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Just finished my second Gothic 3 run

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
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Free City of Warsaw
Elex is much a competently made, finished game

How playing ELEX felt:

giphy.gif

Perhaps Mass Effect: Andromeda will be more up your alley.

You know, AAA, polished title with no jank.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,877
Location
Eastern block
Well, the argument isn't sociological. The jankiness of a game doesn't magically change depending on which country you are from, as sloppy coding exists on both sides of the ocean (Bethesda?). One can construct a transatlantic feud if one thinks it'll be fun, though.
 

Optimist

Savant
Patron
Joined
Jun 18, 2018
Messages
337
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Elex is better in almost every conceivable way. Unless you simply can't stand the setting, I'm not sure how anyone could claim otherwise.

I did actually enjoy the setting - I grew up on Andre-Norton's/McCaffrey's/Bujold's/Lackey's pulp, so technobarbarian science fantasy is right up my alley. ELEX is absolutely a fun game, it's just that I enjoyed G3 somewhat more than that.

Elex had a jetpack, and I love any game that lets you play with its verticality. It also let you join LARPers, Jedi Council or straight up Australians, which got a chuckle out of me. It scaled down the world a little bit, which helped PB do what they do best, fiddle with denser, more detailed worlds. On the other hand it mostly encouraged you to traverse the world from one quest site to another, when in G3 you had some side-faction camps (forest rangers and the desert people) you could find every now and then, more open-ended gameplay, as well as these "heavy chests". Melee in G3 at its release was super fucky, but after the updates it presents you with a series of varied methods of combat, which were more engaging than Elex's autolock + click when you have stamina available. I remember dual weapon wielding especially fondly, you could rush into a group of enemies and spin to victory like a knockoff Jedi. Ranged weaponry was fun in Elex as well, but while Gothic 3 had a bit less of it it also had selectable types of ammo, and made you pay attention to arrow/bolt dropoff. And then there was quite an extensive spellbook as well!

I can see how these cool shades are a strong argument for ELEX, though.
 

JDR13

Arcane
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
3,930
Location
The Swamp
Elex had a jetpack, and I love any game that lets you play with its verticality. It also let you join LARPers, Jedi Council or straight up Australians, which got a chuckle out of me. It scaled down the world a little bit, which helped PB do what they do best, fiddle with denser, more detailed worlds. On the other hand it mostly encouraged you to traverse the world from one quest site to another, when in G3 you had some side-faction camps (forest rangers and the desert people) you could find every now and then, more open-ended gameplay, as well as these "heavy chests".

The open-ended gameplay in G3 isn't very good though. Outside of quest-specific content, the world is mostly empty. As I mentioned, the game was obviously rushed, and the world just isn't fleshed out enough to make its size worthwhile. Elex otoh has lots of neat places and things to stumble across.

Melee in G3 at its release was super fucky, but after the updates it presents you with a series of varied methods of combat, which were more engaging than Elex's autolock + click when you have stamina available. I remember dual weapon wielding especially fondly, you could rush into a group of enemies and spin to victory like a knockoff Jedi. Ranged weaponry was fun in Elex as well, but while Gothic 3 had a bit less of it it also had selectable types of ammo, and made you pay attention to arrow/bolt dropoff. And then there was quite an extensive spellbook as well!

The melee in G3 sucks. There's really no other way to put it. Even with the community patch, it just doesn't feel right. Weapons have no sense of weight or impact, and the animations and movement are oddly floaty. I wouldn't call the combat in Elex good either, but it felt more polished than G3 at least.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
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9,836
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Free City of Warsaw
Just finished Gothic 3 choosing Xardas' solution. Now I'll load an earlier save (from before the decision what to do with Adanos artifacts) and try to become the Champion of Innos.

Despite many flaws it was (and still is) a memorable journey!
 
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Crichton

Prophet
Joined
Jul 7, 2004
Messages
1,210
I remember being amazed at the size of the G3 world after G1+G2, but I have to agree with optimist that taking some of the same design principles and scaling them up didn't work well. The biggest problem for me was XP autism. In G1 and G2, you'd do all the quests you could for each faction before joining and it wouldn't get tedious until your third playthrough, but in G3, even only having played through once, it was just a slog (I expect I'd have the same problem with ELEX). I think PB intended for players to just pick one faction and ignore the others, but the incentives for the player don't line up that way. And, as previously mentioned, 10 quests of "wipe out x animals of type y" leaves a much worse taste in the player's mouth than two.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
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Aaaaaand finished Gothic 3 again, this time as the champion of Innos. I must say I like this ending more. It's more bloody, decisive and my hero (who thanks to experience from all the liberations reached level 75) ended with a big fat crown on his head. Plus I could show a middle finger to Xardas, who bossed my PC around for the last 3 games. I think it's a fitting ending of the Gothic trilogy.

Unfortunately the ending slides did not completely fit what I managed to achieve (for example: I did not kill Rhobar the 2nd, and yet Lee became general again), but it's a minor nuisance. The campaign took me me almost 91 hours (with reloading and checking some other variants, propably around 85 hours without it). And despite such a long run, it never bored me. That is more than can be said about the majority of open world rpgs.
 
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cvv

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Aaaaaand finished Gothic 3 again, this time as the champion of Innos. I must say I like this ending more.

The Xardas ending is probably the weirdest ending of all RPGs I've ever played. You go on a pilgrimage with an old man across the entire continent and in the end he just disappears in a portal. The end.

Loved it.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
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Location
Free City of Warsaw
Aaaaaand finished Gothic 3 again, this time as the champion of Innos. I must say I like this ending more.

The Xardas ending is probably the weirdest ending of all RPGs I've ever played. You go on a pilgrimage with an old man across the entire continent and in the end he just disappears in a portal. The end.

Loved it.

You both dissappear. But why the portal could not be in Nordmar? The pilgrimage is long! I cleared most of the world of critters and still the fucker chose a path with tons of trolls, ripperbeasts and other filth.
 

Daud

Literate
Joined
Jan 4, 2021
Messages
16
Location
Khorinis
G3's biggest issue is the size of the map. You definitely need more time to develop the quests and factions with the care they had in the two previous installments. Most quests are mindless boring fetch/kill shit.
While I liked the way the orcs and the cities appear, orcs are now intelligent and extremely weaker than before. Orcs were strong and scary monsters in G1 and G2, while here you basically wipe an army of them the first 10 minutes of the game.
Yes, you are supposed to be stronger than when you start G2, but it was a detail that, imho, heavily impacted the overall feeling of the game. You are never really scared in G3 like before.

I also feel that the connection with the companions is weaker in G3, I don't know why, everyone feels so distant and you don't really connect with any place.
Last but not least, the game still runs like shit.
 

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