Gothic 3 - Now on GOG

he he, you 2 make me laugh.

I've spent many happy hours with G3 and will again one day, once I get me an SSD to reduce that freaking stuttering.

It's a frustrating, beautiful, massive mess and I love it.

badmofo said:

It's a frustrating, beautiful, massive mess and I love it.

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I'd say this a perfect brief summary of the Gothic 3 experience. There's some solid enjoyment and wonderful ideas in the game, but you have to wade through a gauntlet of issues on the surface to get there. If you manage to do that, the game is still far from great, but it can be captivating at times nonetheless.

rune_74 said:

we huh? You're getting pretty predictable…I think you may have some problems. I don't think you speak for the community, and you are welcome to disagree with me…but you don't always have to be an ass…even if you are good at it.

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Who's being an ass? I'm simply making an observation. Did you even read any of the posts in this thread before commenting? My only problem here is you and your constant trolling.

rune_74 said:

quick send me another threatening IM.

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Fail…

May I recommend the ignore function to both of you? It would save the rest of us a lot of useless bickering.

Indeed and I'm the reason ignore was invented

badmofo said:

It's a frustrating, beautiful, massive mess and I love it.

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I agree. Also, if people look up my older G3 posts, they'll see that I've always felt that way. Nothing has changed.

I quite enjoyed G3, eventually. I recenlty started replaying with 1.74 few months back, but I also installed some German (supposedly with translations) community quest patch which pretty much ruined the game for me. I do not understand German, and there were missing (and bad :-0) english translations which killed immersion. From what I recall it had some additional fixes to the main quests, and it was those I wanted (?) Anyway, eventually put it aside.

rune_74 said:

we huh? You're getting pretty predictable…I think you may have some problems. I don't think you speak for the community, and you are welcome to disagree with me…but you don't always have to be an ass…even if you are good at it.

quick send me another threatening IM.

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I think you're having some problems, since it's clearly Oblivion that got met lost with those stupid loading scenes evey %#!&$ time you enter a new place. Gothic 3 is better in pretty much every way compared to Oblivion and I still think number 3 is the worst of the PB gothics.
Worst buy ever for me is Morrowind and Oblivion. I even enjoyed Mass Effect 2 and the Witcher much more then the Bethesda games

Elwro said:

The game is very much playable without the community patch. Frankly, for me the combat sucks both in the original and after the community patch but it's simply easier in the original, so it gets less in the way of exploration. I'd suggest playing 1.6.

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This. Combat in the original is far from elaborate but it's bearable. The community patch changes that to frustrating.

Wow G3 on GoG. Nice to finally see all the Gothic games like this (and no, Arcania is not considered a Gothic game by me). I've only played it with the CP patch and it worked just fine. I won't comment on the melee because I played and archer but I think the combat was ok. People criticizing combat in G3 seem to forget how the combat was in the first two games.

I remember when it came out it was in a big competition with Oblivion and at the start it kind of lost the battle but with the CP this game is great. I love the graphics, atmosphere and open world in it.

I won't be purchasing the GoG edition since I already have all three Gothic games boxed.

I personally finished the game unpatched and I think it's one of the best and most memorable games I have ever played. Although I agree some bugs were very frustrating and annoying, but they didn't make the game unplayable. People were a bit impatient in the case of Gothic 3 and didn't give the game the chance to show its true potential, because I can't see how can someone hate the game when they properly finish it. If it wasn't because of bugs and glitches, it would be my most favorite game ever.

Greatly enjoyed playing it with the CP. Although I put it aside for now, until I have a better computer (stuttering when loading the geometry that wasn't fixed by a GPU upgrade - probably bottlenecked by slow CPU or HD).

Well, I loved the game for ~50 hours until my savegame died - and this was upon release.

So, I'm sure the CP would have been an even better experience for me - as I understand it's much more stable with it.

I've restarted the game a few times since then, but I don't last much beyond the first 10-20 hours. I think it's because I just can't get past the broken combat (with or without CP) - and the rather awful loot distribution.

Also, it doesn't do that well once you realise the story is somewhat hollow - and most of the world is sparsely populated with truly unique content.

That's why I think a first playthrough works much better for that kind of game, because you're not aware of any flaws in the design - which helps immersion tremendously.

Risen followed the design aspect and mechanics of Gothic 3 (except the melee combat of course). However, I estimate the world size and variation in Risen to be 1/3 of that in Gothic 3. Players enjoyed Risen more because of it was very stable and almost bug free on release. Personally, Gothic 3 is more memorable with all of its factions, surprises and choices and consequences and I am still enjoying it after 50+ hours. I got used to the combat in the same way that I got used to the combat in the Witcher (which was weird at the start).

rune_74 said:

Funny the rose colored glasses for this game…before it came out the buzz was it was an oblivion killer…then it released…and it was not. It was an ok game at best, the first bit was fine but the farther you got into the game the more you saw how empty it got. I distinctly remember how bad the desert sections were.

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I enjoyed the desert (varant) section mainly because it was a very nice change of pace with its deseparate tribes and villages from the dense and busy jungles portion of the world. To me this variation is enjoyable.

Have sunk ~240 hours in 3,1/2 odd replays on it. Pretty much says what I think about it (only really toped by its siblings and a couple select others in my shortlist. Skyrim is looking like it will make said list at this point, a bit above it, due to sheer size, atmosphere and attention to detail). Last replay was frustration free for me too!

rune_74 said:

Funny the rose colored glasses for this game…before it came out the buzz was it was an oblivion killer…then it released…and it was not. It was an ok game at best, the first bit was fine but the farther you got into the game the more you saw how empty it got. I distinctly remember how bad the desert sections were.

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"Oblivion killer"? LOL. You can not kill what is already dead. Can hardly think of a worse high profile game than Oblivion. Gothic 3, even at release, was easily better. Even at "being empty".

Despite the flaws, I had a wonderful time with Gothic 3 and the 1.74 community patch last summer, playing the Orc/Xardas path as a mage with some extra mods installed as well. Similarly as others have reported, I was unable to find a way to be rid of the notorious G3 stutter throughout the game, not that it bothered me particularly much, because I still finished it for the second time.

The overall tone of the game is slightly different to the original two games but I still found it to be a genuinely fun, lengthy and worthwhile experience. Nordmar was especially breath-taking this time around.

Although I've only tried Forsaken Gods the once, it was abominable and utterly alien to my Gothic 3 experience. I was quite disgusted to run into a game/plot stopping bug a few hours in and thus haven't been near it since.

Not to steer the discussion away from G3 too much, but has anyone tried the Enhanced patch for this awful stand alone expansion? Or is the argument that it simply cannot be fixed difficult to refute?

Not to steer the discussion away from G3 too much, but has anyone tried the Enhanced patch for this awful stand alone expansion? Or is the argument that it simply cannot be fixed difficult to refute?

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I finished the normal version. ( not enchanted ). I have to say it wasn't as bad as I thought it is. ( That's because I thought it's the worst thing in the existence though. ) It was finishable at least and I didn't encounter a single broken quest. ( With installing some patches of course. ) Since I liked the game-play of Gothic 3 and FG totally rehashes it, it wasn't a bad experience overall for me. Anyway
Main problem of the game is the emptiness of the world, there are lots of monsters to kill and a fair amount of side quests to do ( which are mostly irrelevant and fetch-boy kind of quests. ) , but you feel that doing them is kinda pointless. Because unlike Gothic 3, you are very strong in FG even from start. You don't feel rewarded by gaining levels anymore. Even if they managed to fix the bugs and glitches in the enchanted version I doubt they could fix these basic problems. So overall, I think even enchanting FG can't help it.

I've played Forsaken Gods twice - once without the enhanced edition patch, once with.

Here's a post I made on the GoG forum about it:

I've recently replayed Forsaken Gods with the enhanced edition patch. Whilst the graphics and music remain excellent since they are a straight carry over from G3 (albeit with the residual stuttering you still get with G3 CPT) the overall storyline, quests, NPCs and dialogue have not been touched by the EE patch, other than to correct bugs. Which means the game remains awful. For example:

Almost everyone in FG is "crazy". Crazy alchemist, crazy birdman, crazy man who thinks he is the son of Rhobar II…and being crazy they have these stupid dialogues with idiotic voices. Myrtana has had all sensible people removed and replaced by tedious insane equivalents. By the end you will probably want to kill every NPC in the game.

Orcs often talk with human voices in FG and have ridiculous names like "Urbanus" (like the Pope, right?). Regrettably the EE patch removed the character called "Ngaio" (…you know…like the crime writer…I'm sure there are lots of Ngaios living in Myrtana)

Most of the game is composed of stupid fetch/kill quests not fit for the hero of Myrtana. "I can't sleep because a crazy birdman comes onto my shed roof at night and spreads birdseed on it which attracts birds…please kill him". Nameless: "Such crazy birdmen are not fit to live in the new united Myrtana! He must die." Something like that anyway.

Oh and the "take my wife shopping in Faring" quest. Nameless goes shopping, I mean really? And then she wants to buy booze and full body Nordmarian armour. Armour? Why in gods name does she want to buy armour? Nothing makes sense.

Oh and the pacifist orc quest. "Hey we're hippy orcs! Please kill 5 waves of paladins with us so we can preserve our peaceful existence!"

Worst RPG ever.