Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods Enhanced Edition

The enhanced edition can't make up for the Forsaken Gods expansion being a utterly limited and pathetic reworking of the amazing Gothic 3. Anyone who's played Gothic 3 will immediatly understand how much Trine Games just have no freaking clue what made Gothic 3 so amazingly good. The open-ended nature of the world and all your decisions. Pitting factions against each other and picking sides. Extremely limited world and limited decisions and completely abysmal writing and changes over Gothic 3. In a way the Forsaken Gods expansion was a good thing in that it highlighted just how much is actually going on in Gothic 3, and how much went into making that game the game it is. My respect for Piranha Bytes grew a lot from trying to play this pathetic piece of crap. Anyway it's a complete and utter failure of a game, and the enhanced edition doesn't do anything to help it. And this is the first time (nevermind garbage like Empire Earth 3) that I will whine about a game not having any place on gog. This game is TRASH and has no place on this site.

Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods is a stand-alone expansion for Gothic 3 and it was supposed to correct the mistakes of it, but it adds a few more mistakes without solving the old ones. Forsaken Gods is exactly Gothic 3 with these differences: -Only Myrtana is available for exploring. Entrances to Varrant and Nordmar are covered with rock. -Unlike Gothic 3, the game is very easy even from start due to the fact that you level-up very fast because of the generous XP points of quests, even the easy ones and numerous chests that contain precious loot. -Nameless hero's personality has changed a lot. He is now an arrogant, hot tempered, idealistic and ceremonious power hungry type of character who is a lot different with the idle, sarcastic , Carefree hero of previous games. Of course his new behavior is essential for the goal of the game ( reuniting Myrtana and becoming a new king ) but this 180 degree change might be a bit confusing for fan of the series . -Now you enemies have endurance bar too, so they can't attack you constantly. -First person perspective for bows and crossbows. -New characters, dialogues and quests. -NPC AI about your actions in the city is disabled. Now you can freely rob every house, open every chest, beat everyone up ( or in most cases, kill them ) and guards won't question or attack you. Also the reputation system is completely removed. You can't decide to ally with a certain side anymore. Perhaps Forsaken gods biggest fault is the fact that it is even more buggy than Gothic 3, although it's smaller and shorter. FG might be one of the few games that have a bug in the main quest of the game which prevents it from finishing without the use of cheating. Although thanks to the community patches, you won't have much problem if you install them . There are many other bugs, like many dialogues which don't have voice acting, invisible NPC's, NPC's terrible AI in path finding ( there are many escorting missions in the game ) , etc. most of these bugs are annoying, but they don't prevent you from playing. They just show this expansion was created with extreme carelessness. Nearly everything including Items, Character models , game environment, skills and enemies ( except for few ) soundtracks ( of course, listening to Gothic 3 soundtracks over and over again is not a bad thing at all. ) are recycled from Gothic 3. The new things are storyline, dialogues, voice acting and quests. Storyline is pretty straightforward. It was meant to fill the gap between Gothic 3 and Arcania: Gothic 4's story. In Gothic 4, nameless hero is the new king Rhobar. Forsaken Gods only explains how did he become the new king. for becoming a new king, he should do a bunch of quests. Quest are inferior compared to Gothic 3 's quest and they are mostly "errand boy" kind of quest. But some of them are interesting or funny. ( like the one which you should beg for 1 gold coin in Gotha. ) Voice acting, except for the nameless hero himself ( though his voice actor is changed ) , is mostly weak. But dialogues are surprisingly good compared to other parts of the game and still they have that raw, downright and sarcastic feeling of Gothic dialogues with them. It is obvious that Gothic 3: Forsaken gods didn't mean much to Jowood and they relied purely on fans to buy it because it is a Gothic title . They hired an inexperienced company to make the game ( Trine games ), although it's not their fault. Even though Piranha Bytes was behind Gothic 3 and it was a major title in the series, it was a really buggy game. Jowood shouldn't have given this responsibility to them. But with all of the things said, Forsaken Gods can provide plenty of enjoyment in it's 20-40 hour play-through ( you can continue the game after finishing the main quest. ) mainly because it still has the addictive game-play of Gothic 3. But you need to be a really forgiving person and a fanatic Gothic fan to get any enjoyment from Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods.

The original release of the game was a total disaster, which I believe explains the numerous 1/5 notes from GOG members. However the Enhanced Edition (EE) has been completely rewritten by people issued from the Community. They re-introduced a little bit of Gothic spirit, solved all the bugs (a feat in itself) and enhanced the graphics. However, don't expect the result to be a completely Gothic-like game because of course they could not change the story line. But it is now a decent game. If you have not played Gothic I, II or III, play them first. Otherwise, give Forsaken God a try. I found it a little bit over priced, though: $5.00 would be more appropriate.

it's a lite Gothic 3. Doesn't really add a great deal to the world (actually it's now shrunk). Sure it looks great (which is nothing to do with the original game), but it tends to (frustratingly) lag in places. Most the time NPC's kept telling me that "surely I had something to do". That's the problem. I kept looking for an NPC to give me something to do, except I decided to venture out into the world instead of check around for NPC quest givers on my own doorstep. Gothic 3 had a feeling of things going on which you could become a part of if you wanted to. Forsaken Gods has the feeling of a world that is telling you to "sod off" because it's quite happy ticking along without you. That sense of exploration has been replaced by the annoyance of trying to find the NPC-quest giver. I've found one and I'm following a trail of breadcrumbs to the crazy birdman who annoys on of the townsfolk by luring birds to his roof. Dull. In Gothic 3 I was wiping out a rebel base because I'd decided that there was a better future with the Orcs. In Gothic 3 I start out in the middle of a fight. Rebels overthrowing Orcs and reclaiming their home. In Forsaken Gods I wake up on a bed with some wild idea about uniting the land under a single banner. In all fairness work by the community on the EE makes it slightly more palatable. But there's a sense of it's a long way from a true "Gothic" game and the departure of Pirahna Bytes from the series signalled the death of it. I'm playing it out of curiosity. But I can't recommend it. Play Gothic 3 instead. Or Risen.