Gothic 3 on GoG for 5 bucks - worth it?

[Kraszu]

Fighting hundreds of orcs at once? Sure, they'll wait in line nicely.

Playing on easy detected.

Nope.

Then playing without alternative AI, it is a fact that that you are attacked by 3 Orcs at once on hard with AI on, not an opinion.

Armour makes almost no difference. A dumb goblin shaman will two-shot any character (no matter the level).

Huh, armour decreases dmg taken from melee, and ranged not from magic.

Armour grants fire etc. resistance as well.

Few of them but it is mostly for meele/ranged some of the best armours have no resistance protection.

 

[The King of Comedy]

I recently reinstalled this game and even on my relatively modern super computer the game still runs terrible.

 

[villain of the story]

Ran buttersmooth on me.

 

[Oriental European]

Beautiful world to visit, awful game to play.

 

[Gord]

The only Gothic game I never finished.

It was quite fun at first, the world is indeed nice, the quests are, for the most part, nothing special, but they aren't all bad either.
Got bored eventually though - I somehow missed direction, some obvious way at how to progress in the story (no, I'm not talking about a quest compass), everything felt oddly arbitrary to me.
Also the grind. Nordmar has multiple camps with dozens of orcs, multiple caves with dozens of undead, multiple ...you get the idea.
And don't even get me started on reaching the king.

If you get it, definitely get the community patch and use alternative AI.
I'm not so sure about alternative balancing though - supposedly it's about making character decissions matter more, but it also means that the game can be a lot harder early on.
Can't reccommend playing a mage. I did and it was pretty weak as far as mage gameplay goes (probably aggravated by alternative balancing). Then again, magic was never the strong point of the series. You are better of playing an fighter or an archer.

From a technical point I never had much problems, btw. I have played it on two different pcs (one old, one recent) and it ran pretty smooth and stable on both of them. You should probably try it without the tweaks mentioned earlier at first, though.

 

[Zergian]

Exploration isn't really a factor given randomized chests....

On the contrary, the chest type I explained earlier means you can't go to the one containing the uber item immediately in the beginning, even accidentally. Instead, it will appear when you have opened a certain number of chests of the correct type. Perfect for exploration. Having static chests, as you suggest, would make exploration pointless if you accidentally found it in the first chest you opened or knew where it was from your previous play-through.

edit: well, there are other incentives, too, such as the chalices.

 

[Elwro]

My problem was, I guess, that I played the Alternative AI after finishing Risen. I couldn't even finish the starting G3 fight, I had no idea what was going on and why even a single orc could rape me in any way he'd prefer. Risen's system was a lot more approachable for me...

 

[Gord]

If anything I would say that combat difficulty in Gothic 3, even with AAI, is too incoherent.
E.g. I had no real problems in fighting against enemies like orcs or humans (as long as there weren't too many of them) using one handed weapons or staves, even with my mage. But a stupid goblin would rape me nearly every time in close combat, because they always managed to get through my defense/interrupt my attack.

Now, it might just be that you have to find the right tactics for different enemies, but the implementation, to me, didn't make much sense: Why is a goblin using a club that different from an orc using the same club? Why is a 40 exp goblin 3x as dangerous as a 100 exp orc?

 

[Daemongar]

I recently reinstalled this game and even on my relatively modern super computer the game still runs terrible.

It ran pretty poorly for me also. There are some patches and tweeks to improve performance, though, and on the same system it worked well. It is worth playing this game for $5 just because it is interesting and enteraining in its own way. Probably is a much better game in German, but overall I liked the lack of hand holding, that in some spots it was very brutal, and in other spots it was fairly quiet.

My biggest complaint with the whole game was fighting wolves. If you didn't have a spear equipped, prepare to be stun locked to death with no way out. That bit.

 

[Kraszu]

If anything I would say that combat difficulty in Gothic 3, even with AAI, is too incoherent.
E.g. I had no real problems in fighting against enemies like orcs or humans (as long as there weren't too many of them) using one handed weapons or staves, even with my mage. But a stupid goblin would rape me nearly every time in close combat, because they always managed to get through my defense/interrupt my attack.

Now, it might just be that you have to find the right tactics for different enemies, but the implementation, to me, didn't make much sense: Why is a goblin using a club that different from an orc using the same club? Why is a 40 exp goblin 3x as dangerous as a 100 exp orc?

Orcs didn't use clubs, clubs have fast attack but low dmg. Attack once and step back then attack again when you will see the opening.

 

[Gord]

Replace orcs with humans then. Actually doesn't matter, my point is simply that the balance of different enemies that seem to fall into the same category (humanoids with one handed weapons in that case) could use some improvement.

Anyway I ended up simply shooting them from afar in the end, but for a obviously low level enemy their ability to interrupt your attacks was to strong.

 

[Metro]

With plenty of quest that changes something in the gameworld?

That's stretching it a tad. Only thing that really changes are what npcs you'll find in a city. From what I recall if you liberated a city it was mostly populated with generic npcs that didn't offer any new quests or anything special. The reputation system was about as complex/involved as World of Warcraft.

 

[Severian Silk]

The game is pretty bland IMO. Quests are repetitive and don't have much impact other than gaining a few faction points for that area. Combat is OK with the CP but not on par with Mount&Blade. The scenery is pretty but stutters frequently when traveling between areas.

I wouldn't spend $5 to REPLAY the game a second time.

 

[Kraszu]

With plenty of quest that changes something in the gameworld?

That's stretching it a tad. Only thing that really changes are what npcs you'll find in a city. From what I recall if you liberated a city it was mostly populated with generic npcs that didn't offer any new quests or anything special. The reputation system was about as complex/involved as World of Warcraft.

I did find the reputation system involving because many quest can be done for either of the fractions, you often can get better reward if you balance it right, and still get above 75rep, dunno how it is done in WoW.

 

[Chaotic Lulz3r]

Played it recently myself, with the CP 1.74.

Run absolutely smoothly, in my modern rig. Not a single stutter, except the classic one when drawing a new flame source (torch/fire arrow) on a just loaded game. Perhaps the SSD helps.

Only one bug, with creatures sometimes clipping into the terrain. Prevented me from finishing one quest in Nordmar, because one deer I had to hunt clipped and got stuck in a mountainside, I saved before I noticed, and the previous good save was hours ago.

I used alternative AI, but not balancing, as I like to end up as an ubergod that can rape anything in any matter of his choosing, and I definitely was one near the end of G3 (finished as a Lvl81 Paladin, but really, there was nothing I hadn't mastered/couldn't use by that point).

Played most of the game as an archer, which seemed really overpowered, being able to kite even the most fearsome creatures at very low levels. Killed my first dragon at level 12 or so (one of the two or three at the bottom of the Cape Dun caves), took about 50 arrows. Packs of low-level creatures (wolfs, snappers) were much more difficult to deal with than lone powerful beasts (shadowbeasts, monsters, trolls).

I only started developing melee skills after lvl60, and I had the Paladin armor, which reduced the amount of damage you take so much, you might as well have cheated a god mode on. I understand that Alternative balance changes the way armor works too, so maybe the Paladin Armor isn't so ridiculously effective.

I didn't much like the desert area, and I found the excavation sites/ruins near Mora Sul very hard to navigate without getting lost, the only place in the game I had this problem.

I liked the great potential for exploration and the lack of handholding.

Also, someone said the game takes 40 hours to complete. Perhaps, if you are in a hurry and are trying to finish asap, but a thourough playthrough, completing most quests, exploring all the terrain and so on will definitely take more than a hundred hours.

On topic and in case it isn't clear, I think it is more than worth $5.

 

[Kraszu]

I only started developing melee skills after lvl60, and I had the Paladin armor, which reduced the amount of damage you take so much, you might as well have cheated a god mode on. I understand that Alternative balance changes the way armor works too, so maybe the Paladin Armor isn't so ridiculously effective.

The problem is that HP cost too little XP. I did self impose HP limit on myself to not brake the game. HP should cost increasingly more. I don't like to be ubergod at the end either I rather replay the game specializing in something else you still end up very strong but specialized.