I never played any of the Bard's Tale games before, and didn't quite know what to expect. The game starts out in a promising way, and after the introductory adventure, I had got my hopes up; the quest, the banter between the Bard and the unimpressed narrator and the effort put into the songs created a fun and enjoyable little world. However, the further I ventured out from the starting villlage of Houton, the bad level design, repetitive combat and bad controls took its toll on my enjoyment. One level had me fighting about 20 set fights without much variation in enemies or difficulty. The repetitiveness was made much worse by several unnecessary deaths as the Bard repeatedly got stuck in a power-shot mode with his bow and couldn't move away from enemy attacks. Another had me fighting through three levels of unvaried enemies (though there were the ocasional fun traps) only to have to fight my way down three levels again through one recurring mix of other enemies. Another design choice that added to the repetitiveness was that all enemies respawn if you come back to a place you had visited before. I didn't mind that too much in the beginning, but since it also occured on visiting houses or shops in a city, it got tedious to have to fight the same enemies over and over again. The game does have a few good components though. I would have liked the rest of the world to be The tavern in Houton was immersive and fun, and it would have been great if the rest of the world and its interactions would have been as well developed. I also liked the summoning system and would have liked it to be developed even further to include more options than "attack" or "stay back". Without more varied enemies and fixing the twitchy combat controls, such development would probably not add much to the gameplay. In summary, the game has some good ideas and concepts and a world that has some good potential, but the gameplay and combat system takes away all the fun in the long run.
I've been a long-time fan of the Gothic series as well as of their precursor Arx Fatalis, but I only just got around to playing Gothic 3 (with the mandatory 1.74 patch). Gothic 3 drops the nameless protagonist into a familiar setting; explore a vast world and side with one of three factions. However, it seems that they have focused on building a larger rather than a better mousetrap. None of the characters in the game have any, well, character. Shift the names around 9/10 of them, and I wouldn't even notice any difference. Since the people in the game don't seem real and their motivations rarely amount to anything other than that of the view of their faction. This is also reflected in the quests which seem all to have been cut from the same tree. A lot of them are either of the 'get me my lost item'- or 'kill them all'-variety. There has been some effort put into creating economic or other rationales for towns and communities (i e hunting, artefact gathering, smithing). However, the towns don't really interact and actions in one town will rarely affect dealings in another. Even the main quests are rather tedious and I never once really cared much about their outcome. As regards exploration, I was disappointed that you cannot dive or swim under water. I also felt that the Minecrawlers and Shadowbeats had been made extremly easy in relation to their terrifying bretheren in the previous Gothic games. I generally think that going large and not having content to backing up is a pity. The first game was the smallest of the three, and yet I never reallly knew what was going to happend next. As a gaming experience, that is far superior to what we have here. To conclude, I think it was nice to revisit the series and get a Gothic-feel once again, but there is really nothing left once once you've finished playing. I would say it's worthwhile playing if you're already a Gothic fan. If that isn't the case, I don't recommend playing Gothic 3.
Apart from the opening this game never achieves the threatening and dystopic mood it seems to seek. Although the protagonist is said to be a threat to an oppressive police state, the protagonist and his sexual innuendo sidekick walk around and converse directly and defiantly with police officials. The most dystopic aspects of this future vision is the lack of security and alertness of the oppressors.
