Demo Review
Content provided by the official fan site Arcania-game.ru
Haven't played anything in a while, haven't made any reviews either. Therefore, starting Arcania, I was doubly intrigued. The controversial project, which has accumulated a ton of rumors and speculations, is nearing the finish line. And the demo is a wonderful way to prepare mentally in advance.
The former Nameless One's heroic journey didn't start out bright.
It's worth noting that Gothic 3 passed me by at the time. First, my computer was weak, then I didn't have the time. But shortly before the release of Arcania, I decided to fill this gap. The game was patched to the hilt and... launched with dreadful creaking and lag. I lasted for 2 hours of dancing with a tambourine. I must say, while my setup isn't top-notch, it's quite capable: Athlon X2 350 3 GHz, 4GB RAM, GeForce 460GTX.
Now it’s just a decoration. You can touch it, but it’s of no use.
Arcania, after a slight tuning of the settings, started up nearly at maximum resolution of 1680x1050. Miracles! I won't go into detail about the graphics; it’s been admired by even the laziest. It's done really well. After the new generation of shooters, it doesn’t drop jaws, but for an RPG, it looks more than decent.
The dungeons are made very atmospherically. The mushrooms help with that.
The American palette is indeed quite bright. The European one is just right. I can’t say that Feshir looks brighter than the starting location in the beleaguered Gothic 3. The local forest could have used the sinister growl of a Mrokor from a cave for complete recognition. I was pleased with the facial detail.
The Bride of the Nameless One. Not lucky, but there's simply no other choice in Feshir.
For the first time in Gothic history, the characters’ heads have stopped being square and disproportionate. After all the genius of Piranha Bytes, this aspect suffers to this day. In the fourth part of Gothic, only Ivy looks a bit ugly. Occasionally, there’s a desynchronization between lip movement and spoken speech. However, other expressions and gestures really enliven the dialogues.
Travelling in Arcania is the most interesting.
Speaking of dialogues, they are outrageously sparse in the demo.
- Did you bring the amber?
- Yes, I brought the amber.
Real people don’t talk like that. It also annoys me that dialogues end with the banal END. I really miss farewell phrases like:
- Well, see you later.
- And don’t get sick.
An old horse doesn’t spoil the furrow.
Nevertheless, there are some quite funny dialogues. If at the very beginning of the game you kill a sheep, then later you can expect approximately the following conversation with the hero's mother:
- You have blood!
- It's not mine.
- Did you KILL sheep AGAIN? You were told to herd them, not to kill them!
- I won’t do it again.
So, our shepherd has already sinned this way more than once :) Such bloodthirstiness… By the way, our young Nameless One is indeed a scary person. I understand that a sheep is not some crawling bug. But to take down a sheep with one hit of a stick so that it flies sideways? Not every shepherd, let alone a blacksmith, can manage that. If I were Ivy's dad, I wouldn't provoke him.
Feshir is a training area, especially in the demo. So the tasks here aren’t complicated. Go-fetch, kill a couple of goblins, talk to that guy over there. I hope that in the full version of the game, there won’t be too many such quests.
A lovely little village.
The little village by the sea looks quite nice and doesn’t seem overly empty. However, hardcore gothic fans will hardly appreciate the inability to fight peaceful residents. It saddens me that the new developers left all the familiar actions like sleeping, putting a steel blank into the forge, etc., but stripped them of any meaning. Now it's just "role-playing activity," which can be completely turned off if desired. The game is incredibly easy to master. The combat is grasped instantly, and the controls are intuitive. To pump a characteristic, you no longer need to frantically run around looking for teachers; everything is done from the attributes menu. And the number of various tips and highlights is just overwhelming. Fortunately, you can disable most of them to complicate your life to the utmost. Those who couldn't care less about authenticity can rejoice in using all these conveniences.
The beach. You can't swim here, but you can kill turtles.
Speaking of combat, it somewhat resembles The Witcher, needing to click in a given rhythm to chain combos. But you can also just try to combine clicking with nimble rolls around the opponent. Combat is more interesting with a larger number of foes. Here they aren't shy to attack all at once and from different sides. The locals’ only drawback is their overall slowness. Even on high difficulty, I could only receive any significant damage from two crawling creatures at once. In other cases, my nimble acrobat managed to dodge nearly all blows. However, eyewitnesses claim that in the final version, enemies fight better.
Dynamic light and shadows are one of Arcania's main graphical features.
In conclusion, I am left with a strong desire to know what the story holds next and hope that the imbalance in the demo is intentional. Undoubtedly, Arcania has become easier and friendlier for the player. American teenagers won't have their brains boil when trying to pass the game anymore. But our domestic hardcore players will surely appreciate it if, of course, they can overcome their skepticism. If this game were made by Piranha Bytes, it would have been more authentic, I guess. But the offspring of Spellbound fairly deserves the right to be called Gothic 4.
If the word Arcania makes you feel tense, relax and meditate on the current water. It's soothing.
Author: Ksandr\_Warfire