Arcania: Gothic 4 Reviews

If the Fall of Setarrif expansion pack announcement has you contemplating a purchase of Arcania, these latest two reviews just might change your mind.

Diehard GameFAN gives it a verdict of “Below Average Game”:

Arcania: Gothic 4 tries to recapture gamers with the Gothic series with what at first appears more stream-lined play, pretty graphics, and an enhanced story. What we get is incredibly generic across all platforms, a leveling system that feels gutted even with the customizations, and something that could have been streamlined a bit to run on more PC rigs. Most of the glitches form previous games are gone, but there are new ones in their place and the game itself feels shallow and the ending completely derails where you thought the game was going and is highly unsatisfying. While pushing the series to be more mainstream, Gothic 4 has lost what attracted me to the series in the first place and replaced it with a linear mess of gameplay and storytelling that feels short and incomplete.

While PC Format gives it a 51/100:

Like an MMO, there’s an undefinable something that keeps you playing, probably far beyond what your sanity can properly stand. But it’s not an MMO, far from it (obviously), so any slack you can cut games from that genre can’t be granted to Gothic 4. It’s got none of the depth of the previous Gothic games and is effectively just a relatively compelling hack-and-slash game. Hardcore fans will be disgusted, while casual slasher players probably won’t even know it exists. Even if they did, it won’t be offering them much they haven’t seen before.