Maxime Gagnon (Thurinum)

While certainly not as good as Gothic 3, Arcania is, in itself, a beautifully crafted game. The graphics, albeit dated, still hold well for a 2011 game. The devs seem to have prioritized armor and architecture texture quality, as the latter shows an acceptable amount of detail - on the other hand, one will find the face textures quite blurry. The game did very well, however, at rendering the natural aspect of materials: wood, especially, looks stunning in some circumstances. It also demonstrates a creative use of shaders: the rain ripples effect, especially, is extremely satisfying - so are the water pools and the breaking waves. Vegetation seems to be using a billboard-based system (similar to SpeedTree's). While the pine forests are dense and impressive, the grass also uses billboards, which is quite annoying. This game uses screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO). While it certainly does help in making the lighting look acceptable, it would have been nice if the effect was more pronounced, like in Assassin's Creed III. Arcania also makes great use of parallax occlusion mapping (POM) especially for some buildings. Would you look at these bricks! Shadows, on an other hand, are blocky even at highest settings, although supportable. Physics are handled by nVidia's excellent PhysX framework, but their use is quite limited, and some extra solid clutter to collide with would have been nice : ( In its settings menu, the game proposes two color grading modes: American and European. That's actually a neat feature! Finally, keep in mind that this game *does not apply display scaling*. User interface looks _tiny_ at 4K!!! I strongly recommend playing at 1080p. I found myself to be very fond of this game's art style: the weapons and armor have a fantasy theme you'd expect from, say, Fable, but are blended with a more realistic medieval style. Whoever were the 3D artists who designed the meshes are extremely talented. Same for the concept art. Probably the most positive aspect of this game is its soundtrack. While most ambient tracks are unexceptional, the combat music and, especially, the main theme are amazing. The gameplay, while highly criticized for being simplistic, is fine, although it certainly doesn't hold well in front of its predecessor, Gothic 3. Combat is extremely simple, although surprisingly entertaining: the dodge ability makes for quick-paced and dynamic combat, whereas the spells are "alright", mostly because their effects are satisfying. Inventory management is simple thanks to hotkeys, but you'll have to like those games where you need to loot *every single corpse*. The story-line, alas, is rather dull: mostly filled with clichés of knightly war, sorcery and curses, it's filled with fetching quests worthy of Oblivion and Skyrim. While the lore had all to be interesting, it is little present in a semi-linear game that often feels more like a Dungeon Siege or Titan Quest title than a Gothic one... You could like this game if: - You love dungeon-dwelling games; - You like level-based, gear-oriented RPGs; - You don't mind a semi-open-world environment; - You don't mind a weak narrative and semi-linear plot; If not, what I recommend is: - Give Fable II: The Lost Chapters a try. It combines Arcania's fantasy and picturesque but with a better environment, lore, story, gameplay, and makes for an overall better enjoyment, imho. Tested on [i5 2500k @ 3.3ghz - NVidia RTX 2070 @ 3160p]