Gothic 3 rocks! How would you rate it?

Gothic 3 has been patched up to v1.12 a while ago, and now that the game is stable, I think it rocks. I thought I'd write down a quick personal review of teh game, and poll for your opinions.

First off, my hardware and a word on perfs.

Athlon 64 (1 core) 3500+ - 2 GB DDR ram - Geforce 6600GT - Asus A8N SLi D. (NV4?) , and it's fairly smooth considering there is absolutely no "loading" interruption in-game. Only the time it takes to save/load game is pretty long.Slows down to a one second stop from time to time, but it's not dramatic.

Graphically speaking , the game world is beautiful, very detailed and very well animated. Colors are vibrant. It compares very well to "Oblivion-the-absolute-reference". In Oblivion everything shines or glows and looks clean and bright. As a result, many will think Gothic is less nice-looking. It's different. I think it's more realistic. Distant landscape is cleverly blurred, and further away it is shrouded in a semi transparent fog. It looks a bit off at time, but I may need to manually tweak my .ini file to get finer tuned settings.

Characters, NPCs, Orcs, monsters, benefited from a great design, and look fantastic. Humans are much better than in Vanilla Oblivion.

I like the soundtrack, its soft melancholic tunes, and the dynamic music, changing when action is around. Voices in english are very good too. Many sound effects bugs were fixed by the various patches.

Gameplay-wise, it takes some getting used to. I enjoy it since I understood fights work with combos (sequences), and mouse button combinations. It has a certain strategic depth, and the player must adapt its ****to the enemies he fights. I've played a good 20 hours (only) so far, and I have no complains regarding gameplay.

The leveling system is "normal" 8) . Yeah. The world doesn't level with you. (See what I mean?) Some enemy types are stronger than you, some weaker. As a result, you feel your character is getting stronger as he levels up. When enough XP is acquired to level up, you earn "Learning points" than you can spend - along with variable amounts of money - with trainers or at a divine shrines in order to improve your skills or learn new competency. The way you spend those points shapes up your characters, as there is no character creation at the beginning. All path are open to you: Warrior, mage, thief, hunter, and there's no specific **** This makes character building very open, interesting, and under your control.

I can't be bothered giving an overview of the world in Gothic or of the background story and main quest. You just need to know it's fairly original, dark, and engrossing, and that the world map if it seems to be smaller than Oblivion's is still huge. The quests directly related to the main quest are interesting, and give the opportunity to gain the trust of the several conflicting factions in the game. As in any RPG there are also many "Go fetch" and "Go kill" quests. A lot of both neutral and agressive creatures live in the wilderness, making it a huge open air dungeon where you may encouter death at any time, and if that's not enough there are many large, deep, atmospheric underground - and more dangerous the deeper you go - places to explore and loot. Don't forget to bring a source of light. WHn it's dark in Gothic you don't see a thing, and you'd better walk on your toe-tips.

I'd warmly recommend Gothic 3 to all RPG fans out there. It's quite hard, so it may not be for beginners or the easily disgruntled gamers.

I'd give it a good 8.7/10. What about you?

Its nice to hear someone actual took the time to enjoy the game, rather than constantly bash it, without even really playing it.

What setting do you play on and how much fps you get? I understand Gothic 3 is a demanding game and im wondering if with all the latest patches I would see a notable increase in performance.

I play with High details settings and at 1024*768. FPS is not great :? , around 15-20 FPS. I used to have the same perfs with Oblivion, all due to my average Graphic card. The experience is still good and smooth. With a similar config that has only 1 Gb of RAM, performances are very degraded and the game slows down a lot.

Patches didn't really improve the performances, but rather fix issues were the game used to crash in V1.0.

Before the relase of the patches I tried playing G3, and the game was crashing when saving. With v1.12, I didn't notice any technical issue. It's a shame the game was released before being really finished, as it ternished its reputation a lot I guess. In its present state, it's one of the best RPG out there for years 2006/2007. (IMO)

Now, people no longer care if you wander into their dwellings and rummage through their stuff. If they do happen to spot you, all you have to do is flee town and come back later and all is forgiven. The simplification of the combat system is a letdown as well. bogaty

I had the same thought regarding the possibility to enter people's houses. Maybe, since the Orcs rule the country, frivolous details such as individual freedoms, and respect of one's property are no longer priorities ? 

G3 combat system allows for a healthy mix of action and a bit of strategy when deciding which moves to make. Being real time, and there being no pause while accessing the inventory it's fast paced and not v easy. It's also more realistic than in many games because you cannot do 2 things at once, like swinging a sword and drinking up a potion at the same time.

Maybe G2 combat was better, I'd need to play it... (And my current PC can pobably run the game this time around!)  

[QUOTE="bogaty"]Now, people no longer care if you wander into their dwellings and rummage through their stuff. If they do happen to spot you, all you have to do is flee town and come back later and all is forgiven. The simplification of the combat system is a letdown as well. ymaitre

I had the same thought regarding the possibility to enter people's houses. Maybe, since the Orcs rule the country, frivolous details such as individual freedoms, and respect of one's property are no longer priorities ?

G3 combat system allows for a healthy mix of action and a bit of strategy when deciding which moves to make. Being real time, and there being no pause while accessing the inventory it's fast paced and not v easy. It's also more realistic than in many games because you cannot do 2 things at once, like swinging a sword and drinking up a potion at the same time.

Maybe G2 combat was better, I'd need to play it... (And my current PC can pobably run the game this time around!)

Combat in G2 was much deadlier, but also much more tactical in nature.  You really did need to co-ordinate your attacks and defences based upon the actions of your enemy.  Further, you were limited as to what kind of attacks as well as the speed and efficacy of your attacks and defence based upon your skill level with a certain type of weapon.  Once you passed certain plateaus, you could learn new attack and defence moves, provided you could find a teacher.  It was a much deeper, more involved system than in G3.  However, you quickly learned that nearly anything could kill you when you were a low level and unskilled, so you did spend a lot of time running away. 

so I shelved it 'till I decide to upgrade my PC.EntwineX

sorry for second post but i think its funny how people 180 dollor cards can barely handle at max and my superclocked 7300 gs for 69 dollors can hahahaha i think its soooo funy rrealy it gives me a great laughiden2009

Gothic 3 sucks - too laggy even on super systems,  too buggy, combat is crappy.. an unfinished game thats what it is.

I'd give it 4/10, just like IGN, Gothic II was much better. And still is : ) 

An absolute gem of a game, with a very immersive, believable world, great characters, great graphics and music. I was completely addicted to it. But the bad combat system and the main story line we're really bad. I mean, the main story especially. After spending over 100 hours wandering the world and doing all the sidequests, I was completely underwhelmed at how uninspired the main plotline was.

Which is really a growing problem with these open-ended games. It seems developers feel they don't need to spend to much effort on making a good story if they give you enough things to do. I know it's more difficult to give a good story with non-linear games such as these, but this one (and Oblivion's) we're brutal.

sorry for second post but i think its funny how people 180 dollor cards can barely handle at max and my superclocked 7300 gs for 69 dollors can hahahaha i think its soooo funy rrealy it gives me a great laughiden2009

Why do you keep braging about your overclocked card and you can just edit no need too double post 

[QUOTE="iden2009"]sorry for second post but i think its funny how people 180 dollor cards can barely handle at max and my superclocked 7300 gs for 69 dollors can hahahaha i think its soooo funy rrealy it gives me a great laughLonelynight

Why do you keep braging about your overclocked card and you can just edit no need too double post 

Because he's lying and starving for attention?

I have just started it. The graphics are great if you have the proper hardware.
Combat is mabye a little to easy, unless you are outnumberd; then you have to think. The quests are a mixture of the traditional "fetch" quests and some more interesting "help or betray rebel" quests.

Some strange AI decisions are also present. For instance, as a low level Character, I ventured into the caves under Cape Dun. There three big Orgres (if I recall correctly) rushed me. I stepped onto a ledge and shot them (14 arrow in the head each. None of them went after me, but they just patiently waited to be slaugtered.

I'll have a final verdict after I actually finish the game.

Thanks for your posts and specially to those of you who made articulated and interesting ones.

Being an old console and PC RPG player I do enjoy this game yet, well do I know it's not THE game. Has a lot of qualities though, methinks, despite its technical downfalls, and like everybody else I do hope they all get fixed fairly soon. I'll have to play G2 in order to compare it with its younger brother, but I feel like I'll be disapointed (Or rather, I find it hard to play games with outdated graphics).

Indeed, I can't help notice a sort of trend in people saying that the previous installment of such or such game was so far better than the latest one. Dunno about you, but I could never dig Morrowind very much, and i truly enjoyed Oblivion. I didn't play G2 (for hardware reasons mostly, but also because I was not very attracted to the game from reviews and hearsay) though I really like G3 so far. Hummm. Guess games like G3 are trying to reach to a broader audience - get out of their niche - thus loosing some appeal to the hardcore gamers out there. 

Its nice to hear someone actual took the time to enjoy the game, rather than constantly bash it, without even really playing it.

Anime910

Thats funny you should say that because most people bashed this PoS because thats the one thing they could not do: As it was unplayable. 12 patches later (ROFL) some people are claiming this thing is 'stable'. The fact that some people stuck around after 11 patches is really sad...but not as sad as a game company making you pay FULL retail to beta test their trash.

When G1 came out, no one even knew wtf I was talking about when it hit the US. I was totally in love with the first and when G2 Hit and I was preordering from UK sites because no local shops even knew what Gothic was.

After 2 weeks with G3 I threw it right into the trash. They never lost such a rabid fanboi so fast. I used to lurk on all the boards looking for the next Gothic fix, now that series is dead to me and to all you fanbois who love gothic:

You like paying full price for half baked trash? Ya you love Gothic, you see how Gothic loves you back?

Now I see JokeWood is selling out and whoring themselves out to the console? Well you might as well, cause after all the PC users you burned by doling out that garbage you called G3, you might as well go make a **** name for yourselves on the console market too. It was a REALLY tough pill to swallow when I realized that OBLIVION>G3, but now I cant wait for the next Bethesda title because: THE STERILE, SHALLOW RPG YOU *CAN*PLAY BEATS THE HELL OUT OF THE INDEPTH, VIBRANT RPG YOU *CANT*. At least when I launch Oblivion: IT WORKS.

My Rating: -.01

Now that it has been patched to death, it is a very good RPG, still a few issues, but I enjoyed it more then the soluless, bland Oblivion. G3 is one of those games that make me sad, with more developer time, it would have been a classic, but because it was rushed out, it never cam close to its potential. Still, a great RPG.

It does many thing better then oblivion, level scaling is not there, so u actually feel accomplishment as u level up and can defeat enemies u used to have to run from. Your action DO effect the entire game world, and the AI of NPC's going about their daily lives is vastly better then oblivion.

too bad, people like the guy above didn't try it after 2 weeks, is is a much different game now. It can be bought for 9.99 now, and with the patches now works well, and still have very nice graphics.

[QUOTE="Lonelynight"]

[QUOTE="iden2009"]sorry for second post but i think its funny how people 180 dollor cards can barely handle at max and my superclocked 7300 gs for 69 dollors can hahahaha i think its soooo funy rrealy it gives me a great laughTheCrazed420

Why do you keep braging about your overclocked card and you can just edit no need too double post

Because he's lying and starving for attention?

Because he's a gamespotter and Gamespot doesn't have an edit option?

I don't like that the main dude doesn't have a pony tail in this game:(

Here's the thing guys: Everyone works hard for their money (well post 20+) So you wouldnt catch food poisoning from McDonalds and say "Oh well maybe they'll prep their grill better next time." When you pull your BRAND NEW car out of the dealership and the engine falls out, front tires fall off and rear axes cracks in half, do you go back to the dealer and hope there is a 'patch' for your **** car? No, you go right back in and you demand this **** fixed or gimme my money back. What other industry puts out trash and then fixes it when they have time? Carmakers dont, airlines dont, food industry doesnt: they all do immediate recalls on their product. Why? Is it because ADULTS buy these products and because the gaming industry is thought to be filled with passive pre-teen/teenage boys who are getting the money from their parents so who cares? This thread is basically proving my point "If I had stayed past the two weeks" of trash that G3 was when it came out? No thanks. When you catch food poisoning do you 'wait it out' and go back to the same restaurant hoping "NOT" to catch food poisoning this time? When you go to the movies and the actors are missing their lines, laughing on the set, bloopers are left in, are you going to watch the sequel - or even stay to finish watching the movie? You guys have to start expecting more from your money.

Gothic 1/2 where way better then 3 one. You should play Gothic 2 with Night of the Raven addon

Here's the thing guys: Everyone works hard for their money (well post 20+) So you wouldnt catch food poisoning from McDonalds and say "Oh well maybe they'll prep their grill better next time." When you pull your BRAND NEW car out of the dealership and the engine falls out, front tires fall off and rear axes cracks in half, do you go back to the dealer and hope there is a 'patch' for your **** car? No, you go right back in and you demand this **** fixed or gimme my money back. What other industry puts out trash and then fixes it when they have time? Carmakers dont, airlines dont, food industry doesnt: they all do immediate recalls on their product. Why? Is it because ADULTS buy these products and because the gaming industry is thought to be filled with passive pre-teen/teenage boys who are getting the money from their parents so who cares? This thread is basically proving my point "If I had stayed past the two weeks" of trash that G3 was when it came out? No thanks. When you catch food poisoning do you 'wait it out' and go back to the same restaurant hoping "NOT" to catch food poisoning this time? When you go to the movies and the actors are missing their lines, laughing on the set, bloopers are left in, are you going to watch the sequel - or even stay to finish watching the movie? You guys have to start expecting more from your money.

ShrapDog

If u were a responsible buyer and researched before buying like I always do, especially for PC games, u would not have had an issue now would u. an educated buyer is a smart buyer.

lol oh its my fault JoWood didnt do a good job...

Tell me Einstein, how do you compare reviews when you pre-order?

The game was great until bugs completely ruined my save that was 40 hours in the game, I got mad and destroyed the game disc, which I've never done before.RK-Mara

U didn't have different save slots? LOL, many games get corrupted saves, welcome to windows.

[QUOTE="fifthhourseman"][QUOTE="ShrapDog"]

lol oh its my fault JoWood didnt do a good job...

Tell me Einstein, how do you compare reviews when you pre-order?

ShrapDog

Only an idiot pre-orders,, especially when the debv have a long history of buggy and rushed releases. G1 and 2 had their share of issues. what is the point of pre-orders? Not like u can't get a copy as it is.

I didn't say it was his fault, Comprehension issues?

BUT, before buying anything, anyone with a shred of common sense researches before spending their money, espercially a game from a small dev from europe who have a long history of buggy games. I did, I waited for the game to be in a decent state, only cost 9.99, for a great experience for me. If others researched, they would have done the same. Pre-ordering Pc games is like playing russian roulette.

This isnt what I asked you. You cant answer my question w/o looking like an idiot. Short answer is: You cant.

Well, la di da arent you so pround of ur big brain. For your info neither G1 or G2 had buggy launches so if you didnt screw up the first two I would be (un)pleasantly suprised to see that they caught up and totally ruin the 3rd installment.

So Ralph Nader, get back on your high horse and go look down your nose elsewhere, Im here to tell people how **** G3 was. Maybe go to for the mentally handicapped and recite your times tables, that should really make you feel superior.

G1 and 2 weren't buggy?

BWHAHAHAHA

BWHAHAHA

I was on the forums and played both G1 and 2, they were also terribly buggy, even reviews mention the unpolished nature of those games. No ones fault but your own, research before buying, u will never get the shaft, common sense.

Good one. Good that u prove people still insult when they have run out of points, or nothing intelligent to say.