Arcania - More Reviews

KayAU said:

Very genereous scores, unless the full game is far better than the demo. I don't get this:
"The story is weak, the quests are boring and the game is short - 79%"
What's the redeeming quality bringing the score up to 79%? The combat (which offers no challenge)? The game world (which you may not freely explore)? The NPC interactions (which seem extremely limited)?
I am also confused about the "enough Gothic left" part…what is left, besides the names of things?

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I grouped the reviews together like this to highlight that it doesn't make sense. The 80% review is much more positive, and what's the difference? 1%.

Anyway, this is looking pretty much like the worst case scenario for the Gothic series as far as I am concerned. A pretty weak game which receives critical praise.

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I haven't seen any critical praise yet. "It's a solid RPG" is no critical praise, it's just a flowery phrase to communicate that the game is not rubbish.

Aditya said:

QFT!

I think most are using Arcania as an excuse for taking potshots at Jowood.

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You call it an excuse, I call just another reason in a sea of excellent ones.

Maylander said:

I find it quite amusing that all of a sudden everyone is a Gothic fan, complaining about Arcania lacking Gothic features. Since when did Gothic become a critically praised game?

If I recall correctly, the non-stop whine about the controls/difficulty of the original Gothic prevented it from ever getting the praise it deserved.

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RPGwatch, and RPGdot before it, have always been hotspots of Gothic fandom for the English speaking world. That the people here do not correlate well with the market in general should not come as a surprise, right?

GhanBuriGhan said:

RPGwatch, and RPGdot before it, have always been hotspots of Gothic fandom for the English speaking world. That the people here do not correlate well with the market in general should not come as a surprise, right?

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That's.. my point? The Gothic love here and over at WoG is well known, so why is it now suddenly popping up everywhere? How can reviewer after reviewer (and comments regarding their reviews) constantly refer to how "Gothic" it feels (or lack there of), when they originally bashed Gothic for being what it is? Shouldn't the casual approach get more praise than the original when the original was bashed for - drum roll - not being casual?

That's why I find it somewhat amusing that Gothic fans seem to be appearing all over the place now (beyond the Watch or WoG).

Maylander said:

That's.. my point? The Gothic love here and over at WoG is well known, so why is it now suddenly popping up everywhere? How can reviewer after reviewer (and comments regarding their reviews) constantly refer to how "Gothic" it feels (or lack there of), when they originally bashed Gothic for being what it is? Shouldn't the casual approach get more praise than the original when the original was bashed for - drum roll - not being casual?

That's why I find it somewhat amusing that Gothic fans seem to be appearing all over the place now (beyond the Watch or WoG).

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Oh, I misunderstood you, sorry! Well, at least in Germany Gothic love is not a fringe phenomenon, and the first two games also scored very highly in reviews there and were very popular. These early reviews are mostly from Germany as well, so its not that strange or opportunistic, really.

Maylander said:

That's.. my point? The Gothic love here and over at WoG is well known, so why is it now suddenly popping up everywhere? How can reviewer after reviewer (and comments regarding their reviews) constantly refer to how "Gothic" it feels (or lack there of), when they originally bashed Gothic for being what it is? Shouldn't the casual approach get more praise than the original when the original was bashed for - drum roll - not being casual?

That's why I find it somewhat amusing that Gothic fans seem to be appearing all over the place now (beyond the Watch or WoG).

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Do you have a single example of a reviewer bashing Gothic, who now refers to it as you say?

Because otherwise, it seems you're sort of overreacting based on nothing at all.

I don't think the "casual" approach of Arcania is the primary problem, according to reviewers. It seems, basically, that the issue is that it's a bit crappy in every possible way.

Gorath said:

I haven't seen any critical praise yet. "It's a solid RPG" is no critical praise, it's just a flowery phrase to communicate that the game is not rubbish.

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I wouldn't see it this harsh. I'd say it is just a "flowery phrase to communicate that the game is not" a Gothic game.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I wouldn't see it this harsh. I'd say it is just a "flowery phrase to communicate that the game is not" a Gothic game.

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I'd say that's sugarcoating it a bit. I'm pretty sure games other than Gothic are capable of getting much better than 60%-70% review scores.

I live in the US and have played all gothic games never hated them.All three had there problems but were enjoyable.I just didn't like being a nameless hero but that's a small problem besides the bugs for the third one.In the end they were fixed by a community patch.Aracania is a gothic lite replica that promised much but delivers little if you go by the demo and the early russian release.I'll have a full opinion next week.

to be honest I'd still play this - but that combat was just terrible. It was by far the simplest combat of any game demo (with combat) that I've played. That's what worries me (I'm prepared to accept that tht is Gothic lite etc etc), but to play through the entire game with the demo'd combat mechanics would be...painful.

Gorath said:

Austrian mag Gamers.at writes "Arcania is […] a good but not very good RPG" if you can ignore its Gothic roots. They speculate that a lot of content has been cut in the second half - a whole city is unused - and a quick add-on might be on the way. - 79%

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A quick add-on on the way... They probably ought to say "a quick continuous customer milking is on the way".

Maylander said:

That's.. my point? The Gothic love here and over at WoG is well known, so why is it now suddenly popping up everywhere? How can reviewer after reviewer (and comments regarding their reviews) constantly refer to how "Gothic" it feels (or lack there of), when they originally bashed Gothic for being what it is?

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I think that your perception may be wrong. Most of the press and "Gothic love" (of the original games) is coming out of German speaking territories now and I don't know what is giving you the idea that Gothic was ever "bashed" a lot over here. Quite the contrary.
Gothic 1 collected more than a dozen awards (editor's choice and that kind of stuff) within the first few weeks after it was released. It was a major hit in Germany and got tons of praise and critical acclaim. If there was any bashing at all (for poor controls or whatever) then it was a footnote.
Gothic 2's reception was a little more lukewarm but it was still received very well by our local critics.
It was pretty much only in North America that both Gothics got slaughtered in (some) reviews but that's also not where the current "Gothic love" press is coming from.

Ovenall said:

I tried out the Xbox demo over the weekend. Unimpressive overall. It felt old, slow and clunky. The running and jumping animations are bad and feel like your character is doing a lazy jog instead of running. It looked dusty brown and washed out. I get that you're starting out low-level and poor in a small village. But throw in some visual interest or color please. Gothic 3 on fairly low settings looked better to me. Lazy design I'd seen a dozen times. The menus were OK.

I never tried Risen, so I can't compare it to that. But I'll probably pass on Arcania, unless I can get it cheap and I'm really bored for an RPG on the Xbox.

booboo- those number ratings are just stupid if you ask me. 7.5 out of 10 is seen these days as a low or only so-so score. Ridiculous.

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True, probably got payed to give such a high score, or maybe 7.5/10 and 2/10 is the same thing for those guys…