This is one of the most disappointing games I've ever played. I was looking forward to this as a Gothic fan (on it's release it was called ArcaniA: Gothic IV or ArcaniA a gothic tale because it was supposed to be the next gothic game). It's supposed to be an open world RPG but it's more like a liniar bad hack n' slash game with level progression. basicly this is what the game is: after you finish the intro (which is the only fun part of the game) you get to a tiny part of the island, you do a part of the main quest and you unlock another tiny part of the island where you can do another part of the main quest and you unlock another tiny part of the island and so on untill the final battle. And than it's game over, no more exploring for no reason at all. the main quest is boring, there are only a few side quests which are even worse than the main quest. characters are boring and not memoreble at all, even the characters from Gothic 1, 2, and 3 and exploring is rarely rewarding, not that there is much to explore as most of the remotely interesting sites are used for the main quest. if you played the demo and liked it keep it that way the demo covers by far the best part of the game.

ArcaniA a gothic fail scores a 3/10

I really tried to get into this game but I gave up. It's terribly boring and consists mostly of running around the coutryside. If you loved Gothic 2 and disliked Gothic 3 for what it became know this: I played through Gothic 3 and even liked some bits but this game is even worse, just plain annoying, generic and void of details, lacking any redeeming factor. It's ok for a few hours then you realize you'll be backtracking many more days of your life away if you continue playing and just quit.

This game is trash, from the horrible story line, to the horrible voice acting, to the horrible DRM

Seriously, I came back to this game after a few months to see if they had done anything to the game and I couldnt install it again because My hardware had changed and my registered copy was on another set of hardware. IE different hard drive...

I've had better luck reactivating a system builder version of Windows. At least with them you call them and be like my motherboard fried had to replace it. They give you a code right away.

After playing the game I really was trying to figure out what they went to great lengths to protect. It was because their game was garbage, it didnt turn out the way they thought it was going to, and they didnt want anyone pirating it to get a free first look, because they knew they wouldnt buy it after trying it. Every review on steam has between .2 - 20 hours, with 20 hours being the outliar.

This is not a gothic game. If for some reason you played the gothic series and you are here looking at this review so long after not knowing much about this game, take it from a gothic fan, don't buy this trash.

ArcaniA – Gothic 4 is a mediocre RPG that is mildly amusing, addictive, and simply boring all rolled into one. Its a semi-open world where you have to unlock the next area by completing certain objectives. The hero a boy from Feshyr a simple shepard and I mean simple. This is one game that truly could have been an OUTSTANDING game. The hero he lacked substance and didn't grow he was still the simple ignorant, and dumb shepard from Freshyr. If you are a hardcore RPG fan this game might be for you. It does have some really good parts and the story has so much more to offer then it did. Mind numbing questing everyone in the game just takes advantage of the main hero (honestly after 25 hours of game play I couldn't tell you his name). I need to find this will you help me? Yes but you have to do this first? OK I accomplished the task. NO you tricked me or What I have do one more thing. The repetitiveness of the same quest just a different location hurt this game more then anything. The game mechanics on fighting were good. On the other hand the enemy’s repeated there attacks in the same order over and over again just like the weather dusk, morning, afternoon evening all sunny. Then night calm, lets say midnight rain, then dusk it stops and repeats the order. That’s all the game does really is repeat its self over and over. The graphics are descent the endless invincible walls not so much. I don't personally like to give a bad review because the designers of the games we love to play, put so much time and effort into them but this is one game had the possibility to offer so much more and falls short by a long haul in my opinion. It feels like they had a good a vision for the game but couldn't fulfill or even do it justice on what they envisioned. One of the most notable parts of the game was the voice actor David Lodge. He was known for his voice role as Kenpachi Zaraki in Bleach and the role of Jiraiya in Naruto. Winstan a NPC that has only a few lines in the game

PROS

-Decent Story, and good story flow.
-Enviroments are pretty big
-Good weapons
-Good Armour
-Good crafting, and was easy to make money.
-Worth playing if you buy it for 75% off or more. It's not worth more money than that.
-Has a Demo you can download on Steam. Try before you buy!

CONS

-Fast travel is terrible, and feels unfinished. You get two portals to travel within each town, so you can fast travel within a town but you can't fast travel to a far away town. You pretty much have to run from portal to portal. Simply it's only half as good as the fast travel of Oblivion or Risen.
-The ONLY way you can sprint is with the Runes or Potion to run fast. Runes have cool down, and potion ingredients are limited. A real pain when there isn't a great fast travel built into the game. You get a little bored with the slow traveling, and discouraged me from backtracking to find all the statues etc for the bonus items.
-Dialog is really bad! Not the writing, but the mismatched inflections in the conversation. Most of the time the hero comes off as a jerk. It's like they recorded the actor saying one sentence then copied and pasted it into every conversation whether the tone matched the conversation or not.
-The mission tracking on the map is only good half the time. The other half you'll be googling to figure out where the heck your mission is located.
-Graphics aren't great, espcially sky lines and shorelines.
-Trader menu for crafting scrolls doesn't tell you whether you own it or not. Also you can't compare item stats you have equipped to items in trader menu.
-Women are not painted in a very good light. After playing through Arcania then Fall of Setarrif right after, I was wondering if there were women haters who worked on this game... The women are painted as stuck up b*tches, or ♥♥♥♥♥s.
-The PS3 version had Trophies, it would have been nice if it had Steam achievements.