Arcania - Review @ Gear Diary

Right, server move out of the way - time to catch up on some stuff.  Mike Anderson sent in his review of Arcania at Gear Diary.  It's a lengthy article with a mixed result and here's a snip on the story:

One of the most important things in a role-playing game is to make you care about the plight of your hero. ArcaniA sets up a revenge motive at the end of the first area, on the island of Feshyr just past where the demo ended (though some stuff in that area is handled differently now and it lasts longer as a result), but even then I don’t think that you are naturally invested enough to care about the plight of anyone you have met. The game simply asks you to go along with the supposition that you DO care and are willing to sacrifice everything to seek revenge since you have lost all that mattered.

OK, I will pause for a moment to address the potential outrage at the fact that I just revealed a serious ‘spoiler’: if you are playing an epic fantasy RPG where you meet an existing love interest 30 seconds into the game and find out within a few minutes that your early tasks are around becoming engaged and a bit later discover that she is pregnant … do you honestly think this situation can be allowed to persist? Sorry, she was doomed … and as such you never invest in the relationship.