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Classic RPG

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As noted by my colleagues, with the patches, (I'm using 1.5) Gothic 3 is a great CRPG, in the classic 3rd party tradition. This third installment is a must for those who have enjoyed the earlier versions.

Ships with bugs, but patches fix problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: January 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

After giving this game a few weeks' playing time, I realized that my original review was written too hastily. Gothic 3 is one of the most immersive, lifelike games I have ever played - and yes, I own Oblivion, which does not measure up.

TECHNICAL
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First of all, the customer reviews are right: this game ships with buggy code. But the latest patch (1.8 at time of writing) fixes the vast majority of these problems. Once you buy the game, make sure to download the latest patch, and you should be fine. After installing the patches, I stopped experiencing the problems described by the other reviewers.

Other reviewers have claimed that this game requires the latest and greatest hardware. This is also untrue. You can tweak the settings to turn off the ugly post-processing effects (bloom/depth of field) and lower the resolution to 800x600, and things should run very smoothly. The game still looks great at this resolution, and, in my opinion, very little is lost by disabling bloom or depth of field. Disabling post-processing may create an annoying white flicker if you have an older system, but there is a fix for this that can easily be found by googling "gothic 3 white flicker".

GAMEPLAY
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Gothic 3 is, for the most part, fun. The gameplay is still open-ended and innovative, but there are some downsides to it as well. The game's biggest shortcoming is a premature release: another month or so in development would have fixed the bugs that now have to be patched by the end user.

***CONS***
I was a bit disappointed that the dialogue system has been "dumbed down". In Gothic 1 and 2, talking to anyone would bring up a dialogue window; now some NPCs ignore you by saying "I'll talk to you later" or something similar. This decreases believability to me.

The combat system has been simplified as well, and this is something that I bemoan with the other reviewers. Gothic 1 and 2 had a refreshingly different combat system from most RPGs. Gothic 3 has replaced it with what is essentially point-and-click. You win or lose based on your attributes.

***PROS***
The world is larger and more detailed than any other Gothic game to date. All of the villages, forests, and cities I've visited are rendered in stunning detail. A complaint I've often heard of Oblivion is that buildings are uninteresting places. Not so in Gothic 3! And forests are teeming with plant and animal life. The level designers really did a fantastic job. Whether or not you disable post-processing, as discussed above, make sure to keep at least near detail on high, as low detail bypasses rendering a lot of the foliage.

In my original review, I wrote that Kai Rosenkranz's music was too melodic to be enjoyable; I assumed I would soon tire of it. Familiary, however, does not breed contempt in Rosenkranz's case. After traveling to many locales and hearing Rosenkranz's themes and variations repeated over a few weeks' time, I realized that his music suits the game perfectly. It is not, as I first asserted, too melodic. Melodies are ethereal - often left unfinished and extensible - and the music fits the genre perfectly. My only gripe is that the fight music is always the same.

Gameplay is addictive. When comparing to previous versions of Gothic, there is nothing particularly innovative that sets this game apart; but standing alone, or when compared to the other RPGs on the market today, Gothic 3 is a great choice. It's not my all-time favorite game - and Gothic 2 may have had better gameplay - but it is a great game nonetheless.

I want my time back.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: September 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Gothic 3 is good visually, and has some good storylines. The close combat system is horrible -- if you do play, stick to ranged combat and/or magic. Some of the advancement is useless: I spent a lot of effort building my "smithing" ability, but I was never able to use it to any advantage. Some major abilities don't even work. My "two-sword-hero" character concept was DOA because the game requires you to be evil to advance in the primary abilities. In fact, "hero" is nearly out of the question, because the character must perform evil acts to complete even the "good-guy" story. The game has too many bugs to even begin to list them. In two places the story can be broken by the game engine deleting characters or items that you absolutely must have to complete the game. (I found two and I only played once!)
I'm a candidate for sensitivity training, and I was still insulted by the portrayal of women in this game. The only female actors that I encountered were pleasure slaves. I really thought we were past that years ago.
I feel obligated to give it two stars because I did play it through once before uninstalling it. I highly recommend skipping this one.

Not Worthy of the Name "Gothic"

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: February 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Gothic 1 and 2 -- for those who has the skill and patient to finish the games -- totally redefined the RPG experience, and are simply awsome beyond word.

Gothic 3 shares some of the earlier elements of its predecessors, most notable is a mysterious and nameless quality of immersion factor that keep you hooked despite the horrendous bugs. However, the Gothic 3's bugs are unforgivable (and apparently unfixable - unless someone rewrites the entire programming codes!)

If you read the other reviews -- and please do -- you already have a good ideas of what's wrong with this game, so I'll just elaborate on a few major negative points, that is, no matter what you do -- patches, .ini fix ... whatever -- you'll still have these problems to some degree:

1) Stun-lock: Some animal will strike you so fast that you cannot do anything, including running away. The patches tried like hell to fix this problem, but simply fail. The weird thing is that this problem look like it's sytem specific. eg. I have problem with wolves and jackals, while my friend - and most other people - have problems with the boars.

2) Uneven enemies levels: Animal are too hard to kill, while humanoid (anything walking on two legs except for trolls) are too easy. Humanoid enemies can easily be stunlocked by you. That is, button mashing will kill virtually anybody, bosses included. I wiped out an entire town on level 3 (very hard but certainly do-able). You got to try it to believe it. On the same token, it's both hilarious and depressing (because you just know the game you tried hard to love is broken beyond repair) to see a squad of elite orc warriors getting trashed by a single boar.

3) False innovation: Unlike what the game claims, and some people would like to believe, you cannot do whatever you want in Gothic 3. Yes, there are great freedom, but there are unintended consequences. (POSSIBLE SPOILER)For example, if you decided to be a hard core rebel bending on eliminating the orc from the beginning of the game, and destroy more than 3 orc towns, one of the main quest-related characters will just attack you and fight to the death. Thus rendering the main quest broken. The developer have admitted to this screw-up, but there is no fix for it. (END SPOILER).

4) Unrealistic game world: Granted, most of the environment are detailed and beautiful, but a few things are horrible (these may be pet peeves - but please hear me out). First, most NPC's don't really talk to you; you hear a respond and sometimes a hand gesture, but there is no dialog box, and neither are the NPC's lips are moving, nor is he/she looking at you.
Secondly, talking about "she," there are not enough women in the game world to make me believe that this world is real and alive. This is suppose to be a continent, not a military base camp or a prison colony. There a more women on the island of Khorinis (Gothic 2), and probably in the original prison colony (Gothic 1), than the entire continent of Gothic 3.

In conclusion, Gothic 3 is not a bad game, but it is far from being a good one. As a result, Pyranha Bytes, the game developer, is history. What that means is that -- most likely -- there will be no more official patch for this game (ver 1.12 is the last official patch) beside home made ones from the ever faithful Gothic community (I am in it).

In the inevitable comparison to Oblivion (I played both), Gothic 3 seems to be more fun in most aspects. On the other hand, Oblivion is so far ahead in being a polished, sophisticated, and well thought-out game that it makes Gothic 3 looks shameful. If you must know, Gothic 2 is still the king of the hill of RPG in my book.

In spite of my bashing, I thoroughly enjoyed Gothic 3 as a great free roaming adventure game with some RPG elements thrown in for good measure. At the current price of $17.99 (as of 9/7/07), Gothic 3 is a great deal.

More intelligent than previous Gothics

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

That means there's bound to be a swarm of people who think it's not as good. It's true, the combat isn't as good, but I'll say a few words about the story first, which some accuse was not found in the game.

In previous Gothics, you defeated the Evil with the help of Xardas in the island colony of Khorinis. Now you travel to the mainland only to find that during your boat or ship vacation the paladins lost the war against the orcs there, because something took away the magic from their runes. Some rebel whose town you just helped liberate accuses Xardas, and you determine to find him to find out what's what. You travel to cities through what ever routes you choose, to gather information about Xardas' location. Travelling is perhaps the most enjoyable part of the game, it's like a highly advanced open-ended version of Super Mario or platformer, with beautiful scenery and music. When you find out where Xardas went, you can change scenery, that is leave the current area and arrive in a new one, and start asking around for more specific coordinates. Finding him in his new tower or possibly old but mobile tower, you realize he was waiting for you, why of course. He admits that he was the one who made the paladins lose their divine powers, and that he's now the ruler of the orcs. He explains that this has made the power of Beliar, the Evil god, difficult to resist, but that there is nevertheless something that can be done. If you want to trust him, you'll go help the orcs in their search for the five divine artifacts of Adanos, the neutral god, whose power the orcs wish to use against the Hashishin, a desert people who also worship Beliar and who are becoming too powerful for the orcs. The Hashishin control the desert, while the orcs control the middle lands and the north.

Let's say you trust Xardas, as I did. When you find the artifacts, and bring them to Xardas, he tells you that they must be destroyed if the eternal war between Innos, the Good god, and Beliar, the Evil one, is to be put to an end. Xardas's argument is that only with all the divine artifacts and powers stripped from the humans and the orcs, will there ever be a possibility of lasting peace. Siding with either Innos or Beliar would only lead to a thousand year tyranny of one over the other, and after this forced peace, the war would eventually begin anew. The same would recur, forever and ever, until something was done to get out of this vicious cycle of taking turns being the oppressed/oppressor.

If you aren't a Viking and eternal battle ain't your thing, you choose to destroy the artifacts, and take into custody the two divine artifacts still remaining in Myrtana, the staffs of the black mage Zuben and the Paladin King Rhobar, both of whom you incidentally have to kill while you're at it (they are the earthly hands of Beliar and Innos, so you just have to remove them from earth as well).

Now Xardas is the only being with some divinity left in him (remember the end of Gothic 2?), so he'll have to go as well. Instead of killing him, you escort him to a gate which opens up to an unknown land, and you leave the world with him. In other words, Xardas gives up his unique power in order to save mankind from eternal condemnation to recurring war. Xardas's dream is that the orcs and humans will, perhaps, be able to leave peacefully in a multicultural post-divine civilization. Sort of what's happening here in the real world at the moment.

What makes this story line seem good, is the subtle, economic way it's told, without the usual hand-holding and guiding the player each step of the way. Instead, you have to actually think (gasp!) a little (oh) about what's going on in the game world, and what everyone says there, and make your own decisions.

What I would like to see in Gothic 4, is how the attempts at peaceful co-existence between the humans and the orcs will fail and end in rivers of blood and terrible calamity, and how the hero must come back from the unknown land to put up a new order of magic paladins and to take responsibility for his misguided social engineering in Gothic 3. There is no end to struggle in this world, but there are two ways: up and down.

The combat is now, as of version 1.6 (which is official by the way), pretty well balanced. What makes it inferior to the system in Gothic 1 & 2 is that you don't have to time your clicks to produce the attack moves and you don't have to time your attacks to survive. You mostly just click indiscriminately. Some sort of little strategy and timing is still useful in some cases, so the combat doesn't become completely tedious, and can in fact be exciting at times.

The performance is somewhat hiccupy in some, rather many, places and not really in others, regardless of settings and machine power, it seems. It's not that terrible. You'll get used to it. The graphics are really nice if you have a good machine (I also changed the draw distances for undergrowth and creatures to 6000 in the ge3.ini).

Probably a five star game when you consider the competition.

Massive Game, Massive Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: March 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is a lot better than most folks think. I would have rated this a 4 overall but too many folks didn't give the game a chance. The game does slow a bit when you have been on it for a couple of hours. Just turn it off and re-load your game. Other than that, I haven't seen all of the bugs people complain about and my system is old (1.9 gHz, Athlon 64, 1 meg RAM with a Radeon 800 GTO). You do have to be patient with the game. Gothic 3 is so immense, it takes a long time to develop your character, get the best weapons and armor, etc. But that is exactly what I want in a game! I have now played this game two solid months without getting bored. My character can still die around the next corner even at level 53! This game does take skill and you have to approach each situation different. I love it. Compared to Gothic 2 Gold, Morrowind, and Oblivion, it does lack a little but those are the best 3 role playing games ever developed. Give it a break folks. Have some fun with Gothic 3.

The long wait was worth it...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: January 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Piranha Bytes pushed the release of Gothic 3 back a number of times, but the game was worth the waiting. The game builds on and surpasses all the great features of its predecessor. It has huge outdoor areas for exploration. The story line is not fixed, but the player can choose which areas to explore in what order and the character can be developed incrementally without any artifical choices between character classes and the like. Many quests can be solved in different ways, with force, magic, stealth, or in other quest-specific ways. It's a lot of fun to play.

Gothic 3 has been criticized for being too demanding on graphics and for being buggy. In my opinion much of this critique has been unjustified or been too harsh. Gothic 3 features impressive graphics and whoever wants to play it at its maximum settings, should better have a cutting edge graphics card. However, with medium settings it plays well on hardware that's geared towards 3D gaming, but is far from high-end - e.g., I played it on a laptop with an ATI X700 chipset. The game has the occasional bug (which is why I gave it overall 4 and not 5 stars). However, this doesn't detract much from the gaming experience. Just make sure to save regularly, and I found it is beneficial to restart the game after 2-3 hours of play as it tends to run out of memory if run for too long at a time.

Overall, Gothic 3 is definitely worth the money and brings many hours of gaming fun. With at least three different endings and many other choices, it also has lots of replay value.

Gothic 3

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: January 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

AWESOME!!!!! There are minimal bugs with the right system. Graphics are great and the music is symphony sweet. It would be hard to top Gothic 1 and 2 (+ Night of the Raven), but this edition at least equals them and the differences are refreshing and challenging. I will play this game for a long time, many times.

Micro Soft Crimes

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: March 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I ordered this game because I really enjoyed Gothic 2 and found that I did not have all the video card requirments to play it so I sold it. I am so angry with Micro Soft for attempting to rob the market with expensive video card gimmicks to up their product sales. I have a really good mind to upgrade to a Mac who has better graphics and is much easier to use.

very fun to play, but definitely has bugs

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First of all, all I can say is that, overall, it is a very strong RPG and I spent countless hours playing it. So, if you are into good quality 3rd-person RPG, then Gothic 3 should be one of your choices.

HOWEVER, this game is not entirelly polished yet and it is a shame that developers began selling this game without fully fixing most of the bugs. To their defense, they did come up with a few patches which solve MAJORITY of the problems. The game (fully patched) runs rather smooth and without any problems; however, it is obvious that there are still bugs that cause the game to crash to desktop after hours and hours of play.

So, I'd give it 5 star for fun rating and 4 stars overall. Quite possibly, an additional patch will fix this game for good, but it is already too late, imho. A lot of whiny teenagers already made up their minds.

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