Gothic 3 - Review @ Yahoo Games

Gothic 3 is the subject of Yahoo Games review today. Handing it a 3/5 star rating, the review says:

Gothic's also a gorgeous game, bringing this living world to your monitor with real class. Much of the landscape is wilderness, sure, but for wilderness it's packed with involving details. Picking out specific high points isn't easy, as the quality of Gothic's models and textures is consistently strong, but the hulking Orc models and the dense, detailed trees stand out.
Sad, then, that it's hamstrung by its poor performance. Having a wide-open world with no loading screens doesn't exactly count for much when the game freezes for seconds at a time as it loads in whatever beastie you're about to encounter. It's not shy about doing this during combat either. The cheesy lens-flare is out of place and unnecessary, and rather spoils the appeal of the game's pretty dawn scenes.

More information.

I've wondered about that lens flare myself. I think it looks very annoying and artificial. Hopefully we will be able to mod that into something better-looking.

The same lens-flare began in G1, the origin of the species.

As much as I instantly bristle at the mention of Oblivion in a G3 review, this quote sets a nice context:

Gothic's approach to the open-ended RPG is a good deal more compelling than Oblivion's, and it surpasses it in other areas too. But if there was ever a game in need of a few more months of development, Gothic 3 is it.

A very fair review.

However, this statement:

Individually, the quests tend towards the generic, but they're put together with style.

snapped my brains like a rubber band.

Gothic 3 is starting to go down in price. It used to be US$49.99 but it's now going for US$39.99 in many mainstream places. If there's a super-patch that fixes the majority of bugs for this game along with another $10 dollar price cut, it goes back onto my "Buy someday" list.

Personally i'd take issue with the view that a lack of an autosave function is a major hindrance and "outdated". In all honesty if there was an autosave i could see myself finding it somewhat intrusive

Additionally i can't help but find his tirade against the trading system as endemic of G3's "oppressive interface" somewhat excessive. When it is stated that "It's not enough to drag all your kit down to the trade window" i wonder if somehow i received a special version of G3 where i double-clicked items to bring them to the trade window (or right-clicked if i didn't want to sell the whole stack) and therefore never had to drag anything down there. Likewise i wonder if i somehow received some sort of divine enlightenment as i never found the gold balance button in any way "cryptic". His obvious horror at a lack of confirmation also troubled me not in the least (and i could have sworn that some playing nwn2 found it downright irritating)

With all that said however i felt that quite a few valid points were made throughout the rest of the review

Autosave has its place in certain games. Gothic 3 isn't it.

Autosave? I have never thought about it in the type of games like Gothic.