Gothic 3

The world of Gothic 3 is huge, and diverse. I still remember the thrills I got when my hero laid his foot in the desert of Varant, and in the snow hills of Nordmar. World is crafted brilliantly, and vistas are breath-taking. Music is superb and adds to the atmosphere of the game. The story of the game is intriguing, and the many possible endings make the game worth replaying. The best aspect of the story is that there is no good and bad side. You start on the side of the rebels against the orcs, only to discover slowly that rebels are not as good as they look, that they pillage peasants, and orcs do not treat humans badly after all. The Hashishin are only intrested in money and slaves. Xardas have plans of his own, Water wizards are back with other ideas for what is good. All these leave the player to carefully think which side to join. This game must be played with the Community Patch installed. I raise my hat to the CP team, and they have my utmost respect for the marvelous job they did, and the many hours they sacrifised. The CP turns Gothic 3 into a brilliant RPG.

If we take 2 things like this: 1. community patch is mandatory for this game - it's unfinished without it 2. you do not look at this RPG as "Gothic" game Then this game is... average. 3/5 Combat controls are bad - and that no patch can change, believe me. This is the first Gothic game that I played as a mage from the beginning. Meleee combat is THAT bad, believe me. When I have to play as a mage - it's bad. Everything else is - meh, average. But if we compare it with Gothic 2. It's piece of.. well I don't want to swear. It's one of the worst dissapointments in my life. Piranha Bytes did very bad job. Very very bad job. After wonderful Gothic 2, this is just... yuck Take a big breath and play it as "Generic RPG" game - maybe you'll like it like that. Use magic from the (almost) beginning - you won't regret it. You will regret it when you unlock best magic late in the game and you won't have anything to kill with it. Yes, it's a bad game....

This is one of those games that simply won't be made again because no one wants to take the risk. There's a huge open world, lots of factions the player can take part in to permanently change the world, and in depth combat and systems that take a while to master. And virtually all of it is unplayable due to bugs. As others have said there is a community patch which makes it *better*, but it's still pretty terrible how much this game crashes. The combat takes a while to get used to and many of the enemies have attack speeds that are so fast they can effectively lock you into a stagger animation. But, if you can overlook all of that, the game has some pretty amazing gameplay and story.

I was a huge fan of Gothic II, played ages with it. The first impression of Gothic III is not good. For one, it crashed three times in 3 hours. Then, the controls are just plain terrible. Almost impossible to turn into the direction you want while moving; hugely annoying. Also, the hero runs for ~2 seconds even after one stopped pushing the button. Finally, it seems to me the fighting mechanics are actually worse than in Gothic 2, one has pretty little control over what is happening, though clearly this is partly due to the terrible controls. So far, this is a majr disappointment.

It is an alright game, but it is buggy as anything without the community patch and the combat is not anywhere near as good as in Gothic 1+2. The game is also very unfinished, many of the side quests and extra things like smithing seem like they only just got added at the last minute to expand the game, because all of the rewards are inferior to things on the main questline. Might be worth checking out, but I'd suggest you play Risen instead.