Current Events > ITT: I play ArcaniA - The Complete Tale (ongoing spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Never played it before. Here's what I know about it:

• part of Gothic franchise (?)
• lots of people don't like it

Let's do dis.



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Apparently Ivy's my special lady.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QsriMk-GZ8


I'm okay with these graphics.



Wrex.



He's a great conversationalist.



Combat's a little simple -- even more than PS2 Baldur's Gate/Norath games -- but it's passable.



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Did the father's three trials, and cheated during most of 'em, and now it's on to the island witch's location so me and my pregnant (!?) fiancee can get the hell off this rock. The plot's moving along at such a nice clip, I can't help but think my village is going to burn down, or get hit by a comet, or something tragic.







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I went through a phase of playing these bootleg type games lol. I preferred Risen 3 tho.

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I was gonna say the game isn't that bootleg-ish, but then the game glitched and skipped the entire "your village and fiancee are destroyed" part of the plot, and now I'm on a beach with weird armor and plotting revenge. This all happened right after I cleared a cave of some generic bugs, so that was kinda odd. Gonna reset and see if things go better. (The game doesn't seem to have ANY patches, which was suspect to begin with...)

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I looked it up and apparently the village is destroyed in a cutscene, and you can accidentally skip it if you press a button after killing the queen bug...which is odd, 'cause would want to loot the bug, which requires pressing a button! Good thing I saved this time.

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Okay, I'm in the second region now. Despite the abundance of fetch quests, I'm kinda enjoying this li'l RPG, even though the dialogue sucks and MC has permanent Max Payne Face.







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I've tried many times to get into that game.
I've never gotten past much further than you currently are.
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It's janky, but endearingly so. Hopefully there won't be a ton of glitches or something that ruin the adventure. When I first started, the theme in the very first town -- literally ten seconds after control is handed over -- glitched and cut out every other beat in the song. That hiccuping "melody" looped and wouldn't stop, lmao. It eventually fixed when I left, but still, it was not a good first impression.

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I dig eurojank, biut Arcania's not a good example of it.

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It's been tolerable so far and has a fairly brisk pace to it (arguably a minus instead of a plus), so I'll have to see if that holds up. Right now I'm through the blockade to Silverlake and might have to stop at the tourism-deficient Valley of Blood.


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So, I'm all the way to Tooshoo now and I still haven't found the temple that Diego suggested I find when we first disembarked. The sheer number of bland fetch quests is almost impressive at this point, honestly. Just off the top of my head, I've:

• found a lost bag
• killed field cockroaches
• killed goblins
• killed boars eating poisonous nuts
• killed goblins
• found a standard-bearer's standard
• found a lost nephew
• recovered a lost bag
• killed cultists renting an apartment
• imprisoned a baron for conspiring with the enemy
• freed a nobleman for not conspiring with the enemy
• collected honey
• collected mushrooms and a fresh skull
• found an orc's amulet
• took an orc's amulet
• took an orc's sketchbook he was using for bathroom time
• found an orc's booze
• found a lost apprentice
• found a lost box with a key in it
• found swampweeds
• found lurker eggs
• killed orc henchmen
• found a guild arrowhead
• spiked booze with mushrooms
• killed a bridge bandit
• stole booze from a woodcutter

It's an impressive amount of padding.







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We should get a pool going for how long it takes TC to realize how bad the game is

Oh, it's bad, but tolerably so.

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Finished Blackwater events, found a murdered mage, tracked his accomplice to a monastery, went through a volcano and jungle, and now I'm on a beach where undead paladins are rising from the waves. It's been quite a journey and I still haven't found the temple Diego asked me to!

I'd be more annoyed by the influx of fetch quests, but I found a kickass 40-power sword in a hidden library study and it drains health with every strike. Couple that with my perk of doing infinite combos (was previously limited to three and six, respectively), things are lookin' up.







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Welp, beat the main campaign -- onto the Fall of Setarrif expansion.

The campaign was...bad, to say the least. I've always heard previous Gothic games were pretty fun, but it's hard to see that here through mindless hack-and-slashing. The final leg was in some undead-besieged city where there's a bunch of districts and alleyways are all boarded up, covered with barriers, need keys, etc. Just a complete, boring, confusing slog to get anywhere. At the end, I teleported back to the monastery and killed Xesha in a secret chamber. Not the hardest boss fight, but she certainly had the most HP and a massive -- maybe undodgable -- AoE yelling attack. Luckily, lightning magic's paralysis works on just about everything in this game, so it wasn't as annoying as it could've been.







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I've been tempted to get the early Gothic games on Steam, but my backlog is so big, I doubt I'd ever get around to 'em. =|







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I meant the Buick-sized field pests that were clearly cockroaches. At first I'd kill meatbugs, but they didn't give (m)any XP, so I stopped bothering.

At least Fall of Setarrif raised the level caps from thirty. I've kinda been enjoying the challenge, but it seems like more of the same boring nonsense as the first one. Maybe some of the difficulty is due to finally ditching that sword that drained health on contact. Using that + infinite swings + stunlocking was pretty overpowered.

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Ahh, yeah, I see what you mean.

Anyway, beat the Fall of Setarrif expansion. It had slightly better dialogue and vision than the main campaign, but still wound up underwhelming. The final battle is just a demon in a volcano with similar AI to Xesha, right up to summoning minions to fight. The ending cutscene then glitches and sends you right into the credits, as if it can't wait for this experience to be over, haha. If I ever play again -- which is a dark-horse bet -- I'd play on max difficulty as a mage.






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