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Risen

Turisas

Arch Devil
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Joined
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G1 story was nothing special and G2 quickly brings new players up to speed, so it's not like it's mandatory. Still a decent game tho if you have the time.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
Should I play G1 or skip straight to G2+NotR?

Last time I asked that, I got the response "play G2 vanilla first, NotR is a bit hard for newcomers", so all other opinions were rendered invalid by proxy to the massive display of homosexuality

Play G1 first. All in all it has the better atmosphere and the G2 story is directly connected to the first. After G1 play G2 with NotR. There´s no need to play without the expansion. Personally I played never without the NotR.
 

dr. one

Augur
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i´d recommend starting with Gothic 1 and then continuing with NotR as well.

while i consider G2: NotR being overall the best Gothic game, i also think Gothic 1 is better in some aspects.
it has better and more original story, a bit more diverse quests, sometimes involves minor puzzle elements, and includes some quite nice dungeons which are sadly lacking in G2.
both games take nosedive towards the end, but in the case of G2 it´s much more notable.
i actually consider G2 sans NoTR to be the worse of the two.

also, one of the charms of both games are moments of bro-esque nature and those would be more-or-less lost without playing G1 first :).
and NotR adds even more ties to the first game.

and, as someone already mentioned, returning to the valley in the second game is a very cool experience if you´ve played G1 beforehand.

finally, G1 is a fairly short game and shouldn´t take more than 30 hours to finish (G2 with NotR takes about twice as long).
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Story aside, Gothic 1 is a definite must-play. The game is great in many ways but as Roxor said, it makes Gothic 2 even greater because you get to see the past game's influence and effects all over -- plus if you are going to enjoy one of the games then you will enjoy the other game too, why not get more of a good thing? The beginning to g1 is great too - you're this useless weak piece of shit who gets bullied by people left and right and can get his shit fucked up by a wolf. hell, you don't even know how to hold a goddamn sword past "not on the sharp part". the slow rise to a position of worth is something that is honestly rewarding, and it feels awesome to finally be given a guild's armor and be told "you're one of us now" - g2 has these moments as well... but when you start the game by having a powerful necromancer summon you and gives your first quest as "go save the world", it just lacks that initial "where am I? what's going on? why is everyone so mean to me ;(?"

edit: yeah the brohemian rhapsody is pretty righteous too - in g2 you know who Gorn is from people telling you, but you might feel no need to help his ass out - in g1 the circle of bros really help you out and make you feel like they're actually worth something as NPCs/characters giving you much more reason to get involved with them again.

Also, disregard that bullshit Nomask said about the controls - the new mouse based controls in G2 are great and I would love for a mod that implements that into G1. The original controls leave you somewhat stranded in finger use and button mapping - it gets easy enough to use as you get used to it, but it still means that you can't strafe/hit as easily (like you would need to if going up against a Troll).

G2 with NOTR is HARD, but at the same time totally worth it as the game is incredibly better with the add-in. There are some really great quests added in, and many things become much more interesting and challenging.

I will say this tho - playing a fire magician will be very challenging as you will be strapped for LP, much more so than a mercenary.

Big important tip: disregard the tip that trainers give you about raising your weapon skills together - that no longer applies in NotR, so you can just focus on whatever combat skill you want to increase and disregard the other ones. In vanilla g2 you had to increase both weapon skills of the same category together; this is no longer the case.

edit 2: also get this mod for g1 - it installs g2's much higher resolution textures that are actually very pretty over g1's lower resolution textures but changes nothing else. definitely worth it and a very small download: http://www.worldofgothic.com/dl/?go=dlfile&fileid=121
 

Black_Willow

Arcane
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Mikayel said:
Big important tip: disregard the tip that trainers give you about raising your weapon skills together - that no longer applies in NotR, so you can just focus on whatever combat skill you want to increase and disregard the other ones. In vanilla g2 you had to increase both weapon skills of the same category together; this is no longer the case.
wut? I played G2 with and wihout add-on and didn't see any difference.
 

Murk

Arcane
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Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
in NotR you don't need to raise both weapon skills simultaneously - in vanilla g2 you did. I can say for sure that this doesn't happen anymore because my last play through I had like 90 in one handed and 12 or so in two handed before i started to read the stone tablets. Previously you would have to raise your lacking skill as your primary one hit a higher level - the idea was that you shouldn't be able to be a master of two handed swords but a noober-goober in one handed swords, or vice versa, however the high LP costs of NotR caused that to change as having skills be double-price in LP when they're already 4x the cost would mean something retarded like 40LP to raise a skill by 5% just so the other one will go up 5% too...

I think the way it worked was that it made more sense to manually raise your lacking skill on its own before raising the primary one instead of paying double-LP to raise both together.

edit: likewise, bows/xbows are now independent of one another too.
 

Admiral jimbob

gay as all hell
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Wasteland 2
good lord that final boss/ending was even dumber and sloppier than I expected

Anyway, that shambles aside, I'll give both Gothics a spin then. It's not like there's a huge wealth of RPGs out that I don't have time for anything but the best.
 

Murk

Arcane
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Jan 17, 2008
Messages
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plus, gothic trilogy is super cheap on amazon

i can give you a run down on g1's guild/system set up if you'd like in terms of how the camps work and what skills can be had and by what means
 

anomie

Scholar
Joined
Feb 28, 2010
Messages
106
Mikayel said:
plus, gothic trilogy is super cheap on amazon

i can give you a run down on g1's guild/system set up if you'd like in terms of how the camps work and what skills can be had and by what means

are any of the community mods for 1 &2 necessary(or are there any other mods that you'd recommend that don't change the game?) they seemed pretty small in terms of how many fixes they had and stuff. also is it even worth playing gothic 3?
 

Murk

Arcane
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Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Definitely the texture pack for 1, otherwise I don't know of any mods that are approved by anyone - they are all gambles tome. Most that I have read about also reek of "this is what i thought was cool", while ...neat, i fear they would involve ridiculous changes that I'd rather not see.

3 is definitely worth playing after the community fix patch, however, be warned that it is a very different game and in many many ways is worse than g1 and g2. It is also horribly unoptimized and runs like crap. My system can run Risen on full settings on 1024x res and get 20 fps easily, Gothic 3 stutters even on the lowest settings.

Negatives have been said - the first time I played G3 with the community patch I honestly spent a solid month on it and was completely engrossed and loving every second of it.
 
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POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
good lord that final boss/ending was even dumber and sloppier than I expected

Anyway, that shambles aside, I'll give both Gothics a spin then. It's not like there's a huge wealth of RPGs out that I don't have time for anything but the best.
No one has argued that you shouldn't give Gothic "a spin". But if you do so before playing NotR, you won't get a virgin experience with the best game in the world, which would be just ... sad.

P.S. Don't use a full view distance in NotR. It will just spoil the experience because the game world isn't of realistic proportions like Daggerfall. You're not supposed to see as far as you would in the real world.

P.P.S. I guess I haven't mentioned how, in my first playthrough of NotR, I missed the cave leading safely into the valley and tried to continue my way through the orc lines instead, which attempt forced me to scale the mountains (you can climb, kind of, by jumping repeatedly against a steep surface). There is always night when you first enter the valley. I travelled in the mountains all the way through the night to the snowy north and what seemed like the end of the world before I realized I had to turn back. I then descended through the clouds near the ice dragon cave so far off the correct path I thought I would never see the castle again. Thankfully, this was when the sun started to rise. I waited for it to shed its light and light my path, and started my journey to the south, hoping to find trails and traces of civilized life. One of the best experiences of my life. Etc. Even the potential for such experiences will be lost if you first play the dull Gothic 1. (Better atmosphere my ass! No game has a better atmosphere than NotR.)
 

Murk

Arcane
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Messages
13,459
Yeah but you also miss out on the little things like the Judge asking if he knows you and being able to match voices with the voice-actors from the first game and seeing who changed into who, and who sounds better or worse (sup, Lares).

Unrelated: always boggled my mind how medium bandit armor (which is light rogue armor from g1) is better than light mercenary armor (which is heavy rogue armor from g1), but i guess the boys at PB got lazy with making new armors.
 

Admiral jimbob

gay as all hell
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Wasteland 2
That's the kind of thing some of my most cherished gaming experiences are made up of, so that is tempting; a decent story can't hold a candle to getting lost in a hostile and unfamiliar world. From everything I've read, G2 does definitely sound more appealing.

Ah well, won't have the chance to play either for a couple of weeks anyway, and I'll probably order the Gothic Universe collection (much as I already have 3, which I still need to replay with the community patch). Will have a think on it.
 

Murk

Arcane
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Messages
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Play 'em out of order, sure. I will say tho, that such experiences are more common in g3 with its GIGANTIC FUCKING WORLD than they are in g1 or g2.

Nordmar was especially pleasant about that due to its very rugged and mountain clad terrain, though after a spin or two through the area you more or less knew it - but still, with the snow and faded vision it was very impressive the first time through.
 
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Mikayel said:
Play 'em out of order, sure. I will say tho, that such experiences are more common in g3 with its GIGANTIC FUCKING WORLD than they are in g1 or g2.

Nordmar was especially pleasant about that due to its very rugged and mountain clad terrain, though after a spin or two through the area you more or less knew it - but still, with the snow and faded vision it was very impressive the first time through.
Apart from Nordmar, travelling in Gothic 3 was child's play and included lots of empty open areas with just a few easy-to-evade monsters. The Valley in Gothic 2 is seriously dangerous the first time you go there, and full of different paths to take from place A to place B, some of them less lethal than the others. To a great extent, that applies to whole NotR. Every step and choice of direction and decision to change direction matter. Gothic 3 had an open world where, apart from the north and a couple of mountains, you could travel anywhere with ease. If you use the default view distance in NotR (which I did in my first playthrough, believe it or not), the game will feel larger than Gothic 3, too (partly because you're limited to jogging speed without speed potions).
 

Murk

Arcane
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Messages
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Not arguing about that, just saying that if you want a hiking simulator then g3 is the better choice.

Gothic 2's layout and placement of everything is very important/relevant, that's one thing the first two games and later Risen accomplished very well in that everything had a purpose and no 'nook' went to waste. There's only so many times you can come across 2 chests and 2 skeletons (one with a rusted sword, one with a rusted axe) in a circle in g3 before you eventually get bored and turn it into a friggin' drinking game. But that aside, the game is very well populated with wildlife and adventuring at night is both fun and exciting cuz HOLY FUCK THATS A RHINO.
 
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Mikayel said:
Not arguing about that, just saying that if you want a hiking simulator then g3 is the better choice.
Agreed. Gothic 3 captures the feeling of running through endless open terrain much better than NotR, probably because the latter didn't try to.
 

Murk

Arcane
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Messages
13,459
hey man, some of us like to randomly partake in a deer hunting simulator in between epic quests to fight dragons n shit
 
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Oh, don't get me wrong. I enjoyed Gothic 3 IMMENSELY when I first started playing it. I can't really explain it, but just exploring the game world gave an amazing feeling that something like Oblivion never even reminded me of.

Still, as a game, and now that the magic's gone, it's not much good for anything, except as a sort of Two Worlds hunt-monsters, gather xp, toy with the guilds.
 

Murk

Arcane
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Messages
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Heh, that's the exact same feeling I had when I first played it. I tried to replay it recently (about a year after my first time) and honestly it just wasn't working out... I don't know if its because not enough time has passed or if because the combat system somehow got worse, but it was a struggle to continue; so I didn't and I reinstalled NotR and am now an archer who's desperately trying to figure out a way to kill orcs that doesn't involve a potion of speed and fire rain scrolls.
 

Archaeon

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back to Risen.: chapter 1 + 2 , just like playing Gothic again... :singletear: Chapter 3 lasted like 30 minutes? And Chapter 4... Uninstalled.

Still, a great game. ( if you don't count the last 2 chapters )
 

314159

Educated
Joined
Mar 26, 2010
Messages
568
The NPCs in Risen sure are talkative. Will they ever shut up? God, I hate this bullshit ("talk with everyone about everything!"). The story is just not that engaging to justify so much dialog. And I want action anyway.
The swamp camp was dissapointing. Way too small, nothing like any of the Gothic`s camps. And there was no place to sleep. How am I supposed to skip a couple of hours? The woman that I saved has occupied the only free bed available. Should I kill the bitch?
The combat system, btw, looks to be fun, but so far there are just not enough opportunities to slash and bash monsters. I'm in this city, I ran around talking with its inhabitants and God, it's boring.
Gothic was better.
 

tarkin

Augur
Joined
Apr 27, 2005
Messages
939
Wasteland 2
For sleeping i used the shack to the left of the fire with a roasting animal and nobody seemed to care. And i mostly just read the subtitles and skipped the VO's with a mouse scroll button (iirc).
And yes, Gothic was better but Risen is good enough.
 

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