Gothic 3

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So far this seems to be a pretty good game. It was just released here in the US today, but I understand that it has been availble in EU for some time. I'm not very far into the game, but I have these early impressions:

Story - Typical RPG/adventure story with not much imagination, but OK, at least so far. Lots of action; very little character building in the early stages, which is a big turn-off. Inventory screen is pretty basic fare, but easy to use.

Graphics - Very good, but appears a little soft, even at 1280 res. Artwork is good, but not great.

Gameplay - Very typical, with lots of standard point-and-click combat. If you have played any Action/RPG in the last 5-7 years, this game will feel very familiar and comfortable. Learning curve is very easy.

Soundtrack - Somewhat overblown, Wagnerian type stuff, with lots of pounding drums and blaring brass, but the sound quality is pretty good. Some ok choural stuff, but at times, it reminds me of the soundtracks to those bad religious flicks from the 50s.

Technology - Game runs a bit slow on my E6600 Core 2 system, with 1 Gig of DDR2 667 RAM, and 7900GTO graphics card. I get slow downs during HD load intervals, which tells me that 2 GIG of RAM would be more desirable, rather than just 1 Gig. But once loaded, the game flies on my system. Settings are on high detail, at 1280 resolution. Again, settings are only basic.

Overall, the game seems very solid, but fairly typical of at least a dozen other RPGS released in recent years. But the game is showing some promise as I get deeper into it.

 

I'm a big fan of the Gothic series, and none of the three games ever disappointed me. It runs fairly smooth on my X2, and so far I'm immensely enjoying the game. Have you played the first two games, Chandos? They're good stuff too.

 

DotW - I have not tried the first 2 Gothic games. But if this one turns out well, I will give them a try. I downloaded the 1.9 patch, latest DirectX version and newest nVidia drivers. The game runs better.

 

For me, there are no people, only black cubes. Bad first impression; I can't tell what I'm swinging at.

I played Gothic 2 a while ago and thought it was awful; there wasn't a single thing I liked about it. But in this, other than the people of course, the graphics look very pretty, and the faction system is good. Maybe I'll have other thoughts on it, but I'm not playing it again until the people work properly.

 

Tried it and my impression wasn't very good. Doesn't stand a chance against modded Oblivion, that's for sure. For one, the engine is too inefficient. I have a relatively new rig with optimized system, but still the game begun to hitch even at the lower settings. The result was that it did not look only worse than Oblivion, but also worked less smoothly.

Another thing begun to annoy me right from the start and that was the complete disrespect for new players. You get your arse handed back to you, in a can, several times if you want to level up, so to avoid this you end up running away a lot. Which isn't fun. Yet, battle is mandatory in Gothic 3.

Then there is this infamous "stun-lock" effect, which also makes the fighting very newbie unfriendly. This has also been mentioned in Gameguru's review. Basically it means that if you get stunned, you're dead and you can't do anything about it. Since new players don't know how to avoid it, you get your arse back even more often.

Thirdly, I hated the controls. Nowdays I expect crisp reactions and swift feedback from games, like Half Life has demonstrated, but in contrast Gothic 3 feels clumsy. The actions always come just a wee bit too late and you really don't get a good hold from your character. Again, this reflects to the battles and the subsequents stun-locks, where control is rudimentary.

So, to me, it was like a B-class Oblivion designed to punish new players. In fact, the game begins with a battle, where you will die (or "lie down for a moment") at least twice before getting the hang of it. Then you get out and get to lie down before the first enemies you meet, who will also be friendly enough to rob you from your gold.

If they had optimized the engine more, clarified the mechanics a little, fixed the sluggish controls, and made it more newbie-friendly, it could had been tolerable. I simply hated it because of these faults.

 

Black blocks solved! In its place are big white lines across the screen whenever I look at the floor. This game is bugged to hell. Also, memory leaks. And the engine certainly is inefficient; on lowest settings it looks five years old, yet still freezes for a few seconds every minute or so.

The battles have been alright for me, but I'm playing on easy. The combat is actually quite fun, mainly because of the enemy AI. Enter a goblin cave, and the first one to see you will grab a bunch of friends and they'll come and block your path. If you leave, they'll go back to sitting around their fire, but if not they attack. They'll just beat you unconscious and take your gold, unless you make the mistake of actually hurting one. Then they try to kill you. Many different creatures have different AI, making them seem unique, and each one seems to have personality.

Not allowing me to remap the controls is unforgivable though. As is the complete lack of tutorial beyond "this button pulls out a weapon. Use it to hit the enemies." The journal is absolutely useless; at the beginning I was told to talk to certain people with directions. I foolishly took that moment to leave for an hour, and when I came back I had no clue what I was meant to do.

Regardless, this game is a lot better than I took it for. But seriously, how can it be on patch 1.09 after only a couple of weeks, yet still be so buggy?