Arcania: Gothic 4 Reviews

Three more reviews of Arcania: Gothic 4 have surfaced recently, though the first one arrives at a considerably different conclusion than the other two.

RPG Codex finds it appalling:

This game is just insanely bad. Really. I know it often seems far-fetched to call something ‘worse than Oblivion’, but I think this game has done it. It managed to set a new low. There is nothing good about it. Absolutely nothing. Non-existent exploration, mindless combat and dumb story and quests are nothing that anyone in his right mind would ever consider ‘good’. At least Oblivion had some pretty sightseeing, some sort of non-combat gameplay and character customization and you couldn’t just steal everything in sight without repercussions. And this? This game wouldn’t be worth your money even if it shipped with booze and hookers. Yes, it’s that bad.

And honestly, I wonder who I should blame more for this travesty. Should Spellbound get all the blame? I mean, after all it was them who managed to deliver this anti-masterpiece to us. But then again, it was JoWood who gave them the rights, and who couldn’t foresee that telling a company doing small-scale Commandos clones to suddenly deliver a complex and big RPG with a pretty demanding fanbase wasn’t quite the best idea. Regardless, I guess it’s just safe to say that both sides managed to screw things up badly, and I sincerely hope this is the last game that ships with a ‘JoWood’ logo on its box. It’s high-time to go belly up, kameraden.

TQcast finds it worthy of a 3.5/5:

Gothic 4 is NOT a bad game, but it’s also not a great game. It’s most certainly not the first three games in the series, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. This new direction could be good for the series, as long as they take some constructive criticism for Gothic 5. Unfortunately it may not have enough to make it stand out from the crowd this holiday season, and that could spell the end of a really good group of games.

And TGN Times hands out a 7/10:

If you are a die-hard RPG’er and you think this game is up your alley, give it a crack. There are some good qualities that definitely merit trying it out. If you are not of the hardcore bent, you may want to rent it first before shelling out your coin, as there are other games out there that you may want to try first.