Gothic 3 Gothic 3 Wins! The game beat me

I've finally gotten to the endgame and I find that I'm coming up short one fire chalice. I think I know where I missed it, but since I wiped out all the orc occupied towns, I can't go back to get it. I've even resorted to using the test mode cheat and giving myself the last chalice. No dice. I have 12 now, but I can't get anyone to recognize that fact.

I'm done. I went past the point of boredom with this game to the point that I wasn't even doing the Nordmar quests, just trying to finish the main quests. This game has some strong points. I liked the large and open world, it was more focused that Oblivion and I didn't feel quite so isolated as I did in that game, I liked the "moral" choices and especially liberating the towns.

What I didn't like far outweighs my likes though. Combat is frustrating to an old man, at least this old man. I finally got a rhythm for most of the fights, though I never was able to melee critters like ogres and trolls. When I messed up and let even a wolf under my defenses, I was pretty much dead. I absolutely HATED when I backed a critter up to a wall where I could stop that annoying back up dodging and then I...could...not...hit the damn thing. I died in this game more than any game I've ever played. This made it a much greater slog fest than The Witcher which I've seen so many folks complain about being slow. Thirty second save game loads after constant dieing really made Gothic 3 an annoying experience.

The graphics were substandard and this is not usually a problem for me, but with that I expect good performance. I died at least a dozen times simply to what I would call in an MMO, lag death. The game crashed fairly often, from what appears to be a memory leak, depending upon how long I played.

Overall this game was mediocre in my RPG experience. I'm not criticizing any that love this game, we all have our preferences and our tolerance for pain. I prefer more adventure, story and depth and I'm willing to sacrifice an open game world to have tighter story and game play.

did you patch it? it never crashed once with me, and stunlock didn't happen much either

Like titus said: did you patch it? The unpatched Gothic 3 was a pain in the ass -> boars.

About the graphics: Don't forget that this game is from 2006 while the Witcher is from 2007. Another thing is that Gothic 3 loads the whole world at once. This is imo not the best idea. I'm more for 3 big 'seperate' worlds, but at least it's better to load it at once then saving and loading on entering a house (Morrowind, Oblivion, The Witcher, ...) I realise that with your constantly being killed thing, the advantage of only loading once, is somewhat lesser. Magic is therefore a good thing to invest in.

At the highest setting, with an exceptionally good computer, G3 is by far the best looking RPG out there as far as I'm concerned. If you have anything less than the latest and greatest, The Witcher will definetly look better (in fact, The Witcher will even look good on lower settings).

I understand the frustration of the combat - when it works, it works really well (ranged combat, magic, melee against single humanoids), but whenever it doesn't work, it becomes a very frustrating experience (trying to dual-wield against Ogres, for example).

I usually recommend the same thing to everyone playing this game: Either have some sort of ranged combat handy, or make good use of the various followers (the NPCs can soak up quite a bit of damage).

PS. The chalice quest is not part of the main quest. There's no need to actually complete it, but you do gain access to the most powerful NPCs in the game by completing it (the Paladins make excellent followers, since they heal and cast spells like magicians, but can tank like a warrior).

Humm, perhaps I should give G3 another go -- this time focusing on ranged and magic rather than melee. The last time I gave up somewhat (but not a lot) before Eliaures, for much the same reasons.

Eliaures said:

The graphics were substandard and this is not usually a problem for me, but with that I expect good performance. .

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Huh?????

I'm guessing it must be your system that is substandard, Gothic 3 is unrivaled in the graphics department, if you have the system to handle it.

Yea something's wrong there...G3 has amazing graphics imo

Outside of Oblivion, which has the best graphics I've seen in a pc crpg, I found the graphics in Gothic 3 to be very nice. It does take quite a bit of tweaking to make it look great, but so did Oblivion. I've never finished a Gothic game, but it certainly isn't because of the graphics in G3. I can just never care about what happens to the main character enough to finish the games. I don't relate to Mr. Nobody.

Magic is a good way to go to, it is hard in the beginning but after a while you become uber strong.
Did it the last time I played and was really enjoying it but i stopped because I had the witcher

I did patch. I got the latest Aspyr patch and then had to get the 1.5 community patch to even play since I downloaded the game and the original patch wanted the CD. Grrr.

I have a fairly stout system. I have an E6600 Duo-Core, 2 GB RAM, an nVidia geForce 8800 GTX, 2 10K RPM Western Digital SATA hard drives, Sound Blaster X-Fi, and I played the the game at 1650 x 1050 on high setting.

The world graphics were decent though I wasn't too keen on seeing trees look like leaf curtains. I admit, the world graphics were good and it's mainly the character graphics I found sub-par. I'm sure it's personal taste, but they seemed blocky, stilted with movements like marionettes, and the models were all too similar. I guess I'm a bit biased in my views of character graphics, I like those from both Vanguard and Everquest 2.

Actually it's not the graphics that was my main bugaboo. I'm certainly not complaining, they just didn't fill ALL the blanks on my graphics checklist. I'm like cprgnut though in that I just don't care about Mr. Nobody. I've reached a level of frustration that makes the game more an exercise in stubborn resolve if I were to finish, and less an enjoyable experience to find out what happens.

It must be admitted too, I have no idea what to do next in Gothic 3. I have all the artifacts and got Innos blessing, but I've no idea who to talk to or where to go next, there's no guidance for this in game. I thought I wasn't advancing because of the stupid chalices.

Eliaures said:

but I've no idea who to talk to or where to go next, there's no guidance for this in game.

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That's what most fans like about it.

It's perfectly understandable however, that a person who prefers a more linear, story driven game might not appreciate that.

Here's what you need to do:

At least that's how I recall it.

mmm first of all download it? buy it, the developers deserve your money.
No I dea what to do? check your journal, normally it helps you on just fine, just a few rare occasions where it didn't
downloaded it, shame yourself

"Linear games are just for suckers !"

(Sorry for that blurb.)

crpgnut said:

Outside of Oblivion, which has the best graphics I've seen in a pc crpg, I found the graphics in Gothic 3 to be very nice. It does take quite a bit of tweaking to make it look great, but so did Oblivion. I've never finished a Gothic game, but it certainly isn't because of the graphics in G3. I can just never care about what happens to the main character enough to finish the games. I don't relate to Mr. Nobody.

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Then you have the same feeling I got towards Oblivion and (even more) Morrowind. The story and the main character is for me perhaps the most import reason why I like to play gothic. It feels weird to see one with the exact same reason going for the opposite.
About the graphics: play gothic 3 on a good system and you will see that it just outruns oblivion.(I've started up both right after each other) The strong point of oblivion is that you can actually play it on a slightly older system with reasonable graphics, while you can hardly play gothic 3. That's why I find it very weird that Eliaures says the graphics are substandard. His system can certainly play it on a good level. Perhaps if he changed the resolution it would be better?

Thanks for the hint. I might just finish it now though I've just started playing Portal and that is one fun game so far.

"Linear games are just for suckers !"

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I guess by that definition that makes me a sucker. I like both kinds but I tend to accept linear games if it has a strong story and good game play. Games like Oblivion are fun for the first 30 - 40 hours , but I lose interest in just exploring and find that there's not much to make me want to finish those types of games.

That's why I find it very weird that Eliaures says the graphics are substandard.

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I'm finding that this must just be a personal preference. The character graphics are what killed it for me on the graphics front. See above post. I played Gothic 3 at 1680 x 1050 on high resolution. Maybe the "wow factor" has already been spent for me with Oblivion?

Eliaures said:

Thanks for the hint. I might just finish it now though I've just started playing Portal and that is one fun game so far.

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Don't worry, you won't be playing Portal for long.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

"Linear games are just for suckers !"

(Sorry for that blurb.)

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Don't know that -> I liked KotOR and that was a pretty linear game for me. Gothic 1 and 2 had some linear aspects as well (the last chapters), it's only Gothic 3 that doesn't have this for the gothic series.
Oblivion started out ok for me, but when I had to walk/ride the whole time from town to town for a stupid quest, I just got bored. Gothic3 has some quests that tend to go on the same way, but luckily most quest are quite close to the person who gave you the quest.

I finally finished the game. Meh. It was more a diversion than an obsession like I tend to have with great CRPG's like Planescape: Torment or even more recently, The Witcher. I was digging through my old CD's looking for my NWN expansions and found I had Gothic 2 CD's. I had forgotten I played that game. Now that I remember it, I actually liked that game better than Gothic 3.

I'm such a packrat, while digging through old gaming stuff, I found a map and a game brief for Darklands. Now that brings back old memories.

Now that I remember it, I actually liked that game better than Gothic 3.

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@Eliaures When I see the favourite gothic poll thread here, only one person differs in opinion from you. I just started another Gothic2 with NotR yesterday and it's by far more enjoying then gothic 3 -> my pc is just not good enough to really play Gothic3 as it should be.