Gothic 3 1.74 vs Risen

[Hobo Elf]

They had a very samey feel to the game though. Risen's engine just felt like a more polished G3 engine.

 

[Metro]

It definitely looked similar but I'm sure they were less than pleased with the results of the G3 engine.

 

[Leonard DeVir]

Gothic 1/2 at level 1

Cant even wield a sword, you equip 2h weapon and he barely lifts it off the ground. You meet an Adult scavenger and it totally annihilates you. Every NPC in the game hates you and wants to kick your ass and steal your ore.

Gothic 3/4 at level 1

Doing backflips and spins n shit, cleaving through anything that gets in his way. You can take on entire villages by nonstop clicking the attack button. Everyones really nice and all has a good opinion of you, even the orcs.

Thats on purpose tough, as the gme is a sequel to Gothc 2. You know, where he killed dragons and orcs and stuff. So it makes sense that he wont get annihilated by scavengers and a few orcs. Other than that, Im done defending Gothic 3: Oblivion.

 

[Gord]

Might try to push forward with the story - didn't even liberate Myrtana yet.

Have fun with that. You're going to need to kill about two hundred or so orcs. Although as a mage you can just use some huge nuke -- a lot less tedious than with a fighter.

Not with alternative balancing unfortunately. It takes ages until you get any nuke-spells. If at all.
I have had to play with the same 3 spells for the entire game so far:
Fireball for damage, frost bolt for freezing/damage and some animal control spell to get some help. I have a few others but they are pretty worthless. One summoning spell that's ok. Fire wave is pure stupid shit.

Do I even have to liberate Myrtana or kill the rebels in the end?
That's another thing, everything feels so optional.
I think I might have gone on playing but the completely arbitrary approach to the storyline didn't exactly help to muster some motivation.

 

[Leonard DeVir]

I dont know if it is the same community patch (as Im playing the german version), but all my love for the communitypatch/questpack aside: they screwed up the spells even more than they were before, therefore I never insztall the magic overhauls.

And yes, with Gothic 3 they made a more or less linear ARPG to a sandbox game, where implementing reasonable C&C is more than hard (looking at you, FNV). Gothic always thrived on C&C: choose your allies, choose your path (mage, warrior),... and the world will react.

In Gothic 3:

-Hey, youre a mge!
-Yea, Im a mage. Cool, huh?
-Goodbye.

 

[Leonard DeVir]

Edit: double post - whyever I quoted myself oO

 

[Serious_Business]

And yes, with Gothic 3 they made a more or less linear ARPG to a sandbox game, where implementing reasonable C&C is more than hard (looking at you, FNV). Gothic always thrived on C&C: choose your allies, choose your path (mage, warrior),... and the world will react.

Really?

 

[Raghar]

You forgot to tell us what GFX card you have.

No, it's there. You apparently just forgot to read it.

Are you Shannow's alt?

I know you have a card with single DVI which is slower than GT420. It also have between 64bit to 128 bit memory interface, and slow RAMs. It can run Witcher 2 at proper speed at 800x600 (which causes crappy texts), and is generally underpowered because it was designed for offices/home theaters/strategy game players. It has power consumption about 30 W on full load, depends on chip revision. I can continue for a while with more facts, thought I would need to look at Internet for verifiations and know at least brand of your card, but what's the point? The only question is why do you have card like that? NV9600GT were available, and you could find NV8600GTS for similar price.

I always thought these hiccups were happening because of some missconfiguration on user system. German's crappy programming is less likely culprit.

BTW a lot of German's programs were extraordinarily crappy. Perhaps it's because of theirs university system.

 

[Coyote]

While Gothic 3 does have non-linearity it's just rife with poorly implemented game play mechanics that pretty much ruin any enjoyment of the game. The combat is atrocious (yes, even with fan patch), clearing/liberating cities/camps is tedious to the umpteenth degree, awful world design where you could no longer climb, having 99% of chests randomized and forcing you to hunt out X number special chests to finally get special/magic weapons, said randomization basically ruining any point of exploration since even if you found some cool cave with ogres or whatever the loot would be no different than a chest you find five feet from Ardea (the starting area), and well... just countless other horrible design decisions like the stupidly prolonged casting animation you perform on drinking a potion. I understand what PB was trying to do with G3, it was fairly ambitious but -- whether they were rushed or just flat out failed -- they fell on their face quite soundly with the finished product.

I put about 60 hours into it playing the Innos path. I still had quests to do in Nordmar but I just went ahead and pushed to finish the main quest because killing orcs two dozen at a time again and again wasn't very fun and it just felt like meaningless filler.

Risen, on the other hand, was not particularly ambitious. They played it safe. It's basically a modernized version of an amalgam of G1 and G2 both in thematic elements, questing, monsters, etc. And while it has all of the drawbacks of G1 and G2 it has most of the benefits making it a much better game than G3 on the balance of things.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Er, keyboard.

And that's all with the massive number of fixes provided by the community patch. Before that, it was a complete mess: winning against entire armies at level 1 via rapid-fire clicking, stun-locking wild animals, massive loading times, frequent crashes and freezes on many systems, continued memory use after exiting, bugs, broken quests, skills that did nothing, getting enough learning points and supplemental stat-boosters via bookshelves/stone tablets/potions/etc. to become a master of every trade and then some (still possible to a lesser extent with the CP, but it requires much more effort and isn't possible until near the end of the game)... I'm sure there were other problems that I've forgotten, too.

 

[Gord]

And that's all with the massive number of fixes provided by the community patch.

Yeah, because with the patches you go from click-spamming and stun-locking to:
run in, attack/kill one or two enemies, run away. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Fighting is simply a tedium, but not fun.

At least it's pretty stable now (at least for me)

 

[Leonard DeVir]

Yeah, and they even knew about the tedious combat, because there is a limit of how many enemies may attack you at the same time ( three, as far as I remember). Immersion breaking if you attack a city, and 25 Orks surround you, navel gazing, while you hack away at 2 or 3 -.- At least it breaks the last bit of immersion there is.

Really?

At least your actions have more impact than in a lot of other games, Gothic 3 included

 

[curry]

But doesn't Risen use the same engine as G3?

0/10

Gtfo noob

 

[bhlaab]

I thought Gothic 3 used gamebryo

The samey feel you're talking about probably has more to do with the art style (weird dudes with huge shoulders)

 

[Aothan]

is Risen's combat all that fun ? There is some merit in its novel-by-scarcity additions but from what little combat I found it felt a bit bland all the same. Maybe this aspect of the game becomes more intricate over time, for instance if there are methods to break or prevent blocking. I will have to confess I did not play for much longer than five or six hours, almost all of which was running from person to person for quest and dialogue purposes.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Dunno about melee, but magic is kinda dull. You have your 3 main nuke spells, out of which I'd say Fireball is the most viable one. Magic Bullet might be alright if you don't mind chugging mana pots like an alcoholic, but Frost felt kinda like a waste of skill points. I could cast 1 Frost to slow an enemy enough to give me time to cast one more to kill him, or I could just cast 1 Fireball and kill him with the first hit.

You can also summon a skeleton and cast Inferno (Rain of Fire), but these are Rune magic spells that require ingredients to use. Alright spells, but not something you can really rely on. Risen's magic is very bare bones. Most of it is utility.

 

[Ammar]

Mages can cast spells directly from the runes, without creating scrolls. That way they don't need reagents. Magic Bullet is the best attack spell, since it can be chained and has a knock-back. With Fireball you have to run wildly through the room until it recharges. Ice is useful as a support attack, so mostly for Order Warriors with high staff skill. All this does not really change that combat with magic is boring in Risen, but it wasn't really much better in Gothic. Risen at least has some nice utility spells like levitation.

 

[Nim]

is Risen's combat all that fun ?.... if there are methods to break or prevent blocking.

Yes, there is a power attack that breaks block (Axe 2 / Sword 7/Staff 8). And you will be using it all the fucking time against lizard after lizard after...... well you get it. Imo melee combat is most interesting in the first half or so of Risen, not as good as NotRs though.

 

[Metro]

Do I even have to liberate Myrtana or kill the rebels in the end?
That's another thing, everything feels so optional.
I think I might have gone on playing but the completely arbitrary approach to the storyline didn't exactly help to muster some motivation.

For the Innos path you have to liberate all the cities. You'll probably be sick of it just slogging through Vengard alone to see the King. Gotta be at least thirty or so Orcs between you and him and possibly more. For the Xardas/neutral path you need to kill both Rhobar and Zuben which is probably easier because you can simply kill them and run away. For the Beliar path I'm not completely sure.

The only question is why do you have card like that? NV9600GT were available, and you could find NV8600GTS for similar price.

It's the old card I used to try G3 years ago (I don't use it now but when I did it ran plenty of games released after G3 just fine at moderate settings) -- which, by the way, was high end when G3 was released. So, the question is why are you moronically going over the specs and dismissing it when hardly anything better existed at the time the game in question was released? To play G3 without stuttering you need to play it on cards that didn't exist until two+ years after it was released? Brilliant. Comparing the demands of G3 against Witcher 2, a 2011 title? Really? For all your technical knowledge it seems common sense has abandoned you.

Dunno about melee, but magic is kinda dull.

Never played a mage in Risen but I've heard it's bad. Then again, the Gothic series never had particularly strong mage play. Melee, however, is probably the best in the series. A much more polished version of what you see in G1 and G2.

 

[A user named cat]

After all these years and community patches, I finally have Gothic 3 running pretty smoothly with hardly any stuttering. I didn't think it was possible.

System:
Phenom II 940 @ 3.4ghz (easy to reach even with default heatsink and it's been safely OCed to this since I got it two years ago. great, cheap cpu)
4gb DDR2 1066
Nvidia 9600gt
Spinpoint F3 500gb

What did I do? Upgraded to 4gb of ram (from 2gb) and installed Win 7 64-bit, that's it. Had been using Win XP 32-bit for the last decade. Decided to try the game out yesterday and was baffled to not be met with long pauses and freezes, couldn't believe it. Still some stuttering here and there due to the shitty engine but nowhere near as bad as before. Didn't even change video settings aside from upping resolution to 1680x1050, so it's default on Very High.

So for anyone who never got it to run reasonably, try 4gb or more of ram and Win 7 64-bit. You might be pleasantly surprised. Sure, it's simple advice but you never know. As you can see, a good video card isn't even needed considering the 9600gt is getting quite ancient now.

 

[Ammar]

The Beliar end is probably the most tedious, it requires you to kill Zuben, Xardas, Rhobar and all the orcish leaders.

 

[Metro]

The Beliar end is probably the most tedious, it requires you to kill Zuben, Xardas, Rhobar and all the orcish leaders.

Oh Christ, just watch the video on YouTube in that case. Just another example of the poor design philosophy that went into G3. I get that they wanted to make it feel epic but they could have implemented city liberation better.

 

[Konjad]

Once I went into the town. I wanted to liberate it. I started fighting all the orcs and finally I made the final strike to the last one inside some kind of castle. It was a hard fight, I was out of potions will just a small amount of HPs. I though: "Glorious victory, soon rebels will take it over and then we will conquer the whole country".

Then, out of nowhere rebels spawned all around me. They screamed "YOU CANNOT BE THERE!". They attacked me after that short warning, before I had time to react. I've been killed by angry rebels all around me.

 

[Gord]

So for anyone who never got it to run reasonably, try 4gb or more of ram and Win 7 64-bit. You might be pleasantly surprised. Sure, it's simple advice but you never know. As you can see, a good video card isn't even needed considering the 9600gt is getting quite ancient now.

Might explain why I didn't have much trouble with it, I was/am using Win7 64bit, too.
Same GPU by the way, 9600GT might be a bit old now, but it was a great card.

 

[CorpseZeb]

By using some lame penis analogy - if Risen is normal, then Gothic 3 is erected - c'mon - Risen is just small, nice, pinky, girly, very, very small game, while Gothic 3 is somewhat monumental (and ambitious, not a common thing amount games). In fact, is not finished because of its scale.

Ps. And yes, Risen is running by the same engine as Gothic 3, but a bit never version (source: forum of WorldofGothic not some lame PCGamer). Also, Risen has a notably smaller world, so it's "stuttering/technical" problems are proportionally smaller.

 

[Severian Silk]

If Risen is comparable to Gothic 3 then I won't be playing it. Gothic 3 is tedious as hell.

 

[CorpseZeb]

If Risen is comparable to Gothic 3 then I won't be playing it. Gothic 3 is tedious as hell.

... but at the same time, the scale of game sweeten some of tediousness. The scale.

Ps. Of course, for some, tediousness is just because of scale.