BathorysGraveland2 said:
DoPo said:
And what about the actual Gothic 4 - ArcaniA? I've not actually played it, since I remember hearing unkind things about it, but I can't remember what or where I heard them. There is another bundle on Gamer's Gate that has both Gothic and ArcaniA in it, it's £10.
No idea, I haven't played Arcania. But it's got nothing to do with Gothic besides having the word printed on the box art, and a few cameo appearances of characters. No one treats it as canon, though, and most Gothic/Risen players including myself simply disregard it. From the little I have seen, it seems extremely mediocre. Very dumb-downed, half-arsed RPG lite. Since the rites of the Gothic franchise have returned to Piranha Bytes, no future Arcania games will be allowed to have the word Gothic anyway. Whether an actual, official Gothic 4 will ever be made by Piranha Bytes remains to be seen. I think they're content with letting the series be put to rest, since Risen is more or less Gothic in all but name anyway.
I hope that jumbled mess makes sense.
Ah, yes - now I remember hearing similar stuff from multiple sources, in fact. And yeah, for a game that's called
ArcaniA - Gothic 4 it's not even featured in the Gothic Complete Package. Like, anwhere - Gamer's Gate, Steam, and GameFly all have a Gothic package that only has 1-3.
Thanks for the clarification.
AWAR said:
As for Arcanum I don't know, I'm still trying to get into it. It's a promising game with a unique setting but very clunky..
OK, I'd have to agree - it does suffer a lot from being an old RPG. It's supposed to be played after you've read the manual (BTW - it's included in the GOG version) but still - the UI is...below average. There are buttons with no description at all, now had the UI had tooltips pop up when you hover over some element, it would have helped IMMENSELY. It also suffers from some balance issues - as I recall, pistols were mostly useless (rifles were fine, though, I think), while dexterity is just broken - when you get it to 20, you pretty much win every combat in turn-based mode. I'd recommend going to GameFAQs and reading up on character generation and just general mechanics in the guides, it would help more than reading the manual.
Also, I forgot to mention - save on different slots when playing Arcanum - the first time I started, my save got corrupted and was just unusable, luckily it was in the beginning of the game (probably 2 hours in or so). Still, the problem never occurred again.
Sofus said:
NOX!!! (yeah okay.. so it's not really an RPG)
Oh, fuck yeah! I keep forgetting about Nox. And yeah, it's not really an RPG but close - it's more in line with Diablo, although it got overshadowed a bit by the second game, so it's not talked to as much. It's a topdown view action RPG but, IMO, it's way better than Diablo. Well, I mean Diablo has good mechanics and monster killing but Nox is better in the other areas. You get to pick one of three classes - the warrior, the mage, and something rather unusual, since it's not rogue or monk or anything, the third class is a conjurer who has less spells than a mage but more than a warrior (well, the warrior just has abilities, not spells, but still) that focus on conjuring stuff (duh), and uses ranged weapons. Nothing unique but it's a break from the standard trio, at least. And the interesting thing about Nox is, that basically each of the characters has a different campaign. They do go through some of the same areas but other than that do different stuff.
Finally, I just remembered another game -
Arx Fatalis. It's a first person RPG with some really nifty features, like, for example, you can combine many items to get new items - a stick and some string gets you a fishing rod, which you can use to catch fish, and if you cook it, it would restore health. And so on. Also the magic system was really interesting - you cast spells by drawing runes on the screen, and you combine them to get spells, so if you draw the runes for Create and Fire you can light torches and ignitable materials, if you draw Create Fire Projectile you get fireball, Improve and Life gives you heal. And so on. Of course, sitting there and drawing on the screen while a monster is chewing you is not really feasible, this they have a rather brilliant system - you can memorize spells, so you can quick cast them - the better a mage you are, the more and more complex rune combinations you can memorize.
Arx Fatalis was the first game of the guys behind Dishonored, so it's a bit interesting in that regard. If you play Arx Fatalis, then their other game - Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and finally Dishonored, you get an interesting progression, as they are all first person games that share similarities, although they get more and more action-y. DMoMM is another RPG and... it's well, interesting, too. Personally, I wouldn't recommend buying it on its own, but you can get it as part of the Heroes 5 bundle on Steam. With that said, I would recommend playing it if you have the chance and want to see more RPGs, as it's another first person RPG which there aren't many around. More action-y, but still, I do believe it was a nice game, just a bit dull at times and the story was...a bit underwhelming. Technically, it comes after the events in Heroes 5, but it's still stand alone, it mostly just shares a world.
