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.
After reading some rave reviews for the 3DS version, and seeing the game here on sale, I was eager to bask in retro-styled platforming goodness. What Mutant Mudds actually delivered is a clunky, soulless imitation that is patently worse than any game it tries to mimic. The game is a short, uninspired platformer with talentless pixel art that gets nearly all of its challenge out of cheaply placed enemies, clumsy, stiff controls, and head-scratching level design. As I said above, I really planned on enjoying Mutant Mudds, so the fact that I can only stomach playing one or two levels per sitting is discouraging at best, utterly damning at worst. It's also worth mentioning that the game's native controller support is so awful, I turned it back to the keyboard, and remapped it myself with a controller emulator. I got it on sale, and it was still too much. Do yourself a favour and play a different platformer. Almost any is probably better.
