Developer: Spellbound Entertainment, Black Forest Games
Publisher: JoWooD Entertainment, DreamCatcher Interactive
Platform: Playstation 3
ArcaniA: The Complete Tale – Review
ArcaniA 4 was released roughly 3 years ago on pc but finally finds its way to the Playstation 3 console. This time the disc doesn’t only contain ArcaniA 4 itself, but also the DLC ‘Fall of Setarrif’ resulting in the bundle named “The Complete Tale”. The pc version didn’t really impress anyone and review comments like ‘There are better alternatives on the market’ were commonly used. You might think that 3 years should suffice to reboot the game and fix the issues the pc version had, but sadly nothing really changed. It even became worse.
Story
You start the game with a nameless character, living in a peaceful town. You’re a former father and were about to get married. After you went out for a short adventure and later on returning to your village, you’ll find out that the village is pillaged and your fiancee is murdered by the troops of King Rhobar.
Your nameless hero wants to take revenge for what has been done to his village and family, and leaves the village to find King Rhobar. The story in between the start of the game and when you finally reach your goal is pretty boring and feels like a big filler to simply provide the with a storyline. Luckily some of the dialogues you’ll have during your adventure have some humor in them to make the whole “I want to be taken seriously”-story a bit lighter and more enjoyable.
Graphics
It’s pretty clear that this game is more than 3 years old. Porting to Playstation 3 even made the original graphics worse. Characters look like they are suffering from a very bad disease and environments are looking pretty blurry.
Even with these graphics, the engine is having problems to handle the game. Frame rate drops and extreme texture popping are issues you’ll need to get used to when you want to finish this game. Regularly even treasure chests and characters need multiple seconds to be visualized correctly. One positive note about the graphics though. There’s a lot of variety in the environments. You’ll travel through dark dungeons, beach coasts, sunny forests and many others. This gives a small reason to play the game, eventually, till the end.
Sound
The music of Arcania is still okay. Not like you’ll remember any of the songs, but you can’t call it bad. Also the voices during the (many) conversations are decent, but could’ve used some extra emotion.
It’s harder to stay positive about the sound effects though. Every melee attack you perform sounds like you are smashing an iron can. The effect differs a little for each kind of weapon, but it just sounds like a different kind of can. When you choose to use your bow or magic as main weapon, then you might call yourself lucky. Sound effects of these can still be considered acceptable.
Gameplay
During your adventure, you’ll acquire experience points for every quest you complete and for every monster you defeat. As a reward for leveling up, you’ll receive skill points. These can be used to boost your stats and gain new skills. You’ll be able to build your hero the way you prefer. You can focus on one of the three attack types: magic, ranged or close combat or you can mix them together and become an all-arounder.
Like every RPG, loot is an important aspect of the game. You won’t only obtain items from enemies, but you’ll also find them in chests, closets etc… Not all of the items you find will be ready to use though. Many of them need to be crafted into weapons, amour, potions and many more. To be able to perform these crafts, you’ll need to acquire recipes which you can buy from traders or find them on your path.
With these elements, ArcaniA 4 and its DLC “Fall of Setarrif” tries to deliver a pretty basic RPG without bringing anything new. Sadly it even fails to make this a flawless experience. Interacting with the environment is extremely bad prioritized. Picking up an item laying close to a chair or bed is the most annoying thing you’ve ever encountered. Your character constantly wants to sit down instead of picking up the item. After a few tries you’ll just give up on this and won’t pick up these items anymore.
Also the battle system itself is really boring. As a melee fighter you have a few skills: attack, block, roll away, stun an enemy with your shield or perform a stronger attack when you’ve loaded your attack longer. Sounds like a good variation, but most of the time you’ll be just bashing square to attack, ignoring all your other skills. This frequently stops the enemy from attacking and making this the most effective way to kill the enemy. Playing the game as a magician or a ranged fighter is adviced if you want a little more fun.
Above that the game groans under bugs and glitches. When you walk by a rock too closely, your character starts floating and becomes completely uncontrollable. This is especially annoying when you’re fighting an enemy and suddenly makes you unable to perform any action resulting in a game over. This also occurs when you run too close near the sea. You suddenly start floating and you’ll float deeper into the sea. Since your character can’t swim, this’ll result in another game over.
Some bugs even become too funny to be true. Now and then you’ll find a chair with the description: “ERROR: should never be displayed, Press X to use”. All this together shows that this Playstation 3 port made no improvements to the original game. It even made it worse.
Conclusion
Save other consumers and place this game behind other games when you spot this game in a store. ArcaniA: The complete tale is ugly, brings nothing new and suffers from a ton of bugs and glitches. The music, voices and the large variety of items and environments are still pretty decent, but that’s about everything positive in this game.
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