I have the Steam version of Gothic 2 Gold and have been having nothing but issues with it. Weird lagging, graphical artifacting on the videos and access violation crashes have been plaguing my playthrough of this game so far.

I was reading on these forums for possible fixes and mods as I just thought "Its old, so it just doesn't work right on modern systems" I came across a topic here in the Gothic series forum that made the statement that Gothic I & II were mostly bug-free. Can someone verify this? Do the non-Steam versions work better? If so, I will buy the GOG version right now, as I really want to have a good experience playing it.

Gothic 2 was never almost bugfree! But you usually were in most cases able to play it through (if not in the normal way, then with cheats). Dont know about Gothic 1.

Also I dont thinkt that there are (beside of DRM, copyprotection and such) big technical differences between the gog, the steam or the retail version of the game. They all should be almost or even completely the same.

Despite of this it should be able to make the game work even on actual hardware, but it can be maybe a little bit tricky to do so, especially with the steam version, because most stuff wasnt made for this version and maybe wont even work with it.

Yeah I had read that some of the steam client features cause it to bug out, for example the community overlay.

I just bought the GOG version...I am sorry to say this but you are absolutely wrong. The Steam version is a complete POS compared to the GOG version. I messed around for hours trying to get Gothic 2 to run at a steady framerate, installing patch after patch after patch, disabling overlays and underlays, and compatibility modes and editing .ini files. Want to know what I did to get this one running? Double clicked the icon on my desktop and pressed enter on "New Game" the GOG version runs flawlessly for me anyways. I can finally play this game with pulling my hair out trying to get a stable framerate. Thanks GOG!

meshuggah12345New, No there is no problem. If you need a game then run it from the folder in Windows Explorer. After installing this — SystemPack.

On the technical side version of Steam is better than GoG, since practically no effect on the system files of the game..
In order to GoG version works correctly with this package, it is necessary to remove and replace the original, it all changed in the system files.

MfG MaGoth,

I'm not terribly concerned about using mods and community patches. All i wanted was a steady framerate to be able to enjoy the game and the GOG version does it. In my opinion the GOG version is vastly superior to the Steam one for someone who wants to just play the game un-modded.