[Hellbilly]

Feel like sharing your comments on Arcania, Spellbound's take on the Gothic universe? Perhaps even post a review of your own? Well then, this is the thread for you! Jot down thought, discuss, etc.

PS. All individual review/comment threads will be merged into this one. Previous thread here.

[Tratos]

Having seen Mage o' Adanos here, I'm wondering - anyone found the stories of the other two winners?

[maledepecher]

ArcaniA - Gothic 4 Review by ME

The Good Things:

-Awesome Armors
-Awesome Robes
-Awesome Weapons
-Awesome Bows
-Awesome Magic (even if its little)
-Awesome Monsters (some monsters are scary)
-Beautiful Places

The Bad Things:

-Very Bad Optimized on PC (lags,lags,lags,even with the last patch, annoying)
-The Player can't zoom in and out the hero
-Very linear
-Bad voice acting
-The skill system
-The Main Hero ugly hair

TOTAL: 7.50/10.
ArcaniA - Gothic 4 has some potential but as it is now is unfinished.
Spellbound needs to put that feature in the game so that the player can zoom
in and out the hero.(for me this is very ANNOYING).

[ICFabian]

ArcaniA - Gothic 4 Review by ME

The Good Things:

-Awesome Armors
-Awesome Robes
-Awesome Weapons
-Awesome Bows
-Awesome Magic (even if its little)
-Awesome Monsters (some monsters are scary)
-Beautiful Places

The Bad Things:

-Very Bad Optimized on PC (lags,lags,lags,even with the last patch, annoying)
-The Player can't zoom in and out the hero
-Very linear
-Bad voice acting
-The skill system
-The Main Hero ugly hair

TOTAL: 7.50/10.
ArcaniA - Gothic 4 has some potential but as it is now is unfinished.
Spellbound needs to put that feature in the game so that the player can zoom
in and out the hero.(for me this is very ANNOYING).

I'm sorry, but I snorted like a motherlover upon reading this "review." I like how you try to sound professional and official and stuff xD

Sorry for the offtopic.

[warstrike]

-Beautiful Places

yea ,too bad they`re not accesible or can`t be revisited

[TudoracheMG]

ArcaniA - Gothic 4 Review by ME

The Good Things:

-Awesome Armors
-Awesome Robes
-Awesome Weapons
-Awesome Bows
-Awesome Magic (even if its little)
-Awesome Monsters (some monsters are scary)
-Beautiful Places

The Bad Things:

-Very Bad Optimized on PC (lags,lags,lags,even with the last patch, annoying)
-The Player can't zoom in and out the hero
-Very linear
-Bad voice acting
-The skill system
-The Main Hero ugly hair

TOTAL: 7.50/10.
ArcaniA - Gothic 4 has some potential but as it is now is unfinished.
Spellbound needs to put that feature in the game so that the player can zoom
in and out the hero.(for me this is very ANNOYING).

Captain Obvious made an amazing entrance

[Godcrusher]

Well the only thing i really liked about the game is the armor(s). everything else is....well, crappy.

[Bastardo]

-Awesome Armors
-Awesome Robes
-Awesome Weapons
-Awesome Bows
-Awesome Magic (even if its little)
-Awesome Monsters (some monsters are scary)
-Beautiful Places

We get it, the game looks good. Nowadays every other game looks good.

I'm sorry, but I snorted like a motherlover upon reading this "review." I like how you try to sound professional and official and stuff xD

Don't feel bad, I almost choked on my drink.

[Mage Master]

yea ,too bad they`re not accesible or can`t be revisited

They can be reviseted, exept in the last "chapter". Only you have no reason or motivation to do so

[Sakabato]

ArcaniA - Gothic 4 Review by ME

The Good Things:

-Awesome Armors
-Awesome Robes
-Awesome Weapons
-Awesome Bows
-Awesome Magic (even if its little)
-Awesome Monsters (some monsters are scary)
-Beautiful Places

The Bad Things:

-Very Bad Optimized on PC (lags,lags,lags,even with the last patch, annoying)
-The Player can't zoom in and out the hero
-Very linear
-Bad voice acting
-The skill system
-The Main Hero ugly hair

TOTAL: 7.50/10.
ArcaniA - Gothic 4 has some potential but as it is now is unfinished.
Spellbound needs to put that feature in the game so that the player can zoom
in and out the hero.(for me this is very ANNOYING).

- Awesome Armors -
I wouldn't say that, it lacks on diversity. You are probably more pointing at the graphics then the difrent types of armors themselves.
- The Main Hero ugly hair -
Now that is just a matter of opinion. The Hero looks simple, and at the same time has some charm on him, he could have been better worked if the voice acting was better, and etc..Still, I think saying the "Hero's hair" is ugly, is really clichê. Myself, I find the hair of Nameless from Gothic3 to be horrible, compared with how the Nameless was back in Gothic1\2, but I don't think that is a reason to point that out in a review.

Stay cool... ; )

[TudoracheMG]

The pony tail from G1 and G2 was the best hairstyle of a main character that I have ever seen

[SkullX]

Armor's and Weapons were OK!...tough some helmets were horrible with some armors.

[carnage12]

The pony tail from G1 and G2 was the best hairstyle of a main character that I have ever seen

+1 haha

[Pain Akatsuki]

ArcaniA - Gothic 4 Review by ME
The Bad Things:
-The Main Hero ugly hair

Whats the point with the hair )

[ChristianAndersson]

***Spoiler ****
This review will contain spoilers, so if you plan to play the game, be careful with the reading here.

The game has some fantastic graphics and atmospheric effects. It's the most beautiful RPG fantasy game I've seen to this date. The sunrise is so wonderful and how the sun rays breaks through the forest and cast its rays between the trees. Wow!!! The graphics for armor and big monsters is really awesome too. Fantastic work, people at the graphics department!

But... then comes the actual game play...
The game is really linear - so totally linear, it breaks the Gothic tradition of freedom to pieces.
In a way, it's like the Diablo 2 concept of going from A to B by hack'n'slashing through a number of enemies, and at the same time solve a number of quests in that specific area.
(Diablo 2 was great, but I don't want Gothic to become Diablo linear hack'n'slash.)

This has many disadvantages:
1. You cannot visit a high-level area with really difficult monsters. It means the game makes sure it's pretty easy all the time. On normal difficulty, I died only ONCE in combat (and that was really due to careless playing which could have been easily avoided).
2. You cannot get hold of a very powerful weapon by going to a high-level area, taking som big risks and then feel the incredible joy and reward of having a really powerful weapon when you go back to the normal/easy areas.

Another bad thing compared to previous Gothic versions is that you can't choose factions any more.
I don't remember from Gothic 3, but in Gothic 2 and in Risen, you typically choose a favorite faction. There was then a lot of game-replay value in the question: "What if I had chosen another faction?" So from this follows that the skill-up system feels a bit boring and not very challenging either.

For example, from the tutorial sections in the game, you will realize that spending 1 point into lightning-spells will stun an enemy during 4 seconds, and while being stunned, you can hammer him down in a sequence of strikes. Do a couple of strikes, then re-stun him again. That works for all enemies, including Shadow Beasts.
The unlimited strikes-ability also makes every fight piece of cake. When you have the first strike, the enemy will never have time to recover. That's how I've beaten down almost every monster in the game, including the Demon Lords, trolls and Shadowbeasts.

From the Gothic series, I remember Shadow Beasts to be really fearful and dangerous. I've not encounterd any enemies like that so far - the Shadow Best in Gothic 4 is far too easy. The game relies on throwing in multiple enemies to make it a challenge. That sometimes works, but it's not the kind of challenge you look for once you've got a taste for the Gothic-traditional adrenline-kicking fights as we got used to in Gothic 2 where it was really a challenge to go into man-2-man combat with an AI that withdrew and ducked your attacks. Here you can just hammer on, and the stupid AI will, at best, load with a powerful attack to block your fast-swings. Then you zap him with lightning or just roll back and then continue to hammer on. Programming AI in the year of 2010 must result in better quality than this (considering that Gothic 2 was released in 2002)!

A good thing, though, is the more advanced recipes to make interesting weapons and food. Great idea, and it almost works!
But... it has not been balanced very good.
- The food-recipes are not powerful enough to heal you effectively in combat. After combat, you use the super cheap bandages to heal. So you will have an increasing stack of healing food with no use.
- The very expensive weapon recipes that you can buy from merchants (or what you can find on a table in a house without anyone guarding it) will not give you anything better than what you can already find in the current area. (Yes, the linearity of the game prohibits you to reach areas with powerful weapons.)
- When you find an expensive recipe at a merchant that will cost you 12000, you can't even see what it will produce. So... SAVE GAME, buy... check... nothing good.... LOAD GAME. Why not display the resulting item stats in the shop instead...

For example, the ranger bow, found early in the game... I lacked some of the expensive stone materials to produce it. And LONG before I found that missing piece, I had found a bow beside the Orc Shaman hut that had equal stats. It was just there, out in the open, no one guarding it.
So there is no need to craft anything and buy expensive recipes. You will find it anyway, completely for free.

A word on game level design. It all looks great, yes. But you can't really see on the stones and mountains and slopes if it's possible to climb or where you can go without suddenly become hit by "instant-death".
The 20 degrees slope at the edge of the area is completely impossible to climb. Or the 1-yard high fence in town that is impossible to climb just because it delimits your current area from a future quest-area.
There are these "invisible limits". Those invisible limits are completely non-logical to the eye. For example, there could be a big rock in the middle of the area with slope of alomst 90 degrees. Still your character can easily climb it in 1 second! Then, if you actually DO manage to get behind some invisible border by simply climbing a rock (that was supposed to be impossible to climb),
*POOF*... you just die in 1 second! (Too bad you didn't save the game since there was nothing challening ahead for the next coming hour since you were just exploring the area, looking for artifacts...)
The consequence of this is that if you try to climb around on the borders, you MIGHT find a beliar artefact. But you can't see on the landscape if it's possible to climb or not. So you just have to try it everywhere, and occasionally, you will be hit by this dreaded instant-death, just because you were climbing a part of the level that looked to be rather innocent and easy to climb. I never experienced that kind of problems in previous Gothic-games or in similar games like Ultima 9. Ultima 9 did actually have something similar to instant-death, but at least it gave you around 5-seconds of reacting time where the character started to take a lot of damage if you went swimming too far from land, so you had the time to turn around and survive.

Another thing about lack of freedom. In Gothic 2 and 3 and Risen, you had NPC that could interact with monsters and with each other. You could also kill every NPC (Ok...maybe not some essential main Quest-NPCs). This was really cool, and it gave lots of possibilities with experimenting, e.g. dragging a big monster to the rangers camp and watch the fight there. Or a skeleton that accidentally attacked his ally skeleton would result in a fight between skeletons! Or you had orcs fighting with skeletons or snappers, etc. That was reallly entertainment! In Gothic 4, it's no such interactions at all (as far as I've seen). It's yet another revelation of how the Gothic 4 world is one gigantic illusion with no credibility.

End-boss fight: good endboss fight! Ok... it could have been a bit harder, but I like that it WAS possible to succeed with the boss fight on the first try, and I had to use many health and regen potions during the fight to stay alive. After having played World of Warcraft and EverQuest, I am a bit spoiled with different interesting end-boss fights. For example, I think the developers could have thrown in some different monster-waves. Now it was always 2 skelly mages, 2 skelly warriors and 1 golem. Why not some variations with: 3 golems / 1 troll / 2 shadow beasts, etc.

Something about the music. It's a great title song, but some of the sound banks sound a bit cheap at times. The string sections does not use a high quality sound library, but it has a strong melody and feeling, which is the most important for me. The rest of the background tracks fulfil their purpose, but there's now WOW!!-tracks in-game. Best soundtrack so far in the Gothic series was Gothic 3 that had some great in-game sound tracks, e.g. "Welcome to Varant" or down in the Orc Dungeons.

I would guess this game had some great visions from the beginning, but when the team realized
- giving the player full freedom would increase the need of game-testing tenfold (yes, it's hard work to create a great game!)
- the difficulty with a challenging AI-opponent,
they just skipped those parts.
It's bad, because for me, that's what has been THE THING with Gothic compared to many other games in the same genre: Challenging AIs and big freedom. Since the game play and freedom to choose my own path is so important for me, I can't give this game very high marks. But for the wonderful graphics, I played through the whole game. For freedom, non-linearity and interesting dialogs and factions, I will probably have to play Fallout 3 instead.

It appears that the Gothic-series has adapted to the mass market and main stream requirements around comfortable hack'n'slash and obvious quest-markers so you don't need to spend any time at all looking for quest-NPCs or items and you hardly need to listen to the quest descriptions. Since the Gothic-developers have given up the great original Gothic-concept about a world that is really alive, player freedom and interesting factions and the role playing part about having to find an anvil to craft your cool sword, I will not buy any future expansions and I doubt that I will return to the Gothic series again.

Here are my marks:
-----------------------
Graphics:
10/10 (Yes!)

Music & Sound:
7/10

Game Play:
5/10

Overall score (where game play matters the most for me):
5/10
...due to....
- lack of freedom
- lack of fighting AI
- lack of NPC vs NPC/Monster interactions
-----------------------

So for the next Gothic game coming in... 5 years...?
- Re-introduce a really free game play experience!
- Make a challenging AI!
- Make the NPCs become alive by having them interact with the environment, like other NPCs and monsters!
- Continue with the interesting recipe concept, but make it rewarding!

[vibse]

I had to give my opinion. I had waited and waited for this game because I enjoyed the others so much. Now I have playedit over the weekend and I am so disapointed. I agree with all the negative you write and at the moment I can not find anything positive to say. Just disapointed.

[Handsome2211]

I need to ask you something . I just started playing gothic 4 and i picked normal difficulty, and its very easy. Can you change difficulty during game?

[TudoracheMG]

Yep,at the options menu

[veljkovic]

I had such a high hope for this game. Gothic 2 was good, but Gothic 3 (after it got properly patched - patch 2.74) was a dream. Huge world, hundreds of people, diffrent climates, very non-linear story... I love it.
So when this game came out I tried not to have my hopes up because I heard about it not being ''gothic'' enough. I downloaded the demo, and... well, let's just say I was disappointed.
Oh, the graphics are superb and sounds are very good but everything else su**s.
The movement is a bit different. I can't control 'hero' as easily as I did before. And the ZOOM! Whay did they had to chuck out the zoom? For me it was as essencial to the playing as 'moving forward'. I could addapt my view to any place on the map - open ravine, cave, woods... It was easier to see what is in front of you. Now in Arcania it only gots one camera height. I could play with that, it's not bad camera height, but what pis*es me off is the change of the camera height when I draw a wepon. It shots up in the sky as if a small mountain is attacking me and I needed to see all of it. And I CAN'T control it. Why do I need that bird view on my character when I'm fighting? I want to be in the heart of the situation, not behind some mountain peeking. It distracted me when it changes camera view like that without me wanting to.
The inventory is disaster. First, I can't see the objects all that well at one glance like I did before. Second, everytnig I pick up just shatters everywhere throught the inventory. There is some classifications like weapon, shield and so, but inside them there is chaos. I liked it when all the wepons were listed by their shape (swords,bows,crossbows), by their strenght and so. It made it easier form me to equipt them, to sell them or top buy them. The way that it is now I have to list all of my inventory and to memorise where everything is if I want any speed in transaction. It's idiotic. That inventory can only be used if the inventory is limited. This one isn't.
I almost shed a tear when I saw the skill three. Now when you gather skill points you just open a panel and pick some skill up. I loved when you had to go to the master with your skill point to learn a skill. It was so much natural. Plus there was a diffrence between different masters in the level of skill they can teach you. It was realistic. Now (growl) 'the hero' picks up the skills from thin air. So much is lost - hunting for the masters, convincing them to teach you, remebering where they are in the world... It was a second part of the cycle: You do jobs or kill for the experience, then you go spend skill points to get stronger, smarter... And because of that you can do more difficult jobs. And so on.
Now they just ripped a big part of the story from the game. I don't understand why. That also shortened the gameplay by hours. If they wanted a shorter game they should not made a gothic-like. Gothic is a game that is played slowly, with attention for detail. You slowly learn the world as you walk throught it. That's the whole idea behind 'open world' characteristic of the Gothic. You can go almost anywhere right from the start. You are not bound by some straight line. The masters were a big part of the reason why you came back to towns and villages. Not to have them is c*ap.

Also, talking with somebody is soooooooo much slower now.It is ridiciolus.
Why does it have to change to a diffrent screen when i start a conversation?And then there is fading.I spend 10 minutes excanging few sentences. It get's boring. Even Gothic 3 without patches wasn't that slow.
And this is done deliberately.

Anyway, I am pretty dissapointed. I was hoping when the released a patch it will amend some of the things in the game (like the zoom) but the patch is small and insignificant. And now i hear they are releasing an add-on. Already? They just released the main game! It is stand-alone add-on which means you don't need main game to play it. Sound familliar? Let me refresh your memories:

FORSAKEN GODS!

It was the same thing back then. And it was bad. Very few quests with no connections. I didn't even find out what the main story was. I stoped playing after some hours. There was a good number of people there but very few of them had something to say, let alone give you the quest. It was a total dissaster. After the whole game of Gothic 3, which is the biggest in Gothic series, Forsaken gods looked like a demo. Even worse than that. Like they just started developing the game and then for some reason sold it to the public.

Someone said that Arcania looked like it was made for the game-consoles. Controls are very simplified. Mabye they could not be bothered to change a control system of the game so that it fits the PC.

My only hope is that some of the independant programmers will create a Community patch which will change the worst characteristics of the game: control,zoom,inventory... But even if they do, it is going to be a long time before they are done.