Year: 2010
Genre: RPG / Action / 3D / 3rd Person
Developer: Spellbound Entertainment
Publisher: JoWooD Productions
Publisher in Russia: Akella
System requirements for minimum visualization qualities in ArcaniA – Gothic 4 recommended by the gameGPU website:
Operating system: Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: 2 Core Duo 3,2 GHz or Athlon II X3 425
RAM: 2 GB
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 512 MB RAM Radeon HD 3870 or GeForce GT 240
DirectX: DirectX®9
Winchester: 7 GB free space
System requirements for Secondary visualization qualities in ArcaniA – Gothic 4 recommended by the gameGPU website:
Operating system: Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: Core 2 Quad 2,66 GHz or AMD Athlon II X4 630
RAM: 2 GB
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 512 MB RAM Radeon HD 4850 or 896 MB RAM GeForce GTX 260
DirectX: DirectX®9
Winchester: 7 GB free space
System requirements for high visualization qualities in ArcaniA – Gothic 4 recommended by the gameGPU website:
Operating system: Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: Core i 5 750 or AMD Phenom II X4 920
RAM: 3 GB
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 1024 MB RAM Radeon HD 4890 or GeForce GTX 285
DirectX: DirectX®9
Winchester: 7 GB free space
System requirements for maximum visualization qualities in ArcaniA – Gothic 4 recommended by the gameGPU website:
Operating system: Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: Core i 7 920 [HT off] or AMD Phenom II X4 965
RAM: 3 GB
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 1024 MB RAM Radeon HD 5850 or 1280 MB RAMGeForce GTX 470
DirectX: DirectX®9
Winchester: 7 GB free space
Official description of the game
The war, which shrouded the Southern Islands in a bloody fog, finally reached the island of Feshir, where until recently peace and idyll reigned. The main character of the game “Gothic 4: Arcania” returns to his village and finds it plundered and ruined. Those who attacked her went to sea in their ships with sails bearing the emblem of an eagle. Our hero, obsessed with a thirst for revenge, sets off on another adventure full of dangers, but soon realizes that the attack of thugs on a defenseless peaceful village was not just someone’s momentary whim. Behind all the events taking place in the world, as it turns out, there is an invisible dark force, and our hero will soon have to face a powerful unknown enemy. But he is not alone in confronting him – his fate is inextricably linked with a mysterious, beautiful stranger, as well as with a powerful artifact from a long-forgotten past.
The game “Gothic 4: Arcania” takes place in a fascinating and beautiful world that attracts players with its amazing landscapes and unsolved mysteries. Zones with different climatic conditions, rich and varied flora and fauna, dark dungeons, cities and ancient castles with magnificent architecture – all this awaits seekers of new adventures. The graphics in the game are simply amazing – the change of day and night, clouds covering the sky, plays of light and shadow, wind and rain will not leave anyone indifferent. Realistic sound effects and beautiful musical compositions immerse players even deeper into the atmosphere of the world of Arcania, and a dashingly twisted plot, many tasks and a well-thought-out combat system will not let them get bored for many unforgettable hours spent playing the game.
Features:
– A large world living its own life, with a change of day and night, changeable weather and various regions – majestic cities, picturesque valleys, deep forests and underground caves.
– Lots of game possibilities: explore the world around you, join different factions and complete countless tasks, hunt for outlandish representatives of the local fauna, do alchemy and handicrafts, create your own items.
– A large selection of weapons (swords, axes, spears, bows, crossbows) and spells (throwing fireballs, weather control, levitation and much more) – in the skillful combination of hand-to-hand and magic combat techniques lies success in battles.
– Great graphics and sound, immersive in the game.
– Friendly interface and convenient controls – even those who are not familiar with previous games in the series will feel at home in the world of Arkania
Review: Playability
Finally, the long-awaited release of ArcaniA – Gothic 4 has arrived and we can finally move on directly to the review of the full version of this game. On October 25, a demo version of ArcaniA – Gothic 4 was released, from which we were able to get a first impression – get acquainted with the very concept of building the game and make the first conclusions on graphics and optimization. Overall, the demo left almost nothing but positive emotions. Now let’s figure out what the full version of the game can please us with.
So, the first thing we will start with is the fact that ArcaniA – Gothic 4 has a lot of changes and innovations that significantly change the gameplay and the very perception of the game. It is not for nothing that the leading word in the title of the game is ArcaniA – with this gesture the developers openly declared that they presented us with a completely new product, significantly different from all the games in the previous series. The Gothic game mode was a very pleasant surprise with its “hardcore” nature and closeness to the canons of game balance, and if you still want to not take too long to deal with your opponents, then the normal mode will give you a pleasant surprise in this regard… The battles turned out to be bright and spectacular – now we can deal with several opponents at the same time by performing incredible pirouettes and tricks.
The innovations were initially met with hostility by almost all fans of the game, but soon they came to the liking of many of them. Although some of them still cause some discomfort and make the game world less tangible – such as the uselessness of gold (it’s easier to find or get something than to buy), the monotony of characters (they could have simulated a dozen or two more) and unkillable non-player characters characters. We hope that soon the developers from Spellbound Entertainment will be able to improve and polish their brainchild better.
We invite you to evaluate part of the game walkthrough of ArcaniA – Gothic 4, where you can see for yourself the quality of this product:
ArcaniA – Gothic 4 is a very high-quality product and deserves close attention from all RPG fans. Taking into account minor shortcomings and errors in playability, we give the game 85% and move directly to its graphical part…
Review: Game Graphics
Let us remind those who have not seen the demo version of the game: ArcaniA – Gothic 4 is based on a completely different engine than Gothic 3, namely Trinigy Vision Engine from Trinigy. “Trinigy Vision Engine” is cross-platform software and supports, in addition to the personal computer, also the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 game consoles.
Several technological solutions from third-party manufacturers are integrated – “SpeedTree” (vegetation rendering at the level), “Kynapse AI” (artificial intelligence system), “Scaleform GFx” (for using graphics created using Adobe Flash), “Fork Particle” (system particles), “NetDog” and “Quazal Net-Z” (network components), “ProFX 2” (for procedural textures), “Mixamo”, “morpheme” and “IKinema” for object animation, sound subsystems “FMOD Ex” and “OpenAL”, physics engines “PhysX”, “Havok”, “Digital Molecular Matter” and “Bullet Physics Library”.
The Trinigy Vision Engine supports normal mapping for textures, the radiosity lighting method, dynamic lighting and shading, particle system effects, location streaming, and post-processing effects such as HDR and depth of field. The resulting image is displayed on the screen using OpenGL or DirectX 11. But apparently the developers of ArcaniA – Gothic 4, due to its cross-platform nature, did not consider it necessary to introduce the most advanced technologies, and limited themselves to DirectX 9.
Visually, the picture is simply magnificent and, as we mentioned in the demo version, the only flaw is the not very high-quality rendering of the water in the sea, which is completely different in quality from the rest of the graphic content. The game has both basic and advanced graphics settings. In the basic settings you can select low, medium and high graphics levels, but if you want a more balanced choice of performance quality, then you will have to go directly to the advanced graphics settings.
At low settings, everything is set to low or disabled, depending on the option modes. The drawing distance in this case is set to 25%. The picture is quite passable, but nothing more.
At medium settings, the game options are set to different quality levels – from low to high, almost all options are enabled, with the exception of exposure. The draw distance is set to 50%. The picture in this case looks much nicer.
Finally, at high settings, all options are turned on and set to almost maximum level, with the exception of shadow quality, which can be increased to ultra, and particle quality, which is set to medium. Of course, all this can be set manually, but this will cost you performance. The draw distance at high settings is 100%.
Visually, the game looks simply amazing: dynamic changes of day and night, beautiful sunsets and sunrises, bright and picturesque locations – in this regard, the game has no equal among other representatives of the RPG genre. The physics in the game is also not bad, but it looks a little simple, especially considering its “narrow” application. This concludes the debriefing on the graphics, and we move directly to the most important part of our review – performance tests in the game…
Review: Resource-intensive game
For ArcaniA – Gothic 4 you will need a Core i 5 750 or AMD Phenom II X4 920 processor and 3 gigabytes of RAM. Later in the review you can find out in more detail which processor is most optimal for the game…
|
Hardware configuration |
|
|
Processors |
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550@ 4.25 GHz cache L2 12 MB Intel® Core™ [email protected] GHz cache L3 8 MB Intel® Core™ [email protected] GHz cache L3 8 MB |
|
motherboards |
MSI P45 Platinum 7512 socket LGA775 MSI X58 Pro socket LGA1366 product provided by the company MSI MSI P55-GD55 socket LGA1156 product provided by the company MSI |
|
Memory |
GOODRAM PLAY 1600MHz (8-8-8-24) product provided by the company GOODRAM GOODRAM Pro 2000MHz (8-8-8-29) product provided by the company GOODRAM |
|
Video Cards |
GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB |
|
Hard disks |
3×2 RAID0 Western Digital Caivar WD2500GL 250 GB, 7200 rpm, SATA 3 Gbit/s |
|
Power Supplies |
FSP GROUP EVEREST 800W 2xSeaSonic S12D 850 Silver 850W product provided by the company SeaSonic |
|
System software and drivers |
|
|
Operating system |
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64 |
|
DirectX |
DirectX 11 |
|
Platform Driver |
Intel INF Chipset Update Utility 9.1.0.1012 |
|
Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 260.63 ATI Catalyst 10.9 |
All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality by the Fraps program in the most resource-intensive part of the game. Less productive video cards are tested based on the Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor, and more productive ones are tested based on Core™ i7 processors.
It was planned to release a review shortly after the game’s release, but due to terrible lags associated with optimizing the game for central processors, it had to be postponed until release hotfix, who was able to fix this problem for us. But judging by various reviews, it could not help some users, and perhaps in the tests presented below you can find the “weak link” of your PC. This time the tests were carried out in separate screen sizes 1280×1024 and 1920×1080 in 4 stages (low, medium, high and maximum graphics quality settings). So this time you can decide at what resolution and at what settings your video card will provide acceptable performance in ArcaniA – Gothic 4.
Since the game is very CPU sensitive, this time we also added CPU testing to the review. We took the basis Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 and Intel® Core™ i7-930, each operating at frequencies of 3 GHz. The processors were tested with one, two, three and four cores activated. In case of Core™ i7, 2 times more tests were carried out in modes with technology enabled and disabled Hyper Threading.
Testing at low quality settings 1280×1024
So, at the very minimum, at the most common resolution today, the game requires at least a Radeon HD 3870 or GeForce GT 240. Not bad, considering that in some games they are enough for maximum settings… Both of our flagships Radeon HD 5870 or GeForce GTX 480 is up against the performance of our Core i7 930 overclocked to 4.2 GHz…
Testing at low quality settings 1920×1080
When increasing to HD resolution 1920×1080, again with minimal graphics settings, the performance bar rises to cards at the level of Radeon HD 4750 or GeForce 8800 GTS 512 mb. Again, very impressive…
Testing at medium quality settings 1280×1024
So we have reached a resolution of 1280×1024 with medium graphics quality settings. The requirements for video cards are almost identical to those with minimum settings at 1920×1080, namely Radeon HD 4830 or GeForce 8800 GTS 512 mb.
Testing at medium quality settings 1920×1080
But by switching to a resolution of 1920×1080, the picture changes dramatically and the performance bar for video cards rises to a new level. A more or less comfortable game with these settings can be provided by a Radeon HD 4850 or GeForce GTX 260.
Testing at high quality settings 1280×1024
High graphics settings make themselves felt by lower FPS drops on not the weakest video systems today. At a resolution of 1280×1024, the requirements for the video system increase slightly, and the acceptable minimum rises to cards of the Radeon HD 4850 or GeForce GTS 450 level and higher.
Testing at high quality settings 1920×1080
Moving to a resolution of 1920×1080 with high graphics settings, you will need video cards such as Radeon HD 4890 or GeForce GTX 285. “Yesterday’s Top” is still able to compete for acceptable average FPS, but the minimum, whatever one may say, leaves much to be desired…
Testing at maximum quality settings 1280×1024
And finally, with the highest quality graphics settings at 1280×1024, the average gamer will have to fork out for cards of the Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 275 level and higher. Only video cards of the Radeon HD 5830 or GeForce GTX 465 level and higher can provide “non-stop” FPS…
Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080
HD resolution 1920×1080 at maximum settings requires at least a Radeon HD 5850 or GeForce GTX 470 video card. It is these cards that can provide both non-lag and acceptable performance for your PC. It is worth noting that at low and medium graphics settings, Radeon cards look preferable than Nvidia, but when the picture quality is increased to maximum, Nvidia cards, or rather their new Fermi-based models, are much preferable to their competitors from AMD. Next, we will test the central processors and determine which one will best provide acceptable performance.
Testing at low quality settings 1920×1080 with GeForce GTX 480 video card
Many of you have noticed that system performance drops in cities, where the maximum load on the CPU occurs. Tests were carried out with minimal graphics quality settings on the video card in the first of the cities called Stuart. The CPU frequency was taken at the level of 3 GHz with the average gamer in mind. As we can see from the tests, single-core processors are already a thing of the past and are categorically incompatible with Arkania. Dual-core processors, both new (Core i) and old (Core 2) architectures, when operating at a frequency of 3 GHz, are not able to protect you from drops below 25 frames.
And only with the use of Hyper Threading technology will dual-core Core i be able to provide a minimum threshold of 30 frames. The number of real cores of 3 or more allows the game to run smoothly and without brakes. Unfortunately, the game will show maximum performance only when using 4 “real” cores. 4 cores Core i 7 without Hyper Threading will show much better performance than with it, i.e. we see the opposite process than when using 2 Core i cores. And in conclusion, we note that architecture Core i in some cases can show performance 1,5 times higher than Core 2, but the Core 2 Quad processor is enough for a game with its head, considering that the GeForce GTX 480 at maximum graphics settings in the most resource-intensive places drops to 36 frames …
Final World: ArcaniA – Gothic 4 left extremely positive emotions both in terms of gameplay and game graphics. Many fans of the series will feel that the developers have destroyed their hopes for the game. But we remind you that to a greater extent the game is Arcania, not Gothic, and demanding something supernatural from it simply does not make sense. The only thing that marred its release were optimization bugs that resulted in uneven use of the performance of CPU cores. But even after these fixes, you shouldn’t hope that the game will fly and before purchasing you should familiarize yourself with the system requirements for the game.
