What is wrong with Gothic 3?

[Nerve Gas]

OK, this is for real.
What's wrong with Gothic 3, actually? I've played it for a little while, but it seems pretty awesome. Needless to say, the quest system is incredible, and has great RP value. The combat, while not really that good, is quite fun, and tense sometimes, since a wrong move can make it much harder. The loading times are a positive factor, in some ways, since they encourage playing along with whatever happens, rather than just reloading if you miss and waste a scroll, or if a container has poor loot.
So why the hell is the game constantly bashed, both by the press and Gothic fans? I've seen the latter complain about lack of chapters - in other words "Waaah, the game is too non-linear, why don't I have clear objectives like the first games?"
And BTW - has any game ever had such a complex faction system? Besides, maybe, Daggerfall.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I like the game myself, but it's certainly very flawed.

 

[Mayday]

No matter who you fight, every combat looks exactly the same: lock, hit, stun, clickclickclickclick win!

 

[Slaytanic]

Well, when it was first released, it did have alot of bugs, graphics wise but also gameplay. Also even if you had more then the recommended sys specs there was a pretty big chance the game would run like shit regardless of your video options.
Also, after slaughtering a party of orcs, and 2 minutes after getting butt fuck locked by some boar in the woods who took like 1 minute to kill me, while you couldn't control jack shit, didn't really help with the overall popularity of the game.

Anyways, alot of people dumped it because it was buggy, couldn't get it to run, had alot of crashes with it or maybe it just ran in slow motion regardless of what system they had. For example, while I can run recently released shooters like Bioshock and other bloomy pieces of crap properly I still can't get Gothic 3 to run smooth on my machine, even with all settings on low. I think that's prolly one of the main reasons so many people were dissapointed with it.

The game itself had/has alot of great things going on for it, specially if they patched it up properly, which I doubt they ever managed. Still had alot of other shortcomings I guess.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

On paper, the game's amazing. When it comes down to it, though, the game suffers from an unbalanced combat system, tons of bugs, and unoptimized, laggy graphics.

 

[Raapys]

Yah, in short, it's basically just the bugs, performance and combat system that is 'wrong' with the game.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Gothic 3 is a great game. Unfortunately it does feel unfinished.... especially when it comes down to performance. As others in this thread have said, it's very very poorly optimised, very laggy. Even on 'uber' modern systems it stalls frequently and there's still a crashing problem.

 

[Trash]

Well, the bugs and the unoptimised engine killed it for a lot of people. Nowadays most gameplay bugs are squashed, but the unoptimised engine and the crap combat remain. Still, I loved the game for what it almost is, and still hope we'll get a real patch one day.

 

[Nerve Gas]

If you can't swallow some bugs you're a pussy. Who gives a fuck unless they're game-breaking?

 

[Trash]

You had one serious reply today. Be happy with it.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

If you can't swallow some bugs you're a pussy. Who gives a fuck unless they're game-breaking?

You never played the European retail release. Some nights I still wake up screaming...

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I played the European retail release. It was fine.

 

[Elhoim]

If you can't swallow some bugs you're a pussy. Who gives a fuck unless they're game-breaking?

Well, they were quite a few game-breaking bugs too...

 

[Elwro]

No matter who you fight, every combat looks exactly the same: lock, hit, stun, clickclickclickclick win!

Yeah, that's my problem too. The games is fantastic in many respects, but the fighting system is just retarded. I wonder if we'll get a patch fixing this, but I doubt it.

 

[kenney bounces]

Most people who complained are those who played gothic 1 or 2.

If you have nothing to compare it to, gothic 3 is a pretty good game to play with.

If you played gothic 1 or 2, you will extremely disappointed with how much is left out of the game with 3.

 

[Nerve Gas]

Most people who complained are those who played gothic 1 or 2.

If you have nothing to compare it to, gothic 3 is a pretty good game to play with.

If you played gothic 1 or 2, you will extremely disappointed with how much is left out of the game with 3.

Obviously, the game doesn't have the awesome original story, or the role-playing options of Gothic I. It would be silly to even expect anything close to that.
And I'm also extremely disappointed that they left out... umm... chapters. Yeah, that's right, where are the chapters? I want to know how far in the game I am, dammit.

 

[Claw]

And BTW - has any game ever had such a complex faction system? Besides, maybe, Daggerfall.

Umm.. I beg your pardon? There is a complex faction system? When they said in an interview it was never meant to be more than it turned out to be, I wondered how it's possible to aim so low.

Also, I was deeply disappointed by the Perk system. Mini-Talents? Meaningful choice of combining weapon and perks? Oh wait, make that choose swords or twohanded axes and learn sword/axe combat level 1, 2 and 3 to go along with it.
Oh, and since the player starts with high strenght, let's give all strength-based perks insanely high requirements, but give the PC enough free alchemy points to learn all alchemy perks he wants.
Ah, and what a genius decision to split the old dexterity into hunting and thieving skill. That way we can bolster our perk count by filling both areas with 1,2,3 perks. Just imagine, boring Gothic 2 only had a single lockpicking skill, with dexterity governing the chance of breaking a lockpick! What a silly concept!

Also, in Gothic 1 and 2, you knew exactly what a skill or attribute did for you. In Gothic 3, it's unclear what level 2 sword combat actually does (the ingame description does nothing to inform the player) or if attributes serve any purpose beyond meeting the requirements for perks.

 

[Volourn]

Gothic 3 is an okay game. Definitely better than it's predecessors. However, it has a major flaw. It simply gets boring the further along you get. I just couldn't play it anymore despite invetsing hours into playing an otherwiuse reasonably fun game.

 

[Saxon1974]

No matter who you fight, every combat looks exactly the same: lock, hit, stun, clickclickclickclick win!

Exactly, the combat was by far the worst part of it. I quite playing it pretty early because of the combat. It didnt matter how tough your opponent was you could just use that routine everytime and never lose.

 

[kenney bounces]

Obviously, the game doesn't have the awesome original story, or the role-playing options of Gothic I. It would be silly to even expect anything close to that.
And I'm also extremely disappointed that they left out... umm... chapters. Yeah, that's right, where are the chapters? I want to know how far in the game I am, dammit.

Uhh no. That's really lame and trivial stuff.

I'll be more specific as to what i'm referring to:

1) Combat in gothic 1 and 2 revolved around several counters to a monster's specific attack. Goblin circles around you; orcs charging directly at you; hence you could sidestep and chop it, or swing side to side; skeletons that had combo attacks you could dodge or counter; npcs that also had combo attacks. Many many monsters had a unique attack pattern that was fun to dodge, and then you could unleash a counterattack.

In gothic 3.. this fun is simplified dramatically. Of course, some people find drawing a circle extremely fun and challenging... and some also find tic tac toe fun and brain stressing. I don't, and a lot of other people are of the same opinion as me; hence all the complains about combat that you are seeing.

2) Hanging onto cliffs(and climbing em). Though this might seem trivial, this was a major part of exploring the world. You never knew what laid behind each mountain; running around was not enough, you had to pay minute attention to what could be scaled and what couldn't.

3) Lockpicking - this was again simplified dramatically; taking another chunk of fun out of the game.

4) Horrible character dialogues - this needs some examples:

Xardas:
You meet xardas for the very first time! You think he decimated the entire kingdom! You haven't seen him for months since the last encounter that he revealed he took beliar's avatar's power. Strangely, he only talks for 15 seconds, and you are instantly convinced to accept his quest!

Lee:
The great general has spent decades behind the prison barrier.. WOW! After two series.. he finally confronts the KING! To finally seek his revenge! DAMN! Exciting! All hyped up!
When you finally clear the entire sieged castle, get the necessary runes, and bring Lee to his final awaited battle...
"There's the king! Let's get him!". Lee then pulls out his sword, without mentioning another word and starts hacking and slashing the king and EVERYONE in the entire castle.
WTF?
And when you finally kill the king and everyone there, Lee says something for a whole 5 seconds, and stands there.
That's it. END of Lee's epic revenge.

5) Level scaling - Orcs scaled in level with the PC.

Summary : Gothic would have been "reasonably" successful, selling a few hundred thousand copies with it's old fans had it stuck to most of what was in gothic 1 ,2. Instead, they wanted an "oblivion" level success (4 milllion copies?) hence they tried a lot of oblivion concepts: Massive world with random things, level-scaling things, level-scaling loot, simplified combat, massive amounts of quests doing the same thing but with changed names etc etc..

As a result : the gothic fans shunned this product + humongous amounts of initial bugs during release + reviews that said gothic 3 is not as good as oblivion (due to lack of polish) resulted in low sales that caused it's publisher to find a new designer for gothic4.

On the bright side of things, PB realises its mistake, and is in the process of creating a new game heavily based on gothic 1,2 concepts.

 

[majestik12]

In my opinion, the game has two critical flaws.

1. 99% quests are either FedEx or "go there, kill that guy" type. The choices are mostly meaningless and do not affect the other parts of the game.

2. The main plot was like "OMG WTF find the fire chalices!". Which is basically a very long and boring FedEx quest.

That's why I gave it up in a couple of days. Maybe this is a fine game and I was just expecting things the devs never supposed the game to deliver.

 

[Nerve Gas]

In my opinion, the game has two critical flaws.

1. 99% quests are either FedEx or "go there, kill that guy" type. The choices are mostly meaningless and do not affect the other parts of the game.

2. The main plot was like "OMG WTF find the fire chalices!". Which is basically a very long and boring FedEx quest.

That's why I gave it up in a couple of days. Maybe this is a fine game and I was just expecting things the devs never supposed the game to deliver.

1. Perhaps, but unlike 99% games on the market, FedEX quests or go there, kill that guy often had multiple parties being interested in the same quest. And Gothic I didn't have better quests, either. Only they were linear back then, most of the times.
2. I'm not far along in the quest, but what did Gothic I have? OMG WTF kill the sleeper? And AFAIK, Gothic II was about OMG WTF kill the dragons.

 

[hakuroshi]

I don't enjoy combat for its sake usually, so all Gothic games didn't impress me overmuch. Too much focus on combat. I liked first chapters of both G1 and G2 though. Both had well designed worlds, which you explored naturally when trying to find what is going on and you place in it. Quests, while not very complex, fitted well into the settings.

I can't say anything bad for G3. It was only 2006 title I enjoyed (except EU3) The only real disappointment was utterly unrewarding exploration (and the size of the world almost begged to explore). There was a lot of visually interesting places, but hardly any in-game reason to go there. Nothing to find really. World is bigger then in previous games, but somehow less intense, less well-designed, empty.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

2. The main plot was like "OMG WTF find the fire chalices!". Which is basically a very long and boring FedEx quest.

You never need to do that. In fact, the quest isn't even completable; after collecting them all, you have to return them to twelve paladins, and one of them doesn't have the required dialogue options.

 

[Callaxes]

Chapters, big evil cult and dragons. Fuck that!

Gothic 3 is the first real non-linear gothic game. No more fucking zone triggers, factions that die off after the 4th chapter and a pre-determined bad guy to kill. And the world, oh the world is just stunning. I never was so impressed by a game world since Darklands and Arcanum.

On the gameplay side though -> total shit.