I still think Risen is too expensive. I'd wait until the Christmas sale, if you can hold out that long.

Risen makes you really try at melee combat, you need to dodge and counter enemys, if your a mage its pretty much easy mode....

The ending felt consoly and negated all skill points and your character build... i never played any of the gothics but i felt entirely ripped off when all the hard work and learning points i spent and used were for absolutely nothing when it came down to boss battle.

Two Worlds felt more rewarding in that regard but no game pulled me in more than Risen in the first 3 chapters...

I will wait till the end of the month, perhaps one of them will be on sale.

I tried the demo of Arcania on the 360 and PC. The game looks good, the movement is great and fighting is very intuitive. The detail in the world is quite impressive and even the interior of the huts is something done right.
I know I won't get the game for the 360 (I avoid buying non exclusive games on it) and the PS3 version won't be out till next year.
Unfortunately the PC version, for now, is out of the question. The reason is that my graphics card is acting like a bitch over the last few months. Overheating for no apparent reason and even with manually setting the fan to 100%, I get temperatures of 105C+ with artifacts and corruption that just beg to shut down the game. I tried several things, I am pretty sure it is a a problem with the GPU itself since even after disabling the second on card gpu (it is a 4870X2) and disabling SSAO and turning on Vsync, it did nothing for it.
I guess I have to accept it is on its deathbed. (it's not the only game this happens)
I just hope it will make it till Xmas because for now there is no way to get anything else even approaching it in terms of speed.

I have the demos of Risen and Divinity 2 to try some time too.

I am thinking of getting Arx Fatalis and save the money for an upgrade lol.

holy flying monkey rainbows... there is a divinity 2 demo!?

edit: Divinity II Demo is a lag filled monstrosity.....

I Found a way to fix the lag, max out all the options and then move the CPU priority to HIGH and it actually smooths out, if the game runs past 35FPS it starts to freeze stutter and lag. People recommended getting an FPS limiter and stetting it to 30 or 32