Demo released
 

http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/g…demo/9570.html

Go and play!

Yep, but for folks in North America, the retail doesn't hit until next week, so this is a nice preview.

Hope it boosts sales, cause that's a fun, simple little section!!

Just try out the English demo, but my German vision is loaded instead…some corrupted saved games. The two are in completely different folders. What happened?

I guess I'm alone on this one - but my first impressions are very poor.
- Runs very badly as expected (3.2Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, x850 XT) with pauses 1-3 seconds at times. I can play Oblivion smoothly.
- Melee combat feels totally disconnected compared to G1/G2. Tactically useless control scheme in my opinion. In addition, if I didnt see a small spray of blood I would have no clue that I even hit my opponent. Hit detection is rediculously bad.
- Terrible place to start the game, getting knocked down and losing your weapon before you even get your bearings. Minor issue I guess.
- Losing weapon "feature" is rediculous and frustrating
- at first glance the landscape looks worse than Oblivion and manages to be just as "generic". Of course I've only seen near town.
- As soon as I left town, it crashed - memory allocation of course.

Yeah I know why they did it but its really bad. Really, really, really bad. There are no tactics at all and there is no "hit" animation either. No feel for a connection at all. Its just BAD.

You know if feels like they motion captured the melee and you are just running a standard animation when you swing. It totally encourages rapid click.

And people rail against Oblivion melee. Jeesh.

Very disappointed.

I agree with you Todd about the combat. One of the best thing about OB's combat is that you felt every hit that connected. In G3 it's as if you're fighting ghosts.

Huge helping of Demo
 

I am pleasantly surprised by the demo. Surprised that it runs pretty well on my 3 year old box, that is.

I have been replaying Oblivion with the settings cranked up to the limit of what I can manage and getting poor framerate, slowdowns and lots of crashes and lockups as well. The G3 demo runs easily as well or better on Medium settings and I have hit level 6 without a crash.

Definitely true that so far G3 appears vastly easier than G2 and a walk in the park compared to NOTR.

gothic games have always been memory intensive. 2 gb is what you need. people like me who have 3+ year older machines can run it fine. this was not made for a next gen console like oblivion, thankfully, so spending less than a 100 for some ram is hardly a complaint when buying a new video card or whole new machine is required to run oblivion on good settings.
the combat seems easy at first, and in some regards it is throughout the game but there is far more options. in the prior gothics you could only carry 2 types of weapons and basiclly swing back and forth. tryi to wield a shield, a staff or a second weapon in gothic 1 or 2. all of these in gothic 3 are quite rewarding, not to mention the bow is awesome in this game. also there is magic staves which you can block spells with while casting a spell of your own- looks cool.
gothic 3 has evolved in many ways. this is what happens with creativity and the urge to try new styles out. nothing is worth that being formuleaic, ie most modern games/music etc. try to think of radiohead, argueably the worlds greatest and most respected current band. there lots of people who claim to be fans but don't like their later stuff. evolution is not to feared. people place faith in gods that don't exist, maybe they should place that faith in people who create amazing works of any medium…but i guess people want someone to blame just as much as they want someone to praise. i should be scolded for falling so far off topic i know…

The demo includes 3 villages (Ardea, Cape Dun and Reddock) with all quests and NPCs. That´s close to 20 hours of gameplay if you look under every rock.
The game needs some time to really take off, just like the older Gothics. Another combat update is announced for the next patch. It won´t change the system itself but tweak everything and finish the balancing.

You´re only losing your weapon when you´re unconscious. Outside the starting area it´s handled like in the older Gothics.

Players with only 1 GB RAM should spend some time on tweaking. Especially the streaming and the low frame rate can be optimized, which could be enough to earn you one or two screen resolution increase(s).

I'm downloading it now, but am very sceptical it will work on my system. NWN2 doesn't run properly, I doubt this game will. Also, i wasn't fond of the first two games, at all, so I am happy with this demo. At least I can see if it runs and if I like it, before I buy it or not :)

I waited for this demo out of concerns about bugginess and system demands. So far, I have encountered 1 bug, where I jumped up on a ledge to escape a boar attack and he was able to kill me somehow from an invisible location below. I've had no crashes or locks, and the simple in-game graphics tweaks are giving me a good framerate while keeping the visuals looking very nice.

Clearly, with !GB of RAM, the 'seamless' world has a few slowdowns as new areas load, but this is tolerable. It was at first discouraging that you could take out Orcs at level 1 (shades of Oblivion), but after playing for a while, the new balance makes more sense. I just spent an hour cleaning out a cave full of Skeletons and a Mummy, and it was some real Gothic action with tough fights.

I guess those of us who love the Gothic series will love this one, and those who never could get into G1 or G2 will probably not catch on once again. Great work, in my opinion. One complaint, though. Echoing some comments above, the visceral thump of battle is definitely missing in G3, and the sound effects are at least partially to blame. Whacking away at opponents is a largely silent affair (and probably thanks to German law) very un-gory as well. Too bad that unlike the Elder Scrolls series, the Gothic games don't seem to lend themselves to modding.

The demo took care of my fears - I was satisfied with combat (though it isn't nearly as good as Dark Messiah, for example), the performance was good, and the little I saw felt very Gothic-ish.

I have read somewhere in the WoG-forum that the 4th patch is going to overhaul the combatsystem somewhat (especially humans vs animals).

I installed the demo and it runs a lot better then NWN2. It looks good as well.
I can't get past the first 5 minutes though, a bit of a chance to find out how the controls work would have been nice…
How do I pick up things? Because the orcs keep bashing my sword out of my hands, and I can't figure out how to pick it back up. :(

You can pick up things by clicking the left mouse button when the item is marked in your hud (when its name is displayed on the screen).

I really didn't know what hit me in that opening fight, and like everyone, I suppose, didn't have a clue about the controls, but after running for my life after mysteriously losing my sword, I managed to switch to bow and arrows. How to make the newbies hate your game…

Yeah I'm a 5-year experienced Gothic vet and that opening scene had me scrambling quite a bit….mostly because of the lag though. :(

You don't have to fight the orcs when the game starts. Just turn around and head out of the village. Get the hang of the controls a little way away and then return… if you want :)

There is a simple trick to avoid hurting neutral NPCs, keeping the right mouse button down keeps your current enemy at focus and all subsequent left clicks will be directed only against him. Allies (their names appear in blue) cannot be hurt by accident, so try making allies before liberating towns etc.

Also never fill the combat queue as this makes the controls unresponsive, for example you draw you sword but got hit by wolf, so the hero unequips, you then hit quickly the spacebar twice, causing the hero to equip and then immediately unequip.

Trying to do the best of a not-so-good situation.