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Anime Gothic 3: The circle is now complete

the_shadow

Arcane
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179
A long, long time ago, I decided to cave into RPGCodex pressure and play Gothic. I suffered from the steep learning curve, but eventually learnt to appreciate the game. After numerous recommendations, I played Gothic 2 (with NOTR), and was completely blown away. Gothic 2 is perhaps the only RPG that has come close to surpassing Baldur's Gate II as my favourite cRPG.

Strangely enough, nobody mentioned Gothic 3. Hell, I didn't even know it existed until I stumbled across a web page while searching for Gothic 2 information. Why was Gothic 3 consigned to the memory hole? Is it really *that* bad.

I managed to get my hands on Gothic 3, and applied the most recent community patch. And I have to admit, I have sunk a large amount of time into this game (although not always for the right reasons). Overall, it's a bit of a disappointment, not just because it failed to meet the quality of Gothic 2, but also because it clearly had potential to rival Gothic 3.

What I like:

- Gothic 3's gaming world is *lush*. Myrtana is possibly the most beautiful setting I have seen in a game for its time, with an abundance of detail paid to the environment. There is an abundance of statistic raising herbs in the starting zone alone, and it only gets better. There are lots of nooks and crannies to explore. Each town also has its own characteristic appearance.

One experience I'll always remember: I had managed to clear out a mine full of minecrawlers with nothing but a two handed sword and perseverance. I then proceeded to harvest all of the gold, sulphur, iron and magic ore. As I emerged from the dark cave, I was greeted with a beautiful sunset. This is the perfect RPG moment. Not your bullshit 5 minute cinematics.

- The political setting is well thought out. The orcs resemble a ravaging army who has successfully subjugated the humans in Myrtana, with only a ragtag rebellion being left in the woods and mountains. However, as much as some orcs would like to kill/enslave all humans, they realise that they need the cooperation of some humans to administrate occupied territories and manage the Morras. The orcs are also engaged in a stalemate with Nordmar, and have an uneasy truce with the Hashishin (resemble Middle-Eastern culture), who also have aspirations for world domination.

- There is a huge degree of freedom. Much like Morrowind, there is a main mission which you can pursue at your leisure. Nothing on the huge game world map is closed off to you by contrived game designers leading you around by the nose. You can swim to Varant in the first 5 minutes of the game, or sneak into Nordmar if it pleases you. You can side with the Rebels, the occupying Orcs, or even the dark god worshipping Hashishin.

- The quests aren't the least bit boring. Well, occasionally you'll get the bullshit "Fetch me X amount of Y", but usually the quests are appropriate for the game setting, and facilitate exploration and plot development. I enjoy the local and worldwide reputation system.

- Combat is *great* (at least with the Community Patch). Sword-fighting is tactical, and every type of weapon has a certain application (single handed swords are good for killing beasts with fast strokes, halberds are good for creatures who use lunge attacks). People complain about the stun lock, but I *love* it. If anything, it's realistic. It doesn't matter how tough a fighter you are, if a pack of dogs were to attack you all at once, you'd be brown bread. *This* is how you keep enemies challenging, without level scaling.

- Potion making and sword forging are useful. About time.

- The looting system is great. Precious items are found in certain chests, in a particular order, which rewards exploration.

Stuff I hate:

- God damn, the Gothic 3 engine is poorly optimised. Even on low performance settings with the Community Patch, my frame rate nose dived on multiple occasions. Loading times are atrocious.

- Nordmar's environment is damn confusing to navigate. I wasted way too much time trying to find my way between the three camps, and finding Xardas is near impossible without some sort of Youtube video.

- In stark contrast to Myrtana, Varant is barren. It's almost like the game developers were running out of time, so instead of fleshing out Varant, they just plunked in a whole bunch of sand dunes between cities and called it a day. The temple ruins aren't very inspiring, either. *sigh* So much potential lost.

- The main characters aren't fleshed out, and seem to have very little involvement in the story. Xardas, Lee, Lester, Milten, and Diego each might get a few lines of dialogue. Hell, finding Xardas is the main overarching quest for the first half of the game, and he only gives you a few sentences of exposition. When I think of the Diego which saved you from Bullock and oriented you into the Old Camp, or the Lee who gave you the moving speech about his betrayal at the hands of the king, or the Milten who greeted you after Sanchez turned on the Fire Magicians, the NPCs in Gothic 3 feel stale.

- The skill system sucks. Skills are bugged, or aren't adequately explained by the documentation. Most spells are useless, except for the basic attack spells, which are ridiculously overpowering when you ramp up your ancient magic. Hell, the fireball is *heat seeking* when charged. Why would I want any other attack spell?

All in all, Gothic 3 shines when you're exploring Myrtana, drags in Varant, and is bloody frustrating in Nordmar. If the engine were better optimised, the spell/skill system balanced, the main NPCs fleshed out, and a bit more detail added to Varant, this would have been a good game. I don't think it is a good game, but I can't deny I've derived some enjoyment out of it.
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
This fucking game had me absorbed for days when I first got it running properly with the community patch. Fucking days.

I'd be at work thinking "man, I can't wait to get home to get raped by a group of ice wolves" and it wouldn't even be fucking sarcasm. It's clearly flawed as all hell and yet the exploration kept me at it. So much to do, so much to see... and when I returned as a demi god with mana regen and the ability to summon armies, demons, and rain fire on everyone... efforts were justified.

This fucking game...
 

Revenant

Guest
I never had any performance issues with an nVidia video card, > 1 GB of RAM and without the Community Patch. Loading times are a bit long, true, but without swapping the game manages to load in less than a minute, which I consider fast for G3 :lol:

And yes, Gothic 3 is a great game overall. I'd say it's the best Gothic game of all, when you take everything into account. Gothic 1/2 may have been much better executed, but they don't have all the immensity the third game provides, with all the towns and countless farms and other exploration possibilities. It's a shame combat is so broken in G3, but, then again, Gothic games are spiritual successors of the Ultima series, and Ultima games were great despite combat in them was always shit. Gothic 3 manages to pull off the highest grade exploration and open-endedness in a CRPG together with breath-taking atmosphere and immersion, and that's more than sufficient for a great game.
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
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Smyrna - Scalanouva
Divinity: Original Sin 2
There is also gothic 4 :troll:


No, there is not! After Gothic 3 and its horrible xp pack there is only Risen ...

Good summary of Gothic 3 BTW

All in all, Gothic 3 shines when you're exploring Myrtana, drags in Varant, and is bloody frustrating in Nordmar. If the engine were better optimised, the spell/skill system balanced, the main NPCs fleshed out, and a bit more detail added to Varant, this would have been a good game. I don't think it is a good game, but I can't deny I've derived some enjoyment out of it.

They really published Gothic too early, game was a bug fest with no optimisation at first months. My high end rig back then couldn't handle one frigging torch before massive patching... And as you stated Varant and Nordmar areas were clearly rushed, one can get easly bored after setting foot in either one of them after Myrtana.
 

Revenant

Guest
And as you stated Varant and Nordmar areas were clearly rushed, one can get easly bored after setting foot in either one of them after Myrtana.
In my opinion, Varant has much better designed cities than Myrtana. They actually feel like cities, not like collections of run down huts that are the settlements of Myrtana. Varant NPCs also appear to have more personality and character than citizens of Myrtana, which makes doing quests for them somewhat more interesting than "me and my poor brethren slaves here need 10 piles of firewood, go fetch".
 
Self-Ejected

Brayko

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I agree with most of what you said, but...

- The quests aren't the least bit boring. Well, occasionally you'll get the bullshit "Fetch me X amount of Y", but usually the quests are appropriate for the game setting, and facilitate exploration and plot development. I enjoy the local and worldwide reputation system.

I remember the vast majority of the quests in the game being exactly fetch quests.
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
Patron
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Smyrna - Scalanouva
Divinity: Original Sin 2
In my opinion, Varant has much better designed cities than Myrtana. They actually feel like cities, not like collections of run down huts that are the settlements of Myrtana. Varant NPCs also appear to have more personality and character than citizens of Myrtana, which makes doing quests for them somewhat more interesting than "me and my poor brethren slaves here need 10 piles of firewood, go fetch".

I agree on cities part, I played as backing Hashishin in my first playthrough and had fun with their quest(except FedeX ones...). But when you leave the villages it is just an empty desert with boring temples to plunder.

Sadly Gothic 3 has many MMO like quests which bore players quickly. (especially ex-WoW addictcs like me :))
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I'm not the biggest Gothic nut here (despite my signature) but I'll comment on a few things here:

The quests aren't the least bit boring. Well, occasionally you'll get the bullshit "Fetch me X amount of Y", but usually the quests are appropriate for the game setting, and facilitate exploration and plot development. I enjoy the local and worldwide reputation system.

Then you are easily amused. Gothic 3's quests are atrociously repetetive to the point of exhaustion. Why the Stranger hasn't been reskinned yet to wear a FedEx uniform is beyond me.

Potion making and sword forging are useful. About time.

Potion making has ALWAYS been useful, but good to hear about the sword.

The looting system is great. Precious items are found in certain chests, in a particular order, which rewards exploration.

There are two possibilities here, one of which is that you don't know how the chests in Gothic 3 work. I'm going to assume that's the reason, you don't want to hear what the other reason is.

In Gothic 1 and 2 chests always have the same loot, it's fixed in place. This can be abused so that in a later playthrough you can make a straight beeline to a chest with a good weapon and get ahead at the beginning, but overall it makes sense as the loot in the chest is what you'd expect it to be. The reward justifies the risk.

In Gothic 3 a new system was used, where chests are divided into several "types" and loot is determined by how many chests of that type you've opened. In other words, mostly random. This actually has the OPPOSITE effect of what you say, it does NOT reward exploration, but kills it. Players will quickly catch on that if chests don't contain any worthwhile loot, there's no reason to go look for them. Yes, I know that good loot can be found by going through virtually every chest in the game, but that's not "rewarding exploration", that's forcing players to comb through every square inch of the game. To say that the system is stupid is an understatement.

There is an optional patch to the Community patch that adds fixed loot drops to the chests. Unfortunately the English in it is so bad that it kills all the immersion the game had stone dead.

In stark contrast to Myrtana, Varant is barren. It's almost like the game developers were running out of time, so instead of fleshing out Varant, they just plunked in a whole bunch of sand dunes between cities and called it a day. The temple ruins aren't very inspiring, either. *sigh* So much potential lost.

*sigh* You know what? I'm just gonna call you a dumbfuck and be done with it. It's a DESERT, they're MEANT to be barren. They're supposed to be little else than sand dunes.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
I agree with most of what you said, but...

- The quests aren't the least bit boring. Well, occasionally you'll get the bullshit "Fetch me X amount of Y", but usually the quests are appropriate for the game setting, and facilitate exploration and plot development. I enjoy the local and worldwide reputation system.

I remember the vast majority of the quests in the game being exactly fetch quests.
That was exactly what killed my interest, they don't even give some context to the fetching it is get 15 boar skins because I said so. The concept of an orc occupation is very original and the orcs are surprisingly :obviously: but you have that annoying sensation that you have when playing MMOs, very well executed world full of inane things to do. To anyone that finished Gothic 3, there are quest worth doing or is just Skyrim radiant quests + liberate cities from the orcs that generaly means you killing all the orcs for butthurt humans and gaining nothing of value, not even a motivational speech? I don't see the point of having a huge world without anything interesting to do in it.
 

the_shadow

Arcane
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179
I don't agree that the quests are 'atrociously' repetitive. There are relatively simply fetch quests (go get 10 piles of wood around town), hard fetch quests which reward exploration and tie in with other quests (go gets my crates of oil from the bandits, obtain all the fire chalices, collect the Artifacts of Adanos), 'kill this character' quests, 'kill these beasts' quests, and 'liberate this town' quest. That's more variety than many RPGs. Hell, the main quest in Fallout is a convoluted fetch quest (find a water chip).

Unkillable Cat said:
In Gothic 1 and 2 chests always have the same loot, it's fixed in place. This can be abused so that in a later playthrough you can make a straight beeline to a chest with a good weapon and get ahead at the beginning, but overall it makes sense as the loot in the chest is what you'd expect it to be. The reward justifies the risk.

In Gothic 3 a new system was used, where chests are divided into several "types" and loot is determined by how many chests of that type you've opened. In other words, mostly random. This actually has the OPPOSITE effect of what you say, it does NOT reward exploration, but kills it. Players will quickly catch on that if chests don't contain any worthwhile loot, there's no reason to go look for them. Yes, I know that good loot can be found by going through virtually every chest in the game, but that's not "rewarding exploration", that's forcing players to comb through every square inch of the game. To say that the system is stupid is an understatement.

I understand how the loot system works, and I support it. It seems we disagree on what we find to be satisfying gaming. If you can make a beeline to obtain the best sword in the game, then in my eyes that *kills* any incentive to explore further. Why would I explore more nooks and crannies, and open more chests, if I already have the best gear? On the other hand, I feel a strong incentive to explore everywhere, and open every chest, if I gain progressively better stuff for doing so.

Unkillable Cat said:
*sigh* You know what? I'm just gonna call you a dumbfuck and be done with it. It's a DESERT, they're MEANT to be barren. They're supposed to be little else than sand dunes.

If that's the case, then make the whole continent smaller. Furthermore, I'm sure someone with a little imagination (and time) could have made it less barren. Varant should be teeming with old ruins and underground cave systems.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
I don't agree that the quests are 'atrociously' repetitive. There are relatively simply fetch quests (go get 10 piles of wood around town), hard fetch quests which reward exploration and tie in with other quests (go gets my crates of oil from the bandits, obtain all the fire chalices, collect the Artifacts of Adanos), 'kill this character' quests, 'kill these beasts' quests, and 'liberate this town' quest. That's more variety than many RPGs. Hell, the main quest in Fallout is a convoluted fetch quest (find a water chip).
Did you realize that you just described every MMO ever? From what you said, Gothic 3 sound like a single player MMO. The comparison with Fallout is strange because Fallout has some fetching but is hardly the only thing you do and even supposed fetching quests (get water chip) are hardly: "You got the water chip, good, here get 100 gold". There is any dungeon in Gothic 3 that is even similar to the Glow or the military base in terms of character interaction, with multiple levels and opportunity for skill/spell use? Those kill the beasts, kill characters, get generic powerful artifacts with generic names have context behind them or is just a NPC giving you a bullshit excuse in two lines of inane text: "Kill this bandit because he is very bad and I can give you 100 gold."? Hard fetch quests can become annoying very fast, dying to boars while trying to get their skin isn't exactly fun, especially when you do this a hundred times. From what you said it only confirm my suspicion that the game never develop from MMO style quests.
 

Metro

Arcane
Beg Auditor
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Aug 27, 2009
Messages
27,792
Combat is fucking awful as is the randomized chest looting system. This in turn kills exploration unless you just like looking at pretty scenery. I remember some massive cave near the starting town (Ardea?) it had skeletons, ogres, minecrawlers, and wyverns in it. The ecology was nonsensical. Quests aren't boring? You must have only done about three quests. As noted, most are of the MMO variety.
 

the_shadow

Arcane
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179
I don't agree that the quests are 'atrociously' repetitive. There are relatively simply fetch quests (go get 10 piles of wood around town), hard fetch quests which reward exploration and tie in with other quests (go gets my crates of oil from the bandits, obtain all the fire chalices, collect the Artifacts of Adanos), 'kill this character' quests, 'kill these beasts' quests, and 'liberate this town' quest. That's more variety than many RPGs. Hell, the main quest in Fallout is a convoluted fetch quest (find a water chip).
Did you realize that you just described every MMO ever? From what you said, Gothic 3 sound like a single player MMO. The comparison with Fallout is strange because Fallout has some fetching but is hardly the only thing you do and even supposed fetching quests (get water chip) are hardly: "You got the water chip, good, here get 100 gold". There is any dungeon in Gothic 3 that is even similar to the Glow or the military base in terms of character interaction, with multiple levels and opportunity for skill/spell use? Those kill the beasts, kill characters, get generic powerful artifacts with generic names have context behind them or is just a NPC giving you a bullshit excuse in two lines of inane text: "Kill this bandit because he is very bad and I can give you 100 gold."? Hard fetch quests can become annoying very fast, dying to boars while trying to get their skin isn't exactly fun, especially when you do this a hundred times. From what you said it only confirm my suspicion that the game never develop from MMO style quests.

I used Fallout as an example to show why you are being disingenuous. At its core, you fetch a water chip and kill the Master. Hell, virtually every RPG's plot revolves around 'fetch this, kill that', with a few rare exceptions. One could likewise simplify Lord of the Rings as "Fetch Ring of Power and drop in Mount Doom". The side quests in Gothic III are context appropriate, and flesh out the game.
 

Jestai

Augur
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Mar 24, 2013
Messages
134
Randomized chest looting was good. What the fuck is your problem with it? The more your explore, the better the items you find... Isn't that a good mechanism? The only frustrated people will be the OCD morons who will be mad because they missed two chests somewhere and they can't get the supreme sword of awesome of their trusty walkthrough. If you're playing the game without external help, you'll get better and better stuff from the chests. Maybe not the best gear, but you won't even know it, right? You sound like butthurt completionists. I'm open to discussion if you have a better argument than "killing exploration because you find bad stuff except if you look thoroughly every square inch of the world", as if only the last 2 chests had decent rewards and as if all the chests were hidden in impossible locations. I mean, i'm pretty sure you can find at least half the chests without exploring at all, and they start to have decent rewards pretty fast.
And if i recall correctly, it wasn't exclusive, some chests had fixed stuff in them too.

Other critics of the game are valid, but most of them are details compared to the worst offender: "hardcore "every wild boar can kill me" gameplay + absurdly long loadtimes". It almost made me quit the game several times. Combat was pretty stupid too: you're very weak, then you build your combo meter and you start to kill everyone with one shot as long as you don't stop. You just need to kill the first 5 orcs without getting hurt too much and the whole city can be considered dead.

Very good setting though.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
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Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
I used Fallout as an example to show why you are being disingenuous. At its core, you fetch a water chip and kill the Master. Hell, virtually every RPG's plot revolves around 'fetch this, kill that', with a few rare exceptions. One could likewise simplify Lord of the Rings as "Fetch Ring of Power and drop in Mount Doom". The side quests in Gothic III are context appropriate, and flesh out the game.
Man, fetch, kill something, talk with NPC and explore are the basic quest templates that every RPG use but the difference is on the execution or are you going to say to me that WoW quests are the same as Fallout quests because they have the same basic template?
 

Jestai

Augur
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Mar 24, 2013
Messages
134
Find the water chip is now a fetch quest. I've officially heard everything.
 

Lancehead

Liturgist
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Dec 6, 2012
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Regarding the quests, I did like that if you liberate too many towns then the orc bosses in other towns attack you right away. The game actually hints at it with a prior boss remarks about the nameless being suspicious. So it's not totally out of the blue.
 

Kraszu

Prophet
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May 27, 2005
Messages
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Location
Poland
Other critics of the game are valid, but most of them are details compared to the worst offender: "hardcore "every wild boar can kill me" gameplay + absurdly long loadtimes". It almost made me quit the game several times. Combat was pretty stupid too: you're very weak, then you build your combo meter and you start to kill everyone with one shot as long as you don't stop. You just need to kill the first 5 orcs without getting hurt too much and the whole city can be considered dead.

Very good setting though.

That was fixed in CP, now you can't chain attack, you will be countered soon (new counter attack that stops stun lock), also you now are attacked by 3 enemies at once making fighting multiple Orcs much harder, and animals no longer stun lock you.
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
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Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Ignored jestai, ignored deep_shadow. Indefensible defense of retarded magic chests.

SEEMS LIKE IT WASN'T SARCASM
 

Kraszu

Prophet
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Poland
The execution is actually pretty good, heck just consider in how many ways you can finish the game, you can archive your goal in multiple ways, for example to get to the Mora Sul temple, one of the keys belongs to they leader, that you can either kill, and to do that easier you can find Nomads, and liberate the town with them, or pay him, how the game works makes it no so trivial since he wants allot of gold, and he gives quests to kill water mages that co operate with Nomads. There is little bit of plaining on how to do quests to get the most reward since you have to balance yourself between various conflicts it isn't hard to do but it is much more interesting then MMO fetch quests.

As for magic support spells are great, with bloodlust you can wreak havoc, it is a bit imbalanced but fun. Time animal is also pretty good.
 

Jestai

Augur
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Still haven't understood the problem with magic chests and I'm still waiting for a better argument than "lol obviously bad ignored". How is progressively better loot is worse than having 50 chests with the same items in fixed locations? Prevents you from metagaming? Forces you to explore every square inch so you can have your 100% completion for whatever reason makes your heart beat? Also, some items were good, some items were ok, some were pointless. It's not like item1<item2<item3<item4[...]<item50.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
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Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Still haven't understood the problem with magic chests and I'm still waiting for a better argument than "lol obviously bad ignored". How is progressively better loot is worse than having 50 chests with the same items in fixed locations? Prevents you from metagaming? Forces you to explore every square inch so you can have your 100% completion for whatever reason makes your heart beat? Also, some items were good, some items were ok, some were pointless. It's not like item1<item2<item3<item4[...]<item50.
The magic chests works almost as bad as Skyrim leveled chests, you are forced to get garbage while you don't open enough chests but to open enough chests you have to explore alot and that involve alot of time, while you are trying to open all chests possible, you are going to be leveling all that time because alot of places have too strong monsters for a low level character, so you can only get better stuff at higher levels, then any good reward to exploration at low levels are gone, you are only to get rusty iron sword after rusty iron sword until you open enough chests that is only going to happen when you have a higher level and even if through raw combat skill (important on an action RPG) you manage to kill that fucking hard monster you are still going to get that rusty iron sword because you didn't opened enough chests. The excitment of suddenly discovering an awesome sword at a random cave you entered and suffered through it is gone because you already know you are going to get crap in the end anyway because you didn't opened enough chests.
 

Nim

Augur
Joined
Oct 22, 2006
Messages
447
Only good things about G3 were the music and improved bow combat. Everything else is shit :rpgcodex:
 

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