Gothic 3

Gothic 3 is perhaps among the most ambitious games ever made. But that's a two-sided coin. It's the reason for both praises and hates this game gets . Many people praise this game because of its literally open-world nature and pure freedom of exploration In a huge world. But there are other people too who hate on the game for the same reason, calling it a sloppy confusing bug-ridden mess. Well these people are somehow right too. Gothic 3 is sloppy at many parts, Sometimes it's awfully confusing and it's a really buggy game. But by no means, it's a mess. All of these faults can't hurt the brilliant core of the game. Just as some fans say, Gothic 3 is an unpolished gem. It is unpolished, but it is still a gem. Due to the fact that game is completely Open-World, there isn't much main story in it. You and your friends from previous game arrive in mainlands with ship. Nameless hero lost his equipment by pirates and forgot or lost most of his abilities ( Obviously ) so he can start a new adventure. Mainlands consist of three regions, The beautiful Flourishing Myrtana, deserts of Varrant and the icy lands of Nordmar. You start the game in Myrtana and your first quest is to find Xardas. Myrtana is occupied by Orcs (who are civilized, they talk and they don't attack you on sight like previous Gothics, there are still savage Orcs though in Nordmar. ) and there are human rebels who want to take back their cities from orcs. You can choose to either join the rebels and destroy the orcs or join the orcs and eradicate all three rebel bases or just follow your own way. If you ally with humans, you truly ally with them. After your reputation with them becomes more than 75%, All of the orcs become hostile to you and attack you on sight and vice versa. There is truly freedom In Gothic 3. No gimmicks. Only Fallout 1&2 and previous Gothics in a smaller scale are in the same league with Gothic 3 in terms of RPG freedom. As it has been said, the world is huge and this huge world is filled with huge number of foes and beasts that should be confronted with combat. Gothic 3 's combat system was somehow a subject of criticism by some. Previous Gothics combat system were somehow tactical in which you had to push buttons in a certain rhythm for effective hits. But in Gothic 3, you only need to click the left mouse button constantly to defeat your Opponents. Although that's not completely true, because there is a new bar among your ordinary Health and Mana bar called Endurance and its duty is to limit Nameless hero's Sprinting, weapon swinging etc. but still, whenever your stamina ( or health and mana in that case ) becomes empty, you can use one of the game's bugs ( or maybe it was done in purpose, idk ) in your advantage. Whenever you open one of the in-game menus ( like Inventory screen, Character screen, etc ) you completely become invulnerable! You can drink potions , wait for your endurance to refill etc without any worry. But it has to been said even if Gothic 3 Combat's is a clickfest, it's still fun and challenging. Gothic 3's Musical scores are perhaps some of the best created for a video game. Some of them can be compared to Lord of the Rings scores. Kai Rosenkranz truly used all of his musical knowledge to create some of the most epic and ear-catching soundtracks of all time. Nearly half of the joy that exploration has in Gothic 3 is provided with the game's top-notch sound-tracks. Although the same thing cannot be said about sound effects or voice acting. But as an originally German game, there can't be much complain for voice acting. Gothic 3 visuals are extremely gorgeous and detailed. Great draw distance , Pixel Shader 3.0 support and Dynamic lighting are just few of the Genome's engine abilities. Although with all of it's power, it's a very unstable engine. One of impressive things about graphics is the rendering of three different environment (desert, jungle , ice region ) pretty well. Gothic 3's RPG system is still based on learning points and it's pretty much like Gothic 1&2. But differences are: 1. You should acquire spells with LP too. There are no rune stones anymore. 2. There is a skill screen which is full of skills in different categories ( fighting, hunting, magic, smithy, thieving, alchemy, misc ) and you should pay attention to learn skills alongside with increasing your basic stats like strength , ancient knowledge ( intelligence in other RPG's ) etc. We can't talk about Gothic 3 without talking about its bugs and glitches. The game loads the whole world map in one loading . of course, that's a really good thing, but the problem is that you die a lot in Gothic 3 , especially at first, and every time you die, you have to tolerate the long loading screen. Though it's a good way to prevent players get the bad habit of letting the main character die over and over again until they find a solution, but it's a waste of time too. There are many big and small bugs here and there including broken quests, odd NPC behavior , etc, but the good thing about them is the fact that they are not fatal and don't make the game unplayable. These bugs are the result of the ambition of the game. It is really hard to imagine such a huge game without loads of bugs. Gothic 3 like it's predecessors, is a cult favorite game. It is not a game that can appeal to mainstream. But it will satisfy the cult who follows it in the best way possible. You might labor a lot for completing a quest, but when you see that lovely green line " Quest success " and XP points, all of those labors replace with pure joy.

I should start with stating that I am a huge fan of the Gothic series and to be honest I absolutely adored Gothic 3, a game that still somewhat divides the community, Take note however, DO NOT play this game without the community patch 1.74, and make sure to turn on alternative balancing and ai. I spent 130 hours on this game (so steam tells me) and I enjoyed every minute, the game world is huge, the graphics beautiful and colourful (although too colourful for a Gothic game). The game is also challenging, as a gothic game should be (again, as long as you use alternative ai and balancing). It's also without a shadow of a doubt the most 'open' game I've ever played. Now for the negatives, most notably, unpatched this game is a buggy mess. It quite literally launched unfinished. The story is that the publisher JoWood forced the devs Piranha Bytes to release the game while it was still in development, and it most certainly showed. The combat is also a bit iffy, but it does have it's charm in places, swords swing preposterously slow and without sound, enemies have strange attack patterns, and even when you level up to technically be able to take on two enemies at once, it can be awkward to fight them, as they sometimes give no chance to get in a swing. The story also isn't as developed as previous Gothic games (I'll also get back to that one) and finally my main gripe, and the community it seems. The atmosphere just simply isn't as heavy as the previously two games, and that will definitely sound trivial to someone who hasn't played the games, but the atmosphere was just so key to the Gothic games. Worry not though, I said I'd return to certain issues in the game and here goes. A mod is in development called the 'Gothic Community Story Project'. What is this witchcraft you say? it's a mod that seeks to improve pretty much every negative aspect of Gothic 3. First and foremost it seeks to better the atmosphere and give the game the 'Gothic' atmosphere which it so desperately needed (screenshots and video footage would definitely indicate success). It also aims to expand on the scant story of Gothic 3 (characters will have further dialogue, things will be explained in more detail, backstories expanded upon etc.). That's not all however, it also seeks to implement new weapon, chest, perk and magic systems, as well as adding new sounds and making the music more evenly distributed. Along with new characters (pirates make a return!) improved armours, new weapons + improvements to existing ones, and my personal favourite, the nameless hero will now have a ponytail! As much as that all sounded like an advertisement, I hope some people disillusioned with Gothic 3 will now give it the chance it truly deserved. 5/5 a gem of a game.

While everyone else was playing the fourth Elder Scroll game, I was searching for a more satisfying RPG experience, and stumbled across Gothic 3. Sure, I had played Gothic 2 before, so the series was not new to me, but I never had my eyes on the third installment. At first I was immensely disappointed in this buggy mess of a game, and it took a good few hours before I actually got to enjoy it. The bugs are many, the animations are strange and choppy, and it has a real budget-feeling in pretty much every aspect. But once I did get past all that, I realized that this game was filled with satisfying gameplay, great music, much to explore, and a lot of good content. Come on, you can take over cities! I was sold. I like the factions, and I like the concept of taking sides - it makes for good replay-value. The environments, be it forests or deserts, looked stunning at times, back in 2006, and the music is great, even though a bit ill-fitting at times, and epic (to use an overused and annoying term). The overall story isn't the best, but I actually found it to be interesting enough, and I felt satisfied in the end. Even if you don't like it there's so much more to do anyway, you'll have your hands full. In short, once I passed the steep curve with bugs, strange mechanics, and the janky budget-feeling, I was entertained for helluva lot of hours. If you can get past it, you will too.

I *loved* Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 and didn't like Gothic 3 much at all. The biggest reason for this is their attempt to give the player "choice" - but really, the choice pretty much always amounts to "Have Team Red conquer the city, or have Team Blue keep the city." Go to another city, and it's "Have Team Blue conquer the city, or have Team Red keep the city." It's technically a choice, sure, and those choices have impact on the game world, but at the same time it's a fairly meaningless choice because neither Team Red nor Team Blue are very interesting. The brilliant characters that brought Gothic 1 & 2 to life are mostly missing here, replaced with a lot of flat, generic, uninteresting characters that you won't miss much no matter who conquers what city. (Even some of the characters who came over from Gothic 1 & 2 with you have lost a lot of their personality - Lee, for instance, was an embarrassment to previous versions of the character.) On the good side: The game's beautiful, and the world is beautiful. It's a great sandbox to wander around and explore - particularly the southern deserts were just visually stunning. The skills system is a little more sophisticated than Gothic 1 & 2 as well - more options for specializing in different things, dual-wielding, ranged combat, crafting, etc. It is, as others have mentioned, pretty buggy if you don't patch it (there are some great Youtube videos floating around from the pre-patch days of unkillable psycho pigs and other hilarious bugs) but the Community patch has pretty much fixed the technical aspects - alas it couldn't really fix the game's writing. But at the end of the day, what it comes down to is this: Do you want to take over a city, killing all the boring NPCs on one side and permanently filling it with generic NPCs from the other side? Or would you rather the NPCs weren't generic but were actually interesting, even if that meant you couldn't slaughter them all? If it's the former, the game's well worth getting - you won't find many other games like it. If it's the latter (as in my case) this game can still be worth getting if you want to just ignore the main quests and wander around, but don't expect it to live up to the greatness of the first two.