Dhruin
SasqWatch
Let me be clear, this first Arcania article at Rock, Paper Shotgun is an impressions piece, not a review; I only have so much space in the heading. Alec Meer writes he has given up half way through and isn't impressed. A lengthy quote:
...and a negative full review at GameSpot, with a score of 5/10. Describing it as "dull" and "generic", author Brett Todd presumably didn't finish either:7.5 hours: halfway through the 15-hour campaign. I stopped there not because I’m lazy, not because I’m mendacious, not because I felt I’d seen it all – but because I couldn’t stand any more. I thought about playing for the same amount again, and I felt incredibly tired. I thought of all the other things I could do instead (most of which, admittedly, involve staring at the internet), and I felt deeply sad. Games shouldn’t do that.
That didn’t happen because the game is awful (it’s not; if you want so absolute a qualifier, tell me a suitable term that lies perfectly between ‘awful’ and ‘ tolerable,’ and that’ll do the trick nicely), but because I felt like I was wasting my time. To be mediocre, to inspire no emotion – that’s the worst crime of all, most especially for a roleplaying game, something that’s supposed to inspire a feeling of adventure in an unknown land, a sense of otherness, place and purpose. I felt nothing. No care for anyone or anything – even the salt-tingle compulsion of levelling up and looting barely activated the hungry lizard-portion of my brain. I didn’t feel hate, anger or even contempt. I felt nothing.
Here’s what Gothic 4 is: it’s an MMORPG without the MMO. It’s mindless, time-consuming fetch quests, running along roads and skipping past characterless dialogue from characterless characters until they give you your next, fetch-based objective. Without a sense of being in a living world, the emptiness of such pursuits is inescapable.
More information.Unlike its more interesting predecessors, Arcania: Gothic 4 is a commonplace action-RPG with boring quests, rudimentary controls, and dreary character development. All of these flaws make the game difficult to get emotionally involved in, which is the kiss of death for an epic RPG like this one that demands dozens of hours of commitment.