Just got Gothic 3...

[Hurlshort]

I played the demo and I was actually pretty impressed. I liked the art style, and the controls are way more intuitive than Gothic 2. I might ask for it for Christmas, but I'll have to check and make sure it's thoroughly patched before then. Then demo was bug free, from what I could see. Also, the cut scenes were pretty phenomenal.

[mkreku]

I'm still waiting for the next patch, and I bought it via pre-order. I'm beginning to suspect that all the patches in the world won't make Gothic 3 into the Gothic I want.

[Slowtrain]

Its a shame really. I was expecting G3 to have shot at being the best crpg in a long while.

 

Ah well, it just goes to show expectations are worthless. Every game is brilliant right up until the day it is actually released. :/

[Hell Kitty]

Random thoughts after spending many hours in the game:

 

My first thought on leaving the starting village was that the blurred background effect was that I was on a stage and it was a large painting. I turned it off but that looked crap, so I turned it back on and got used to it and now I quite like it. Except when on the coast, as the blur doesn't gradually fade it and looks completely stupid.

 

Exploration is great. The world is much more unique compared to Oblivion.

 

Sadly I've never found any interesting weapons when exploring, as they either need to be bought or created yourself (that part is good at least). Armour can only be bought, and only when that faction trusts you. And speaking of armour, what the hell is with the huge shoulder armour fetish?

 

It's a good thing you don't have any limits on your inventory, because you're going to want to pick up everything that isn't nailed down, thanks to the constant flow of "Go get me x amount of y" quests. Which are crap, by the way.

 

Far too often you don't agree to do quests, you just get them added to your list during a conversation. Sometime people don't even ask you to do anything, they'll just mention something and it'll become a quest. Like "I've lost my mojo", and then you have "Find Bob's lost mojo" added to your list. There are no journal entries, you just get a snippet of the conversation, and for quest like this you have no indication of what the next step it supposed to be. I hate having unfinished quests in my list.

 

A real example of the above is when I found out some guys dirty secret, I got a quest to tell the Orcs about it, and it didn't make much sense because I'm totally a mad orc killing rebel helper guy. Anyway, I go to every orc in town, and none has a dialogue option to tell on the filthy secret keeper. I found out who I had to tell later when I killed him during a liberation and failed the quest. Whatever. My main motivation for liberating towns is removing crappy quests from my list.

 

I've explored most of forest land, a whole heap of Nordmar, and my character was roaming around desert world and then I just kinda lost interest and don't really see myself going back to it.

 

There are so few females in the land that the few who exist must see as much action as that girl smurf.

[Tigranes]

Heh, I know what you mean. My game is hanging in

Trelis

now after just having done most of the quests in

Montana

, and I still have the quest to "Destroy the Rebel Camp". Actually, I went adn visited it, then came back and liberated

Cape Dun

, so..

 

Is Nordmar and dsert any different in game play than the forest place, or is it still visit each city for some different quests and different ways to liberate?

[Slowtrain]

My main motivation for liberating towns is removing crappy quests from my list.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Awesome.

 

 

*Adds Hell Kitty's mojo to list*

[Hell Kitty]

Is Nordmar and dsert any different in game play than the forest place, or is it still visit each city for some different quests and different ways to liberate?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Towns in those places don't need to be liberated as the Orcs aren't in control, though there are many orc camps throughout Nordmar and wiping out each camp earns you a quest completed.

 

I find Nordmar much easier to get lost in as it looks very samey, and the vision obscuring storms don't help. The desert area (Varant), the little I've explored at least, is full of wide open spaces and as such it's easier to spot interesting things.

[Zagor]

My final review of Gothic 3 (after the second patch)

I couldn't finish the game, because of boredom.

 

Good graphics and sound doesn't help, the game is boring. It's the first game I have bought and not finished. It was when (SPOILER) I got a quest to retrieve some artefacts to Xardas when I gave up, because I had no idea where to look for them.

And the gameworld is huge.... I got a hint from Xardas to talk to someone in one of the towns, but when I got there I realised I had liberated the town earlier and probably killed the person I was supposed to talk to. He was nowhere to be found anyway...

 

Other problems are all the bugs. Unfinishable quests, people dropping through the ground, stunlock, bad AI...

 

It's no fun to spend two hours finishing a quest, revisit the questgiver, and realise that you can't tell him you have finished his quest. No reward and no experience...

 

After about 30 hours of playing, this is my final verdict:

 

Graphics: 80%

Sound: 80%

Gameplay: 65%

Too difficult: -20%

Bugs, bugs, bugs and bugs: -80%

Frustrating: -30%

 

Total: 65%

Edited November 23, 2006 by Zagor

[mkreku]

Surprisingly kind review of Gothic 3 from Gamespot:

 

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/gothic3/review.html

 

7.6/10 is not too shabby of a game buggy enough to challenge even the mighty Daggerfall for the Throne of the Bug Kingdom!

[Volourn]

Gothic 3 is the best Gothic/ES style game ever. I have played for about 15 hours thus far. I am enjoying myself for the most part. however, it has TONS of problems that aren't neccessarily bugs; but simply poor design. I could see very easily how it is getting poor reviews despite enjoying my play through. *shrug*

[mkreku]

I found this on the official Gothic board. The bolded part was bolded by me.

 

You have lost me- are you talking about improving the performance of Gothic 3 or your computer??

If you are talking about Gothic 3-- then go into your Gothic Folder and get your INI file and change the Cache sizes on Image, Materal, Mesh, Animation and Speed Tree, change the prefetch to 3. There are more but those will help performance a heck of a lot, gave me an additional 10 fps on the average.

 

My lowly little rig---its a --sniffel--Dell (hide my head in shame). But I have an excuse-- my hands shake and my arthritis is really bad and so this is my first premade in years. I normally build my own but due to my age and my arthritis, I felt it best to buy 1 premade. I did add a X1800xt graphics card and 3 GB of memory plus a new power supply.

 

remember -- I was born in 1925

At least Gothic 3 has the coolest fans! He is 81 years old!!

[Darque]

Wow, that is impressive.

[Dark_Raven]

The old guy will have a problem if the action in the game is too quick for him. This isn't chess.

[Volourn]

Meh. Gothic is very near being crapcanned by me.

 

Word of warning: If you played the demo, and then bought the game thinking it was cool to use your demo saves which was allowed; DON'T. Or else, you will eventually see major game ending crashes bugs thata re unavoidable.

 

I had to reinstall the game even though I had reached level 17, and was going well.

 

I'm not even sure if I'll end up bothering to finish the game. Hoepfully, I can get back into the flow of things.

 

Hmph...

[Slowtrain]

I just saw 20 copies or so of Gothic 3 in the game store yesterday. Walked right by them without stopping. Sad.

 

 

And I remember just some months ago I was thinking Gothic 3 could be crpg of the year.

 

 

The bargain bin awaits. Cause that's where all those 20 copies are going to end up.

[Girias_Solo]

Just finished the game using the 1.09 patch.

 

All up, it was actually the best game I have played for a few years at least. The lack of dialogue and interaction with the old buddies was a let down, and the combat system was not as good as 1 and 2, but it still has the Gothic feeling, along with some really great exploration and choices to be made.

 

Its not an easy game, kind of. I guess it could be classified as hard for todays gamers, but it was fairly easy for me, mostly. The storyline was pretty good, though the AI, especially the humanoids need some serious work. Seeing a Hunter brag about his ability, then watching him get owned by one wolf was amusing the first time. Apparently PB is working on this aspect in the next super patch.

 

I am not here to make anyone else enjoy the game, Just saying that to me its a winner. If only the characters had some more dialogue. I guess this is one of those infernal choices of the new computer age. Have a Giant game with less dialogue or a smaller, tighter game like G2 with more individual dialogue, but less people to talk to. This has only been a problem since voice acting became mandatory in games, but Gothic has always had this so, thats the way it goes.

 

So there you go. Best game to me since Gothic 2, Vampire Bloodlines and Arcanum graced my PC.

[Morgoth]

All I need now to throw myself into the journey is another gig RAM (should arrive tomorrow) and that friggin' 1.10 patch that should fix the ambient sound bug.

Then we'll see. Right now it's pretty unplayable on my comp.

[mkreku]

I am also still eagerly awaiting the 1.10 patch. I'm hoping it's such a gigantic patch it'll be called 2.0 instead, but that's not really likely. Just fix as much as they can so the game is playable for an old Gothic fan like me and I'll be happy.

 

It's incredibly frustrating not being able to play a game I've been looking forward to for so long. I'm guessing I'll be taking my first few, virgin steps on the mainland of Myrtana in time for Christmas. About time too.

[Volourn]

Well.. I'm slowly getting back into things. I'm now level 5, and finishing up questrs for Reddock before heading to Cape Dun. Hopefully, the game doens't get retarded again. I hate having to redo things with the same character. I want to get to a part of the game I ahdn't done so I stop with the deja vu. If all goes well, the game might get pushed ahead of both NWNs!!!

[Morgoth]

It seems like a new Gothic3 Patch (v1.12) was just released!

 

http://download.piranha-bytes.com/gothic3/...c3_patch112.exe

[Spider]

The only changelog I could find:

 

* Fixed ambient sound bug

* Sound occlusion improved

* Several physics and character movement bugs fixed

* Inventory exploit fixed

* Camera behaviour improved

 

I hope that's not all it fixes...

[Morgoth]

What's wrong? 5 things got fixed, 2829103054 remain. That's still progression, so you should show some gratitude at least... Tsk tsk.

[Spider]

Oh yes, much gratitude.

 

Truth be told I don't even know if I'll be able to muster enough interest to get back into Gothic 3. Uninstalled it when NWN2 arrived since I didn't mind waiting for a patch to ramp up performance a little anyway. But if such a patch doesn't arrive I'm not sure I'll re-install. It's a good enough game, but it runs like crap on my system. I don't really care about most of the bugs either, but if I could play it on medium textures instead of low, it'd probably be enough.

 

Mostly though, it felt like this patch took quite long to get out there and it just doesn't really fix anything noteworthy. Wonder what took them so long. Compare this to what the NWN2 1.03 patch fixed and what the 1.04 will fix and it seems a bit miniscule.

[Morgoth]

Seriously, forget it. G3 is a hopeless case. Even not the fastest loading algorithm would make it faster. The Piranhas already admitted that they f**** up the production pipeline. Making that game running at adequate framerates would require probabyl 6 months or more time to rewrite large parts of the engine, and I don't think this is ever going to happen. I myself sold my copy already at Ebay for 30

[Volourn]

Gothic 3 is very buggy. No doubt about it. I can't argue with that at all. However, despite that and some other issues I have with it, it's a pretty decent game. It's about equal to both NWN series' OCs, and in many ways better and in some ways worse.

 

G3 wa sgood enough that it made me want to give G2 a second chance, and I just went out and rebought the game. yeah, probably a waste of my $20; but oh well. *shrugs*