Gothic Gothic is fun

[Inhabitants of Khorinis]

Did anyone ever play the massive, Russian Gothic 2 mod/overhaul: Returning?

Last time I checked, several years ago, it was only in Russian, but I believe there was an option to have English subtitles.
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38329

If I remember correctly, it should be a mix of the english (original) voiceover and the new russian voiceover. The subtitles are all in english but the stuff that's new is not a professional translation, just google translate.

 

[Cryomancer]

I've also read that the game brings back the last dungeon from G1 where you go to retreive Uriziel. Why would you torture the player by bringing back the worst g1 had to offer? The final part of G1 is an absolute shitshow just because of how tedious it is.

The sleepr temple on returning is a little different. But that region is optional. Just good lucky trying to fight the fire dragon as a fire magician without uriziel... Magicians on ret are more "restricted" to their elements. You can't learn army of darkness and other powerful dark magic in Innos monastery.

and they come at you in packs of 4 and beyond. And 95% of the location is like this, there are almost no safe routes on the entire map, valley of mines isn't unique in this regard there are many such locations in returning mod. This mod in general is one of the worst slogs I've ever seen in a video game. I've played it to the last chapter, don't ask me why, I don't know myself. Guess I'm just desperate for anything that resembles Gothic.

Just use a scroll/spell which transforms you into a animal like a bloodfly.

I played a lot of returning last and in this year. Loved water magicians and necromancers.

I disagree that the mod is a "slog". It has far more enemies? Sure. In fact, my circle 4 WM can kill a seeker pretty fast, while on G2, took a eternity with ice block + melee strikes. Regular zombies can soak 6 fireballs. Spells on G2 costs multiple times more than on G1 and deals a tiny fraction of damage. Returning made magery great. And on end game, water magicians and necromancers are pretty dope.

Not having to be a sheep of Innos to be a magician is so great.

If I remember correctly, it should be a mix of the english (original) voiceover and the new russian voiceover. The subtitles are all in english but the stuff that's new is not a professional translation, just google translate.

My greatest problem with ret, was the english translation. The crafting menu and book literally saying different reagents for the same spell. Sinitar discord and google translate saved my life. Without the RPGRussia, I would't be able to play the game...

 

[Zanzoken]

I've also read that the game brings back the last dungeon from G1 where you go to retreive Uriziel. Why would you torture the player by bringing back the worst g1 had to offer? The final part of G1 is an absolute shitshow just because of how tedious it is.

I'm glad someone else brought it up, because as much as I have enjoyed the game, these last few sequences have turned into a real slog. It's disappointing because the pacing has generally been excellent up until this point.

 

[Zanzoken]

Well fellas, the Sleeper is snoozing once again. Lackluster final boss capping off a lackluster final act, but still a great game.

And now we move on to the best sequel to come out of Germany since 1939. Only this time, the good guys are gonna win! :D

 

[Jinn]

Lackluster final boss capping off a lackluster final act, but still a great game.

Welcome to every Piranha Bytes game. It's unfortunately how they all are. But really, most RPGs are the same. In fact, most games leave me with the same impression. It seems to be a plight on gaming in general, but particularly accentuated in (good) PB games because of their excellent quality leading up to that point.

 

[Cryomancer]

Lackluster final boss capping off a lackluster final act, but still a great game.

Imagine when you play Risen 1... Now try play returning.

Welcome to every Piranha Bytes game. It's unfortunately how they all are. But really, most RPGs are the same. In fact, m

Risen 3 final boss was not THAT bad. But Risen 1 is IMO the worst final boss on all PB games.

And on G3, you don't even has a "final boss"...

 

[Thal]

I'm playing Gothic 2 for the first time, and my advice is to stick to keyboard controls. I reached level 15 with with mouse controls, thinking that since you can chain attacks, it's just a matter of taste.

Well, turns out that you can only chain forward attacks, and the camera doesn't lock on to the enemy. So with mouse controls you have a massive clusterfuck with goblins or multiple enemies and can't use left-right swing attacks at all. The entire time I was cursing the developers for their sadistic design, but turns out it's just underdeveloped mouse controls. After I switched over to keyboard, I killed a shadowbeast on the first try. However, I can't help but compare combat unfavourably to Severance, whose combat resembles Gothic, but is better in every respect. Ironically, despite being action rpgs, in Gothics the blade goes through the enemy like it was air, just like in Morrowind, if you're locked on to a different target. As a result, you more or less have to cheese group fights by pulling targets individually.

Still, they are fantastic games in their own right. Start with Gothic 1.

 

[Murk]

Not my experience regarding the controls...

You can manually lock on via hotkey, and you can chain forward into side-swipe attacks, or vice versa (though it resets the forward combo if you break it), but you can chain "infinite combos", which is a common method to kill a shadowbeast or other strong non-blocking enemies by pushing them into a wall and chaining them to death.

 

[Zanzoken]

G2 really has a nice feel to it compared to G1, doesn't it? I'm not even to Khorinis yet but it already seems smoother and better polished in terms of controls, combat, and environment design.

I am still playing with G1 combat controls btw.

 

[Zanzoken]

So I've been playing G2 a little while and starting to get decent at the combat. I have a good "1-2-dodge" combo using the little knife that Cavalorn gives you, and can reliably kill wolves, field raiders, and other mobs while taking little or no damage.

I've just been hoarding LP for these first few levels, given that the character system is kind of fucky, but ultimately decided to go with 1H melee for this run. I trained the requisite skill up to unlock "Fighter" rank, eager to see what the new combat animations would be like. Surely my dude will be even quicker and deadlier now, right?

Uhhh... no. The new animations are complete garbage. While I can now do a flashy 4-strike combo, each step is tricky to time, and if you're off then dude just freezes for a second and gives the enemy a free shot at his face. And the speedy "stick-and-move" style I was using so effectively up until now is no more. The flashy new sword strikes are slow and unresponsive to the point that I can no longer properly execute my backsteps. The timing I was using in the old style is now all wrong, and results in dude either throwing up an ineffectual block, or being too slow on the backstep to avoid damage.

I am going to keep at it and see if I can adjust to this new style, but if I can't sort this out then it might be enough to induce a ragequit. I really want to like this game -- and in many ways I do -- but it's testing my patience in ways that G1 never did.

 

[Murk]

You can definitely adapt, and more importantly, your odds of doing a 'critical' hit increase with your skill meaning your damage goes up. Eventually you'll hit enemies with 150+ defense where your weapon just won't do any damage without a crit going through (adds your STR to your damage, basically). You'll always do at least 5 damage, but when you're up against dragon snappers and orcs, that won't cut it. So, long story, you gotta raise your skill level if you plan to be melee.

Also, master tier melee is definitely faster though I tend to only use the first 3 hits from the combo since some of the swings have a longer window, so it may be worth while to go from normal combo to a side-swipe to reset it.

On my current playthrough I'm using 2handers and will do the first 3 hits then go into a side swipe or just strafe to reset it, since the last hit takes too long.

One last note -- if you are an avid 'back step' dodger (useful on monsters particularly since you can't block them) then you may want to stay using 1h instead of 2h since the backstep dodge for 2h weapons has an additional animation that slows you down.

 

[Zanzoken]

Thanks for the info. I saw where the combat formulas essentially make it so that you have to land critical hits to actually do any meaningful damage, which is a bizarre and completely unnecessary change to the previous game's system.

I am honestly not sure what to do. I still have a save with all my LP unspent, so I could reload and switch to a different style. But the general consensus seems to be that archery is OP and boring, and magic is weak as piss until the late game. So not sure if there's really any benefit from doing so.

It doesn't help that G2 is just generally harder to get into than G1. This whole first chapter is just a bunch of random sidequests around Khorinis and hunting mobs to kill for XP. Technically you can advance the plot rather quickly, but all the stuff I've read said that's a mistake and you should clear as much as you can before leaving Chapter 1. So it's a lot of grinding, which isn't too bad as long as the combat is fun, but now you throw in these fucky animations and having to basically forget the techniques I've learned so far and learn a new style and... idk.

 

[Thal]

Thanks for the info. I saw where the combat formulas essentially make it so that you have to land critical hits to actually do any meaningful damage, which is a bizarre and completely unnecessary change to the previous game's system.

I am honestly not sure what to do. I still have a save with all my LP unspent, so I could reload and switch to a different style. But the general consensus seems to be that archery is OP and boring, and magic is weak as piss until the late game. So not sure if there's really any benefit from doing so.

It doesn't help that G2 is just generally harder to get into than G1. This whole first chapter is just a bunch of random sidequests around Khorinis and hunting mobs to kill for XP. Technically you can advance the plot rather quickly, but all the stuff I've read said that's a mistake and you should clear as much as you can before leaving Chapter 1. So it's a lot of grinding, which isn't too bad as long as the combat is fun, but now you throw in these fucky animations and having to basically forget the techniques I've learned so far and learn a new style and... idk.

I just finished Chapter 4 with one handed and it works brilliantly. The fighter animations are tricky in the beginning, but you'll learn to love them. You will just have to practice timing with the animations. 99% of the time you freeze, because you hit too soon. The knife has terrible range, which means it won't be good even short-term. Get a Fine short sword with 25 str req and 50 damage, which will cover your needs for a while.

 

[Murk]

The trailing animation of your attacks helps to time things, when the trail "catches up" is when you can do the next action.

Archery is indeed OP and boring but only when your skill is high enough that you can attack from semi-distance. Though getting some dex is still good since it helps with lockpicking, pickpocketing, and gives you access to the dex swords which generally have a much higher stat-to-atk ratio.

Finally, unless you plan to go mage, you'll have enough LP to be pretty high or maxed out in 1 stat + 2 combat types. Mages have to spend LP on mana, circles, and also learning spell formula. You do get fireball at circle 2 though which is decent, and lightning/small firestorm can get you through the mid game.

Having said all that, melee is the most fun IMO, and in my current playthrough I am doing magic + 2handed on a mage character. Mostly using magic for healing, which is very cost efficient, ice block and ice wave to freeze tougher enemies/crowd control. Quite fun! Then you get summon demon or fire storm and it's GG.

Having gotten to Chapter 6, I installed the returning mod and... so far I'm not loving it. It's very unstable and has crashed multiple times while loading -- so I may not be able to even really play it.

Will try tomorrow to see if I can get it to run better, but if the game consistently crashes on load (and so far, once on saving) then I can't be bothered. It definitely looks nice with how much stuff they put in visually, but the dense vegetation makes it impossible to see stuff on the ground (or get through caves without lowering the camera to the floor).

I'm hoping I can get it to be stable, but if not, then on to Risen 1.

 

[Shadenuat]

STR is always added to damage, it's just that normal hit formulae is /10 damage. Bows always crit otoh which is why they do so much damage.

I saw where the combat formulas essentially make it so that you have to land critical hits to actually do any meaningful damage

Not sure, I think in the end farming as much STR as possible is technically a bigger increase in damage than skill. Also, you can raise skill with books and notr tablets so can leave it at ~30 in the beginning. (right, don't forget to save 30lp for skill needed to read tablets)

Btw, since you're melee, don't forget to donate fire mage in city 50 gold donations per donation to double your hp early.

Generally people love to kill everything chapter by chapter in G2 but reality is higher tiers of armor you get even in ch2 (notr or mine valley) make you close to invulnerable to many enemies soo and later armor upgrades are tableturning stuff.

I have a good "1-2-dodge" combo using the little knife that Cavalorn gives you

You want weapon with longest reach, drop this garbo. With that of course you won't like 30% moveset.

Archery is indeed OP and boring but only when your skill is high enough that you can attack from semi-distance

You need 0 skill to be an archer. Most effective way is just to max DEX. You can throw some points in but again, due to tabletos, you will end up with 50-60.
There are many moments when you can't use distance at all, like when opening doors and there are some skeletons, for example. But due to noscope you can just tank hits with armor.

dex swords which generally have a much higher stat-to-atk ratio

They still take STR into formula which makes them semi-worthless tbh. Especially when Claw of Beliar exists.
You may want Acrobatics but that's honestly points wasted as G2 has many teleporters. And for Pickpocket you want max dex, definitely more than 100+. So unless you're archer, I'd go all out STR for any char.

The biggest problem in melee run would be that fun doesn't last for 60 hours - there are simply too many raptors to chunk through.

You do get fireball at circle 2 though which is decent, and lightning/small firestorm can get you through the mid game

Wouldn't waste time on fireball, when there is Ice Lance (100 damage).

It doesn't help that G2 is just generally harder to get into than G1. This whole first chapter is just a bunch of random sidequests around Khorinis and hunting mobs to kill for XP.

Yeah, after G2 I decided to replay G1 and a) it doesn't waste your time as much (although some quests like selling weed is meh, G2 finding bandits quest is very good tracking quest for example) and b) it gives loads of XP for quests (500+) which allows you to progress quickly without lawnmowing trash.

I finished some basic quests in all camps, spent a whooping amount of total 10LP (on lockpicking), joined Gomez, and with 2 rings of str, 1 bottle of str and good sword and heavy Shadow armor am going for eggs now, to become fire mage.

Oddly for me with system patches and all mouse behaves better in G1 than in G2.

 

[Murk]

Huh, I thought Ice Lance was circle 3. Fair enough, get that instead of fireball. I think I had fireball already by the time I got to jarkendhar so I never got ice lance from nefarius.

Shadenuat having a 0 in archery for most the game (I just played like that) is annoying cuz you have to be in near melee range, which if you're going to pull multiple enemies means you'll get swarmed and can be flinched out of your attack animation (not always, but enough to make it so you get hit more than you should have). If you want to go full sperg, then yeah whatever, but my recommendation of getting some points in it is for someone who is new to the game and probably expects archery to work from a distance.

 

[Shadenuat]

I played 30 one handed 30 bow (base). Made me learn that you can actually climb trees The thing about LPs is that early there is never enough due to NOTR "balance" (and because you want to use potions and tablets later after you hit 80-100 in stat), but later you swim in them and don't even know where to throw them. I also picked up every skill available, the most profitable felt Pickpocket, Lockpicking felt very disappointing.

Some sort of STR battlemage would be probably fun to play, otherwise character building is very boring.

 

[Murk]

You cans till get 200 in your primary stat pretty consistently (though you don't really need it), and you can save some LP if you do the 4/5 trick.

Battle Mage isn't bad, can knock out certain key enemies by focus firing projectiles, and the utility spells are useful for strong enemies earlyish (dragon snappers before you can consistently damage them, etc.) though mage armors/robes look dumb

I am always frustrated at how as a mage you get a redundant fire bolt rune tho in jarkendar when you're forced to make one prior to being able to go in.

 

[Zanzoken]

I think I have my melee issues sorted now. I stand by my opinion that the forward strikes are slow and clunky, however it looks like the side slashes are still fast and don't throw off your backstep. I used side attacks a lot in G1 but had gotten out of the habit of it in G2, since at untrained levels of 1H they aren't really much different than forward strikes.

I just have to retrain myself to quit using W for striking and instead alternate between the A and D keys. But I am pretty sure I can manage that.

 

[cretin]

how the fuck does dodging work in gothic 1?

I see all these posts saying you're supposed to dodge back with monsters, but it only ever seems to result in me being hit no matter what. What am I missing here?

 

[Murk]

how the fuck does dodging work in gothic 1?

I see all these posts saying you're supposed to dodge back with monsters, but it only ever seems to result in me being hit no matter what. What am I missing here?

You have to time it pretty closely, and it works better with 1handers than 2handers, but you get I-Frames when dodging back (not blocking).

If the returning mod didn't completely bork things, I'd upload a clip. Gonna try to remove the mod and just see if the vanilla game will run.

 

[Zanzoken]

I don't recall dodging being as useful in G1 but that may be because I was using two-handers.

Does backstepping give i-frames in G1 or is that only in G2?

 

[prengle]

sometimes it's nice to remember that videogames are supposed to be fun, memorable, joyful experiences

 

[Murk]

I think I'm done with the returning mod; started a new game to avoid the last corrupted save, same thing happened after about 3 hours.

Oh well, on to Risen 1 I guess. I wanted to experience the new stuff they put in, but some of the changes they made really broke the feel of the game (both in terms of atmosphere and in terms of feedback/gameplay).

 

[Zanzoken]