RPGWatch Feature: Arcania Review

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
I'm also having much more fun with Drakensang at the moment, despite its generic saccharine qualities.

I'll be returning to it one day, because of the murky taste Dragon Age never fails to leave within my mouth.

Interesting, all of that seems ask the question. Is there good and bad RPG or different sort of RPG?

A sentence like "RPG should be like that" is a bit ambiguous because of the very diversified contents of any RPG. It's the game genre the most complicated. If you look at the ideal RPG it is:

• A great action game if real time, strategy game if turn based.
• A great action game with multiple modes, because it should includes great sword fighting, very different to great bow fighting, very different to great magic fighting.
• A great writing and adventure game because the main story is very important.
• A tree of multiple adventure games with cross links, because it should offer real choices with consequences.
• A great sim to offer a nice life mood to the world and world evolution.
• A great puzzle game because a great RPG must have nice puzzles.
• A great Hidden Object games because a RPG without nice hidden stuff to find ends with a boring exploration.
• A great cartoon because it must includes enough great cinematic.
• A great movie doubling because it must include a great voice actiing.

Well well well, could be a nice dream but perhaps a bit too much. And the question is if I remove an element, is it still a great RPG or a different RPG? Or this isn't the right question. Then if I remove two elements, is it still a great RPG or a different RPG?

Thank you for an AWESOME review! I often ask myself the same question - "How far should the game go till getting it across to the larger audiences becomes dumbing down?" - especially when people go on about how fantastic a stupid slasher is that requires absolutely no thinking, and the only kind of supposedly meaningful choices one can make are about who to sleep with.
It's clear to me that I'll be relying on your reviews when choosing a game to play next - of which there are few since I'm so choosy! :-)

I too finished the game and had fun with it. As said by most who completed the game not epic in any way but a nice little RPG. Where I feel this game earned it ire is that it claimed to be Gothic 4. And as we all know it was nothing of the sort. Just the fact that you could not climb on to something that was imminently climbable took this completely out of the Gothic work imo. This whole flap reminds me of when Ultima 9 came out. To any who are thinking of getting this game when the price comes down, just look at it as ArcaniA 1 (only).

I really like your review. I'm one of those hardcore RPGamers who can not find enough time and mind to spend for traditional heavy RPGs. I really miss those days when I was in the university, I'd lots of time to play RPGs. Now my work is a little hard and after a tiring day concentrating a heavy, serious RPG can be a real pain. Nowadays, at nights the only game I can play is Borderlands. In this aspect, Gothic 4 is really my game, you're so right about that.

Anyway I like Gothic 4. It's because my expectations were so low about the game, so I didn't feel any disappointment. Yes, the game was dumbed down and yes, quests and dialogs were poorly written. But, the combat is fun, it's not entirely button mashing. There's some tactics there, some Witcher style timing. I'm playing the game in Gothic difficulty and I recommend to every action RPG veterans to do that. Still my favourite combat is in Risen, but Gothic 4 passed it. It feels more responsive than Divinity 2 for example. I give poorly written dialogs to the Spellbound's inexperience in making RPGs. It's their first RPG anyway, I'm waiting a much more mature dialogs from them in the future (if there will be a Gothic 5 of course).
The game is somewhat linear, but exploration (and rewarding the explorers of course) is still there. Linearity is not always a bad think. For ex in Gothic 3, after 100 gaming time I hated exploring the same jungles, same caves, generic quests etc.
For dumping down, I think we must blame Jowood for that. Dumping from Gothic's responsive NPCs to totally blind NPCs who do not lift a finger if you steal something from under their nose is a bad thing. My biggest complain about dumbing down is the leveling system. Gothic's traditional leveling system was already simple, so there was no need to change that.
Graphics. I'm not a graphics worshipper or such. But, Gothic 4's graphics are really awesome. Quite often I stop on a hill or a cliff to enjoy the beautiful scenes and sun set. Musics are also beautiful and complete the atmosphere.
And finally I bought the Collector's Edition to 30 sterlin, pretty cheap for a CE version I think. Game's friendly DRM also a plus to me.

@Gokyabgu
Friendly DRM is an oxymoron.

Not all DRM's are some kind of a monster. I'm not talking about Ubisoft's freaky DRM policy like must be connected to internet all the time. Or, Fallout New Vegas's disc version, which compels us to install annoying Steam program and use it all the time. But, one time internet activation is quite reasonable, like in Gothic 4 or in Flames Of Vengeance. I hate disc based copy protections too, because I must put the DVD everytime I launch the game. So, I use no-dvd cracks even if I buy legal box copy. There're some problems with the cracks, like patching the game and such.
So in todays market and technology I think the most friendly copy protection is this.

I agree that one time activation via the internet is preferable over disc based DRM. The only caveat, is activation should not be limited, so you can install the game on another machine in the future. I do worry about their servers being around in the future. If they could give you a file that activates it after the first time, that would be best. Probably would defeat the purpose of the DRM, unless it was encrypted using a key embedded in each particular copy of the game.

Just finished Arcania, and from a non-Gothic point of view, this game wasn't very good even for what it intended to be. Laced with Fed-x quests that lacked any kind of depth at all. This game is an empty shell with no life to breathe into the experience of it all. If i can enjoy Gorasul and Dungeon Siege, then i should have been able to enjoy this game. Granted it had some enjoyable moments, however this game lacks Character and Creates it's own Genre known as "Generic RPG's" much like eating a rice cake, it has sustenance but is lacking in Flavor, The only satisfaction i received was quieting the hunger pains. I had difficulty finishing the game, but vowed not to touch Divinity: FOV or FNV until i finished and that was my motivation.

Well, having played this about 16 hours now and haven't regret that i bought it, via steam. Surely there are some areas of the game, which they could have done better, but that didn't ruin it so much, it's not a kickass RPG, but not the worst ever too, so far only one crash, i guess it's an updated version now, at least so it says at steam. All in all it keeps me playing it, and then it can't be bad

Ok, now i have played it trough, total of 31 hours. left out some side quests. With all side quests it could take a bit longer, about 40 hours.

Saw the game at Target for 19.99.

However, I'm enjoying Ventetica now more than I enjoyed Acania then. Still, twenty buck is good price if you were curious about getting the game before.

Arcania is complete rubish, my worst purchase ever, Gothic 1 and 2 NOTR was the very best gothic games i played, g3 was a real joke, but this, cmon…. this is irony in its pure form, you can make an RPG accesible for people that dont get it, or do not want to take the time, to actually use whats in their heads, and let the ones that wants it, be happy too, Ive played fable 2, and you can use an option to have a GPS like, to get to your next step, but if you turn it off, you have a Classic RPG.-
Arcania is a F%&$ tribute to Oblivion, Another POS btw…

Originally Posted by TheMiracle
Arcania is complete rubish, my worst purchase ever, Gothic 1 and 2 NOTR was the very best gothic games i played, g3 was a real joke, but this, cmon…. this is irony in its pure form, you can make an RPG accesible for people that dont get it, or do not want to take the time, to actually use whats in their heads, and let the ones that wants it, be happy too, Ive played fable 2, and you can use an option to have a GPS like, to get to your next step, but if you turn it off, you have a Classic RPG.-
Arcania is a F%&$ tribute to Oblivion, Another POS btw…

Wow super duper run on sentance.