Arcania is slightly underappreciated going by the review score on steam, and by the way that most of the negative reviews I've read describe it you'd think it was absolutely terrible. It isn't, but it also isn't good. A perfectly fine RPG that in some ways is slightly dated even for the era in which it was released, and does not hold up that well at all today, this is a perfect example of a 6/10 game by the standards of someone who is usually fairly generous with ratings.
A bit jank, very generic, and with rather ugly graphics there's very little to actually praise even before we get into the real problems. There are many insignificant bugs, mostly visual ones, that don't do too much to worsen the experience on their own for the most part. During rainstorms I found myself blinded IRL by the lightning, I can't tell if that's just how the game is or its a quirk of my particular PC, but it was very unpleasant. During dialogue, sometimes the wrong actor will read a line, and the spoken words rarely match what the subtitles are on screen. Translation issues perhaps, I think the devs are German.
I found that there was no real point to half the skills, or worrying about loot as you can easily find everything you need. By the time I finished the base game I had 75k gold and enough spare items to easily get over 100k if I felt like selling everything I didn't need, and had spent a decent chunk on stuff I ended up not really using. There are no issues with scarcity here, that's for sure. Having played on easy difficulty I found most combat encounters to be far too easy, I only felt like I was in danger twice until the last couple of areas and even there it was only specific encounters that posed a threat. I can see the game possibly being quite hard at higher difficulties though. There might be I-frames, I couldn't tell if it was a bug or it just counted as a miss for the enemy when they hit me while I was dodge rolling. So that's neat.
The writing was of general poor quality, and the voice acting wasn't much better, but occasionally these factors would combine to provide some hilarious moments. I just don't think most of them were intended. The player character randomly starts acting like a selfish jerk partway through the game, maybe as if he's as sick of the slow plot progression as we are. The music is pleasant, but about as generic as everything else.
There are several large areas to explore filled with people to talk to and things to do, and in each one there is one specific thing you need to do in order to move forward towards your goal of getting revenge. Sounds like you could just rush through if you feel like it, but no. Most of the quests are necessary because you'll be directed to speak to one person who knows something about what you're trying to do, or has something you need to move on. They'll usually tell you that they'd love to help, but the person who actually has the thing or piece of information you need is this other guy way over there, but it's a real nuisance to get there so you have to do it yourself. Also, you need to do a little task for the first person in order to learn that you actually need to talk to a second person. The second person will also have something they need done, and will also usually reveal that you need to talk to a third person. So that just goes on and on for hours, as that plus left clicking to hit enemies is the core gameplay loop.
I ended up finding the game very repetitive, and although my final in game time was 22.4 hours I felt it could have been a fair bit shorter. 15 would have felt pretty good, I think. There's a reason I got to about the halfway point and ended up dropping the game for 10 months. I was ready to drop it again near the end but kept pushing on, as I felt that the next area would be the last. I felt that way for about the last 5 areas. When I finally got to the final boss I was looking forward to it again, and then I discovered that the fight itself was terrible, boring, and far too easy. The final cutscene played immediately after beating the boss and I was sent back to the main menu after the credits.
In conclusion, the game is a perfectly fine if dated RPG that, if you like mid to late 2000's fantasy RPGs and understand that this isn't really a Gothic game, you might enjoy. If you go in expecting nothing and get it super cheap. If it's not at least 75% off, don't even think about it. If you've read this and still want to play it, do get the gold edition though, or the bundle that includes the classic Gothic games.
