Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"All flash, no substance"

Gameplay:

The "open world" promised to players never existed. I think the game would be better explained as "open linear-area". You will explore new areas, however only after they are opened up to you when you progress down the storyline. The areas are relatively small, and they will not take you long to discover. The monsters will NOT re-spawn either.

It's a hack and slash style game. If you go mele, you will spend your time hitting the mouse button and swinging away. If you choose magic, you'll spend some time rolling, however magic seemed way overpowered. If you choose bow, well, you'll waste everything with absolutely 0 effort. The fighting style and unbalanced weapons really make the game easy, even on "Gothic" difficulty. The rolling got a little monotonous in my opinion, and took away from the real feel of a good RPG, where in the previous Gothic's you were able to parry, which I myself prefer. The rolling and style of fighting was purely made to draw in the console players, that much is obvious.

The storyline was weird. And the voices were even weirder. Some things I noticed were they attempted to shove in all of the characters from previous Gothic installments when this game didn't need them all. As a matter of fact, the other characters were relatively useless through most of the game, unlike in its predecessors. The story ends with a blah ending. It leaves you wondering without giving you ANY sense of accomplishment whatsoever. That really made me mad. I killed this powerful demon in the end and all I get is a short movie and I don't accomplish my quest? What about MY character?

The voices...oh gosh the voices. They are terrible. I haven't seen this bad of voice acting since the last Chinese-English dubbed movie I watched. Terrible. Unrealistic. Annoying. They can do better than that. MUCH better than that.

One thing I noticed was how GOOD they aged Diego. Gothic 4 takes place years after everything in Gothic 3. They aged him fantastic! But why didn't they do the same for all of the other characters??? Hagen was pretty good I think. But Milten still looked way young (his voice annoyed me too), and Gorn looked like someone out of a retro strip joint.

The skill system....sigh. Not much thought went into this at all. You can level 3 spells, a useless sneak skill, or two attack skills. You just fill in the bars as you go. No thinking about, no buying skills, spending cash and learning points to learn them. There is no thinking "which skill is best to use my points on?". It was a system designed to not think, and just click buttons and go. An RPG without an elaborate skill system is like a grilled cheese without cheese.



Graphics:

Fantastic visuals. The graphics were wonderful, and the particle effects were just wow. So amazing. I loved it. The more powerful your spells got, the cooler they looked. The water effects were great. Overall this was one of the best LOOKING RPGs out there. But of course, all flash and no substance doesn't equate to a great game.



Sound:

The music was great, I really enjoyed it. The music was actually something Gothic-ish. I think I could see this music being used in a Gothic installment. Great job. The ambient noises were fantastic too. The voices in the caves, the way you could hear your armour when running. The sounds from the monsters was even really great.



Is it a Gothic?

No. The world isn't open, the choices are even made for you. You don't have a choice as to how to complete a quest. There is one option. There is only one way to do it. And the cave is totally one directional. You can't even accidentally stumble into the wrong corridor and meet your doom.

The quests are all marked on your map, so forget about having to think through the entire game. Everything is layed out for you. Go kill 5 things, you can't miss them. Go collect something - don't worry anything you can pick up is conviently glowing for you. These things annoyed me. It made me think the makers of the game thought I was stupid. I can find things on my own, I don't need someone holding my hand, literally, through the entire game.

You can't sleep, crafting is mindless, I fell in the water, about 2 feet below me and died, apparently you can not swim either. You can take anything you want from anyone and they don't care. I looted every single home, right in front of the owners, and they just stood there and smiled instead of kicking my butt. What a joke. And you can't kill anyone unless they are red named. So if someone is blocking a bridge, and you swing a huge axe into their head, nothing will happen. So forget huge epic fights just because someone made you made and you stabbed them and killed them.

The AI is sad. Pathetic really. They have no brains about them at all. You can beat the game on "Gothic" difficulty in about 15 hours easily. Just make sure you roll when you hear that charge up noise and they turn great and they slowly lift their weapon into the air and they stop moving AND....*breathe* I wonder if they gave me enough signs as to what the AI is about to do? Good lord. How stupid. I'm not a stupid gamer. I don't need a million signs TELLING me what the AI is about to do and exactly when they are going to do it. That takes the fun out of all the combat. Then again, the combat was very bland overall anyway.


In the end:

This game should be called Aracania: A Gothic Tale. It's not enough like the previous Gothic installments to be considered Gothic 4. The storyline was slightly strange, and it reflected the characters in the game poorly. The whole ideal of Gods above Innos, Beliar and Adannos was stupid in my opinion too. They are the Gods in Gothic. DON'T try inserting new ones. It will fail, and it did.

If you're looking for a game with absolutely stunning visuals and sounds (minus the voice acting of course), this is your game. If you want a world you can dive into and become a part of and lose yourself in, a game where you have choices you can actually make, this game isn't for you. It's a fabulous looking mindless hack and slash RPG with a limited skill system. Overall, worthy of a 5.0.