Gothic 3 - Review @ Pro-G
 

Pro-G has reviewed the Euro version of Gothic 3. Saying that the state of the game "must be in breach of some trading standards law somewhere" after playing unpatched, the score is still 6/10 because of some addicting factors:
More information.

"Needlessly resource-hungry engine"?

People - please stop trying to look competent by judging several manyears of programming. Gothic 3 has really a big, seamless world not based on heightmaps. There ist no "needlessly resource-hungry" when you consider this.

I at least don't agree that graphics are terrible. Indoor areas don't look good, but outdoor areas are beautiful in some places. Vegetation looks great and so do a lot of the monsters. The trolls look incredible.

maybe I should send them a link to our "Gothic 3 Tweaks ?" - Thread :-)

I think calling the graphics "terrible" is a bit much.

Given the system requirements they don't meet expectations, but they certainly arent terrible. The Gambryoish LOD popping however, now THAT is terrible.

That was my thought - with my setup I think the game looks very nice )and I have rarely seen mushrooms hanging above eye level ;) ) - it is the performance per GHz / GB that feels inadequate.

I think it is very appropriate to compare Oblivion and Gothic 3 relative to system requirements. Clearly PB was shooting for Oblivion visuals. They made the decision to stream RAM the whole game - and now they will face the consequences. They fell a tad short of Oblivions visuals - and that won't sit well. They risked stability issues with a technology they werent quite up to task for (and even XP isnt quite up to task for) and here is the result. Not a good payoff simply to avoid a load screen every few hours of gameplay.

How many times did you think "damn all these load screens!" when playing G2???

I agree. Especially since the game's mini-freezeups for streaming new areas are often as long as Oblivion's actual distinct loads.

Also, I think that they fell far short of Oblivion's visuals. Not to mention, they also fell far short of Oblivion's physics engine and combat AI, which were big parts of that game.

Its very difficult to swallow the fact that I have to go play Oblivion at high detail because my machine can't handle Gothic 3 at medium detail. How rediculous is that? Its pretty frustrating actually.

I don't find that to be true - I was constantly annoyed at Oblivion having to load so much - plus you get the mini-freeze for streaming the open world.

Maybe I need to log more hours, but I prefer Gothic 3's combat system, and think that they both have pretty crappy physics (and combat) compared to something like Dark Messiah. But I can see it as a point that some would prefer one over the other - I just don't see it as a 'far short' type of difference.

I agree they weren't as successful as (I assume) even they would have probably liked but I disagree it was the wrong decision to attempt it. One of the very reasons Gothic offers a more compelling world is little things like real windows and being able to see people inside buildings. Time will tell if they can tweak the performance but I think it's a bit presumptuous to claim the performance/Mhz ratio is inadequate based on one other game that has to load every single interior cell no matter how small and has NPC AI that is so broken it's hilarious. If it's so easy, where are all the other competitors?

That was one thing from the Codex article way back that I loved … I mean, I remember hearing about the vaunted 'Radiant AI' system, and the only thing that it seemed to do was have random people on horseback go past me on occasion. Otherwise G2 *still* feels much more alive than Oblivion.

So does G1.

Did you notice the reviewer hasn't actually finished the game? He's still playing it!! That is inexcusable. How can you properly review a game while still only partway through it. I wonder if he's even been to the other lands yet!! I give the review a D.

At least he is honest - many reviewers don't finish and then pretend they know the game. I just reviewed Star Trek Tactical Assault for the DS and then read a couple of reviews - some are terribly inaccurate!

I couldn't imagine signing my name to a game I'd not finished …

To be honest I'm more surprised NWN2 has as low fps as it does, considering Gothic 3 is a huge, open world and NWN2 is divided into fairly small modules.

I think the graphics are better in G3 than NWN2 as well. My Greatsword in NWN2 looks pathetic!!

I think it´s very harsh to call the graphics in G3 terrible. The water looks pretty ugly, thats true but once you enter a forest you just have to say "wow". Thats how a lively and dense forest should look like, the graphic in G3 is just not optimized for eyecandy.
The world in Oblivion looks like it was taken from a theme park, but yeah, the water is nice:rolleyes:

I think the reviewer is a little bit dumb to apply any patch to the game.

Thats a standard policy for a few reviewers. Firingsquad used to do that if I recall, don't know if that's still the case.