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.