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On why Gothic 2 original is better than NOTR.

Doktor Best

Arcane
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
2,849
There are people who pride themselves on being good at a singleplayer game few other people plays.

person a: EATING SOUP IS SO STUPID! LOOK HOW I AM FAILING AT DOING SO USING A FORK!
person b: Umm, you gotta use a spoon.
person a: STOP FUCKING BRAGGING, EATING SOUP IS NOT HARD!!

clearly a legit point you got there.
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
2,350
Location
Moscow
I'm in no way a hardcore to the max badass like most people here seem to be, but i always thought while Gothic+NotR was hard it was also fair and gave you more options. Gothic 2 is just the type of game where you get better little by little. It's not that hard actually, just takes time. Early on you can easily get beaten by a couple of shit stained thugs on the streets of Khorinis. And it takes time and effort to get stronger. Better to avoid some things at first. Grind a bit here, do some small quests, look for other ways to defeat and outsmart more powerful enemies, explore all the places your level allows you. But know your limits. And after some time get a bigger and shinier axe and cleave the fucking skulls of the thugs that used to beat you. Thats how it felt for me.

NotR is a nice expansion i prefer to get to it sooner rather than later in the game, because you can get a lot of experience and good gear. Not to mention the sword of Beliar :love:

PS. I'll just leave it here
 
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T. Reich

Arcane
Joined
Apr 15, 2013
Messages
2,714
Location
not even close
But the new world is utter fail,and they could have at least made it optional.

Wouldn't call it utter fail at all, although I remember 3 things that bugged me aboot it.

1. Most of the new monsters are just reskins, which is eh.
2. The pirates are a bit ill-fitting/random.
3. The fuckhuge ork mob guarding the temple in the desert is a chore to get through.

Apart from that, the runaway prisoner camp, the explorashun, the temple delving and the overall story were all cool to me.

1. Well, more variety is fun, but even visual variety was ok by me. Gothic overall had the decent mob vairety, so it never really got boring to me.
2. It was random, allright, but I guess they couldn't come up with anything better to tie up Khorinis with Jharkendar in a meaningful way.
3. The pirate party that you assemble for the razor extermination quest in that very same desert roflstomps that orc mob.
 

Rpgsaurus Rex

Guest
2) Change in Scrolls makes the game logic fall apart. Where every scroll costs 5 mana. And chosen of Innos is no more powerful than an average farmer. In fact give a farmer scroll of summon demon and watch him beat the DRAGONS.
Utter bad design as a cop out for making some fights too hard.


Scrolls, what. The "broken" shapeshift scrolls you can get early were broken in G2 vanilla all the same. That said, you still can kill anything without them with enough skill/patience so nothing really "breaks" - more a like a rather expensive tool for a newbie who can't bother to learn the fighting system.

The super good scrolls like summon demon, fire rain etc. are rare. A peasant finding a strong spell scroll one just isn't likely, setting-wise. Buying is even stranger, considering how poor peasants are (if you loot them they drop what, 10 coins max?). Even if they do find one - so what? A weakling suddenly coming across a powerful tool is a common fantasy trope. That would make for an interesting quest, actually.

As for mana cost not being balanced - LPs are far more precious in NOTR so getting STR200 or w/e you need to wield the best axe means no LPs for mana. In vanilla you could just pump everything incl. mana on warrior while still wielding the best stuff - no way is that more balanced. The rarity of the good scrolls compensates for them being cheap and makes warrior gameplay more interesting.

You can kill dragons in melee in NOTR if you do a pure warrior build.

The saving up LPs is valid. I hate that too. But that's p. minor consider how great NOTR is overall.

The rest of the arguments are just "I don't like it so it's bad" or "lolwut" level.
 

Emily

Arcane
Joined
Mar 21, 2012
Messages
3,068
2) Change in Scrolls makes the game logic fall apart. Where every scroll costs 5 mana. And chosen of Innos is no more powerful than an average farmer. In fact give a farmer scroll of summon demon and watch him beat the DRAGONS.
Utter bad design as a cop out for making some fights too hard.


Scrolls, what. The "broken" shapeshift scrolls you can get early were broken in G2 vanilla all the same. That said, you still can kill anything without them with enough skill/patience so nothing really "breaks" - more a like a rather expensive tool for a newbie who can't bother to learn the fighting system.

The super good scrolls like summon demon, fire rain etc. are rare. A peasant finding a strong spell scroll one just isn't likely, setting-wise. Buying is even stranger, considering how poor peasants are (if you loot them they drop what, 10 coins max?). Even if they do find one - so what? A weakling suddenly coming across a powerful tool is a common fantasy trope. That would make for an interesting quest, actually.

As for mana cost not being balanced - LPs are far more precious in NOTR so getting STR200 or w/e you need to wield the best axe means no LPs for mana. In vanilla you could just pump everything incl. mana on warrior while still wielding the best stuff - no way is that more balanced. The rarity of the good scrolls compensates for them being cheap and makes warrior gameplay more interesting.

You can kill dragons in melee in NOTR if you do a pure warrior build.

The saving up LPs is valid. I hate that too. But that's p. minor consider how great NOTR is overall.

The rest of the arguments are just "I don't like it so it's bad" or "lolwut" level.
A warrior should not be able to cast fire rain no matter what.

In G2 you need 150 mana to cast the scroll. To give you some perspective Master Parlan the experienced old magician only has 100 mana. So in G2 Only high council of fire,Xardas and maybe Vatras could cast fire rain. And for a good reason as well. As that spell can literally wipe out the entire sieging army of orcs in valley of mines.

And when Master Pyrokar(leader of Fire magicians in the region) says that the council wants to wait to see what happens,it is because orcs are not the main enemy,nor are they particularly menacing. And this only starts making sense when you yourself become a high magician so you can understand yourself that dragons,demons and the rest are what is trully dangerous. And being caught off guard.

But in NOTR you could buy 3 scrolls of fire rain for less than 1000 gold,meaning it is essentially nothing and just send 3 farmers to wipe out the sieging army. That brakes the ingame logic.
And really,a demon being stronger than a dragon(which are level 500 ingame btw) is also very problematic,and especially the fact that a farmer could kill a dragon with a 200 gold tool.
 
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Haplo

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
6,138
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Not really. Combat in Gothic 1/2 is mostly binary. With weapons you either have enough attack power and armor to survive a fight or you don't. The "challenge" of the game is mostly just identifying which monsters are within your combat range and harvesting their XP. Max out your str/dex and chosen weapon, do quests to get the top tier armor, and that's it. Everything dies quickly.

Interesting. If it works like you describe and skill and timing doesn't matter, I wonder how I have beaten the skeletal warrior guardians of the Dragon Slicer near the begining of the game. Must have been a glitch...
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
Not really. Combat in Gothic 1/2 is mostly binary. With weapons you either have enough attack power and armor to survive a fight or you don't. The "challenge" of the game is mostly just identifying which monsters are within your combat range and harvesting their XP. Max out your str/dex and chosen weapon, do quests to get the top tier armor, and that's it. Everything dies quickly.

Interesting. If it works like you describe and skill and timing doesn't matter, I wonder how I have beaten the skeletal warrior guardians of the Dragon Slicer near the begining of the game. Must have been a glitch...

I said "mostly." It's obviously more stat-based than not.
 

Jacob

Pronouns: Nick/Her
Patron
Joined
Dec 24, 2015
Messages
3,336
Location
Hatington
Grab the Codex by the pussy
person a: EATING SOUP IS SO STUPID! LOOK HOW I AM FAILING AT DOING SO USING A FORK!
person b: Umm, you gotta use a spoon.
person a: STOP FUCKING BRAGGING, EATING SOUP IS NOT HARD!!

clearly a legit point you got there.
No, more like person A says that drinking tea is something common and nothing prestigious, then person B, C, and D start talking bullshit about tea drinking rituals.
 

Biscotti

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Nov 24, 2015
Messages
561
Location
Belgium
1) The addon world is neither interesting,nor integrated in the main game. It serves as a huge chore which often leaves me just playing much more focused G2.

Couldn't possibly disagree more. I started NOTR without playing vanilla, and up until arriving in the addon world I had absolutely no clue I was actually going through the NOTR questline all that time. The missing people felt like an issue that tied in rather well with all the other shit going on.

Could be I'm just really fucking dimwitted, but at that point I realized how well the NOTR content is interwoven with the vanilla content.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Yeah, when I played Gothic 2 for the first time I figured out I was in the NOTR portion only when I got to the pirate base. Not because it clashes badly, but because I felt the whole thing to be too complicated for a normal side quest. I do understand where the OP is coming from with the scrolls though, if the idea/lore behind some of the spells was to only be able to be cast by powerful mages then them costing 5 mana does break the internal logic. It's more of a structural thing than a gameplay one, because, like someone mentioned, they are somewhat rare, so you can't really spam them.
 

T. Reich

Arcane
Joined
Apr 15, 2013
Messages
2,714
Location
not even close
The whole "a peasant could cast it" (non)argument is complete bullshit.
You're not playing as a peasant or a common brigand - you're playing as a fucking CHOSEN ONE, a representative of the gods. A person who only recently weilded magic only to lose it to an unlucky cave-in.
For all we care, an average non-mage NPC in G2 from the could have been coded to have 0 base mana and no ability to raise it. There's a reason mages are few and respected (both in Human and Orc societies), and you never see a "wild" mage either. No magic for you, plebs!

Besides that, actually powerful spell scrolls are pretty damn rare and also expensive. There are only 8 or 9 rain of fire scrolls in the whole of G2Notr. Strong summoning/transformation scrolls are similarly restricted, and are usually even not available for sale early on - you can only find them in the wild, which is quite dangerous at this stage.
You simply can't go and roflstomp the entire game with scrolls. They are strictly support material, even if strong.
 
Joined
Dec 12, 2013
Messages
4,229
It is pretty obvious that the new content from NotR that is located in Khorinis is just a cut content from vanilla. In vanilla many places like a destroyed caravan outside the City are empty, in NoTR there is a whole quest around that place.
 
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
4,189
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
2) Change in Scrolls makes the game logic fall apart. Where every scroll costs 5 mana. And chosen of Innos is no more powerful than an average farmer. In fact give a farmer scroll of summon demon and watch him beat the DRAGONS.
Utter bad design as a cop out for making some fights too hard.


Scrolls, what. The "broken" shapeshift scrolls you can get early were broken in G2 vanilla all the same. That said, you still can kill anything without them with enough skill/patience so nothing really "breaks" - more a like a rather expensive tool for a newbie who can't bother to learn the fighting system.

The super good scrolls like summon demon, fire rain etc. are rare. A peasant finding a strong spell scroll one just isn't likely, setting-wise. Buying is even stranger, considering how poor peasants are (if you loot them they drop what, 10 coins max?). Even if they do find one - so what? A weakling suddenly coming across a powerful tool is a common fantasy trope. That would make for an interesting quest, actually.

As for mana cost not being balanced - LPs are far more precious in NOTR so getting STR200 or w/e you need to wield the best axe means no LPs for mana. In vanilla you could just pump everything incl. mana on warrior while still wielding the best stuff - no way is that more balanced. The rarity of the good scrolls compensates for them being cheap and makes warrior gameplay more interesting.

You can kill dragons in melee in NOTR if you do a pure warrior build.

The saving up LPs is valid. I hate that too. But that's p. minor consider how great NOTR is overall.

The rest of the arguments are just "I don't like it so it's bad" or "lolwut" level.
A warrior should not be able to cast fire rain no matter what.

In G2 you need 150 mana to cast the scroll. To give you some perspective Master Parlan the experienced old magician only has 100 mana. So in G2 Only high council of fire,Xardas and maybe Vatras could cast fire rain. And for a good reason as well. As that spell can literally wipe out the entire sieging army of orcs in valley of mines.

And when Master Pyrokar(leader of Fire magicians in the region) says that the council wants to wait to see what happens,it is because orcs are not the main enemy,nor are they particularly menacing. And this only starts making sense when you yourself become a high magician so you can understand yourself that dragons,demons and the rest are what is trully dangerous. And being caught off guard.

But in NOTR you could buy 3 scrolls of fire rain for less than 1000 gold,meaning it is essentially nothing and just send 3 farmers to wipe out the sieging army. That brakes the ingame logic.
And really,a demon being stronger than a dragon(which are level 500 ingame btw) is also very problematic,and especially the fact that a farmer could kill a dragon with a 200 gold tool.

Isn't the entiere point of scrolls making PCs who aren't specialized in magic be able to cast high-level spells when they really need to?
 
Joined
Apr 9, 2015
Messages
66
NotR is indeed vastly inferior to Gothic 2 classic. You just need to play 5 minutes to realize this.

The valley below Xardas' tower in Gothic 2: Get wooden club, kill goblin, get bow, find cave, kill goblin camp, kill mine crawlers, meet Lester, kill young wolves, find herbs and a bag of gold, kill a bloodfly. Find a cave behind it, it's a rat's nest. Kill the rats, find the tomb. There is a rusty sword. Congratulations, you've just found your first sword.

The valley below Xardas' tower in NotR: Get wooden club, kill goblin, get bow, find cave, kill goblin camp, kill mine crawlers, find valley, meet Lester, kill young wolves, find herbs and a bag of gold, kill a bloodfly. Find a cave behind it, it's a rat's nest. Kill the rats, find the tomb. There is a rusty sword. Congratulations, you've just found trash loot. And now fuck off.
 
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Cunt Dickula!?

Guest
I'm playing G2 first time in classic (played NotR like 8 times) and i can just recommend it.
It's very interesting to see how the game changes pacing and balancing wise.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
14,476
Location
Frostfell
NoTR should at least allowed you to be a chad Xardas apprentice aka necromancer or re join water mages. Luckly returning allows that.
 

Tavar

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Jun 6, 2020
Messages
1,046
Location
Germany
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
I hate playing Gothic 2 with NoTR for three reasons:
  1. Difficulty spikes, e.g. the Seeker you have to fight after returning from the valley of the mines. I played as an archer which is a completely broken build in general, but I couldn't defeat this enemy without using a summoning scroll which is basically cheating.
  2. The game feels off in the old world due to the new content. Greg is the worst offender here: He makes you his bitch and you cannot even tell him to fuck off or report him. The missing people quest is also weird as it moves so slowly.
  3. The new world is boring and filled with recycled assets from Gothic 1. Neither the pirate nor the bandit camp feel finished.
 

Blutwurstritter

Learned
Joined
Sep 18, 2021
Messages
875
Location
Germany
Just finished Gothic 2 with NoTR and I didn't enjoy the changes to balance. The rebalancing makes the game too restrictive for my tastes. Exploration felt almost railroaded due to the walls of difficulty that you hit in NoTR, almost as if you're supposed to follow certain steps in a specific order or you're facing massive hurdles. The original allowed for more freedom and experimentation, it didn't punish you for trying out skills or spending a few points non optimal. And I also didn't like that I had to cheese the dragons with spell scrolls as melee dragon slayer. Armor upgrades also felt less satisfying and no longer like big achievements as in the original game since most enemies that you'll face are still able to hurt you. Some fucking bandits with wooden sticks could punch through my dragon armor. There was generally a feeling that human npcs had unnaturally high stats so that they could hurt you no matter what. I'm neutral on the new content. The quality is good but I would have preferred it if they had spent more time on improving Irdorath instead of adding Jarkendar. The last chapter is still pretty boring and one of the weakest parts overall.
I rate the games Gothic 1 ≈ Gothic 2 > Gothic 2 with NoTR. Of course its still a great game, but the original offered me a tad more enjoyment.
 

Maggot

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 31, 2016
Messages
1,243
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
The rebalancing in NoTR makes dexterity builds better since they get a bonus to damage to make up for the lack of strength, adds tablets to let you branch out into other skills, and gives you more avenues for learning skills and making potions since in vanilla you can only learn potions from Constantine if you apprentice under him. Also the original game is full of clearly cut content like the NotR stone circles that do nothing.
 

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