 seconds cut scene explaining nothing.

rikus said:

i think there is less than you can count in one hand, so that makes it a pretty damn refreshing game, even though i enjoy replaying all the classics, i need something new once in a while. and it's getting drier and drier every season.

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There was nothing refreshing about Arcania, at least as far as I'm concerned. Even on the hardest difficulty I could blow past any opponent that came my way. I can be very forgiving when it comes to RPGs, but there is nothing redeemable about that game.

You are forgetting about indies. I'm too tired to list them off, but the indie rpg scene is getting larger every year. Some people dismiss these games due to a lack of shiny graphics or they're not up to AAA standards, but some of the best RPGs I've played in the last 3 years have been from indies.

There have been some great RPGs released by the AAAs as well such New Vegas, Wither 2, Deus EX: HR, Risen, Dragon Age Origins (I think it was 3 years ago) and Drakensang. Those are just a few of the better ones.

I'd add in roguelikes as well. There has been a lot of activity in that off-shoot of RPGs as well. Legerdmain, Dungeons of Dredmor, Rogue Survivor and of course Crawl Soup recently had a huge update.

I've heard this argument about how RPGs are dying a hundred times before . No they aren't dying. There has never been a time where you could find a ton of quality RPGs……well maybe a year or so ago when Dragon Age was released, there were a ton of great RPGs released in that year.

Anyway, even back in the C64/dos days or the heyday of the 90's/early 2000 there still was not a ton of great RPGs being released in any given year. It has always been a struggle to find good RPGs. Maybe back when the goldbox games were being released did I find more quality RPGs, but still even then it was struggle to find them.

No, you may have certain devs abandon the genre or go bankrupt, but there will always be another to take their place and now that it's getting easier for indies to make and sell their products (no more shareware disks at the supermarket ) we'll see more RPGs. Maybe even more than before.

Arcania = the new Lionheart ?

I agree with all Arcania has not match with previous Gothic games comments, but i really enjoyed playing it.
Reason?
Simple, it wasn't Piranha Bytes make so i didn't expect it being even close to previous Gothic games, so i played it like any other RPG and enjoyed it as it was