ArcaniA: Gothic 4 – Review

ArcaniA: Gothic 4 -- Here you see the hero, fetching something.

ArcaniA?  More like Obviouso.

The best thing that can be said of ArcaniA: Gothic 4, the new RPG from developer Spellbound and publisher JoWooD, is that it makes a good first impression.  You are dropped into the prologue as an interesting character – a tortured king – in a unique setting – the cavernous tunnels of his own demon-infested mind.  You spend the first twenty minutes of the game learning the combat system, which is pretty good for an action RPG.  The blocking, rolling, and striking controls are responsive and permit for tactical and fun battles.  The graphics are crisp and detailed.  The monsters are frightening and move with lively and brutal grace.  The sounds of the cavern are subtle and ominous, a nice change from the rousing music that greets you at the title screen and menus.

But as soon as the prologue ends, so does the fun.

Game: Arcania: Gothic 4

Genre: Action RPG

Version reviewed: PC

My rig: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU @ 2.40GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS, 2.00 GB RAM

Also available for: XBox 360, PlayStation 3 (coming in 2011)

Time to complete: About 25 hours

Save system: Save anywhere except in combat

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines arcane as “known or knowable only to the initiate: secret.”  Synonyms include “mysterious” and “obscure.”  The title ArcaniA is therefore ironic, considering that Spellbound clearly intended everything about ArcaniA’s gameplay to be as obvious as possible.  Any object that you can pick up glows and has glowing butterflies fluttering around it.  Any corpse that you can loot glows and has glowing flies buzzing over it.  All quest objectives appear on the minimap (even in locations you have not yet explored) as bull’s-eye icons.  Quest-giving NPCs walk around with giant exclamation points over their heads.  Enemies glow when they are about to attack you.  In fact, the only thing mysterious about ArcaniA is why it is called ArcaniA.

The simplicity of the interface and gameplay mechanics extends to the game world as well.  There is no character creation – you are provided a character to play as, without even the option to name him.  This constraint can work – Geralt, in The Witcher, comes to mind – but only if the character the developers impose on you is interesting.  Here, you play as an utterly generic farmhand from a small village, devoid of any personality or charm.  The only character customization you will engage in will be the assignment of skill points (three per level) to a skill tree.  The skill tree is limited to a handful of melee, ranged, and magic skills, and bears a visual resemblance to the skill trees in the Mass Effect games.  The difference is that in Mass Effect, BioWare offers multiple classes, each with its own skill tree, whereas in ArcaniA, there are no classes and only one skill tree, resulting in a very limited ability to make your character feel unique (one of the joys of the genre).

These skills are the extent of the character customization options in ArcaniA.

Another joy of the genre, exploration, is non-existent.  The island of Argaan may look a bit like Oblivion’s Tamriel, but it is laid out like an 8-bit Super Mario title.  Even without the aid of the minimap’s ubiquitous bull’s-eyes, there would never be any question as to where to go next.  This design choice can work.  For example, the explorable areas in Dragon Age are fairly linear.  But BioWare compensates for this linearity with complex party member interaction, the ability to determine the sequence in which you tackle quests, and above-average storytelling and dialogue.  Spellbound offers nothing to redeem ArcaniA’s linearity.  Even the side quests (which are mostly pointless collect-a-thons) occur along the rigid path of the main quest.

Interaction with friendly NPCs is limited to accepting quests, completing quests, and trading.  Never will an NPC fight alongside you.  In one instance near the end of the game, (minor spoiler) I battled a demon while a group of friendly mages stood five feet away.  They couldn’t be bothered even to toss a helpful spell in my direction.  Compare this scenario to Fallout 3, in which friendly NPCs will routinely join in a fight.

There is no morality system.  In fact, there is no morality, or law, at all in the world of ArcaniA.  You can steal freely and without consequence.  I looted all of the bandages from a room full of wounded soldiers, in full view of everyone, and nobody batted an eye.

This degree of streamlining is rarely desirable in a role-playing game, where immersion in the game world is crucial to enjoying the game.  In ArcaniA, however, you will quickly become grateful for any shortcut you can find.  After one or two hours of play, the game becomes an exercise in tedium.  The story (and I’m being generous using that word) is comprised of fetch quest after fetch quest after fetch quest.  There are fetch quests within fetch quests.  There are fetch quests in which you fetch another fetch quest (I’m not joking).  The reward for completing any given fetch quest is to receive five more fetch quests.  Every NPC you meet needs you to fetch something or someone.  Boar hearts.  Nuts.  Flowers.  Idols.  A depressed friend.  Beer.  Livers.

Here is an example (minor spoilers):  Around the middle of the game, you need to access some archives to get information about the location of a hidden object.  There is only one NPC with the authority to grant such access, and he’s been kidnapped.  So you need to fetch him from an orc hideout.  Before you can enter the orc hideout, you need to bribe the orc guard with beer.  Not just any beer.  Special orc beer that you need to fetch from the one orc shaman on the island who makes beer.  The shaman won’t give you the beer until you fetch his friend, who’s hiding in the woods (hint: to find him, just follow the bull’s-eye on your minimap).  The shaman’s friend won’t come with you until you fetch his necklace.  Another orc stole it.  So you need to find him (see previous hint) and fetch it.  The fetching goes on and on, until the point at which you barely remember the archives you are supposedly doing all of this fetching to access – and certainly beyond the point that you care.

Literally every new section of the island is blocked by a barricade that can only be opened by completing fetch quests.  Right up until the final battle of the game, you are fetching random crap for annoying NPCs.

In ArcaniA, everything important glows and sparkles.

An over-reliance on fetch quests is never good, but is a common enough problem in RPGs.  The trick is to make the fetch quests feel interesting by giving the player some story-based motivation.  This is a trick that Spellbound has not learned.  There are no stakes in ArcaniA.  There is no emotional involvement.  The fetch quests, unadorned by any compelling story, feel exactly like the artificial chores they are.  They are also repetitive in the extreme.  No matter what or whom you are fetching, there is a pretty good chance it is at the end of a linear cave filled with whatever monsters are appropriate for your character level.

The story, or what there is of one, involves an overly complicated tale of revenge, war, court intrigue, demonic possession, and a bunch of fantasy clichés.  But it basically comes down to you trying to single-handedly save the island of Argaan.  Why you would want to save this island, when ninety percent of its inhabitants are monsters and the other ten percent are NPCs that jerk you around with fetch quests, is beyond me.  By the time I reached the finale, which ends with a head-scratchingly incomprehensible cliff-hanger, the only emotion I felt was relief that I could move on to better games.

Get used to this face, because 75% of the game's male NPCs have it.

I could continue, and tell you about the ridiculous weather and day/night cycles (it rains approximately once every five minutes), the atrocious voice acting, the fact that the same three NPC models are recycled over and over again, the lack of interesting loot, the simplistic crafting system, the lack of any meaningful connection to Gothic 1 through 3, and the myriad other annoyances and let-downs that reduce this game to a twenty-five hour slog, but what would be the point?

ArcaniA: Gothic 4 is a technically impressive, bug-free game, with above-average graphics and a fun action RPG combat system, but its shallow game world, reliance on fetch quests, and simplified game mechanics make it difficult to recommend.  Do yourself a favor and fetch a better game instead.

The Final Dungeon Score: 6 out of 10