I Finally Got Around to Playing Gothic

[UniversalWolf]

I bought the trilogy pack after I tried the Gothic 1 demo, but it's been sitting on my hard drive for several months awaiting my attention. A few days ago I finally fired it up.

I think it's great. I'm about level 10 and having a blast. My favorite parts so far:

[spoiler:8646d72045]In the sect camp: first I annoyed a swamp shark until it invaded the camp and killed a templar. I grabbed his 2-handed sword and suddenly became much deadlier in combat. Then I talked to the guy on the second level who trains the templars. Afterward his insulting apprentice rudely asked me what we talked about. I told him he would never be worthy to be a templar, so he tried to attack me, but I ran away and climbed down a ladder. The idiot tried to follow me down and fell off the ladder, knocking himself unconscious! It was hilarious. I got all his equipment, including a slightly better 2-handed sword.

At the New Camp mine I got the mission from the guy who wanted to exchange a bunch of food for a special weapon. I suspected something was fishy, but I did it anyway because I had most of the stuff with me (I had to hunt for the apples, but everything else was easy). When he stiffed me, I went into his hut. He chased me in and I beat him in combat and took all the food back and all his gear, plus I opened his box and cleaned it out. Fun.[/spoiler:8646d72045]
Quite a fun game. I think the demo only ran at low resolution, but the full version goes up to 1600x1200. On a modern system it runs great and still looks okay. Third person is by far the best perspective for a 3D game like this, in my opinion.

 

[Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude]

If you're loving the first one (and all of the quirky random happenings), you'll love the second which is bigger, better and prettier.

If your trilogy pack came with Night of the Raven expansion for 2, I would suggest not installing it until you've completed your first playthrough (unless you're feeling confident in your combat abilities) as it makes the entire game stupid-hard, and adds a ton of new content which can be overwhelming if you aren't already familiar with the layout of kharanos.


Have you decided which camp you'd join and advance in yet?

 

[Deleted member 53669]

I uninstalled gothic 2 after 5 minutes because the controls were horrible.

 

[Eyenixon]

I uninstalled gothic 2 after 5 minutes because the controls were horrible.

Baby, go give up on your LIFE WHILE YOU'RE AT IT.

Gothic is a great game, as is the sequel.
I also agree with Phil, stay back on the Gothic 2 expansion before you finish it the first time around, it makes every piss difficult as he mentioned, but it also changes a lot of stuff around that makes it more difficult for newbies to get into.
Gothic 2 also has improved controls from the original making them a lot easier, but it doesn't get rid of the combat's tightness.
It's very much an improvement in every way, although I do consider the original Gothic's game world to be a bit more compelling and polished, the whole prison colony thing was well done, and the choice with which camp to pursue gave it a lot of replayability (even though it got pretty linear near the end).

 

[Verd1234]

I uninstalled gothic 2 after 5 minutes because the controls were horrible.

I uninstaled Fallout 2 after 5 minutes because the game was terrible...

Or so I thought...

Then I was told that maybe I should spend more than 5 mintutes with the game(5 hours?) and it would be better..

And they were right...

Perhaps you too must learn the lessons of the Wise Men of the NMA?

 

[Flop]

If your trilogy pack came with Night of the Raven expansion for 2, I would suggest not installing it until you've completed your first playthrough (unless you're feeling confident in your combat abilities) as it makes the entire game stupid-hard, and adds a ton of new content which can be overwhelming if you aren't already familiar with the layout of kharanos.

Unfortunately, the version of Gothic II included in the Trilogy pack, is the Gold version, which not only includes Night of the Raven, but automatically installs it with Gothic II. I had to give up trying to play as a mage in that version. It's still a great game, though.

 

[Deleted member 53669]

What's so great about this game? It was so glitchy I couldn't even run it correctly. The controls made me nearly break my keyboard. The combat system was "Run into things to kill them".

I'm sorry, I need convincing.

 

[Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude]

The controls can be VERY difficult to learn, but eventually you get the hang of it.

Mastering the melee combat takes time, but it's all very precise and responsive. Timing is huge. Your fighting stance changes as you level up your combat discipline of choice, which effects the timing of your attacks and how you approach each encounter as well.

As to what's so great about the game... if you can get into it, the world and npcs (and their daily routines) are quite convincing. The combat is good (although the high learning curve can be off-putting), and the story (along with how it's told) is interesting. There's a ton of replayability, no level scaling (Many beasts are significantly faster than you, and will happily kill you instantly should you stumble into their path early on) and there's secrets everywhere, so exploring is greatly rewarded.

The entire world feels hand-crafted and gritty (the polar opposite of oblivion). It's just a very solid product. If you're up to it, try the first one and give it a couple hours of your time (take it slow). You'll know by then whether or not you love it or hate it.


Patching it up and running it in xp compatibility mode should fix most of the bugs you encounter (although there is one nasty bug in G2 on vista where killing the dragons out of order causes the last one to become invisible and invulnerable).

 

[Deleted member 53669]

I feel like all of you are convincing me to sniff paint. I sniff paint and get a migraine and start vomiting. I say, "Hey, I don't like this". You guys say "WTF are you talking about, this is the best shit ever!"

I guess I'll try Gothic 1 first this time? I really am not into fantasy setting material.

 

[Sander]

What's so great about this game? It was so glitchy I couldn't even run it correctly. The controls made me nearly break my keyboard. The combat system was "Run into things to kill them".

I'm sorry, I need convincing.

The combat system definitely isn't the best, I can get over it, others can't. As your character increases in power you do get limited combo strings, but that's about it.

But it's also very heavily influenced by your character's stats. And the rest of the game is pretty good, especially the early free-roam parts.

But ehm, if this is a deal-breaker for you, and you don't even like fantasy settings anyway, why would you go out of your way to try it? It's not like Gothic is a brilliant, revolutionary game. It's just a good action RPG.

 

[AskWazzup]

Unfortunately, the version of Gothic II included in the Trilogy pack, is the Gold version, which not only includes Night of the Raven, but automatically installs it with Gothic II. I had to give up trying to play as a mage in that version. It's still a great game, though.

It's actually not that hard once you figure out where, when and how to spend your experience points. Also you shouldn't waste your precious runes on crappy magics - the only rune you need for the first two magic circles is fireball...

 

[Paul_cz]

I uninstalled gothic 2 after 5 minutes because the controls were horrible.

Baby, go give up on your LIFE WHILE YOU'RE AT IT.

Hahaha that was awesome.

Also, Gothic trilogy is greeeeeeeaaaaaaat! In fact, I am gonna fire up G1 right now.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

the best thing aboutGothic is area design, which puts pretty much evetry other "immersionist" RPG to shame. srly if piranha bytes guys taught a course in level design, bethesda designers would be the newbs sitting in the back of the class with dunce hats on their heads. hint: if your levels are rivaled by those random-generated in terragen, you might want to reconsider your design philosofphy.

 

[Deleted member 53669]

But ehm, if this is a deal-breaker for you, and you don't even like fantasy settings anyway, why would you go out of your way to try it? It's not like Gothic is a brilliant, revolutionary game. It's just a good action RPG.

Because I like the give things time before I form an opinion about them.

 

[Paul_cz]

the best thing aboutGothic is area design, which puts pretty much evetry other "immersionist" RPG to shame. srly if piranha bytes guys taught a course in level design, bethesda designers would be the newbs sitting in the back of the class with dunce hats on their heads. hint: if your levels are rivaled by those random-generated in terragen, you might want to reconsider your design philosofphy.

Morrowind wasn't that bad and Fallout 3 was even better in this regard, but yeah, all three Gothic game wipe the floor with Oblivion regarding world design.

 

[Ravager69]

The only Gothic to suck me in was the third one. And only up to a part where my 60+ hours-save game became corrupted while I wanted to save my progress. Of course the last back-up I had was from before 30 hours. Then I quit playing,

Considering the HUGE and I mean HUGE amount of bugs, glitches, performance issues the game had, I was surprised I managed to get so far (guess I did it to prove myself that I am patient, I dunno).

Also, when I was about level 60, my hero became an unstoppable killing machine, slaughtering 30 orcs and other monsters at the same time (slash, slash, open inventory, heal up, slash, slash etc.).

The first ones bored me with atrocious movement and bad voice-over. Also, the story did not seem so interesting, so to hell with the saga.

 

[UniversalWolf]

If you're loving the first one (and all of the quirky random happenings), you'll love the second which is bigger, better and prettier.

Cool. That's what I've heard.

I don't know if I would say I love it, but it's definitely the best 3D cRPG I've played.

Have you decided which camp you'd join and advance in yet?

I joined the Old Camp, because I liked Diego. Even though the Old Camp has the ugliest armor.
[spoiler:496f96d8ac]Although they've exiled me now so I've quit and joined the New Camp mercenaries.[/spoiler:496f96d8ac]

Concerning the controls: I found them difficult at first, but now that I've gotten used to them I like them. If it were up to me, I'd steal some of the controls from Tomb Raider and add that game's style of climbing, swimming, and rope climbing, replacing Lara Croft's superhuman abilities with skill-based abilities. For combat I'd steal some of the controls from Mount & Blade. The combat isn't great, but at least every type of monster seems to have a defined strategy, so different tactics are necessary for different beasts.

I think it's far too easy to get tons of money and hundreds of healing potions, and there should be encumbrance limits. Actually I'd be fine with zapping all the healing potions out of the game. I never really need to use them. I'd also like a more detailed damage model with things like broken bones, blood loss, poison, disease, crippling, and blindness.

Still enjoying it though.

 

[UniversalWolf]

Just to update, I've finished Gothic 1 and started in on Gothic 2.

In the end I was slightly disappointed by Gothic 1. I still think the core format of the game is very promising, but I was saddened to discover that the big decison of which camp to join really didn't make much difference. All roads lead to the same place, ultimately. Also, once you join a camp, the game changes to a series of standard fetch-n-deliver quests. As you progress the story it becomes more linear, and ceases to respond well to the player's choices that may be at odds with the storyline. The end game is a bit better, as the quests end and you get some easy puzzles instead, although the crux of the story isn't very revolutionary. Finally, Gothic 1 reveals itself to be very buggy as the game progresses. It started crashing more and more often for me, until I hit a bug I thought was going to force me to give up on my game when I was almost to the end. Luckily I managed to find a workaround (but not a fix) with a little digging on some fan forums. This is not to say I didn't like the game, just that I liked the first half more than the second half. I plan to replay it again at some point, but not right away.

Luckily Gothic 2 is a big improvement over Gothic 1. I haven't finished the story, so I set that aspect aside for the moment, but the character dialogue options and responsiveness to a wide breadth of player actions seem improved. Actually this is one of the best things about Gothic 2 so far; someone you meet might swear you to secrecy on a subject, but you can easily decide to betray them either deliberately or through carelessness. You get dialogue options with no cues or warnings, so if you mindlessly click through them you'll end up spilling the beans or incriminating yourself - and the NPCs will notice.

The controls and combat system are much improved over Gothic 1. Combat in particular has more strategy since blocking and parrying are more effective, and side-stepping blows is also very effective. What's more, the AI does both these things well. In most cases just trying to whack something to death is dangerous and ineffective. Instead you have to figure out a pattern to counter your opponent, like parry-swing-parry-swing. The patterns and tactics become more difficult as the skill level of your opponents increases. It's not as much fun as Mount & Blade combat, but it's pretty good (as far as real-time combat goes).

Gothic 2 also seems to be much less buggy than Gothic 1, at least so far.

While I can't yet comment on the story overall, I can say that the way in which the characters you met in Gothic 1 transition to Gothic 2 is really quite well done and enjoyable. They've all scattered and sought their own disparate paths, so you never know when or where you're going to encounter someone you recognize.

While I consider Gothic 1 to be flawed but worth playing, it gains some appeal as the prelude to Gothic 2, which I consider a really solid cRPG based on my experience so far. Having played Gothic 1 makes Gothic 2 more enjoyable.

Finally, Gothic 2 looks better than Gothic 1. Considerably better, in fact, even though they use the same engine. I don't place too much weight on graphics quality, but it is a factor.

That is all.