Damn Gothic 2 is a masterpiece

I'm giving Gothic 3 a chance again now, in part because this discussion has me interested and in part because there's a newer version of the community patch since the last time I tried it.

First of all, Gothic 3 does everything it can to make a horrible first impression.

Just as I remembered from the first time, G3 has an atrocious start; it's arguably the worst beginning of any game ever. You start in the middle of a battle, and what's the first thing that happens? Hint boxes pop in the middle of the screen. And the hint boxes don't pause the game, so you can either scramble to click the box away (at which point another one pops up immediately), or you can ignore your friends and allies fighting all around you and read the helpful hint advice. It's ridiculous. But what's also ridiculous is that nothing in the battle actually matters at all. You can't die, and your friends can't die, and although the slaves in the village can die, they get resurrected as freed slaves as soon as the village resets, so absolutely nothing matters.

In addition, you have the same character you had through the first two Gothics, but now he's back to having no skills and no equipment again, only this time there's no explanation. In general I don't think the device of saying, "somehow your character forgot everything he knew before," is a good one, but in Gothic 2 it made sense and there was a plausibility to it. The Nameless Hero was caught in a massive magical conflagration, so it could be a side effect. I'm willing to accept that. In Gothic 3 it makes no sense. What happened to the Barbarian Axe and Dragonhunter Crossbow I was carrying when I killed the undead dragon? I walked ashore in the middle of an orc invasion but left them on the ship? Along with my armor? Gorn, Milten, Diego, and Lester brought their gear, so I guess I figured I didn't need mine, except for this Orc Slayer sword I've never seen before.

Okay, one last thing. The default graphic settings are terrible. The bloom and blur and other effects are jacked up way, way too high. Gothic 3 looks pretty good once you get everything sorted out, but I had to spend an hour tinkering with the .ini files (because the settings on the options screens aren't sufficient) to get it to look okay. Actually I'm still not done tinkering, I don't think. I don't blame the new graphics for being different, but I think there are significant faults with them. The new models seem very rounded, like they're made of wax that has melted in the sun. The textures also have really high amounts of specular that make them look shiny, even when there's no reason for it. I bought a hunter's leather armor. Part of it is a pair of rough leather pants. If you look at my pants in the sunlight they're super shiny, which doesn't make any sense at all.

Melee combat completely blows. Why? Stun-lock. You can get stun-locked and killed by a scavenger without having a single chance to do anything. It hits you first, so you're dead, and that's all. The only other stun-lock I've ever seen in a PB game is the Brontos in Risen, but those are high-level monsters and you can still escape before you get killed usually. In Gothic 3, everything can stun-kill you. After playing Gothic 2, it's just sad. In Gothic 2 fighting almost anything was fun. You let an orc charge you, then step aside just when he swings his axe. He misses, overswings, and you hack away at him before he can regain his footing. Fun. Gothic 3...not fun.

Now, this is not to say I think everything about Gothic 3 is bad. There are some things I like. But to get to those things, you have to overlook a lot. What do I like? Well, I've seen people on other boards making fun of the Depth of Field, but I like it. I like it in Risen too, for that matter. I like the new marble textured dialogue boxes. They read a little better than the old ones. The soundtrack is pretty good. It's not as though I despise every last thing about this game.

I'm also having this weird problem where the game suddenly goes into slow-motion for no apparent reason. I don't remember that happening the last time I tried it, but I haven't found a fix yet. EDIT: I may have solved this. I'll post back later.

EDIT: Since I'm piling on the criticism, here are a few more things I don't like about Gothic 3 so far.

There are weapons and items that add skills and bonuses for no logical reason. For example, the Orc Slayer you start the game with; it gives you bonus damage against orcs. Why? Why would a non-magical sword do more damage against orcs? There's a bow that does bonus damage against "predators." Why would it do more damage to a wolf than it does to a bandit? It makes no sense. There are no weapons or items like this in the first two Gothic games, not that I can remember at least.

One of the good things about Gothic 1 and 2 and Risen is the main character. He's sarcastic and insulting, which is funny. So far in Gothic 3 his dialogue is very flat and generic. I'm going to keep an eye on this to see if his personality ever comes back. They used a different actor for his voice this time too. Okay, so that's not deal breaker, but I hope there was a good reason for it. Most of the characters have new voices. I haven't made up my mind about them yet, except for Diego, whose new voice I don't like at all. Then again, Diego hasn't had a cool voice since Gothic 1.

 

eh.. actually, your charcter has more power than G1,2's start point. but he's not powerful enough to feel stronger.
think about it, your character's strength is already 100.
and your gears are stolen by pirates.
I know it's ridiculous(seriously, Innos' eye and Beliar's claw are stolen? and don't care about that?).
but, at least have reason.

I agree beginning of G3 is terrible but look back on G2, eh.. everyone who start G2 hardly kill a wolf I guess if he know some tricks.
I suspect PB has poor sense to make start tutorial. how about Risen? you can't block wolf's attack with hunting knife...
and at Risen2, it's hard to kill sand devil at level 1. I think PB should do something to make tutorial easier.

actually, melee combat of G3 is good.
too bad sound effects and motions are bad enough to feels like touching sponge with stick.
but combat itself become more like action than G1 and 2.
and it has much stretegy than G1,2.
and actually, G1,2 's combat is really simple and don't have much strategy.
Tip: don't use combo. rather than combo, use hit and walk back stretegy when you fight with animals.

how about normal swords of G2? it provides you skill bonus with no reason too.
actually, I don't think there are no reason.
think about comparing wood cutter's ax(not the weapons in G1,2,3) and war ax.
war ax is more powerful weapon to kill enemy but wood cutter's ax is much useful tools to cut tree compare to war ax.

 

One good thing about G3 is that the caves become pitch-black once you get inside far enough, so you must have a torch or a light spell or you're left in total darkness (and likely to be eaten by a grue). I actually wish the other PB games had that feature. In fact, if I'm going to criticize G3 on this point, I'd have to say there are way too many "glowing crystals" to light up the inside of caves. I like utter blackness most of the time.

Collecting loot is much easier in G3. That's an improvement. Splitting the inventory screen into categories was a good move too, although I'm not crazy about the trade interface.

The only thing I like about it is that there are several different types of attack for each kind of weapon. For example, you can stab with a sword and stun your opponent. Unfortunately I really never use moves like that with long power-ups, because button-mashing is the most effective strategy. Keep your weapon moving and attacking at all times.

I do like the missile combat in G3 though. There's no aiming zoom, and you have to judge the trajectory of the arrow or bolt in order to hit your target. One of the things I don't like about Risen is that crossbow bolts have a perfectly flat trajectory.


The orcs in G3 are really annoying after playing G1 and G2. They turned the orcs into Klingons. Bleh.

To fix my slow motion bug, I had to change Timer.ThreadSafe=true to Timer.ThreadSade=false in the ge3.ini file.

 

It's not a matter of G3.
but it's because orcs of G1,2 is easy pray.
if you skill is high enough, just using left and right attack can kill them easily.

 

Here's the problem: if you've played G1 and G2, and then you play G3, you're overwhelmed by negative comparisons. That's why I can write long posts about everything I don't like about G3 - I compare the game to the first two, and I liked the first two better. If I had never played a Gothic game before, or if I wasn't expecting Gothic 3 to be a sequel to G1 and G2, I don't think it would bother me nearly as much. As a Gothic game, I think 3 is poor, but if it were just some generic game, I'd think it was okay.

Here's another example...the jumping and climbing in Gothic 3 is bad. Or rather, it's non-existent. Climbing and mantling up to ledges Tomb Raider-style was a major part of the first two Gothic games, but it's been completely stripped out of Gothic 3. If I had never played Gothic 1 and 2, I probably wouldn't notice, but since I just finished playing them, it's a significant disappointment to lose that aspect of the gameplay mechanics. In fact, stripping out the climbing and swimming is a major reason the caves in Gothic 3 are not nearly as good. That entire dimension of exploration is missing.

I think the combat in Gothic 3 is quite bad. They overcomplicated it, pure and simple. Combat in Gothic 2 was easy, but you still had to figure out the right way to kill each different monster, and that wasn't always easy. The only significant problems I had with combat in Gothic 2 was the target selection, which was often cumbersome and imprecise, and the collision detection for projectile spells.

 

If your skill is high enough..
low skill combat really sucks. G1 doesn't have much problem about this because you only need 30 skill points to increase but, at G2, it's really annoying since you need huge amount of skill points to increase skills.
I like G3 combat because you can beat lots of enemy if my control skill is good.
I beat some of arena at low levels.

I like 1,2 too but that doesn't bother much while playing 3.
yes, lose of climinig is huge lose.
but I think it's not a 3's fault but 2's fault becaues PB started to remove dungeons since
G2. think about it, there was actually no dungeon in G2.
there are two dungeons in G2, but it's just longer cave. puzzles of both are really sucks.
and G2 even remove ladder too.(actually, there are two ladders in NotR though)
G3 is just sequel of G2.

 

Heh, sorry, but one more complaint about G3 compared to G1-2.

My entire run through the series this time has been as a magician (last time was New Camp -> Mercenaries -> Rebel fighter) so I'm using magic for the first time in G3. They made it so spells like Flame Wave only damage enemies. Meh. In fact, Xardas "destroying" rune magic seems to have made it much, much easier to become a magician. All you have to do is buy some Ancient Knowledge and some spells.

Like I said, I don't hate this game. There are good things about it, for sure. But comparing it to the first two is disappointing.

 

Comparation always make disappointments .

 

Fixed that for you. =)

 

thank you.
now I understand difference between make and create.

 

The worst flaw of the G1 and G2 combat system - poor target acquisition - remains in the G3 system. It may actually be a little worse, in fact. It does some really dumb things. There's no apparent hierarchy for differentiating between hostiles and non-hostiles. Suppose I want to throw a fire spell at a big fight between a bunch or orcs and a bunch of Nordmar humans. The orcs are aggressively hostile toward me, so their names show up in red. The humans are neutral toward me, so their names show up in off-white. The game is too stupid to assume I want to target the orcs. What's worse, once you start to cast a projectile spell, there's no way to stop even if you realize you're targeting something you don't want to attack. This kind of thing happens even in melee combat. Like the other Gothic games, you often have the opportunity to team up with NPCs, in which case their names change to blue. But the moronic targeting system still marks them in melee sometimes. Often it seems to prefer your friends and teammates as targets, which is pure idiocy. I was teamed up with Thorvald from the Fire Clan, who was being attacked by a one of those giant boar-like creatures, so I drew my weapon to help him out, but I couldn't target the monster as long as Thorvald was anywhere nearby.

I will say that Nordmar is way more fun and way less annoying that Myrtana. Myrtana sucks. You start playing the game, and everything you see tells you you should be trying to liberate all the human towns...but actually you should not be doing that at all, and if you do liberate more than a few you can completely screw up your game and close off access to large portions of story content. In Nordmar orcs are treated the way they should be: as a plague of evil subhuman monsters deserving nothing but swift, painful eradication. In Myrtana you have to do fetch-quests for them.

 

It's hard to liberate more than 3 towns at low level.

the worst quest part of G3 is Nodmar. most quests are item fetching and killing orcs.
in Myrtana or Varant, quests are connected by repect(?) points while respect points of Nodmar means almost nothing except armor.

compare to Darksoul, Gothic's targeting system isn't that bad.
at least, it won't choose monster whom I can't see.
for me, G3 is less annoying than G1,2 because combat of G3 is more slower than G1,2.

 

True, the quests are not good in Nordmar, but the atmosphere and terrain are the best. It's like a huge maze.

Building respect with different factions is one of the reasons I dislike Myrtana and Varant so much. There's way, way too much of that in G3.

I like that you can do things like assassinating Rhobar, however.

The ruins in Varant could be cool, but they all look the same and there's nothing under the surface to explore.

 

Yes, map of Nodmar is awesome.

too bad dungeons are removed since G2...
as a dungeon, ruins of Varants are nothing special but field of Varant have a good geographic puzzle. maybe not that good but at least use map to find where to key.
and finding key of Morasul's ruin key is awesome too.

 

I'm having the same reaction I had last time I played G3. I'm nearing the end, I have all the artifacts of Adanos...and I just don't care anymore. The war of the gods is boring, and I don't care that I'm "The Decider" and I don't care which way it goes. Xardas's plan is probably the most attractive just because it's the most revolutionary, but even Beliar's victory doesn't seem all that bad now that orcs are Klingons and G3 tries to create a moral relativity between Innos and Beliar. The only goal that ever really interested me was exterminating orcs, and by the end it's rather pointless.

 

Actually, it's not a bad choice.

I think they should make final battle events to avoid kill all enemy in town.
like NV.

but choosing Xardas' plan is different, I think.
if you don't want to choose any faction, you can just leave the world.
I think that's good choice for freedom unlike NV: you should choose one faction to win, there is no choice for abandom the choice.
I know it's boring to destroy all enemy.
if you think so, then just leave. there is choice for that.

 

Well, I tried finishing G3, but ended up quitting again. I fought a long battle to liberate one of the cities...I can't remember the name, it's the one closest to the pass into Varant. After I'd routed the orcs and had them running away, I was trying to toss a frost bolt at one of them but the targeting system insisted on sticking to the paladin Konrad, who was clearly marked as an ally. This despite the fact that there was a hostile orc nearby. So after all the hassle of liberating the town, Konrad turns hostile and attacks me. Rubbish.

I think I've figured out why G3 is so much worse than the first two games, and why I simply don't care about the story at all. Nothing happens in G3 unless you do it yourself. The game world may be big, but it's completely inert. In contrast, circumstances change as you advance the story in the first two games. In G1 the Old Camp closes so you can't access it anymore (unless you want a fight). In G2, the seekers show up everywhere. You're in the same places, but there are new factors to account for because your enemies are taking steps to counter your successes. G3 doesn't react to your progress. The whole world is just sitting there waiting for you to clear it of monsters and complete all its little quests.

Anyway, I'm done with it. I think G2NotR is the best of the series, although I still believe G1 has the best atmosphere. G3 comes in last place by a significant margin.

 

funny thing is, it's same for G1,2.
actually, not many game have mechanism of "living factions" to act without player's action.
I heard Wizardry 7 is few of them and Fo1 was planned to be but cancelled.

I admit final mission of G3(eliminate all enemy) is quite boring.
it too shame for great game to have such problem.
but that doesn't make G3 worse than G1,2 which is not much better than JRPG.

and for story, G3 is quite interesting for me while it doesn't attracted you.
for me, story of G2 is doesn't make me interesting and story of G1 dissapointed me for poor ending(because it's not a end) and poor plots.
G3's plot is actually well designed for explain player's actions and locations of artifacts.
and most important thing is, it's only game created by PB to player to beat the game
by player own. not by Belliar, Innos or Xardas unlike G1,2.

 

Not at all.

In G1 the Old Camp guys lock the gates and murder all the Fire Mages. The player doesn't do that. It happens once you get to a certain point of the story.

In G2 the island is invaded by seekers. The player doesn't do that. The circumstances of the world change once you get to a certain point in the story.

In Risen the island is invaded by saurians. The player doesn't do that. Once you hit a certain point in the story, they pour out from their caves.

In G3 nothing happens. The Nordmarians don't invade Myrtana if you kill all the orcs in Nordmar. Rhobar doesn't organize a new army and start fighting the orcs, even if you break the siege of Vengard and liberate a few towns. The Hashishin don't break their alliance with the orcs and try to take Myrtana on their own. Any or all of those things would have been cool, but not one of the major factions takes any action on its own.

 

it's just script triggered by plot.
they can't success or fail thier action but just read you plots.
they can't success thier action like Masters army( they can destroy other settlements if you take too much time) or Enclave.

G3 doesn't have any script triggered by plot.
but it has reactions for player's deeds.
and that's more vaulable feature than just let game reads you a plot like JRPGs.