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Two Worlds. The mentioned "worst ending" is somewhat redeemed through Two Worlds II, but that game is less sandboxy
Gothic, Gothic II and Gothic III, to a lesser degree Risen, but for sanitys sake don't even try Arcania.
Storm of Zehir, an AddOn to Neverwinter Nights 2 could also be called sandboxy.
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Just as a side note to that listed above, Gothic is one of my favorite games of all time. The controls are difficult to get the hang of at first, but once you let yourself get used to it(and its worth the bit of a learning curve) its impressive all the things you can do and how fluid it allows the combat system to be.
I just beat Risen a few weeks ago and enjoyed it quite a bit as well, though the ending was a bit less than spectacular. In a lot of ways it has a similar feel to Gothic, though with an easier control scheme.
Feytharn, I've played Gothic 1 and 2, but have 3 and Arcania on my 'to get to' pile, what about Arcania makes it so mind-shattering?
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First: After patching it to life, I enjoyed Gothic 3 quite a bit. Sure, it is not as good as Gothic II, but it is an easy to control game with a lot of side quests and i felt drawn into exploring the world anew (the same isn't true for the add-on which is much to simple and unimaginative).
Arcania...well...it is bad. The Graphics (at least under directX 9) are worse than Gothic 3, the story is...o my...the first quests you do are to impress the father of your bride to be...
- kill a stag
- kill a goblin
and so on. The dialogue is terrible (perhaps they improved it by translating it into english, but I doubt it) and the game lacks the freedoms AND the grit of the other gothic games.
I have been on a tight budget the last year, I saved my money to buy it, paid 45€. After Gothic 3 I was prepared for a game that lacks, nut not this much. I managed to play it for about 1 1/2 hours, trying to find anything that doesn't p*** me off. I failed and I havent touched the game since then.
Sorry, I can't really detail what makes this game so bad IMO, since I didn't find a single redeeming feature in it.
Sorry, I can't really detail what makes this game so bad IMO, since I didn't find a single redeeming feature in it.
I'll give you a hand there:
First - cutscenes are low-budget, I found the static cartoons-with-voice acting to be a little lame.
Second - it's hardly sandbox, it has a definite hub structure
Third - voice acting is horrible, dialogue is horrible (in English at least)
Fourth - Final boss fight was a total piece of cake, every other fight was also laughable
Fifth - As usual, magic is broken. By max level everything is a one-shot kill.
Sixth -
Seventh - for me it seemed to end with a cliffhanger
Eighth - DRM. Might sound wierd but every time I played Arcania I would lose internet for as long as I played, then it would reconnect when I exited. (I build my own PC's and work in tech support, I don't think it was a software/hardware problem since it didn't happen with anything else)
Ninth - zero replayability (no variations on the story)
Things it did have going for it though were:
a) much fewer glitches
b) graphics are pretty
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Sorry, I can't really detail what makes this game so bad IMO, since I didn't find a single redeeming feature in it.
I'll give you a hand there:
First - cutscenes are low-budget, I found the static cartoons-with-voice acting to be a little lame.
Second - it's hardly sandbox, it has a definite hub structure
I didn't have the nerves to see the difference - I wouldn't even have minded, had the game be good
Third - voice acting is horrible, dialogue is horrible (in English at least)
Fourth - Final boss fight was a total piece of cake, every other fight was also laughable
You had more patience with this game than I did
Fifth - As usual, magic is broken. By max level everything is a one-shot kill.
Sixth - ** spoiler omitted **
Seventh - for me it seemed to end with a cliffhanger
See above ;-)
Eighth - DRM. Might sound wierd but every time I played Arcania I would lose internet for as long as I played, then it would reconnect when I exited. (I build my own PC's and work in tech support, I don't think it was a software/hardware problem since it didn't happen with anything else)
Ninth - zero replayability (no variations on the story)
The good thing about that is that no one would want to replay Arcania anyway...
Things it did have going for it though were:
a) much fewer glitches
My damaged, 32year old pacman cardridge has fewer glitches than gothic 3 when it was first published. Thankfully the fans did good work with the patches. I doubt Arcania will find enough Fans to even bother...
b) graphics are pretty
Alas, not on my system.
Thank you for summing up the problems.