Gothic 3

Loved Gothic 1 and 2, even Risen and Elex but this is absolute trash, too few redeeming features to be considered a diamond in the rough. Melee combat is a sick joke

I bought this game right at the release day, even the collectors edition for about 60€. To make it short: The game was nearly unplayable in the retail 1.0 condition. I loved the prequels and some of those great features were still there: The atmosphere, the art style, the rough and funny conversations. But there were two main problems: On the one hand the game was a disaster on the technical aspects. The engine was poorly optimized and responsible for countless graphical glitches and bugs. A floating hero, caverns were you couldn't see anything...just to name a few. The other problem was the large world. It was TOO large, as even the developer later admitted. They were unable to fill the gigantic world with quality quests and story in the time they had for development. I think that at the time they realized that it was already too late to postphone the release, as just another few months would've changed nothing. The game was messed up from ground up! Ultimately they also lied, in not communicating these problems prior to release. People bought the game based on promises and based on the fame of the prequels and Piranha Bytes was lying in their customers faces until the end. It was only a few weeks / months later that they finally admitted their failure. I have to be fair though. They learned from their mistakes. And should one day "Risen" be released on GOG - the unofficial sequel to Gothic, developed by Piranha Bytes - I will surely buy it. Let's hope the company learned this lesson for good! PS: I'm quite positive about the community patches. Though I never tried the game with them installed, so its just hearsay...therefore two stars as my final verdict.

I really liked Gothic 1 and 2, both were and still are great RPGs, so i was looking forward for third one. When it came, i was slightly worried about the whole situation, when every second person was complaining about bugs etc. But when i tried it myself and i have to say i played the vanilla version, i think i never encountered any bugs, certainly not any game breaking bugs. And if there were some other tiny bugs, i didn't even noticed them. So either i was very lucky, or others were very exaggerateing the whole situation. In any case, i really enjoyed the third Gothic as much as the first ones. Perfect gameplay, hardly compared to anything else, it has its own style. Nice world, music, story, everything you want from good RPG. Try it, it is definitely worth it.

Gothic is a quirky series about a nameless prisoner who has to make a name for himself. You start out weak and helpless but climb up through the ranks until you can take your revenge, or forgive them and save the world, possibly both. This series certainly seems to reward the morally flexible. Want to beat someone up and take all their stuff, it not only permissible it's encouraged! Just make sure you're either stronger than your opponent or you're sneaky about it. The base game doesn't penalize you much over this though madders try to patch consequences back into the game. I say that borders on re-writing the game as this revenge theme has been a staple of the series since the very opening seen of Gothic 1. The above applies to all the Gothic series but the reason I say Gothic 3 is the pinnacle is the graphics are beyond all the rest and the interface and combat is much easier to pickup and run with. Yes it's full of bugs but the community fixed most of them. Despite this I have to say this is by far the most playable and the second most epic (It's huge but there is no "epic" threat) of the three and It's the one I would recommend to an outsider. I have not played the Risen series but if I did it would be because of Gothic 3.

A very good game where you can do what you wants, with a great feel freedom and a very immersive mediaval-fantasy atmosphere. I suggest to download and install the community's patch to avoid the bugs.