World of Gothic – Review
written by: Don-Esteban
translation: BlackLizard

Skills

Arcania is worlds away from the multitude of skills in Gothic 3. Here everything has been boiled down radically. Because after that, there remained enough space on the screen, the only three meager spells including their upgrades have been put up there as well. Whoever wants to hold his own as a mage has practically no chance. Spells are at most for support, eventually you will have to finish off the enemies with a conventional weapon. As an offensive spell, only the fireball is of use. So, the choice consists of the fireball, which deals some damage.

The character system is hardly motivating – too limited is the choice of skills.

Freezing does – oh well – it freezes the opponent for a certain amount of time. And lighting, which presents a somewhat weakened combination of both: The enemy is immobile for a short time and, at that, loses a particular number of health points. The summoning of combat assistance in the form of animals or monsters though, has never been considered in Arcania. Defensive spells, which for example strengthen your character or allow special skills for a limited amount of time, are only available in the form of runes. Runes you will find, just like magic scrolls, within the world during the course of the game. All runes have a fixed cool-down time, after which they can be used again. Scrolls can usually only be used once.

Not all NPCs had the pleasure of receiving the same care during their creation. Don’t fear, there are no thunderbolts shooting from her eyes. And her voice is really lovely.

All skills from the Gothic series, well-known and popular, like sneaking or pickpocketing, are either gameplay-wise completely useless, or, in the second case, simply no longer possible. Disemboweling of animals you no longer have to learn, you simply “harvest” the inventory of the enemy without using any special skills. Just like the ore veins which are found in caves. In an animation the hero does, out of the blue, pull a pickaxe from his inventory, and starts hacking, in the end the inventory of the ore vein will just be emptied by x nuggets of gold, iron, coal or obsidian. The distribution of skill-points after levelling up presents itself as unspectacular as it can get. Simply go into the respective menu folder and distribute the three points via a click to the desired skill. Getting a better skill from a teacher is no longer possible in the gameworld. All skills are improved with some kind of slide control. Pride of one’s achievements or identification with the game-character can hardly be generated by such an effortless skill system. Immersion has already taken its leave, which concerns the crafting system as well.

Crafting

Crafting is covered by uncomplicated click-combinations. Once the recipe or construction plan has been found and read, you can immediately select the recipe in the menu and define via another slide control how many items of that sort you would like to craft. You only need the necessary ingredients. However, Spellbound has apparently failed when it comes to the ingredients for some items. For several weapon improvements chests of ebony are needed. But there’s just one to find in the whole game. Crafting of this style is not only possible for weapons, but also for alchemists’ potions and recipes. We are neither in need of an anvil nor an alchemist-table, and not even a campfire. Meat is fried even in the hardest rain, inside our bare hand and potions are mixed directly in our trouser pocket. The hero truly has to be the chosen one! To survive the game, the crafting of self-made products isn’t necessary anyway. Thus the boring, way too simple crafting system, where you can click together your stuff on the screen, is even dispensible.

Graphics

Gunda’s creation was somewhat more successful. And the dynamic shadows make the scene appear quite lively.

Given a good PC-system, Arcania displays an impressive graphical scenery. Wide panoramas, snow-covered mountain-tops in the distance, clouds passing in the sky, postcard-worthy sunrises and sunsets, detailed and dynamic shadows and a convincing shader for rain, which simulates credible wet surfaces, all these belong to the best features Arcania has to offer. The game makes it obvious that the graphics have been polished for years. Especially landscapes, houses and level objects are designed convincingly. Different from the games of Piranha-Bytes, the combination of towers and walls also makes sense from a strategic defense perspective , and does not just look good. Apparently this was well-researched. Towns are beautiful and Stewark, Setarrif and Thorniara have each been granted a distinctive architectural style. Thick grass is growing on meadows, Speedtree-trees rustle in the wind – or would rustle, if there was a sound for the wind. This way the storm remains silent. Sometimes however, they are shaking around in a strong artificial way, as if an inaudible gale-force wind is raging. A problem, which is already known from Gothic 3. The monsters and other enemies are fleshed out in detail and designed diversely. Sharp textures, a high number of polygons and shaders make them look three-dimensional and believable. Unfortunately, you cannot say that in general about the NPC's. Important characters of the game often have their own looks, with a well-modeled face and fitting facial expressions. On the other hand, NPC's which are only used for side quests are only roughly designed. Constantly, faces are repeating themselves. Here, too, there is a limited number of models available for heads, which is noticeable especially with female characters. Additionally, second-rate NPC's often have woody animations and bad dialogues during conversations, possess little to no facial expression, and sometimes not even have lip movements. Disproportionately more care was given to story-relevant characters. Especially much effort has been put into the four old friends, whose designs can be viewed as successful throughout. After the, nowadays naturally out-dated edgy versions of the first two Gothic games, and the weird shrunken head-models of Gothic 3 - Diego, Lester and Co., we have finally arrived safely in the time of modern graphics.

Music

The music works very well in the background. In this sense Studio Dynamedion and the composers Tilman Sillescu, Alexander Roder, Alex Pfeffer and Marcus Schmidt respectively, have done good work. The recordings are not made solely on the computer but have been staged with different orchestras, a choir and the soloist Conny Kollet. So, rather elaborate work. The soundtrack never gets annoying or dominating, and always fits to the game-action. However, if you only listen to the tracks on the soundtrack-CD included in the Special Edition, you may reach the conclusion that a lot of the titles are nothing more than the usual sweet fantasy-pabulum, as you have heard it on the soundtracks by, for example, the mass producer Jeremy Soule (Icewind Dale – Heart of Winter, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, Morrowind, all chapters of Guild Wars, Warhammer – Mark of Chaos etc. pp.). Only few tracks evoke a similar atmosphere like the background music of older Gothic-games, which were composed by Kai Rosenkranz. The main theme is already rather fantasy-bombastic, and less with a minimalistic focus on the core subject. Just like the impelling track ‘A Hero Returns’, which is brought in for the final battle. Nonetheless, both tracks of course belong to the outstanding and memorable titles of the soundtracks. Only the ‘Stewark City Theme’ (as well as ‘Reprise Night in the City’) and ‘The Valley of Blood’ remind you of older Gothic-melodies, with their guitar-passages, while ‘The Swamplands’ picks up on old virtues with its reflective melody. Apart from those; the wind-section dominates the game’s soundtrack. Most tracks are rather unspectacular, and take up a place in the mass of common fantasy-soundtracks. Good quality, but little recognition value. From the result achieved by the Gothic 3 soundtrack, this one is still far away. While the first was often too dominating and intruding in-game, it is a real pleasure to listen to, on its own. The music of Arcania takes the opposite route. As background music in the game it is very fitting and comfortable. On its own, for most parts it is too insignificant though.

(German) Special Edition

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