Arcania: Gothic 4 Reviews

A couple more reviews of JoWooD and Spellbound's Arcania: Gothic 4 have reached the Internet, starting with this elaborate analysis from our friends at Gear Diary:
ArcaniA ticks a wide array of feature list items from having a variety of locations to familiar names of characters and settings and plants and enemies and so on, but the implementation is shallow and unsatisfying. The game is restrictive and simplistic and seems to take pleasure in inhibiting ever letting players just relax and enjoy the experience.

But at the same time, ArcaniA is not a '˜bad' game: it offers decent performance, solid graphics, hours of action-based gameplay, and loads of quests. It isn't terrible (unless you are a Gothic fan), but it isn't very good either, since the action is simplistic, the quests are mind-numbingly all the same, and overall it is just a mediocre experience.

And then GameArena chimes in with a dismal 3.5/10:
So then, how is Arcania without the Gothic franchise behind it? How is it, not for Gothic fans, but fans of western RPGs? Unfortunately, the answer is the same regardless - call it Arcania, call it Gothic 4, it still won't be worth picking up even when it hits the bargain bin.