I reserve opinion until lots of reviews are out, but the demo was -- to my shock -- not horrible. Like others, I am not thrilled with the invisible walls -- that was very un-Gothic of the developers.

Well I guess it's official after comparing Risen to Gothic 4/Arcania who were the big fuck ups that caused the Gothic 3 mess.

Jerykk wrote on Sep 24, 2010, 04:30:

Oh and also apart from the great performance and nicely implemented UI. Oh and finally good/decent player physics. Apart from the nice animations and weapon effects it really is a downgrade.

What? The game does not perform well given its fairly mediocre presentation. There's some nice texture work but that's about it. The UI is improved over the Gothic games but I liked Risen's UI better. Physics were pretty wonky, as my character would often get stuck on collision and then suddenly slide 10 feet away.

Other notable downgrades:

1) Combat is fairly mindless. Roll in, pull off a three hit combo, then roll away when enemies charge up to perform their slow and extremely obvious power attacks. In Gothic 1&2, fights were far more engaging. You had to perfectly time your attacks, blocks and dodges. In Arcania, you just roll around all the time. As mentioned in an earlier post, it feels more like Divinity 2 than Gothic.
2) NPCs don't seem to care about you invading their house and stealing their stuff.
3) Invisible walls everywhere. Why can't I wade into a shallow pool of water?
4) You can see perfectly fine at night. Night-time was serious business in the Gothic games because you couldn't see anything, requiring you to carry a torch. Even then, it was risky to travel at night because the torch only had a limited light radius and you never knew what you might run into.
5) You can instantly eat food and use potions while moving. This undermines the intensity of combat. In Gothic, you had to stop and slowly drink potions or eat food, which meant it wasn't a viable option during combat. Here you just drink potions while rolling around.
6) Way too easy. In Gothic 1&2, your first encounters with Goblins or Mole Rats usually ended in death. You had to learn their attack patterns before you stood a chance. in Arcania, just mash the attack button and then roll away before enemies do their power attacks.

So yeah, based on the demo, I think Arcania definitely feels like a downgrade from Gothic. Note that the issues all pertain to fundamental parts of the game which will remain the same in the full version.

Risen is a far worthier successor to Gothic.

THIS! Exactly 100% word for word what I thought after playing the demo.

And to add, no swampweed or even a sign of an alcoholic beverage. Its not Gothic without drunken or stoned mercenaries bitching about life.

LittleMe wrote on Sep 24, 2010, 02:06:

Overall this game feels like a downgrade.

Yeah except for the missing bug fest of previous Gothics. Oh and also apart from the great performance and nicely implemented UI. Oh and finally good/decent player physics. Apart from the nice animations and weapon effects it really is a downgrade. Yeah gosh, finally a Gothic that is playable on release, what a disappointment after playing for 20 minutes and not even playing it or giving it a chance. Looks like you spent more time typing up that ego boosting demo bash than playing it. At least now you have a new mental position against something to help define yourself.

Unlike you Jerykk seems to completely get my points. Makes you wonder who's the biased one here. Also, who says I played the demo for 20 minutes? I played it for about 70 minutes, inspecting every tiny thing, enjoying the surroundings, fighting air, trying to hurt NPCs, trying to shoot an arrow through my girlfriend's eyes, trying to climb rocks, trying to swim! Etc.

I said about 20 mins into the game for ppl who don't play my way. So tough shit for you, your comment didn't land true.

Kudos for the demo.

*Spoiler*
However the game has some problems that show a lack of polish. For example, in the quest log, it said that Ivy agreed to marry me and wants to go to a city on the mainland BEFORE I actually talked to her and where she agreed to marry me and told me she wanted to go to the mainland city. So I suggest you don't read the quest log because it will contain spoilers of events that have yet to happen.

Kudos to Spellbound for releasing a demo.

hah! I downloaded from Filefront and AVG is telling me that arcania.exe is a virus.

They're trying really hard to screw this up I see.

oh yeah, and it crashes on start up. *delete*

This comment was edited on Sep 24, 2010, 05:01.

Oh and also apart from the great performance and nicely implemented UI. Oh and finally good/decent player physics. Apart from the nice animations and weapon effects it really is a downgrade.

What? The game does not perform well given its fairly mediocre presentation. There's some nice texture work but that's about it. The UI is improved over the Gothic games but I liked Risen's UI better. Physics were pretty wonky, as my character would often get stuck on collision and then suddenly slide 10 feet away.

Other notable downgrades:

1) Combat is fairly mindless. Roll in, pull off a three hit combo, then roll away when enemies charge up to perform their slow and extremely obvious power attacks. In Gothic 1&2, fights were far more engaging. You had to perfectly time your attacks, blocks and dodges. In Arcania, you just roll around all the time. As mentioned in an earlier post, it feels more like Divinity 2 than Gothic.
2) NPCs don't seem to care about you invading their house and stealing their stuff.
3) Invisible walls everywhere. Why can't I wade into a shallow pool of water?
4) You can see perfectly fine at night. Night-time was serious business in the Gothic games because you couldn't see anything, requiring you to carry a torch. Even then, it was risky to travel at night because the torch only had a limited light radius and you never knew what you might run into.
5) You can instantly eat food and use potions while moving. This undermines the intensity of combat. In Gothic, you had to stop and slowly drink potions or eat food, which meant it wasn't a viable option during combat. Here you just drink potions while rolling around.
6) Way too easy. In Gothic 1&2, your first encounters with Goblins or Mole Rats usually ended in death. You had to learn their attack patterns before you stood a chance. in Arcania, just mash the attack button and then roll away before enemies do their power attacks.

So yeah, based on the demo, I think Arcania definitely feels like a downgrade from Gothic. Note that the issues all pertain to fundamental parts of the game which will remain the same in the full version.

Risen is a far worthier successor to Gothic.

Overall this game feels like a downgrade.

Yeah except for the missing bug fest of previous Gothics. Oh and also apart from the great performance and nicely implemented UI. Oh and finally good/decent player physics. Apart from the nice animations and weapon effects it really is a downgrade. Yeah gosh, finally a Gothic that is playable on release, what a disappointment after playing for 20 minutes and not even playing it or giving it a chance. Looks like you spent more time typing up that ego boosting demo bash than playing it. At least now you have a new mental position against something to help define yourself.

Overall this game feels like a downgrade.

Yeah, I expected as much. Fortunately, Gothic 3 was so terrible that I can't really be disappointed by the series anymore.

My Gamer's Hell file was corrupt so when you're downloading it in Europe I suggest you use FileFront. Used it as my second try, 2,5mb/sec.

The game is obviously made for consoles too. You can no longer exploit by jumping against rocks and finding your way over them because they are now veiled by invisible walls. However exploiting could break immersion... this is worse and it gives you way more the sense that a path is laid out for you.

Fighting feels clumsy. You dodge in a too fast motion and speed and you land too far away. Hits don't feel like they connect.

Graphics are similar to Divinity 2. The whole gameplay feels vaguely the same as Divinity 2, actually.

A shocking realization: You can no longer attack anyone unlike in the other Gothic games. People now walk around stupidly unlike going about their business. People don't react to your weapon drawn. Overall this game feels like a downgrade. Hooray for the consoles and it's audience. Hooray indeed.

Also: This is NOT the beginning of the game. I hope that it is because of this that I was completely detached from my character and his soon to be married girlfried. He looks and acts like a dork, btw.

I stopped when I entered an overly bigger area than the first 20-so minutes of the game due to sleepy time. Granted: There's a good possibility the game loses its claustrobhobic feel at the point I stopped.

Give it a try, but this Gothic fan is disappointed.

Last percent of that cd1.bin is damaged goddamnit...

coldcut wrote on Sep 23, 2010, 18:45:
This is a feature video of the demo

du bist gestorben!!

Well, it feels kind of meh. I'm with Cres here, I'll be waiting for the bargain bin on this one. I really like the America and Europe tone maps, more games should utilie this.

Surf wrote on Sep 23, 2010, 17:09:
Fuck off. Your choices of an RPG and anyone making them for the PC these days are slim!

I look forward to it, and hope its at least as good as Risen. I am sure they are aware this time around its a deal breaker.

I'm also looking forward to Two Worlds 2. Might just be the last two RPG's you will play on the PC fuckwits.

Im really looking forward to this (haven't played the demo as of yet), and I agree with you 100%, but you forgot the Witcher 2.

StingingVelvet wrote on Sep 23, 2010, 18:22:

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 23, 2010, 17:39:
Thats a W7/Vista issue, your only luck will be to run it in WinXP - i had the same issue.

And even then its lottery whether the driver for the gpu you have will run gothic 2.

If you're talking about Gothic 2 running on Win7 it was an nVidia issue that they fixed in the latest drivers, it works fine now.

*nods* Separate issue. I'm on XP. I'm not quite as frustrated that it won't run, I'm just more frustrated that I was outright ignored along with several others.

This is a feature video of the demo

oi, needs to test it

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 23, 2010, 17:39:
Thats a W7/Vista issue, your only luck will be to run it in WinXP - i had the same issue.

And even then its lottery whether the driver for the gpu you have will run gothic 2.

If you're talking about Gothic 2 running on Win7 it was an nVidia issue that they fixed in the latest drivers, it works fine now.

Crashed. I guess I'll save my money for something that works.