Gothic 3 - Review @ RPG Codex

Love you VaultDweller.
Love you too, sunshine.

Wulf said:
Yet, as an rpg player portraying to others the game details for demonstative purposes, as to why the player has travelled from town to town with a greyed-out endurance bar indicating nameless's afliction/illness that does not get corrected seems somehow ignorant and out-of-place as far as quality reviews are concerned.
Honestly? I didn't even notice. So what? Does it suddenly cast doubt on anything I've said about the game in my review? I hope not.

This, coupled with leaving out details of the magic system overview and and failure to emphasise the freedom not to join a faction path...
From the review: "Nothing is forced on you, nothing is mandatory - NOTHING AT ALL - so everything is in your hands and up to you. " As you can see, it's clearly emphasized in nice capital letters. Agree about the magic system though.
 
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I disagree about the magic system. Is a review only good if the reviewer played every type of character?

Should he have started a new magic user character and threw a couple spells before reviewing? What if the experience of playing a mage changes drastically 3/4ths down the line?

Saying a character type system must be included in a review would be like saying a reviewer of Kotor has to play through at least twice to get a heads up on the good side and light side. This is unnedded. An acurate review can be given with one play through with one character, unless that reviews knocks a system they didn't try or says the game has no replayability when it does.

What if he played through as a mage and wasn't able to give as much info from a melee perspective. Also, he obviously made a faction siding decision. So he missed out on other content that wasn't needed to review the game.

I played a good chunk into G2 and never made one potion. Would a review by me of the game be incomplete without adding anything in about it. It would be stupid if I said the alchemy system in G2 sucks when i didn't try it.

I'm just happy that rpgwatch (based on dot reviews) and rpgcodex reviews at least requires the reviewer to play the game enough to know enough about it to write a solid review based on solid experience with the game, unlike the trend of most reviews where it is abvious the reviewer didn't get very far into the game.
 
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Sorry, roqua, but we were not suggesting that VD should have played as a mage before writing his review, just that he should have written something about the magic system employed in the game so that people who enjoy playing mages, such as myself, would have some idea what to expect!!
 
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I understand. And I remember you love mages, but let me ask you this. What would you be looking for in any game review minimum? A brief description of the magic system? A critique of it? What sets the magic system apart from, say, ranged combat or fighting with a spear instead of a mace? Afterall, in the Gothics, and most games, the magic system is just a different way of causing damage and relates almost exclusivley to combat.

And in games where it provides utility, it provides it as an alternative to another way to accomplish something. Pick the lock or cast open lock? Same result.

A create example would be the Quest for Glory series. In part one (Heroe's Quest at the time) you could climb up and get the object, throw a rock and knock it down, or cast a spell that would retrieve it. Basically three ways for the three classes.

And what if a reviewer is like me, who never plays a mage in a single character game. I could hardly give a well formulated opinion since any experience playing a mage is not fun, so I couldn't say, "playing a mage is fun and the magic system is great compared to {another game}. But if there has to be an obligatory stement on the magic system, does tehre also have to be one on ranged combat?

While we are on the subject, lets say it was a review of Fallout or another game where diplomacy is a viable alternative to combat. Would the review have to go into great detail on this, or just mention that the game provides diplomacy as an option to avoid combat or solve quests without bloodshed. Doesn't sneaking and thievery skills also accomplish this in most situations?

Another question I have would be isn't magic use in almsot any game with magic use standard fair for the most part, only needing a mention when it deviates from the norm, such as bloodlines or arx fatalis (and both of the magic systems in those games really are standard fair, just in one every character uses "magic" in a limited way, and in the other you make pictures to use magic.

To be fair, I guess the same could be said for melee combat. I guess G1 and G2 had notably different melee combat than the norm, but almost every game's combat could be summerized just by naming the type of combat it is. Its TB, its RT, its RT w/ P, its Twitch. But that isn't true for Tb or twitch since G1/2 made a different kind of twitch, and TB can use action points (FO), or set amount of actions (D & D), have a lot of options (ToEE) or very few (most other TB games).

Well, I'm kind of getting off course, but the first 3/4ths of this post made sense.
 
You make some valid points, and I would likely answer YES to most of your questions. However, as the way magic operates in G3 is different from the way it did in the previous games, then I feel some aspect of this should be mentioned!!
 
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My question wasn't so much aimed at this review, as reviews in general. Or the review precess. Reviews are kind of a hot topic lately, and I think this this is a good time to get some long standing questions I've had addresses maybe, especially since a lot of people in this post write reviews.

And your reply brings up another question. A lot of reviewers who are reviewing this game in particular never played G1 or G2, so they wouldn't be able to compare and contrast the differences in the magic system of G3.
 
However, my one major criticism would be that he failed to mention the magic system, which to me is always important!!

I heard that the mage is far too powerful in Gothic 3.
 
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Only later in the game, and only if you have mana regeneration.
 
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Mana regen is VERY powerful, but it does take some time to acquire it!!
Roqua, I get annoyed about people reviewing G3 who haven't played the earlier games, but I can understand why/how this happens!!
 
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Then again, a sequel should be good enough on it's own without having to have previous knowledge of the series and whatnot. Though I agree it's good to be acquainted with the earlier games, it shouldn't be a necessity.
 
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The Gothic-3 magic system deserves a full long page or even a chapter of it's own, yet because of the main inabillity of many players to grasp the full depth of it early on (and i don't mean the agressive part of it as in combat) but the implications to the storyline of changes made through magic, transposing, summoning, and especially "quest completion by magic only" (which is implied in the hinted suggestive storyline) - - then in retrospect it would take a brave man to even atempt a full evaluation as parts of it lean to subjective/differing gameplay theory, he would have to know the magic system inside-out.

This of course is no reason why a general outline at least of the magic system couldn't be offered in full comprehensive style game reviews - in mini reviews it wouldn't matter.
 
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The omission of the magic system in almost all reviews is the publishers´ fault. Publishers should make it a habit to supply reviewers with an additional CD with savegames. G3 is way too long to play more than once for review purposes. The game´s structure favours melee combat early on.
 
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