Gothic 3 used to be a favourite in the olden days, so I bought it again on GOG for old time's sake. Although the first few hours were still quite fun and had that old feeling, even the community patch and content mod can not hide the dramatic balancing, game design and technical flaws as well as content gaps inherent in this rushed release. It starts with the copy and paste armors and effectively nonexistent helmets and ends with snoozeworthy buggy and idiotic fetch quests on the level of a turn of the century MMORPG - worse, honestly. Who throws sacks of grain all over the farm to play scavenger hunt? If you have the patience for that kind of nonsense you should still be able to enjoy the beautiful organic world and the very assertive and present characters, but I do not.
I first played this game at 12 years in 2002, and since then it's laways had a special place in my heart. The darkness and unhingedness of the original Diablo intrigued me back then, scared me so bad I had to stop playing in the Catacombs (second area of the game after the Dungeons), and since then come back to it to play a couple levels periodically every couple years. While the controls and UI leave something to be desired and have definitely not aged well, the gameplay is sufficiently demanding to force you to keep an eye out, and not so hard that you have to throw away the mouse in frustration. I personally do not miss the more complex item management of its successor, and evne though that aspect of Diablo 2 is marginally better, Diablo 2 absolutely takes the backseast in the atmosphere department. The only other Hack & Slash I played so far that comes close to Diablo in terms of atmosphere is Path of Exile, but that's very situational. The graphics are not pretty I guess, but I don't mind them at all. I think they work just fine, even today, for what they are designed to do. It's the kind of disturbing horror atmosphere that either needs very rough graphics or obscenely realistic graphics for maximum effect, so it's fine. While it has overall aged to a point where I'd say it probably won't be the main game in your library, it's great for short sittings once in a while. There is simply no game like it, and at this point I doubt there ever will be. Personal suggestion: use The Hell mod. Improves the game in many ways, most notably it makes it evne more disturbing. Another personal suggestion: do give Hellfire a try. Many people seem to think it stinks, but it's really just more of the same, with a pinch of icky creepiness on top.
