ArcaniA

I've bought this game on X-Box 360 and it still haunts enough to tell your about it. The graphics/sound: Decent for that time (but awful dialogues) The gameplay: You play a dude "hero", fighting monsters. Boooring. The quest: Never got past generic quests and generic monsters, and put down the game out of disappointment and boredom. The original motivation (revenge?) was so poorly introduced you won't care. The Background: There's a level of silliness so naive it is just baffling. Let me tell you the intro. There will be "spoilers" (ahem). If you have any ambition in story or scenario creation (for a novel, a RPG, whatever), then this is EXACTLY what you need to NOT do. So... You are some kind of dumb dude from a village of fishermen that knocked up the daughter of some other dude with a baby. I use the word "dude" because the writer failed utterly to make me interested. And "dumb" should be understood as a medical condition: The hero is really, really limited in brain power. Instead of trying to make yourself appear a responsible future father, you decide to learn to fight (because mercenary life is a fulfilling one when you have a family?), and kill some crabs. You get to convince your fiancée's father you're worthy (I killed crabs and pixies!), then she announces out of the blue that, while pregnant, she wants to explore the world before the baby comes out, because after, she won't be able to. After all, who, in medieval times, full with monsters, orcs and demons, wouldn't want to explore the world while pregnant? Hopefully, some pirates come to the village, slaughter everyone, including your fiancée. And you feel suddenly filled with righteous vengeance, and go the continent to... avenge. Or something. Then, silly generic quests. That's the thing: I am not even kidding. The writer tried to build pathos using a generic my-fiancée-is-deeeaaad story overwhelming with stupid irresponsibility, then send you out in the world for revenge. :-(

Ah, Arcania. A Gothic game? Is it? No. But it has the same characters! What is it then? What's the story? You play a boring shepherd, going on his boring quest of revenge to avenge his annoying girlfriend, who was killed by King Rhobar, who is a boring version of the hero from Gothic 1,2 and 3, but now posessed by a dull Demon. You'll meet Rhobars former friends (Diego etc.) along the way, but they're made as uninteresting as possible. - It's a 3d action adventure with rpg elements. - Railroaded world, chopped up into smaller parts. It's more like levels with a bit of freedom, than the open world RPG of Gothic 1, 2 and 3. - Boring story - Boring combat - Boring characters - Generic world It's a grindfest from start to end. You'll fight the same-ish enemies the entire way and it grows dull pretty quickly. I played the game through hoping it would become good somehow, or give me a nice conclusion, but even that was dull.

I can understand that Arcania might not appeal to Gothic fans, but as a newcomer to the series, I really enjoyed it. First of all, it's a game that you shouldn't take so seriously - just enjoy the medieval world that comes to life with beautiful graphics and atmospheric music. Part of the game's charm is that its quests are lovingly simple - I say that because not everything has to be complex/difficult/serious (I've got enough problems in the real world). I also liked the user interface which is very clear and better than in most games. So to sum this up: with an open mind, Arcania is a relaxing and enjoyable experience.

I'll be upfront that I had never played any of the Gothic games before playing Arcania, so I can't speak to how it compares to those titles. What I can say is that I found ArcaniA to be an enjoyable Western RPG with lots of places to explore, fun action-based combat, and a story that, while rather forgettable, kept me interested enough to keep moving forward. The game is nothing ground-breaking, and some may find it too linear, but I genuinely enjoyed playing it, and I occasionally get the urge to give it a second play-though.