The less you relate this game to gothic the more you will enjoy it. As someone who has not yet played a gothic game, (I plan to change that) I had a pretty good time with this one. Arcania is a WRPG in the vein of Two Worlds, Dragons Dogma, Risen, Kingdoms of Amalaur etc etc. If you haven't tried any of these, its a single player adventure RPG, which features some hack and slash combat, spells, leveling up your character, a bunch of quests, loot and a semi- open world to explore. Most of these type of games have fairly servicable but simple combat style, so in my opinion live and die by the way they ask the player to interact with the environment. In this sense, Arcanaia is a fairly linear affair, with the game splitting the open world into small sections with a main quest and a few small side quests. It's probably to the games benefit and there is enough material to let you enjoy the environment, but not to get bogged down. It also means that the game doesn't suffer from the issues of going back and forward between locations a million times, ala dragons dogma. Another nice thing about this game is your bag does not have a weight limit, making loot super easy to deal with. The combat itself is fine, theres a bit of variety to the melee and it doesn't feel as clunky as Two Worlds. Magic can get a bit boring, just spamming auto targetted spells without much thought, but at least you have that option. The environments are quite nice and varied, but the game seems to be constantly loading the enivornment as you walk around. It has some flaws, horrible voice acting, dodgy controls, a poor camera. Yet, none of this really takes away from the fun. One of the better WRPGs on the console while not really standing out from the crowd for any positive or negative reasons. Does it hold up in 2023? Yes, I think so, especially if you are sick of the cluttered, busy modern rpgs.

I don't have a ton of guilty pleasure games, but this is definitely one of them. Its one of those it's so bad its good kind of games that I got addicted to, to the point where next thing I knew I completed the main story.

The Good:
-The Soundtrack is fantastic with the main menu music always getting me pumped to play as I sit through the loading screens. Some of my more favourite tracks are so relaxing to listen to as I explore the world that I added them to my personal playlist.

The Bad:
-Bad voice acting and dialogue. Usually when you read a dialogue option and pick it your character will say something along those lines but not exactly. Well, this game your character will say the exact dialogue option word for word.
- Combat is bad as you pretty much have to stick to a bow and arrow build for most of the game. Get used to running backwards while shooting enemies with arrows because that's the only effective way to deal with most of them.
- I don't usually knock on graphics as it doesn't bother me really, but this game is pretty ugly from the textures, environments and character models.

Overall this is a game where if your drunk one night at home, play this game to have a laugh and you just might get addicted as I did!

+ First RPG that I played, heavy nostalgia glasses.
+ Great graphics for its time.
+ A long and varied story.
+ Amazing soundtrack.
- A terrible dependence on fetch-and-kill quest design, more often that not leading to layers upon layers of quests that each depend on each other, a.k.a. "I will do what you ask if you do what I ask, but you can only do what I ask if you do what the other guy asks, and you can only do that if you do what the fourth guy asks etc."