Gothic Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos mod for Gothic 2

[Krivol]

The sad thing is you really don't need to invest a single point in strength/dex attributes and still will be able to finish the game with 200+ in each...

 

[notpl]

The sad thing is you really don't need to invest a single point in strength/dex attributes and still will be able to finish the game with 200+ in each...

Yeah. Very excited about the hardcore difficulty mode coming in the next patch, haven't had any interest in touching the game again otherwise. Even if you go out of your way not to abuse the animation glitches and other things experienced players all know about, Archolos was a bit too easy even compared to vanilla.

 

[Jvegi]

The sad thing is you really don't need to invest a single point in strength/dex attributes and still will be able to finish the game with 200+ in each...

It's because it's shit made by shit modders.

 

[Sweeper]

The sad thing is you really don't need to invest a single point in strength/dex attributes and still will be able to finish the game with 200+ in each...

It's because it's shit made by shit modders.

We get it, the game is shit. Give it a rest big guy.

 

[Jvegi]

It's a mod, not a game.

 

[Vulpes]

Have there been any news regarding the 2.0 update or the Hardcore addon? I really hope they come out sometime this year

 

[Justicar]

Have there been any news regarding the 2.0 update or the Hardcore addon? I really hope they come out sometime this year

2028 at the earliest.

 

[Spike]

Have there been any news regarding the 2.0 update or the Hardcore addon? I really hope they come out sometime this year

I believe they said 6 months from now or so. That is their estimate but they are just doing this at their leisure because they want to. They created the mod and ran their schedule like an actual business so it would get finished, but now they are chiller about it as of an interview from a few months back. I mentioned this earlier if you want to see the video.
EDIT: To clarify, the 6 month thing is a recent comment. The comment about them developing it at their leisure because they are all friends and want to out of joy is an older comment.

 

[Sweeper]

Okay then, finally fucking done with the Archolos playthrough after 85 hours. Some thoughts.

• I've seen some of you dumb-dumbs claim that it's better than the Gothics, whilst others claim that it's the worst of the Gothicesque games. You're both morons. It's not as good as the originals, but, and to my surprise, it is better than both Risen and ELEX (which I like).
• The quests are a mixed bag. There's less reactivity, less ways to complete quests, less C&C. I was looking for a Lobart's farm, but I never got it in Archolos. Some quests try to imitate the greatness of Gothic quests, like Lokvar counting all the shit you did for him to lower the price for the grave, but those quests end up being too simplistic and are few and far in between. However, the quests that deal with island politics and organizations are pretty great imo. Still fairly simplistic in the paths you can take, but they do serve as pretty good worldbuilding. In that regard it's one of the few RPGs I've played where the main quest (and main quest adjacent quests) is (far) superior to the side quests.
• The quests are not the game's biggest fault however, it's the inclusion of crafting and the fact that the game is simply too easy whilst at the same time the power progression is no longer as satisfying as it was in either Gothic 1, 2 or even Risen or ELEX. You can end the game with well over 300 strength and 250+ dmg weapons, but you're still not one hitting human mercenaries.
• What the fuck's the point of including a fairly in-depth cooking system as a source of healing items when you're just gonna allow the player to sleep, drink from water barrels, pray to Innos or alt-tab while you leave Marvin standing in the bathhouse like a retard as a way to restore health?
• Weapon crafting meanwhile (in)directly lessens the dopamine hits you get from exploration, as anything you can find out in the wild is vastly inferior to the stuff you can craft and the actually good weapons are only found in chapter 5. I keep trying to think of a single instance where balance doesn't end up being a vampiric malaise on the joy of playing an RPG, can't think of one.
• Min-maxing in this game has switched from point saving when increasing stats, to merchant runs so you can buy ingredients for permanent potions or the permanent potions themselves. This led to me being gold starved up until.... nah basically the entire game. I even joined the Jews thinking I'd be swimming in gold, not the case when fucking Hershlik ends up selling 3 str and dex potions plus 3 King's Sorrel, Dragonroot, Goblin Berries and Earth Aloe each that's like... 15.000gp goddamn it, I'm roleplaying as a fucking refugee over here! I ended the game with 200gp btw.
• Boss fights... why? I've got a big ass Dark Souls boss health meter, and I'm just gonna Ice Block 'em and then proceed to whack 'em until they're dead. Mechanically they're virtually no different than any other human enemy.

Despite all its faults it's still the closest we've gotten to Gothic 2 in 20 odd years. Gothic chads get pshek developed ludo from Poland, Fallout troons get The Frontier.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Okay then, finally fucking done with the Archolos playthrough after 85 hours. Some thoughts.

• I've seen some of you dumb-dumbs claim that it's better than the Gothics, whilst others claim that it's the worst of the Gothicesque games. You're both morons. It's not as good as the originals, but, and to my surprise, it is better than both Risen and ELEX (which I like).

Subjective. Plotwise Archolos is more interesting than Gothic 2 which is all about dragooooooons.

• The quests are a mixed bag. There's less reactivity, less ways to complete quests, less C&C.

• I was looking for a Lobart's farm, but I never got it in Archolos. Some quests try to imitate the greatness of Gothic quests, like Lokvar counting all the shit you did for him to lower the price for the grave, but those quests end up being too simplistic and are few and far in between. However, the quests that deal with island politics and organizations are pretty great imo. Still fairly simplistic in the paths you can take, but they do serve as pretty good worldbuilding. In that regard it's one of the few RPGs I've played where the main quest (and main quest adjacent quests) is (far) superior to the side quests.
• The quests are not the game's biggest fault however, it's the inclusion of crafting and the fact that the game is simply too easy whilst at the same time the power progression is no longer as satisfying as it was in either Gothic 1, 2 or even Risen or ELEX. You can end the game with well over 300 strength and 250+ dmg weapons, but you're still not one hitting human mercenaries.
• What the fuck's the point of including a fairly in-depth cooking system as a source of healing items when you're just gonna allow the player to sleep, drink from water barrels, pray to Innos or alt-tab while you leave Marvin standing in the bathhouse like a retard as a way to restore health?

To give more options to the player? I remember cooking quite a lot.

• Weapon crafting meanwhile (in)directly lessens the dopamine hits you get from exploration, as anything you can find out in the wild is vastly inferior to the stuff you can craft and the actually good weapons are only found in chapter 5. I keep trying to think of a single instance where balance doesn't end up being a vampiric malaise on the joy of playing an RPG, can't think of one.
• Min-maxing in this game has switched from point saving when increasing stats, to merchant runs so you can buy ingredients for permanent potions or the permanent potions themselves. This led to me being gold starved up until.... nah basically the entire game. I even joined the Jews thinking I'd be swimming in gold, not the case when fucking Hershlik ends up selling 3 str and dex potions plus 3 King's Sorrel, Dragonroot, Goblin Berries and Earth Aloe each that's like... 15.000gp goddamn it, I'm roleplaying as a fucking refugee over here! I ended the game with 200gp btw.

'The economy is challenging' is the most retarded criticism you can make towards a game.

Besides it wasn't so bad. I also joined the merchants and wasn't as gold starved, and yet purchased all the stat increasing potions and herbs I could find.

And the stat increasing system in Archolos is better than in Gothic 1&2 when you had to conserve potions until a stat point reaches the cost of 5.

• Boss fights... why? I've got a big ass Dark Souls boss health meter, and I'm just gonna Ice Block 'em and then proceed to whack 'em until they're dead. Mechanically they're virtually no different than any other human enemy.

Despite all its faults it's still the closest we've gotten to Gothic 2 in 20 odd years. Gothic chads get pshek developed ludo from Poland, Fallout troons get The Frontier.

Fallout fans get great total conversions of Fallout 2, a game older than Gothic 2 every couple of years: Resurrection, Nevada, Sonora. It's not like we're starved for quality Fallot content.

 

[Tavar]

Are there any other total conversion for Gothic 2 with similar quality?

 

[Marat]

Maybe try Dirty Swamp 2.0. Also worth waiting for Sailors of the Storm. Rest is either very old and commensurately bad or minor in scope.

 

[Mauman]

I thought the economy was one of the better changes.

There's always a use for gold, unlike in Gothic 2 where gold became an after thought about half-way in.

 

[Sweeper]

Subjective. Plotwise Archolos is more interesting than Gothic 2 which is all about dragooooooons.

I don't disagree, my point was the side content in Archolos is way worse than the side content in Gothic 2.

To give more options to the player? I remember cooking quite a lot.

It'd be nice if those options had an impact.

'The economy is challenging' is the most retarded criticism you can make towards a game.

Besides it wasn't so bad. I also joined the merchants and wasn't as gold starved, and yet purchased all the stat increasing potions and herbs I could find.

And the stat increasing system in Archolos is better than in Gothic 1&2 when you had to conserve potions until a stat point reaches the cost of 5.

The economy being challenging would be a good thing, but that's not the case here, since there's only one worthwhile thing to spend money on and healing is plentiful.

Fallout fans get great total conversions of Fallout 2, a game older than Gothic 2 every couple of years: Resurrection, Nevada, Sonora. It's not like we're starved for quality Fallot content.

I've only dicked around with Nevada, but fair enough, point retracted.

Gothic chads get pshek developed ludo from Poland, Fallout New Vegas troons get The Frontier.

 

[Jvegi]

Are there any other total conversion for Gothic 2 with similar quality?

Similar, yes. They are all shit.

 

[notpl]

The exploration feels a lot better if you play as a mage, since magical staffs are not craftable and you advance by finding both your runes and the books to learn magic circles themselves. I agree if you were strictly following a melee/ranged crafting progression your growth would feel a bit more rote and exploration would be less interesting as a result.

As for other quality Gothic mods: not really. Legend of Ahssun is probably the second-best all around campaign package, it's decent but obviously no Archolos. Dirty Swamp does some very interesting things with the gameplay systems and especially bossfights, but is short, linear, and has fairly poor world design. Aus dem Leben eines Diebes is great from a narrative and design standpoint, but very short.

 

[agris]

Legend of Ahssun is probably the second-best all around campaign package, it's decent but obviously no Archolos.

You played Ahssun? Whats inferior about it compared to Archololos? VO aside, I don’t care about that.

 

[Ryzer]

Are there any other total conversion for Gothic 2 with similar quality?

You might want to look at SureAI mods for Skyrim that give that Gothic vibes, Enderal is good.

 

[notpl]

Legend of Ahssun is probably the second-best all around campaign package, it's decent but obviously no Archolos.

You played Ahssun? Whats inferior about it compared to Archololos? VO aside, I don’t care about that.

The main city is nowhere near as believably-designed or gorgeous, it doesn't change the magic system or add new spells (maybe one, I barely remember) or do anything with itemization like Archolos did - things like the boxer's rings, the mana regen rings, bonus spell damage rings, the summoned creature builds, Ahssun is very much just the vanilla gothic 2 gameplay experience. It adds a touch more crafting, like I think you can join a painter's studio where you sell dyes as one of the possible town apprenticeships, but it's very minimal.

Not much in the way of c&c or branching paths in side-quests, a few of them are failable if you do it wrong (which I guess counts as a branching path, but isn't quite the same) and I think you get a couple basic "turn the thief over to the guards or let him go" choices. Again, it's much closer to base G2 in its scope, whereas Archolos felt like it tried to expand it into something more like a sequel than a straight duplicate.

I thought the wilderness areas of its world map were very well-made, though, and I think it was a touch bigger than Archolos in that regard.

 

[agris]

Legend of Ahssun is probably the second-best all around campaign package, it's decent but obviously no Archolos.

You played Ahssun? Whats inferior about it compared to Archololos? VO aside, I don’t care about that.

The main city is nowhere near as believably-designed or gorgeous, it doesn't change the magic system or add new spells (maybe one, I barely remember) or do anything with itemization like Archolos did - things like the boxer's rings, the mana regen rings, bonus spell damage rings, the summoned creature builds, Ahssun is very much just the vanilla gothic 2 gameplay experience. It adds a touch more crafting, like I think you can join a painter's studio where you sell dyes as one of the possible town apprenticeships, but it's very minimal.

Not much in the way of c&c or branching paths in side-quests, a few of them are failable if you do it wrong (which I guess counts as a branching path, but isn't quite the same) and I think you get a couple basic "turn the thief over to the guards or let him go" choices. Again, it's much closer to base G2 in its scope, whereas Archolos felt like it tried to expand it into something more like a sequel than a straight duplicate.

I thought the wilderness areas of its world map were very well-made, though, and I think it was a touch bigger than Archolos in that regard.

Interesting, thank you. Your discussion also serves as an indirect rebuttal of NotSweeper ’s claim that CoM is inferior to the OG G1/2.

 

[notpl]

Interview with the creators about the upcoming total conversion mod Against All Odds, from the team that made the Returning mod

https://gothic.org.pl/publicystyka/...nst-all-odds-the-interview-with-the-creators/

Of note: "What don’t you like about Returning, and would you like it to be different in Вопреки всему (Engl. “Against All Odds” – ed. note.) ?

I don’t like everything about Returning. If I were to work on Returning today it would’ve turned out completely different or wouldn’t come out in the first place. Our mod will be completely different from Returning/New Balance in every aspect. We have nothing common with the above mentioned modifications and strive to distantiate ourselves from them as much as possible."
"What new things can we expect from the guild threads of paladins and water mages that were not present in other modifications?

First of all, during the writing of new Paladins plot (as well as the city guards) i focused on private storylines of already existent characters so well known to us in the original Game. For example there is a whole storyline about Mario who previously didn’t play any significant role in G2. In our modification however player will have an opportunity to significantly influence his fate. Of course the same applies to various different characters as well.

Water mages thread have much more changes. In the original game it was the least developed and detailed faction in the matter of characters, their motivation and stories. During the water mages thread we’ll be able to explore Jarkendar that has been expanded almost thrice the original volume, and discover what happened to the Builders civilization, why Adanos decided to punish them, also we’ll have to fight those very dark forces Raven mentioned in the original game. In short, it’s gonna be fun."

"Why will it be worthwhile to go through the main storyline of the game from scratch?

We decided to focus on increasing the storyline not “in perspective”, but in “width”, introducing a large amount of variability in both main and side storylines. Even without taking into account the variety in terms of gameplay, the player will be able to experience at least 5-6 different walkthroughs, in which most of the events will depend on the player’s actions and decisions."

 

[The Wall]

Archolos guys should make their own Gothic RPG. NOT work for some other studio. Start their own

 

[Konjad]

Archolos guys should make their own Gothic RPG. NOT work for some other studio. Start their own

None of them wanted to do management and other business stuff.

 

[notpl]

I remember seeing one of the devs in their discord say something to the effect of "We'd consider it if people wanted to pay us, say 1 mil pol" which sounds so funny in retrospect, since they could probably clear 1 mil USD on kickstarter after the success of CoM for a sequel if they were serious.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I finally finished the mod and found it generally excellent, at least within the constraints laid down by the Gothic 2 engine. If I had a complaint it would be that access to armour feels quite random/uneven and its a huge determination in your frustration levels. Also, the finale/point of no return wasn't telegraphed well enough and I was disappointed to find out I was locked out of any further quests in chapter 6.

I also only had a single crash the entire time, even though I was using the DX11 mod, which I thought was pretty fucking good. The game engine itself fucked me many more times, with perpetual sliding down rocks, stuck conversations etc.

Kudos to everyone involved!