First time with Gothic 3

I thought that the combat in G3 was appropriate - you had light attacks, charging/thrust attacks which gives strategic edge when used properly, and each weapon had their own range (short swords, halberds .. etc.) and animation. Archary was satisfying but could be improved, and required a lot of skill to get better.

I think that this type of combat was appropriate for G3 because of the significantly large size of the world - if the combat was the same as in G1, G2 or Risen 1, then each battle will last much longer and make the already long game a much more furstrating experience.

Besides, is the melee combat in Oblivion (released over same time period as G3 and with a similar scale of the world size) better than G3? I don't think so.

Originally Posted by SpoonFULL
I thought that the combat in G3 was appropriate - you had light attacks, charging/thrust attacks which gives strategic edge when used properly, and each weapon had their own range (short swords, halberds .. etc.) and animation. Archary was satisfying but could be improved, and required a lot of skill to get better.

I think that this type of combat was appropriate for G3 because of the significantly large size of the world - if the combat was the same as in G1, G2 or Risen 1, then each battle will last much longer and make the already long game a much more furstrating experience.

Besides, is the melee combat in Oblivion (released over same time period as G3 and with a similar scale of the world size) better than G3? I don't think so.

Problem with G3 combat was that it was highly exploitable, and you could easily win all arena combats using the same two moves or whatever.

Beyond that, the infamous stunlock animals were a major obstacle to enjoyment for melee oriented characters.

The game had good ideas - and the combat had potential, but it was never fixed and pretty far from what I would call a good system.

To each his own, though.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Problem with G3 combat was that it was highly exploitable, and you could easily win all arena combats using the same two moves or whatever.

Beyond that, the infamous stunlock animals were a major obstacle to enjoyment for melee oriented characters.

The game had good ideas - and the combat had potential, but it was never fixed and pretty far from what I would call a good system.

To each his own, though.

Indeed it is not the best, and can be exploited but I thought it was 'fitting' for the scale of the game. Going by how slow you can level up in G3, it is probably critical to win arena fights at least at the beginning of the game. But that does not last as you need higher melee skills to use stronger weapons to make more damage to manage the difficult foes later on in the game.

As for animals, I tend to move to lower ground so that I can wack them.

I think one improvement they could have made easily to G3, without changing the combat system significantly, would be to emphasis the impact of weapons more - that's it. A nice example is Two Worlds where the combat system is simplistic but the weapon impact added a significant dimension.

I've finished the game 4 or 5 times (=more than it deserves) and I can't say that stunlocking by all living and dead things ever stopped being an issue. Granted, nothing as bad as the wildboars in the vanilla, but you'd always have cases of enemies occasionally getting 5 or 6 hits that would seriously drain your health force.