I enjoyed Arcania very much (I dare say it: more than Gothic 3 indeed), that being said I don't think I would recommend Fall of Setariff even to fans of the game.
I think Couchpotato said it best: you can basically summs up Fall of Setariff as "Hey guys here are the few final hours of the game we couldn't put due to a rushed development, have fun!". This would have been okay as part of the actual game I guess, even perhaps as a small cheap DLC that had been released around the time of the game.
As a stand alone add-on? That's a JOKE. I finished it with 3hours 21 minutes on my last save. Yes it's -that- short. I'm not sure how I could recommend this to anyone. Granted it ties some few loose ends, but then they obviously had not budget whatosever to make proper intro/ending videos. I guess I could recommend for someone who is genuinely enjoying Arcania for the first time and want to play it right after but otherwise... don't bother. And wait till it gets available for a handful of bucks - 15$ is way too expansive for this.
You know for all the criticism Arcania got for being dumbed down, ruined Gothic and what else, I've always felt it mains issue as a game per se was that it felt like a rush job as if someone said halfway through development "Okay guys, time to wrap it up" which left no choice to Spellbound that to rush the rest of the game.
I mean the first "half" of the island is actually very good to me. Sure it feels more like an action/adventure kind of game and is quite different from the Gothic 1/2 or Gothic 3 formula... but in spite of being more linear, you still have rather big areas with quite a lot to explores, cities, NPCs, quests and so on... then once you get to the Monastery, which feels like halfway through the game, all hell break loose: it basically turns into a glorified hack'n slash and the rest of the game (which amounds to a few hours rather than the "second half" of it) basically turns into one long corridor with very few NPCs, very little quests, and the only big city of the east coast conveniently cut off.
FoS is unfortunately reminiscent of this later part of the game, except it doesn't have much of a plot beyond "go get that daemon" and feels just as rushed as well. This is a shame because to be the better parts of Arcania proves Spellbound can do better.
I think that's a shame really, and FoS is hardly a worthy swan song for Arcania. I doubt Nordic Games will make an Arcania 2 (but then who knows, Arcania DID sell well and I never expected Fall of Setariff to comes out), which is kind of a shame because I felt if Spellbound could improve upon it they could do great stuff (and perhaps Nordic Games wouldn't be as dumb as Jowood ? That wouldn't be hard
)
Oh well, I guess I'll be looking forward to Spellbound's steampunk action fantasy RPG Ravensdale instead, it might be good!
-Sergorn