One of the most bloated and artificially hard mods in existence
You have a skewed perspective because as soon as someone dangles a bit of necromancy in front of your face you start droolingOne of the most bloated and artificially hard mods in existence
I disagree. Pick dragons for eg, then be able to cast circle 6 magic makes perfectly sense as they are legendary creatures. They being able to summon monster and heal thenselves too. Their nasty breath attack too. Being close to a ice dragon lair dealing cold damage and to a fire dragon, fire damage also makes sense. It din't fell bloated. Quite contrary. Vanilla dragons fells like a cakewalk.
Also, Returning allows you to be a Xardas apprentice, instead of a sheep of Innos.
If memory serves me right then it initially started as something much more reasonable. More like Die Welt der Werurteilten but for Gothic 2, only later did it morph into this hambeast of a mod. Its a classic case of too much time in the oven. The ingredients, the recipe and the temperature were all just right but they left it in the oven for too long and now its burnt and most of that great work is just a waste.With the amount of work that went into Returning they could have made a self-contained mod, like a smaller Archolos. That would (presumably) feel much less jarring when you play it.
For example the insane overuse of vegetation in
For example the insane overuse of vegetation in
Why not just ... Install the no grass patch?
B. with no grass so you can see what is actually on the ground but now everything looks like shit covered with one tiled ground texture
If memory serves me right then it initially started as something much more reasonable. More like Die Welt der Werurteilten but for Gothic 2, only later did it morph into this hambeast of a mod. Its a classic case of too much time in the oven. The ingredients, the recipe and the temperature were all just right but they left it in the oven for too long and now its burnt and most of that great work is just a waste.With the amount of work that went into Returning they could have made a self-contained mod, like a smaller Archolos. That would (presumably) feel much less jarring when you play it.
For example the insane overuse of vegetation in Returning probably started as a simple tweak that added a bit more vegetation here and there but as the development dragged on someone kept adding more and more until they had to edit the textures underneath it all for it to look serviceable and since they spent so much time with it they were not going to just walk it back after it became apparent that it looks like crap. The end result is a mod with two vegetation settings:
either A. a overabundance of grass that hides literary any item that happens to be on said ground
or B. with no grass so you can see what is actually on the ground but now everything looks like shit covered with one tiled ground texture
You have a skewed perspective because as soon as someone dangles a bit of necromancy in front of your face you start droolingOne of the most bloated and artificially hard mods in existence
I disagree. Pick dragons for eg, then be able to cast circle 6 magic makes perfectly sense as they are legendary creatures. They being able to summon monster and heal thenselves too. Their nasty breath attack too. Being close to a ice dragon lair dealing cold damage and to a fire dragon, fire damage also makes sense. It din't fell bloated. Quite contrary. Vanilla dragons fells like a cakewalk.
Also, Returning allows you to be a Xardas apprentice, instead of a sheep of Innos.
But also that's part of your charm so don't change
For what it's worth, the creator agrees with you and is currently making a less insane mod called Outfaith. This mod cuts all of the fanfiction addon plot with the seekers (the secret ultra OP faction that is manipulating everything behind the scenes in Returning) and the bloated, grindy chapter 7 orc war and instead focuses on simply adding new spells/weapon types/factions etc and trying to meaningfully differentiate them for increased replay value. Basically, he's keeping the necromancers/swamp camp/water mages/other side guilds, condensing everything else, and trying to balance more for a core gothic experience than a grindy MMO smorgasborg. He admits that he made Returning at a time in his life when he was really into MMOs and it influenced his design sensibilities heavily.I have to be honest here. As impressive as mods like Returning or Xeres Returns are I almost universally hate them. They are the definition of a "bloat mod" adding so much that the original game is completely smothered underneath it all. The survival mechanics for example have no place in Gothic period because the world is so small. You are never more than a few minutes away from a settlement and so the only way to do survival stuff is through making the player stop every few minutes to drink/eat because apparently the MC has the most broken metabolism known to men. Or the absolutely barely fan-fiction tier writing in Xeres where all the characters from the old camp(Gomez and his bunch) were resurrected as deathknights but lost all their memories making their inclusion completely toothless.
Its cool to read about it in the changelog but in-game it just feels like this immense chore to deal with.
Any of this worth looking into? Or is Myrtana still GOAT?
. This mod cuts all of the fanfiction addon plot with the seekers (
CoM does interesting things with the magic system and it's possible (and fun) to go pure magic. Difficulty is low overall so whatever you want to do generally works fine.Any of this worth looking into? Or is Myrtana still GOAT?
I'm a huge magefag and loved this mod cuz I could play as an water mage and necromancer and loved the changes made into magic, summons have a mana upkeep and you no longer can learn army of darkness and other high level dark magic spell in Innos's monastery.
CoM I din't played yet. IS great for mages?
. This mod cuts all of the fanfiction addon plot with the seekers (
You can refuse the keeper in Xardas tower and ... Ignore 99% of keeper fanfic.
You can avoid joining the keepers, but nothing prevents the retarded chapter 7 content unless you just voluntarily stop playing at that point (like I did)