Arcania - Demo Released

I've given it some thought, and I believe the demo could very well be the intro to the real game, all the way up to a certain dungeon. I assume the dungeon is either specifically made for the demo, or got tweaked to show a lot of variety in terms of enemies and loot/gear (there's no way we're going to burn through several types of weapons and armor in 10 min).
 
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I'm a little late to the party, but I just finished the demo. Where should I start?

First, as I feared, this is not a "Gothic" game. Not by a long shot.

Invisible barriers everywhere. I can't jump over a 2' high ledge now??

The water looks nice, too bad you can't go in it. First they took away diving in Gothic 3, now I can't even fucking swim?

Only one movement speed?

As others have already mentioned , combat is little more than a clickfest now, and the auto camera is pathetic. Both of those aspects reminded me of Two Worlds, but even worse.

I played the demo on "Hard" and didn't die once. Way too many healing items, and they're overpowered. A simple hemp bandage heals 100 hit points?

Archery is overpowered right from the start.

The AI is *bad*. While in the cave, I noticed that enemies would follow me to a certain point, and then just stop. I could then pelt them with arrows, while they just stood there and died.

Voice acting is terrible imo. The witch was so bad that I had to constantly click through her dialogue to avoid getting pissed off.



Now the good points. I can really only think of two.

Graphics were good, and it ran very smooth. I played with everything maxed @1920x1200 (no AA), and never saw even a single stutter or hitch of any kind.

It's one less game I have to worry about buying next month. :)
 
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First of all, let me just say that I can't defend the actual game because I haven't played it. I'm merely pointing out that it's a demo, not the real game, in addition to correcting a few things.

Only one movement speed?

I've wondered about this. There is a stamina stat, but mine never actually went up or down, no matter what I did (even in combat). Maybe they simply turned off the use of stamina, including sprinting (in the demo)?

In any case, there is a rune in the demo that will enable you to sprint. It doesn't actually cost stamina or anything, which makes me believe it's a replacement for the sprint ability as it seems they've turned off stamina for the demo.

As others have already mentioned , combat is little more than a clickfest now, and the auto camera is pathetic. Both of those aspects reminded me of Two Worlds, but even worse.

Hmm, what's wrong with the camera? Classic 3rd person view from what I can tell, worked exactly the way it's supposed to and the way I expected. No better or worse than any other game I've played with similar view. The combat has potential, due to timing, rolling around and so on. It's pretty smooth once you get the hang of it. Still, no soft lock is annoying as it leads to rolling around without it relating to the enemy.

I played the demo on "Hard" and didn't die once. Way too many healing items, and they're overpowered. A simple hemp bandage heals 100 hit points?

Oh come on, now you're just being picky, as if you wanted it to fail all along. It's a demo. It's obvious the looting does not represent the looting in the actual game - it's merely there to show a great variety of weapons, items and so on.

As for the difficulty - I hardly think the first hour of a game is supposed to be hard. Even the first hour in the original Gothic, a game known to be ruthless, is easy; you just walk down to the Old Camp, killing a few Juvenile Molerats/Scavengers on the way. After that, there's a bunch of talking, and then the first hour is over.

Archery is overpowered right from the start.

No doubt about it. Way more powerful than melee. No idea if this will remain true later on in the game.


The AI is *bad*. While in the cave, I noticed that enemies would follow me to a certain point, and then just stop. I could then pelt them with arrows, while they just stood there and died.

Hardly new. Doesn't make it any better of course, but Gothics in general have crap AI (and most other RPGs where there is collision detection). In Gothic 3 you can use the following tactic no matter what you face (as long as it's not a Shaman):
- Start shooting.
- As they approach, jump up on a small rock/hill/etc.
- The brilliant AI will now backpeddle and then circle around the small rock/hill/etc to try to reach you.
- Jump back down from the rock.
- The AI will now go back the way it came.
- Rince and repeat untill an entire city worth of Orcs lies dead. Unless they have a Shaman, as casters represent the only problem in the game, mainly because you can't exploit their stupid AI in the same way.


Voice acting is terrible imo. The witch was so bad that I had to constantly click through her dialogue to avoid getting pissed off.

Aye, and as I pointed out above: The romance. Oh man.
- I have to pass a test so we can get married.
- Married?
- YOU DON'T WANT TO?!?!??!??????!!!!!?!?!?!

Me in my gaming chair: Bwahaha, where did that come from?
 
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Played the demo, seems like a half-decent hack'n'slash, not a Gothic though.

The good: Looks great, amazing vistas, and runs really smooth on my at least 2-years old PC (i don't really remember how old it is:) )

The bad: Characters were bland, combat was piss-easy (well - one dungeon, and you defeat 2 minecrawlers, 3 skeletons, 4 undead knight/paladins/mages in a row, no downtime needed), invisible barriers in water (or was it acid? it seemed to kill you instantly), you can jump, but there is no much reason to jump (nothing up to climb to, jumping down kills you in most cases - and height does not seem to be the main reason why). World is spacious, but rather boring (in G1 & G2 every corner there was something interesting) and heavily gated - no freedom at all, you explore areas in linear fashion when they get available. Skill system - not very interesting.
I assume the cool armor you got near the end was just a demo thing, to show graphics, cause running in plate armor after just first chapter would be stupid. I like to see how my character rises in power.
 
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I've wondered about this. There is a stamina stat, but mine never actually went up or down, no matter what I did (even in combat). Maybe they simply turned off the use of stamina, including sprinting (in the demo)?

Based on the skill descriptions, I think stamina comes into play when executing specific powers - like the Flurry ability, which is meant to cost stamina. Sort of like "physical mana" - but I didn't actually take notice.

Oh come on, now you're just being picky, as if you wanted it to fail all along. It's a demo. It's obvious the looting does not represent the looting in the actual game - it's merely there to show a great variety of weapons, items and so on.

We really don't know. I have to agree that Health items SEEM overly abundant - in the extreme.

Now, I HOPE that won't be the case in the full game, but I've seen developers do stuff like this, as if they really didn't know what they were doing.

Elemental comes to mind as a good example of how incompetent they can be ;)

As for the difficulty - I hardly think the first hour of a game is supposed to be hard. Even the first hour in the original Gothic, a game known to be ruthless, is easy; you just walk down to the Old Camp, killing a few Juvenile Molerats/Scavengers on the way. After that, there's a bunch of talking, and then the first hour is over.

Oh, but there's a difference between being too easy - and being broken.

This isn't just about damage, it's about AI behaviour. Now, again, it's a demo - and we can't know.

But the fact that I can kill everything effortlessly with a bow - and that monsters can't catch up to me when walking backwards, is a REALLY worrying sign.

I mean, why would they specifically disable the monster's ability to follow an archer, walking backwards slowly?

That makes no sense.

Hardly new. Doesn't make it any better of course, but Gothics in general have crap AI (and most other RPGs where there is collision detection). In Gothic 3 you can use the following tactic no matter what you face (as long as it's not a Shaman):
- Start shooting.
- As they approach, jump up on a small rock/hill/etc.
- The brilliant AI will now backpeddle and then circle around the small rock/hill/etc to try to reach you.
- Jump back down from the rock.
- The AI will now go back the way it came.
- Rince and repeat untill an entire city worth of Orcs lies dead. Unless they have a Shaman, as casters represent the only problem in the game, mainly because you can't exploit their stupid AI in the same way.

Yeah, Gothic 3 was pretty bad.

Gothic 1 and 2 were MUCH better though, not to mention Risen.

Perfect? No, but definitely better.
 
Don't attempt to apologize for its shortcomings by rationalizing that "it's not the game, it's a demo". I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous.


Btw: If you watch your stamina during combat, it does go down when doing combos. Although I never seemed to get close to being "low".
 
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Hmmmz. I tried running it on my iMac running Windows 7 at work, a 3Ghz Core2Duo with 4GB RAM and a GeForce 9400, but it just froze my computer at the second intro movie... crap.
 
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Finished.
Effects are nice, combat isn´t without potential and is definitely better than Gothic 3´s, premise is quite interesting and I really liked how down-to-earth beginning was.
Combat balance (melée x ranged x spells) seemed largely off, leveling/skill system boring/sucks, the world lacks meaningful reactivity (try headshooting a villager, heh)/interactivity, camera is terrible because it´s unadjustable, AI weak, quests totes mundane (the fact it´s a demo isn´t an excuse).
Characters look mostly very good, but lack on the expressivity front, lip-synching is often quite nonexistent (laughs), voice acting below average to abysmal.
Writing is infantile.

The game looks very good in dungeons (lighting, other effects) and very mediocre in exteriors, even with everything on max - detailed textures + nice effects (like godrays) automatically do not beautiful environments make. I think the main culprit is the sky which looks terrible and doesn´t mesh with the rest at all, giving the game weirdly 2-D feel. Stiff tree animations, boring lighting and lack of ambient life (insects, birds etc) don´t help here either.

All in all, felt like Gothic for kids or something, but it wasn´t entirely without charm and one play through it might be quite fun, especially if one is a member of target audience. 5/10.

P.S.: On my mediocre rig it run quite well with everything on max bar few post processes which I set to medium, but given how relatively small the demo area is, I wouldn´t bet on it in the full game.
 
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Hmmmz. I tried running it on my iMac running Windows 7 at work, a 3Ghz Core2Duo with 4GB RAM and a GeForce 9400, but it just froze my computer at the second intro movie… crap.

Running it on an iMac, is kinda the same as declaring you really have no right to exist ;)

Not being able to play Arcania, is what I would call an extremely lenient punishment for such betrayal of good taste!
 
Don't attempt to apologize for its shortcomings by rationalizing that "it's not the game, it's a demo". I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous.

I tend to agree, especially since we have no chance of *knowing* if those certain weak points that people has been complaining about is "just because it's a demo". A demo is supposed to be representative of the full product, so for now I'll have to assume that combat is indeed very easy and that loot is plentiful. Some people claim that "obviously" it will not be the same in the full game, but I don't see how that's so obvious...

Personally I've not yet fully decided whether I think this is a good game or not - in its own right. But it's certainly *not* a Gothic game, as far as I'm concerned. There were parts of the demo that I liked quite a lot (I'm not automatically opposed to "modern" features in CRPGs)... but towards the end of the demo I more and more got the feeling that this game isn't for me. Too much hack-n-slash gameplay and too weak dialog. I especially *hated* that ridiculous witch... glad to see I'm not alone :)

I can see how other people might like it quite a lot though, since the presentation and implementation of the stuff it actually did was overall quite good.
 
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I my experience a demo usually is indicative of the final game mechanics.

Loot and so forth is up for debate I guess.

The overall feel I have got so far is that there could be balancing issues here for sure, "rough around the edges" so to speak. Do the developers ever comment?
 
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Plenty of demos are tweaked to give a certain experience. It's very normal to make the demo more accessible, to make the game sell better to a larger audience.

Some things are rare, though, and I don't recall developers ever removing monster AI abilities for a demo.

With that said, I feel reasonably sure that item placement and what not, will be changed upon release.

But, we simply have no idea until it's released or developers comment on complaints.

That said, I find it absolutely unbelievable that the bow will be this powerful in the actual game. It would mean a 100% broken combat system that a dog with a keyboard would report, as a beta tester.

If they're smart, they'll use feedback to adjust the first patch for the release version. Stranger things have happened ;)
 
As it stands, I definitely won't be getting it.





One thing I'm curious about though…

Regarding the end of the demo.

Who was that woman (Zyra?) that was standing with the old NH and friends in the throne room? I don't remember her from any of the previous games.
 
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As it stands i also won't be getting it.

Re:- your curiosity...
There was a 'Syra' in G1 (she danced in front of Gomez and when not dancing she scrubbed the floor)
 
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No idea, most likely a new character. Could also be someone from a certain buggy add-on.

Edit: I doubt it's the dancer, I don't think the name is spelled the same. Not sure though, I didn't really pay attention to the final scene of the demo, as it ended when I approached them (I wanted to take a closer look and it ended).
 
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No idea, most likely a new character. Could also be someone from a certain buggy add-on.


Yeah, that's another thing that disappoints me about Arcania. I was hoping that they would decide not to recognize the events of Forsaken Gods as series canon.

Considering the amount of negative backlash over that game, I thought Jowood would be smarter than that.
 
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The witch voice acting was really, really terrible. the others i didnt find better or worse than most other games.

I actually thought it made her look really creepy in a "she's mentally disturbed" kind of way.

My thoughts of the demo (after 1 hour of playing it last night):
  • *Look at the options menu. Toggle off quests helpers*
  • What's the point of disabling the roleplaying "furnitures"?
  • Start demo.
  • Looks pretty.
  • Damn, I'm playing Alistair from Dragon Age.
  • Welcome to Gothic+Two Worlds.
  • Gah! damn popping grass, I should stop looking at the ground.
  • Why do I have to actually use jump, to jump off a cliff?
  • Yeah, fall damage!
  • Wow, bandage heal for a lot of HP.
  • *Looting houses and chests* Nobody is reacting to me plundering their stuff?*sad*

Combat made me think of The Witcher a bit, with the weapon glow to get "combos". Overall, the game feel polished, except for the invisible wall stuff they give the impression of being "bugs" and I found one real bug with the torch too. I will try to finish it tonight and maybe replay it a bit to try some other things.

Oh, and there's an explanation for no swimming in the game. You see, our hero think the sea is too wet for him (his mother said he was afraid of water though).
 
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Now the good points. I can really only think of two.

Graphics were good, and it ran very smooth. I played with everything maxed @1920x1200 (no AA), and never saw even a single stutter or hitch of any kind.

It's one less game I have to worry about buying next month. :)

The last one is truely HILERIOUS !!
 
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I played it a bit last night and the game feels a bit off somehow. It doesn't feel like a Gothic but it still feels like an okay ARPG. Everything is too fast and it feels like I need to rush around.

What I don't like is the huge text. Also the resolution performance hit his huge on my box so I have to run it at a lower resolution so the UI is huge to go along with the huge text. It feels like I should plug in a controller and sit back ten feet from my monitor.

It feels like a console port with sharper textures but still good enough to play.
 
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Would Diablo 3 look like this if it used a similar camera?

I may write a big post with many random points later but I think this sums it up pretty well.
 
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