Gothic Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos mod for Gothic 2

[toro]

I got this bug as well, and it seems to be present in my non-quicksave saves. Quest-progression NPCs are missing now and don't trigger, and there's no "insert sh" in the mod. Restart?

I think yes. I got fucked as well.

 

[JarlFrank]

Finished. Steam says 117 hours, but I guess it's more like 110 if we factor in the game running while I was preparing my dinner or taking a bath.

Lots of content, enjoyed it a lot. Towards the end it maybe even became a bit too much content, around halfway through chapter 5 I was ready for it to be over. Most commercially released games don't deliver that amount of content, not to mention quality. Many quests are interesting, even the errand boy shit you do in Silbach at the start is fun because it's different. How many RPGs have you sweep the floor... or put a pile of sheep shit on a guy's bed? The game keeps surprising you with interesting quests and storylines from start to finish, and there's a lot of shit to discover when you go out exploring. Some areas at the very start, like that cave with skeletons between Silbach and one of the vineyards, are tough enough that you have to return thirty hours later to be able to get through them. There's always something to come back to, which makes the world feel much bigger than it is. That's also the reason why I was losing interest halfway through chapter 5: I had already cleared out the wilderness entirely and run through most areas at least twice, so now walking from place to place was just walking, with nothing interesting between anymore. Still, the game world managed to keep me exploring for 90-100 hours and enjoying every minute of it.

Absolutely on par with Piranha Bytes' official offerings, and utterly superior to 99.9% of major commercial releases.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Y I remember killing Raven and Thorus in Gothic 1 and then they are alive in Gothic 2 expansion xD

Most players likely kill Thorus in Gothic 2 as well, then he's back in Gothic 3. The eternal gatekeeper.

 

[Cunt Dickula!?]

Y I remember killing Raven and Thorus in Gothic 1 and then they are alive in Gothic 2 expansion xD

Most players likely kill Thorus in Gothic 2 as well, then he's back in Gothic 3. The eternal gatekeeper.

Nah. Why would you do that? You don't have to.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Y I remember killing Raven and Thorus in Gothic 1 and then they are alive in Gothic 2 expansion xD

Most players likely kill Thorus in Gothic 2 as well, then he's back in Gothic 3. The eternal gatekeeper.

Nah. Why would you do that? You don't have to.

You're the Chosen of Innos, and Thorus is black.

 

[thesecret1]

Finally finished this, after 131 hours of playtime. Holy shit this was good, an honest to god Gothic game, it really was like playing Gothic 2 all over again. Excellent stuff, easily 2021 GOTY, no contest.

Loved the world design and quests – absolutely on par with Piranha Bytes, maybe even better. Especially loved that a lot of the time, if you did a quest, you actually saw its effects in the world with shit spawning, NPCs repositioning, etc. The map was also lovely – it's actually pretty small if you think about it, but the design and enemy placement make it feel much bigger, in true Gothic tradition. Economy was top notch – I ended the game with about 200 gold, since there was always, ALWAYS something to blow all my money on, which is an achievement that almost no RPG manages nowadays. Mad respect to the devs for achieving this. NPCs and story were par for the course for a Gothic game – both really felt like something old Piranha would write.

As for C&C, I actually disagree with the posters saying that there's little of it – there's quite a bunch of it at every step, be it while doing side quests, or even shit that later affects the ending slides. It's just rarely in your face about it – for example, you do not get some option "save your dog or let it die, your choice herpderp", instead, knowing you are going on what's probably going to be a long expedition, you can leave it with a friend (Victor) to take care of it while you're gone – boom, you just saved the dog, without it being marked as part of some quest or getting it as part of some binary dialogue option. A whole lot of the C&C in the game is in this vein. Of course, at the end, you get a long railroaded scene where you basically move in a corridor and get loads of "spare him or kill him" options, but that's more of an exception to get a proper "epic ending" rather than the general feel of the game.

I think the only real weakpoint of the game was the Vardhal dungeon – it was way too long and shitty since nothing in it endangered you at that point (good ol' Gothic endgame where you're an invincible murdermachine that laughs at some skellies and gargoyles) yet the dungeon just went on and on and on and I was feeling quite fatigued with it. Shit spawning only after you accepted the quest was a minor annoyance (clearly done to save time on "hey I already did this quest dude" kinda shit), but I never found it to be too disruptive.

Really, an excellent game overall. I'd go as far as to say it should be considered canon, and something every Gothic fan should play as part of the core series (it sure as fuck beats playing Gothic 3 or that one game that shall not be named). Piranha Bytes should hurry up and hire everyone working on this, then proceed to put them in charge while the guys who worked on Risen 3 bring them drinks and shine their shoes or something.

10/10, an absolute must play.

 

[Cunt Dickula!?]

Just finished it. Took me 70 hours. It's amazing for a free mod and should be played by everyone who likes Gothic 1/2.
Though tbh it really drags a little in Chapters 4 and 5.
This is one of those cases where less would have been more.

Spoiler

With chapter 6 and the ending it's especially frustrating how people basically ignore everything that you did for them in the story.
Ulryk doesn't care at all about you single handedly cleaning his whole mine (which should be very important to him as its his only source of income) from minecrawlers.
And that after his own men failed again and again.
He also doesn't care at all that you cleaned out his family tomb from evil cursed creatures and returned his mighty heirloom sword to him.
You killed every bad person on the whole island and did various major tasks for the most influencial people on the island (e.g. killing ALL the orcs on the island and repelling their advances).
But somehow neither Roderich nor someone in the city administration (they can't be all dead) can stop you being transported to the mine valley.

They really wanted to force that idea with Marvin being Scar which is pretty silly. You shouldnt make a background story for a character that has like 2 lines of dialogue.

 

[notpl]

Agreed, the increasing heavy-handedness of the plot in the later chapters and the quest items that don't spawn until you've triggered whatever arbitrary previous step the quest requires are probably my two biggest gripes overall. I'm not thrilled with the invincible NPCs and the cutscene deaths either but I at least accept that they might have been necessary to tell the kind of story they wanted to tell.

 

[Konjad]

Finished in 64 hours but I did not complete a lot of quests that I will probably bother with during a second playthrough in a year or two.

There's so much content, and the world is changing with the game so much it's amazing. The story's quite intereting too. When even was the last time I played something that hadn't "herpaderp evil attacks the world, save everything!" story? I don't even remember. This shit was good and had plenty of unexpected events throughout the story.

Chapters 1-4 are easily 9/10, but I guess as is the tradition, I guess they had to make last two chapters railroaded meh. Actually, one and a half of a chapter, and chapter 6 was quick as fuck, so it's just 3 hours in total or so, which I played tonight as I couldn't sleep.

But the amount of content does seem kinda overwhelming at some point - in Chapter 5 I still had probably over two dozens unfinished quests. However, with 60h closing by I started to feel the "quest fatigue" - especially since by then I completed all of the most interesting to me ones, and reached the highiest position in the guild. Unfortunately in chapter 5 I encountered plenty of quest bugs (they were not necessarily ch5 quests) so it further discouraged me from completing more of them. Stuff like

Spoiler

I went to give the potion of change to the camp, gave 3 of them away, found the guy who was changed too, so the only thing left was going to the alchemist, yet the quest failed presumably because I started the quest to attack the camp.

Or moving the goods in the dock, eventually Omar appeared to ask about the goods, someone going around, and then he said to get the rest of the goods quickly, and a sec after that dialogue he said I didn't arrive last night and had to finish it himself - quest failed.

And more.

Seems like the quests from chapters 4-6 were quite rushed, at least some of them. As far as chapter 4 I only had one quest bug at the beginning, then the game was 100% bug free until ch5 for me, and suddenly bug creep came. It was just some side quests, so no biggie though, most games released today have way more bugs anyway, and they are made by people who get paid.

Nonetheless I had a blast all until half of chapter 5, but then the end came quickly.

The best Gothic since NotR. Has the feeling and gameplay of good old Gothic 2. I'm also positively suprised by the quality of the dubbing, attention to details, improvement over original mechanics, and so on. I haven't played such a good RPG for I don't know how many years...

There was only one thing I forgot when playing tonight, and now I'm curious. At some point Kurt disappeared and I meant to look for clues for where he went. Tonight, however, I forgot about it and completed the game. Can somebody tell me what happens if you look into it?

 

[Alphons]

At some point Kurt disappeared and I meant to look for clues for where he went. Tonight, however, I forgot about it and completed the game. Can somebody tell me what happens if you look into it?

Spoiler

He got killed in the sewers. You can find his body and journal which answers some questions.

He's the reason Jorn was kidnapped- went to pawn Jorn's ring to Volker (though he didn't know anything about Ring of Water).

 

[Konjad]

This mod has 98% positive ranking on Steam, but reading the 2% negative ones is quite hilarious, here are some of the better ones:

Gothic is a methaphor for Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and the protagonist should be a hero with important task. The gameplay shouldn't be like original Gothics either. Moreover, this game is like poor free healthcare:

If someone thinks that the first Gothic (or any decent RPG really) is about simulating the experience of some low-life peasant, who is running errands and collecting crops, then I must disappoint you. The penal colony was just a metaphor of the human's mind, which penalized every negative thought and threw it away, but they did not perish, they are still hidden somewhere deep and together they have power to take control and shake the body - a whole Myrthana. But it can be also interpreted in Dostoyevsky's style about the nature of crime and human's struggle to deal with it's consequences. From the very beginning, protagonist should have an important task to do and some quirks (e.g. no name, which is also symbolic) and as a result the player is focused on the objective and is aware of the world, because he has feeling that he is taking part in something important, so remembering names and doing simple quests, served as an obstacle or challenge, is not a problem. In this game, however, there is no such thing. The story starts slow, there is no hook, no reason to take interest in the Marvin at all. Anything worth considering starts in chapter 2. Before that we are given control of an NPC without any personality, even as simple as Jungian archetype. The whole idea of "from zero to hero" or "road to glory" alone is not enough to compose meaningful protagonist. Quests do not support the narrative side of the game either, due to frustrating manner of not letting the player to ask an NPC directly about the details of the character or location, which causes players to be torn out of the gameplay flow by wondering around aimlessly, which artificially prolongs the playtime. Without a clear, high-end goal serving as a guidepost, every quest becomes merely a meaningless distraction. The moment I lost all my hope was when Marvin's uncle (such dynamic character that I don't remember his name) visited him in the city, ordered to retrieve his money from the vineyard while sitting in the tavern. And after doing that he did not share the money with the player (or gave very little). That's a common example of lazy quest design. Throughout the two chapters Marvin did not change at all. He might get better skills, equipment, he will probably save the island or be famous and the end, but he will still be an empty shell, bunch of pixels and lines of code.

It is worth to talk about number of available factions in original Gothic - 3, which has a special meaning in every religion, because it is considered a perfectly balanced, divine number. Every faction in Gothic represented separate part of human's consciousness. I am talking about Freud's id, ego and superego. For example the camp on swamps represents id - hidden, primitive, unconscious part of our psyche, which hungers for simple pleasures and hedonistic life, but also can turn into dangerous den controlled by terrible monster created by our fears. Gothic 2 also has the factions' triad, but with a little differrent approach. That's the reason these two games reacted even with the unaware, child's mind, because they took holistic, universal approach to human's nature and I absolutely admire them. Unfortunately this is something that people tend to overlook when investigating why Gothic 3, Arcania or other similar games cannot charm them like these two. And this romantic impulse to grab people's nostalgia, called Archolos, simply does not deliver it at all, by introducing only two reprinted factions from Gothic 2 to join in one place, which breaks the illusion of living, dynamic and open world.

Combat system, which I loved in original Gothic, after all this years became stiff, unresponsive and frustrating. I really hoped that it will be polished to match up the modern standard, like it was achieved with advanced cooking and alchemyy. I don't really mind the current controls mapping, but movement flow, animations, aiming and enemy toggle are not even close to being pleasurable. To sum things up, I seriously though that games were better when I was a kid and tend to idealize them, but now I understand that I was just missing the feeling from that happy, naive part of my life.

I never expected such indignation in the comments about random low-quality opinion I have committed. Reading objections really made me think about it, so I reevaluated the title properly to cut all the unnecessary hussle. Unfortunately my negative opinion still stays as it was before. And saying I cannot judge something because it's free and made with passion has as much sense as saying that I cannot tell anything bad about free samples of food in the mall, despite tasting awful or anything bad about free healthcare in my country, despite it being in extremely poor condition. When you decide to publish any product, you have to be prepared for various opinions and take responsibility of its flaws. And I don't intend to disregard the dev's hard work. I just share my honest and objective opinion to help them be better creators in the future. I will not mention the swarm of bugs, graphics, performance issues and voice acting since it would be unfair, but I will focus more the design and artistic approach instead

I'm too retarded to run the game and to read Steam store page:

Booted the game up. Went to options, and controls which was all pre-bound to keys in German for some reason (I am not German).

Tried to click the intro several times in the main menu, but that didn't do anything.

Started a new game, and got straight into the bowels of a ship and had a short conversation with some NPC, though no voice acting was to be heard. Went and spoke to the first NPC I found a few steps away, and again no voice acting sounded. I then alt+tabbed out to see if I could see the intro on youtube. Find out it's all in Polish, and even though on the store page it says "Professional voice acting" that's in Polish only. Bit misleading, but alright, I tabbed back in only to be met by a "application error", followed by a bunch of nonsense, popping up in a box which couldn't be clicked on, and I had to alt-tab to the browser window, and then wait a few seconds for the error box to disappear on its own.

I booted it up again, and it had reset my resolution settings. I then set them back to 1080p, as they had been, and tried to click the intro on the main menu again. Still didn't work, so I alt-tabbed out again, and back in again, and decided to try it one last time. It then froze the game for 5-6 seconds and forcibly quit the game with no notice.

Upon re-launching, my resolution had been reset once more. Started a new game, and I still didn't get any intro. I wanted to look into it some more, so I saved the game, and quit. Relaunched it 30 minutes later, and trying to load the same gives me another application error, and then the game quits.

At that point I was done.. I'm not sure if I'll come back to it. I'm sure the team has put in a lot of work on this mod, and it might be a good conversion, but it sure didn't leave a good first impression. I'm thinking it could have used some more time in the cooker before releasing.

Complete turd, modern games are so much better, people who say it's good are lying:

Oh come on whats with the 146% positive reviews?

Unless you have a wooden PC and used to play Gothic series when you were a kid and never played any RPG for the last 15 years maybe this title can give you a weekend of nostalgia. It is obviously made by hardcore gothic fans to hardcore gothic fans.

But as a standalone RPG in 2021 it is abysmal. Controls are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pain, combat is a simplistic clicksmashing, UI is terribad.

It is like giving a gold star 5 stars review to a worn ancient half-broken canoe saying it is a great boat for a family trip to Europe just cause you love history.

I'm too retarded to learn controls and they talk so much that I can't follow:

The reviews are seriously deceiving. RPG with 98% positive reviews? Sign me up! Loaded the game and was exposed to some of the worst ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ controls in the history of gaming. No biggie, I'll go to controls and adjust. I think the controls were written in Klingon because I can't understand ♥♥♥♥. Spoke to a few characters, it takes about 3 hours to get through one character's dialogue. Plus, the characters are bland af.

No mouse cursor in menu and no English VO so it's utter garbage:

Nah, this game not even in English, mouse cursor does not even show in menu or work.
Graphics so outdated.
Would have played if game was in English with English voice overs.
All the best for you guys who made it, but that time has passed.
Time for a new up to date Gothic with todays tech.

Anyone upvoting this is just doing it for nostalgic, loyalty to old games or friends of devs.
This game is out dated and does not even have proper english voice or a damn mouse cursor working.

ITS CRAP.

Didn't start the game, but it's in Russian and old so it's shit:

I came hoping to find another Enderal or something, Boy was I wrong.

Janky ass controls, everything is in russian or something. Cant do ♥♥♥♥ because the control descriptions arent in english, cant adjust mouse speed, super dated, game. Didnt even get off the ship.

No English VO, so it's all bad:

Gothic always has at least English voice acting. But Mod's devs desided to make silent movie from the game. And for me it is a bad half measure.
Yes, it's great that someone still do wonderfool job to rebuild Gothic. But it just didn't work for me becouse NPC's does not talk at all.
It is my honest opinion, no more, no less.

I can't just be a mage from the beginning and also fuck Polish:

I want to like this, I really do, but the balancing is just off and if you want to play a mage you are basically screwed right from the start.

Melee builds:
Walk into starter town, there is a strength trainer. There is a melee proficiency trainer right next to him. Training costs are cheap.

Ranged builds:
Walk into starter town, there is a dexterity trainer who also improves bow proficiency. Training costs are cheap.

Mage build:
Mana trainer is a ripoff. While other trainers charge 15 gold for +5 stats, this one charges 75 gold for +5 mana. Gold takes much longer to earn than previous games. Magic tiers are broken up into "circles" which you have to learn individually. Unlike previous games, there is no mage guild. There are no trainers, you have to find books. Every circle has 2-3 books which are scattered across the world in completely random places. Unless you know precisely where all the books are, you can't do magic. The first circle requires a series of quests first before you can even think of starting which gives you 1 book from a set of 2 (basically, even after all this, you still can't do magic). Ok, you found the needed books. They still need skill points, so you dump 20 points into the first circle. Now what, you can't learn spells in this game, you have to find magic runes scattered across the world as there are no merchants. Unless you know precisely where they are, you can't do magic. Ok, you found the books, you found a spell rune, you even dump 20 more points into raising mana and you go fight a mob just outside town. You dump 11 lightning bolts into him and...you are out of mana while he has 40% hp left. You can't do magic, but now you wasted so many points into a build that doesn't work that you can't pick another either. Mana doesn't regenerate and you would go through all your consumables to refill your mana bar once, even though it can't kill 1 mob. Magic also supposedly only goes up to the 4th circle so you won't have any of the strong endgame spells either.

Gothic 1 was fine, Gothic 2 was fine, Gothic 2 NotR ruined damage based magic because of damage sponges (basically stuck with ice block and summons bashing away at frozen enemies). This is worse than NotR.

Basically, magic is expensive, slow to acquire, underwhelming and you are gonna spend all your time googling where everything is placed just so you can start. This and the game has no audio so all dialogues are silent unless you want to download Polish.

Other Gothic mods are vastly better:

Buggy crappy mess. Besides, one of the most boring Gothic mods I have ever played.

For the record I played 20 hours (outside of Steam), and got into Chapter 5.

I had some laughs. Authors disabled comments on these reviews, even despite the fact some of them had quite some discussions going.

 

[Sjukob]

There was only one thing I forgot when playing tonight, and now I'm curious. At some point Kurt disappeared and I meant to look for clues for where he went. Tonight, however, I forgot about it and completed the game. Can somebody tell me what happens if you look into it?

Spoiler

 

[covr]

Soo, this the best game of decade for me and I still do not understand how it works. A couple of questions from G1 and G2 noob:

- I want to use 1H strength weapons. Do I need to put any points into dex?

- Can I use shields? What can I put into other hand when using 1H weapons? (pls skip a dick joke)

- Sometimes I hit for massive damage - I assume these are critical hits: how do I improve my chance to score crits?

- Skill weapons - why do I need to pump this skill? To have better to-hit-chance? BTW is there any to hit chance in the game?

- Where to sell golden/silver stuff? I am early chapter 2, lvl 8, still not entered the city.

- Goblins are fast and I cannot hit them, wtf. Any tips on how to kill those mothefuckers during early game? Nigga Goblins from hidden cave are especially nasty, I want to kill those porch monkeys asap.

-I've learned all the animal extraction/trophy skills from 2 hunters in Silbach village: are there any more trainers to learn extracting body parts from enemies?

 

[Konjad]

a

 

[Sjukob]

covr
Weapon proficiency = your chance to successfully hit, it also unlocks new and better animations at 30% and 60%. When you successfully hit you deal (weapon damage + your strength - enemy armor). Otherwise, you deal (weapon damage + your strength - enemy armor - 1)/10. So you should really pump your weapon proficiency before getting high strength, because it just doesn't matter if you can't land successful hits. You always deal at least 5 points of damage with every attack. Ranged weapons always deal full damage on hit, but the chance to hit with low weapon skill is very low, especially if you shoot from big distances. Magic always sucessfully hits from any range.

Melee damage scales with strength only, no matter what stat the weapon requires to be weilded. Magic staves are currently bugged and do not scale with anything. Ranged weapons scale with dexterity only. Spells do not scale with anything.

There are no shields in the game.

You can sell gold and silver ware for a premium price to the carpenter artisan in the city, but only if you become his apprentice.

Yes there are more gathering skills to be learned from hunters. They are scattered all over the island, but you can find the most importants ones near Wolf's Den and in the city.

Do not fight goblin hordes early on unless you can take out some of them before you engage in melee. If you fight 1on1 try to keep a few steps away from them, beacause the closer they are to you the higher the chance for you to whiff your attacks, it's best to hit them while they recover after an attack.

 

[covr]

Thank you Sjukob
So armor is just for a direct dmg reduction? Or does enemies have to to-hit-chance rating?

 

[Sjukob]

So armor is just for a direct dmg reduction? Or does enemies have to to-hit-chance rating?

All humanoid enemies (including skeletons, orcs and frogmen, but not zombies) follow the same combat rules as you do. But all other creatures and beasts always deal a set amount of damage per hit.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Curio skins: save or sell?

Edit: will Tonan pull guard duty and save you the 400 coins to guard the swamp weed farm?

 

[thesecret1]

Curio skins: save or sell?

Just sell them. There might rarely come up a recipe that asks for them, but you can always just buy that shit back if it comes down to it

 

[Outlander]

Well, shit.

Hey there!

I already posted it to our discord but why not here as well.

We as a mod team rarely ever do this sort of thing, but I think this warrants an exception. Plenty of you are enjoying Archolos at the moment, and, well, this might be worthy of your attention. It has come to my notice that one of the people working on the modification experienced a personal tragedy: Nikola Bieniewska-Rusak, one of the voice actresses for Archolos, lost her house due to a housefire.

I am enclosing the fundraiser link at the end of this message, and all I ask is that you consider helping out. Even just sharing the story further helps. The fundraiser page is in Polish, and if that isn't your native language, I suggest you use DeepL, it translates really well.

Fundraiser link: https://pomagam.pl/en/wojtowopozardomu

Thank you for donating or sharing the story further. Have a great day.

 

[Zariusz]

Interesting, i thought that this was just spooky sound effect but apparently its a real npc.

 

[agris]

wait - how do you make items selected in the inventory appear large and in the center of the screen?

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Just sell them. There might rarely come up a recipe that asks for them, but you can always just buy that shit back if it comes down to it

Someone in Wolf camp collects wolf skins (one of each sort), and the winter and desert varieties count as curios.

 

[Tygrende]

Some madman is doing an unarmed build using those rings that quadruple STR if you wear two of them and have no weapon equipped. Both can be gotten pretty early still in chapter 1. Looks like a a fun challenge, might try on 2nd run.

 

[Justicar]

 

[agris]

Some madman is doing an unarmed build using those rings that quadruple STR if you wear two of them and have no weapon equipped.

Level 30, chapter 2.

My people

 

[Mauman]

Some madman is doing an unarmed build using those rings that quadruple STR if you wear two of them and have no weapon equipped. Both can be gotten pretty early still in chapter 1. Looks like a a fun challenge, might try on 2nd run.

Can unarmed even crit in the gothic 1/2 engine? Even with 800+ strength I'd imagine it'd get really bad if only because of the God awful damage formula that non-crits use.

 

[Tygrende]

Some madman is doing an unarmed build using those rings that quadruple STR if you wear two of them and have no weapon equipped. Both can be gotten pretty early still in chapter 1. Looks like a a fun challenge, might try on 2nd run.

Can unarmed even crit in the gothic 1/2 engine? Even with 800+ strength I'd imagine it'd get really bad if only because of the God awful damage formula that non-crits use.

Cannot crit at all, he would be doing about 74 damage per hit. Which is the same as critting with a 35 damage weapon and 39 STR to put things in perspective. Basically you would be doing low level crits all the time. But you also save tons of LPs on not having to bother with weapon skill and crafting weapons which you can invest in STR.