ArcaniA

[h1] Better Than Its Reputation (If Your Expectations Are Set Right) [/h1] ArcaniA is technically the final entry in a legendary RPG series, handled by a different developer, and now widely considered unofficial. Going into it, my expectations were rock bottom thanks to years of overwhelmingly negative reviews. But honestly? It’s not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Don't get me wrong, this is not a hidden masterpiece, and the overall quality is noticeably lacking in places. However, purely in terms of moment-to-moment enjoyment, I actually found it more fun to play than Gothic 3. It is mostly a linear, highly simplistic third-person action RPG. If you go into it expecting deep player choice, consequences, and a massive, intricate world, you will be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is, there is fun to be had here. Pros: Somewhat decent selection of mods that can help with some annoyances. Great soundtrack. Solid combat and voice acting. Good controls and optimization. Cons: Many simplifications to various systems. Some animations are very goofy-looking. The side quest is mostly boring. Bugs.

Broken. Doesn't work on modern systems. Steam should pull this game from the store.

Arcania is slightly underappreciated going by the review score on steam, and by the way that most of the negative reviews I've read describe it you'd think it was absolutely terrible. It isn't, but it also isn't good. A perfectly fine RPG that in some ways is slightly dated even for the era in which it was released, and does not hold up that well at all today, this is a perfect example of a 6/10 game by the standards of someone who is usually fairly generous with ratings. A bit jank, very generic, and with rather ugly graphics there's very little to actually praise even before we get into the real problems. There are many insignificant bugs, mostly visual ones, that don't do too much to worsen the experience on their own for the most part. During rainstorms I found myself blinded IRL by the lightning, I can't tell if that's just how the game is or its a quirk of my particular PC, but it was very unpleasant. During dialogue, sometimes the wrong actor will read a line, and the spoken words rarely match what the subtitles are on screen. Translation issues perhaps, I think the devs are German. I found that there was no real point to half the skills, or worrying about loot as you can…

This is just straight up horrible and the people telling you to ignore that its gothic and its an o-kay linear rpg are lying to you. This game is bad in everything, level-, quest- and characterdesign. Nothing is believable and throwing in random gothic references at every corner doesn't make it better. Combat is atrocious, difficulty is way too easy until it ramps up at the end. The story is a farce for the gothic world. Save yourself the money and the time and buy another random 7/10 rpg if you just want to play an average game. Some of my favorite features of this game: - you have an ability to stun enemies, burning is some of the strongest dmg in the game, if the enemies burn they can't be stunned - you can't sprint naturally, you will find 2 "abilities" letting you sprint for 5-10 seconds every 30 seconds, but they need to be on your hotbar taking away TWO of your 10 slots to sprint...occasionally - most level ups are 1% buffs, this is not an exaggeration, except for 1-2 moments in the game where you get another combo attack or something you get 1% mana regen or 1% dmg per level - you can use the pickup animation faster than you can effectively pick up stuff, you can lightin…

Solid old-school RPG. Big world, fun combat, good story. Dated graphics but worth it.

i played for 5 hours with constant crashes and errors. After one crash it corrupted *all* my save files. Good, I do not wish to play this game any longer.