I don't know what it is about G3 ... but i just like it ... despite all the problems ... the lack of main quest and really open nature of the world makes it into almost a sandbox experience ... and it's hits just the right points for me
I think you really should try The Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos. It's a free stand alone mods for Gothic 2. Great story, top noth Gothic mechanics & insane quality. Absolutely worth checking out.
I have to agree. A lot of us have heard of this mod but many haven’t played or beaten it. I myself have only played the first hour or two because I’ve never beaten a gothic game before and it was sort of confusing for a gothic newbie, which is completely expected from such an ambitious mod.
I just fnished it yesterday, took me 100h. did everything in the game. only achievements i missed are faction specific and one or 2 that i didnt figure out by reading but are simple to get if i reload. Its an absolute love letter to not only gothic but gamers of RPG. The team that did it should get hired by piranha bytes imediately.
Was looking forward to this since your first impressions vid. This was THE game of my childhood and I would spend my school days just drawing maps of the cities and imagining how the Rebels would rebuild Vengard once they drove off the orcs ... wonderful memories!
Still, with all those problems, somehow I truly enjoy this game, the music, the immersion, it still have some gothic feeling. Now I hope you'll check out Archollos, that's the true gothic 2 sequel we ever wanted.
Even though people are generally not hot on this game, it's the one which introduced me to the Piranha Bytes games. I got the boxed version which came with a cloth map and a pendant of the Sleeper, and played it on my very out of date pc at glorious 15-ish fps. I miss the days of gaming being mysterious
Man... I played it on lowest resolution with lowest textures... Basically without textures!!! Best memories! And I never understood why people hate this game. And also, I used to do a lot of sword-fighting in real life and I can tell that the "feeling" of a sword in G3 is truly amazing... Very natural and real. It beats even "The Blade of Darkness" experience for me.
The strongest component of G3 is the amazing soundtrack. I would say it's the best of all games I ever played. Welcome to the Desert is my favorite track.
The kiting in this game is insane! I had to kill the cows on the farm belonging to the orc city, and free the slaves in the camp nearby. I sniped 4 of the 5 cows and angered the farmers. So, I ran away to free the slaves. Ended up running back to the farmers, followed by the slavers, and then to the city, where the fight alerted the orcs. So, I then had the orcs, the farmers and the slavers all chasing me, and the last cow had disappeared. Who could blame it? So, I ran away into the woods, with the whole bunch following me, where they began fighting with the local wildlife. The woods were alive with the sounds of battle. Hiding, I stumbled across some grain thieves camped beside a cave filled with gigantic ants. The giant ants attacked everything, the grain thieves attacked the orcs, the slavers and the orcs attacked the grain thieves, and in amongst it the wildlife had a go at whatever crossed its path. I sneaked away but ran into a pack of wolves and led them back to the ongoing epic confrontation in the woods via a bridge, which they then fell off one by one into a gully below. Some grain thieves arrived and I led them back across the bridge. They too failed to negotiate the bridge and fell into the gully with the wolves. I never did find the last cow. I suspect it fell out of the world with the shock of it all.
I do remember the combat to be very different when it came to multiple Human/Orc enemys. All the melee fighters did wait in line for you to slaughter... this seems to be a big change from the community patch.
Awesome review. I played long before community patch was available and it was a total hot mess. Now i wonder if it is worth to go back again.... But my backlog....massive ... Duties... Drowning...😅
When I entered for the first time in my life in Nordmar I had one of my most intense experiences with gaming in my life. It was 2007, I was nineteen years old. Gothic 3 is my favourite Phyrana Bytes game and I played all of them many times(excepting Elex 2 wich I finished it just one time and I don't think I will play it again - I loved Elex 1 by the way). I appreciate all fans who praise Gothic 2, I really understand why, It's my second favourite from this studio.
Same thing... Elex 1 for me was even better than G1. But Elex 2 is a total waste! G3 - is my TOP N1 game of all times (Talos principle not included)... And I played G3 for the first time when I was like 24...
I think all the modern AAA open-world RPG developers should learn from how Gothic 3 handled a giant open world with hundreds of quests without (!!!) any quest markers. And no fast travel (until you find a hidden teleport stone (!!! one for each town) The modern open-world Witcher3/Assassins Creed/Horizon formula is so overused and uninteresting now. I just don't care about the world they are trying to immerse me in, just click fast travel on the quest marker and get the quest over with. Rinse repeat. Especially the delivery quests. Are you freaking serious? I can accomplish this quest with 2 clicks on the map. In G3, you were provided with roads and distinguishable landmarks, and a lot of hidden pathways, which made the world very interesting to explore, and the quests not tedious and boring.
I like to remind people that Gothic 3 came out the same year as Oblivion. They are both unplayable without community patches, the both have forgettable and only rudimentary main quests and they both provide vast worlds that feel repetitive at times. And yet both have side content that is amazing. It's still amazing to me how G3 can have such a streamlined approach to how everyone in the world views you (via reputation) yet despite all the numbers being right there, it never feels too artificial. And even with the odd deviation from the Gothic formula, it's still a game with heaps of character and atmosphere - which Bethesda is still not able to do.^^
Great review. I bought it at launch since it was the follow-up to Gothic 2 and it was basically unplayable, it would keep pausing every few seconds so it was constant stop and go. I put it aside but tried it again after the community patch was released which made it playable and I had a fun time of it. I never played Forsaken Gods since I heard that it was pretty poor. What I really liked is the absence of quest markers. You were given instructions to follow to the destination instead of chasing a marker. One thing I remember was a large jump in difficulty in the snowy region in the late game after you had built up your character to be pretty powerful, it was a throw back to earlier in the game where you were underpowered.
For me one of the bigger disappointment in G3 was main story too. Especially fact that our closest friends: Milten, Diego, Gorn and Lester were totally marginalised from main story.
Gothic 1 was immensely ahead of its time in my opinion and it was incredible well balanced in many ways. The player learning curve was great, the small, lets say meaningless, quest you could pick up around the camp and how they eventually get more and more meaningful and have greater and greater impact on the world and the ways you choose. The in-game money system/ore was very nicely balanced also in the amount and costs within the game, also how you are forced into dealing and seeking out more and more as you progress. The skill system is good but i wish there were a bit more enemies around to level up on and inhabit the world but as it is you must always advance into unknown terrain to get more EXP and levels which works very well. It went downhill from here. G2 lost some of the magic, G3 lost even more. the Risen 1&2 (I did not play 3) series can best be compared with G2. G1 is where it was at. Good 'ol times.
I feel the economy of gothic 1 is giga broken had a semi blind playthrough a few days ago and I kid you not I ended up never worrying about ore after at mid-late chapter 1
And i feel like the game balancing is all over the place it felt like super bs the first 3 lvl ups after that you steamroll through the game with some minor stopping points until temple part 2 broke my leg ans brain 😂 build was str 2H xbox merc no magic unless necessary for progression
I dont know what game you played. The money system was easily broken, even unintentionally. Meaningless quests, i assume you mean side quest stayed meaningless in the big story and the game didnt have any side quests after chapter 1. There wasnt really any meaningful choices either. And overall G2 was everything great that G1 was, but it was better pretty much in every way.
@@theRobson0908 All games of those times have work-arounds, broken mechanics and loopholes or even cheats. Thats a positive. The bugs are not game breaking but once you find a cool shortcut you use it.
This game was incredibly dissapointing for me as a big fan of the previous games and the melee combat is horrible and unfinished (maybe only Two Worlds comes close to this). The story is bad and unfinished, the quests are boring and the retcons to the world (especially the Orcs) are bad and don't make any sense.
gothic 3s launch was ridiculous. you mentioned animals stunlocking you by attacking. board attacked so fast at launch, they sometimes cleared full settlements, because npcs got stunlocked forever. nothing that was loveable in gothic 1 and 2 was left in 3 imo. but if you think gothic 3 is bad, try gothic4/arcania :D
bad game. exploration was fun though and music great. myrtana looks decent, even today, nordmar much less and varant is a joke (low res low poly dunes and mountains). bugs are topic for whole another video - there's a quest where you have to "escort" an old hunter (follow him really) to a place he wants to die in and to this day i remember that after losing him from sight for five minutes he just slipped under some textures and ended up in literal "underworld" in "area" below ground where killed npcs end up before clearing memory (found him with cheats, "teleport to" or something like that).
I personally really liked that there isnt a forward ending like in the previous games because both in gothic 1-2 the main boss battles were terrible. What i really didnt like in Gothic 3 the chaotic difficulty gaps. You could defeat an entire orc gang with relative ease but a bunch of goblins or wolves or a boar kicks your behind.
The imbalance in combat style is partly due to the community pack turning on 'alternative AI' for 'immersion purposes', which means multiple enemies can attack you at the same time, whereas the original game setting was balanced for having them attack you one after the other, which makes melee a much more viable option albeit fairly 'unrealistic'.
What G3 did great was the music and the world. They re the first for me to do open vistas right where you can see important landscape elements (castles landscape geometry) from far away. (with a proper PC of course). It feels like a really open world. Also the music. Also the feel of Nordmar.
One of the reasons I loved G3 was the main story, since it felt lime a more naturalistic journey if you followed the level curve loosely and roleplayed hard. I think in a lot of ways its a game that rewards role players and ignores metagamers, building off the high immersion qualities of the series that this game still excels in.
Thanks for the video Mort! I remember this being one of the first games that I ever bought from a country retailer and, unfortunately to much of my dismay, Gothic 3 was extremely bad and broken game at launch that made it impossible to finish and back then I couldn't download any patches, because I didn't have internet back then. I was extremely disappointed by it. I put the game aside for almost a decade and waited for the modders to do their whole "unnoficial" mods thing and then I finally went back to it and managed to finish it. It wasn't even in the same ballpark as Gothic 1&2 of which I loved dearly and then Jo Wood and Piranha Bytes started breaking up and they wanted to bank on the Gothic fans and made a few games in the Arcania series (which all were pretty mediocre). This game to me is the black sheep of the family and it would probably be best for everyone if it's not brought up at all (much like Deux Ex Invisible War) when talking bout the Gothic franchise. Since this is a video regarding Gothic franchise again I would like to remind again to try out Chronicles of Myrtana Archolos, which in my opinion, is the true follow up to Gothic 2.
As some comments suggested, Playing chronicles of Myrtanna Archolos is quite a fun experience. I think i would say for me Gothic2 -> Chronicles -> Gothic 1 -> Gothic 3 (tho the first 3 are defenietely all close together in terms of how much i loved them so dont take it as i think gothic 1 is bad). The game itself is more focused on a personal quest that takes you through but in the end also have a grand scale of things. The new systems added expand on the work from gothic 1/2 and qutie frankly its a blast. Some quests left me giggling and some quests i was geniuenly surprised that a group of modders can come up with so many differnt turns and angles of it. I love your reviews and even tho i absolutely loved Archolos i would love to see your take on it. Only issue is, i dont think there is an english voice pack for it - only polish one (tho as a polish person myself it is high quality voice acting tho i actually still played without it as my brain now a days gets bad with polish as i live in Scotland so more english working brain) but text pack is still working and English version issnt too bad. You can also i think have the voices going but just have english subtiltes so it doesnt feel like its just silence. None the less Great video
One addition, maybe I missed it. The terrible loot system. Loot isn't put into the world 'by hand' but you have 4 types of chests one generic type with only garabage in it and 3 specific types. Money, Warrior and Mage chests. The more chests of each type you get the better the reward (it follows a list). While this system might have its merits - you don't go out into the gameworld to get this one item you absolutely want for your playthrough. There are lots of dungeonstyle locations to clear out and at the end you find only 3 generic chests giving you a tiny amount of generally pretty useless gold and some low level garbage. For the rest: fest quetch to kill x of that quest to fetch quest... With a very sorry heart I gave this game a thumbs down on steam.
I want to thank you for your clear voice. English is not my first language and I understood everything without any captions. I'm definitely subscribing!
As an og gothic fan (playing since 2003, playing g1-3 at least once in a year since 20 years, and I can tell you only one thing: the chronicles of myrtana is exactly what people like me were dreaming about, and knowing that it is impossible for it to happen - but it happened. It might be better than g2 notr and i should state that g2notr is my favorite game of all time
Chronicles looks promising... I can't play it yet, because my wife is in a team of guys who do voiced translation of this game... There are literally hundreds of lines for each character... Massive detalization... Can't wait to play it.
The Gothic series is always something that appealed to me on some level, but at the same time it's so janky that I could never get into it. And I've felt like this for 20 years, so it's not just that I am used to modern games. Even back in 2002, choosing between Gothic or Morrowind was no real competition because Gothic just looked so rough and clunky. I also hated that you have to play as this generic guy. He's not The Man With No Name, he's the Nameless One, and although neither have a name (well, the former has a nickname at least) the latter has no personality either. I did play about half of Gothic 2, and it had things going for it like the townspeople going about their business, but it was painful to play, like an extremely bad souls-like. Heck, I had way more fun playing Two Worlds, which is supposed to be the ultimate Euro-jank RPG, and the RPG equivalent of The Room. Gothic 3 appealed to me slightly more, but it came out with Oblivion, and once again there was no real competition. Based on this video, I'd be more tempted to try it than 1 or 2, but with "finishing the game being unrewarding" I am not sure I want to bother.
I played this game as a teenager when it first came out, and I hated it. It ran like a turd on my PC and I didn't understand the game at all. I was hungry for another Oblivion... Didn't get it sadly, but it's cool reading all the comments here and seeing how many dedicated fans there were. Shame I missed out
Im playing it now with mods.. if you can get over the melee combat animation (imagine its morrowind or put 250 pts in strength as a cheat to fix it a bit) then the world the RPG mechanics are simply amazing something even Baldurs gate 3 cant achieve.. you can betray people,mix and match classes, transform into beasts, be a crazy fire mage warrior knight...its incredibly deep and massive.
Gothic 3 is a decent game, I appreciate the risk they took with moving it to an entirely new engine. They could have made it in the old engine and it would propably be a much better game - but still, it was quite OK for what it tried to accomplish. Melee sucks because of how relentless the enemies are and how they can stunlock you, to the point where a pack of ordinary wolves is a deadly encounter even at level 75 with top-tier equipment. Hunter is OK until you get bumrushed by 10 orcs (and you will). At that point it becomes a game of climbing on something and safely picking them off like ducks And magic just runs in and goes brrrrrr. Especially if you take your time to grind ancient knowledge off tablets scattered around the world. You need 250 points to learn Mana Regeneration - at this point it's GG, your mana passively regenerates at a rapid rate, to the point where potions outside of combat are useless. In typical old Gothic game it would be like melee is strong early but tapers off late, where mage sucks early but is by far the most satisfying extermination machine late. Here, mage is strong from the get go and stays #1 through the whole game.
I played this at release, and liked the game well enough. Despite the horrible bugs. As a game it was OK, as a Gothic game it was horrible. This just wasn't a Gothic game anymore to me. It didn't belong as a sequel to the first two. It should have been its own game instead, with no connection to the world of Gothic. Just change the name of the characters and the world. Tweak the story a bit and I would like it a lot better. Names are a powerful ting, and this game has the wrong name. I really enjoyed the open world of this game. I love exploration, and unlike a lot of large open world games, this felt handcrafted. But they should have cut the Desert and the Nordmar and instead given all their focus to Myrtana. It's by far the most complete zone. The other two almost feels like an afterthought. Could have added them as expansions or something later.
Gothic 3 was pretty underwhelming for me as a long time Gothic fan - however, I did quite enjoy the desert area and the path of Beliar. The conflict between the assassins and the nomads is really interesting, some of the areas were beautiful and fun to explore and seeing almost all of the water mages again was great. Nordmar was really underwhelming and disappointing, though, even more so than Myrtana.
I honestly had a blast playing Gothic 3 yh i only finished it one unlike the previous 2 games, but it still took me around a 130h to do so. Its a shame what happened to it but I really think people should give it a try
maybe some gamers can help me out on here. a pc action rpg that came out between maybe 1999-2003. its starts out with the protagonist waking up from a car crash in the middle of a trailer park in search of his daughter...if i remember correctly. you get some weird abilities along the way you can mix and match. i remember all psychic abilities had yellow outlines and did lots of blind or stun damage. they had magician abilitles was purple outlines. there was a magic sword ability that rained down a set of magical swords. it was as if each level introduced different ability groups to solve puzzle.. but most of all it was a story base action rpg i could never remember the name and wanted to finish it. i also remember this one level that was very egyptian based with many character teleporting and having pharoh like designs and they were like a illuminati class..with pyramids in the background. it was a classic for me and i was still in middle school when this had come out sooo i totally cant remember the name of it... maybe someone can help .. if not it was worth a try here . thanks
@noname I agree for Gothic 1 but Gothic 2 with graphics mods are fine for me even looks better than gothic 3! You can find tutorials on RUclips how to install them!
@noname I didn't play Gothic 1 and 2 until around 2017-2018ish and I loved it. It became basically my addiction at the time. This is coming from someone who despises Morrowind. Both games are janky, but Gothic is the right kind of jank imo, where as I cannot like Morrowind no matter how hard I've tried over the years.
The game was released titally unfinished so that is why the story is also bare bones. They were forced to release it tho way by their owners. That was a big reason why they parted ways.
Hi Mortym! Piranha Bytes is probably my favorite AA developer. Absolutely love Gothic 1 and 2, Risen 1, and the Elex series. Gothic 3 w/ mods and updates is pretty good if not different from the previous Gothic games. Curious to see what your thoughts are on Arcania...
This game was like bioshock 2 for me, it's great for new comers in the franchise but divisive in the community. Appreciate the review Morti, this game was special for me, understanding that there's great aspects and fun underneath it's flaws typified as a eurojank. Again thanks Morti. I keep to myself to not let perfectionism be the burden of a good game.
It was my very first RPG ever and i spent many many hours in it, played it like 3 or 4 times with different decisions and i absolutly LOVED it. After the community patch 1.8 (i think) it was almost bugfree, at least for me. I can't understand all the negative things you said. Of course you can't compare it with an 2023 AAA title, it's a really small game studio. The soundtrack is a masterpiece, and at least in German, also this rough language they use, is hilarious :) Well, the story,... i never really cared about this "main quest" to find Xardas. There are way more other things to do in every city.
If I had money to give you, I'd pay you to 100% Ancient Domains of Mystery (classic.) I spent 20 goddamn years beating that game and I'd love a review from a non-roguelike fan as thorough as you. Alas, disability doesn't pay me enough to pay you to play it.
The Gothic 3 Community Story Project (G3CSP), is still in development. Their goal: Fix the story and pretty much the whole game. Remarkable. That is what I call fan dedication.
I completely forgot about this game. I loved Gothic II. I remember reading articles in game magazines about the upcoming release of Gothic 3, their amazing graphic an AI improvements.... But in the year of its release I was too busy with Battle of Middle Earth II (best birthday ever) and Anno 1701 and forgot about it.
thanks for the review. i always fet the same about the story - i never knew why i was about running and finding artifacts in the first place. thanks for pointing it out. another thing i really hate is the abysmal low number of items that canbe found in such a huge world. you always knwo what is in a chest, regardless of it being in myrtana, varant or nordmar. such a shame, could of been an epic game
I loved the first couple of hours in the game; the music is really good and the world seems believable and nice to explore. But after finding Xardas after a hundred hours, after exploring all other areas and getting REALLY tired of the "MMORPG"-like quest design that wasn´t interesting in the least, I got the final quest by Xardas... and realized that I would have to keep searching for the LAST quest item that I hadn´t found by myself! And there is NO way (not even with a guide) to know which of the items I hadn´t found since they are all called the same name; I would once again basically with the help of a guide re-visit all the locations again to find the missing one.... No way in hell, I watched the ending on RUclips instead... I played a sort of ranger character with a mix of bow and melee, so my combat basically consisted of me shooting arrows at the enemies, waiting for their pathfinding to make them return to their original place, and shoot another arrow... rince and repeat with up to 10 enemies. I really love Gothic 1 and 2, and this game made me really disappointed. Never touching it again...
If there is anybody who is thinking about playing the game who has not played it before, I recommend try it just for the music if noting else. This game has one of the vest soundtracks ever and together with the world immersion in the game its the most pleasing experience.
I'm surprised you didn't mention my personal biggest problem with this game - quests. And I don't just mean the main quest. I mean almost every single quest that there is in this game. 'Cause every single one of them is effectively just a fetch quest, with maybe a single pretextual line telling you why a certain npc needs you to bring him those 10 wolf pelts. So even if you play with a quest pack and content mod (which I'd highly recommend) for every actual quest with some story to it you still have to deal with an absolute deluge of the vanilla fetch quests and it is pretty embarrassing (even regarding the problems the game faced in its developement) how much better of a job the fans have done in regards to giving you the side content you actually want to play through, with some quests even being stretched throughout the whole map, giving you this feeling of actually being on some epic and important adventure towards your goal (the quest with the sword of elements or "Where is the guru?"). That being said I just can't help but love this game even in its vanilla state. It's probably one of my most played single player games ever along with Fallout: NV
IMO bad balancing is not rly a big downside considering that gothic 1 and 2 were TERRIBLY balanced too (like for example turning into animal and wiping out all the monters in area really fast) (and the melee combat was even more of a stunlock fest)
It was one of the best game I ever played. Like it more than first two games. People say it was buggy and quests was broken. But it crashes only if I played too long, so I simply restart the game every hour and it never crashed on me. Bugs wasn't big deal either, sometimes it makes whole game less predictable and I like it. Maybe it was wrong for purists, but I more like simulation fan. In real life your quest giver also can be eaten by a wolfs.
Mortismal if you feel the need for some more Gothic, i recommend Gothic 4 Artania. Its not as good and the story takes some liberties, its still decent enough to warrant a play. I havent played other Gothic games after Arcania (so 4 Gothic games total) so i cant comment about any other. However i would absolutely recommend Risen 2 and Risen 3, even if you never play Arcania. I will add to this comment once i see the video.
Thanks for the retrospective. Kinds of sad to see what could have been a "dynastic" series in on such a flat and sour note. Onward to 200k. All glory to the algorithm.
Playing the game with alternative AI does make the game less frustrating and makes the combat less luck oriented, however there are some moments where although alternative AI has good intentions. It doesn't jell well with some of the design elements of the game. Gothic 3 throws many more hordes of Orcs and Undead at you compared to the first two games. Mage is the best way to play this game because of this since you get access to fire rain and destroy hordes of enemies that bow and fighter characters would have trouble facing.
Is it possible that you didn't turn off the alternative A.I. (which isn't connected to the Alternative Balancing, is kind of hidden in the difficulty setting, which you seem to have overseen, and is on per defaul) which changes the combat fundamentally, so it get much harder. Without alternative A.I. the combat is actually pretty easy. But anyway, I enjoyed the review a lot!
Ah yes, Gothic 3. I remember playing that despite my pc barely being able to handle it. Furthest I ever got was I liberated all the towns for the rebels, finally got myself paladin armor, started to head north into the mountains to find Xardas, only for the game to crash and all my saves were suddenly corrupted and I lost everything
Gothic 3 and its creator, as well as similar studios, is one of those janky RPG games i cant help but love. I dont play them a ton, but they always capture my attention.
Great video. I enjoy the Gothic series to this day, but I have to agree, that Gothic 3 is not the best game out there. I still like it (mostly because of nostalgia I guess) but it sure has it's flaws.
I played it after release and it was so buggy that it was basically unplayable. It soured everything in regards to euro jank and piranha bytes for a long time for me.
One thing you forgot to mention. Gothic 3 is big, i started the game 2 or 3 times back when it came out and i had plenty of fun in the green and white areas hunting animals and exploring, but without fail around that point i had enough of the game and put it down for the next attempt.
I don't know what it is about G3 ... but i just like it ... despite all the problems ... the lack of main quest and really open nature of the world makes it into almost a sandbox experience ... and it's hits just the right points for me
I think you really should try The Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos. It's a free stand alone mods for Gothic 2. Great story, top noth Gothic mechanics & insane quality. Absolutely worth checking out.
Yes, yes and thousand more times yes!
Would love this, haven't tried it out myself but heard many good things of it, but I'd love to hear a proper review.
I have to agree. A lot of us have heard of this mod but many haven’t played or beaten it. I myself have only played the first hour or two because I’ve never beaten a gothic game before and it was sort of confusing for a gothic newbie, which is completely expected from such an ambitious mod.
I just fnished it yesterday, took me 100h. did everything in the game. only achievements i missed are faction specific and one or 2 that i didnt figure out by reading but are simple to get if i reload. Its an absolute love letter to not only gothic but gamers of RPG. The team that did it should get hired by piranha bytes imediately.
Yesss
Was looking forward to this since your first impressions vid. This was THE game of my childhood and I would spend my school days just drawing maps of the cities and imagining how the Rebels would rebuild Vengard once they drove off the orcs ... wonderful memories!
Nerd!
I personally would add the music to the Positives, its one of the best soundtracks ever made for an rpg
Still, with all those problems, somehow I truly enjoy this game, the music, the immersion, it still have some gothic feeling. Now I hope you'll check out Archollos, that's the true gothic 2 sequel we ever wanted.
The music is great.
I'm playing Chronicles Of Myrtana atm. Just wow
I didn't know 'open world' was a thing, until I played this gem in the rough, all those years ago.
I look forward to checking it out when they add English VO. If nothing else I'm sure AI will make that trivial in a few years.
@@59768 I highly recommend playing with polish VO, they made an absolute great job
I still think this games underrated. The mood, music (omg the music!!) and overall... "feeling" of the world was fantastic.
As a German living 1h away from Piranha Bytes Studios I am especially proud of what they made. The Gothic Series was my Teenage theme 💪😎
Even though people are generally not hot on this game, it's the one which introduced me to the Piranha Bytes games. I got the boxed version which came with a cloth map and a pendant of the Sleeper, and played it on my very out of date pc at glorious 15-ish fps. I miss the days of gaming being mysterious
Man... I played it on lowest resolution with lowest textures... Basically without textures!!! Best memories! And I never understood why people hate this game. And also, I used to do a lot of sword-fighting in real life and I can tell that the "feeling" of a sword in G3 is truly amazing... Very natural and real. It beats even "The Blade of Darkness" experience for me.
@@alekseimutovkin bruh ❤
The strongest component of G3 is the amazing soundtrack. I would say it's the best of all games I ever played. Welcome to the Desert is my favorite track.
The kiting in this game is insane!
I had to kill the cows on the farm belonging to the orc city, and free the slaves in the camp nearby. I sniped 4 of the 5 cows and angered the farmers. So, I ran away to free the slaves. Ended up running back to the farmers, followed by the slavers, and then to the city, where the fight alerted the orcs. So, I then had the orcs, the farmers and the slavers all chasing me, and the last cow had disappeared.
Who could blame it?
So, I ran away into the woods, with the whole bunch following me, where they began fighting with the local wildlife. The woods were alive with the sounds of battle. Hiding, I stumbled across some grain thieves camped beside a cave filled with gigantic ants. The giant ants attacked everything, the grain thieves attacked the orcs, the slavers and the orcs attacked the grain thieves, and in amongst it the wildlife had a go at whatever crossed its path.
I sneaked away but ran into a pack of wolves and led them back to the ongoing epic confrontation in the woods via a bridge, which they then fell off one by one into a gully below. Some grain thieves arrived and I led them back across the bridge. They too failed to negotiate the bridge and fell into the gully with the wolves.
I never did find the last cow.
I suspect it fell out of the world with the shock of it all.
That first paragraph made me laugh out loud. It could be a great animated short!
@@DeltaSteak991 Insane game.
I do remember the combat to be very different when it came to multiple Human/Orc enemys. All the melee fighters did wait in line for you to slaughter... this seems to be a big change from the community patch.
Anyone else found the massive " P B " Stone letters on top of one of the Mountains in myrtana?
Awesome review. I played long before community patch was available and it was a total hot mess. Now i wonder if it is worth to go back again.... But my backlog....massive ... Duties... Drowning...😅
When I entered for the first time in my life in Nordmar I had one of my most intense experiences with gaming in my life. It was 2007, I was nineteen years old. Gothic 3 is my favourite Phyrana Bytes game and I played all of them many times(excepting Elex 2 wich I finished it just one time and I don't think I will play it again - I loved Elex 1 by the way). I appreciate all fans who praise Gothic 2, I really understand why, It's my second favourite from this studio.
Same thing... Elex 1 for me was even better than G1. But Elex 2 is a total waste! G3 - is my TOP N1 game of all times (Talos principle not included)... And I played G3 for the first time when I was like 24...
I think all the modern AAA open-world RPG developers should learn from how Gothic 3 handled a giant open world with hundreds of quests without (!!!) any quest markers. And no fast travel (until you find a hidden teleport stone (!!! one for each town)
The modern open-world Witcher3/Assassins Creed/Horizon formula is so overused and uninteresting now. I just don't care about the world they are trying to immerse me in, just click fast travel on the quest marker and get the quest over with. Rinse repeat. Especially the delivery quests. Are you freaking serious? I can accomplish this quest with 2 clicks on the map.
In G3, you were provided with roads and distinguishable landmarks, and a lot of hidden pathways, which made the world very interesting to explore, and the quests not tedious and boring.
I like to remind people that Gothic 3 came out the same year as Oblivion. They are both unplayable without community patches, the both have forgettable and only rudimentary main quests and they both provide vast worlds that feel repetitive at times. And yet both have side content that is amazing. It's still amazing to me how G3 can have such a streamlined approach to how everyone in the world views you (via reputation) yet despite all the numbers being right there, it never feels too artificial. And even with the odd deviation from the Gothic formula, it's still a game with heaps of character and atmosphere - which Bethesda is still not able to do.^^
Great review. I bought it at launch since it was the follow-up to Gothic 2 and it was basically unplayable, it would keep pausing every few seconds so it was constant stop and go. I put it aside but tried it again after the community patch was released which made it playable and I had a fun time of it. I never played Forsaken Gods since I heard that it was pretty poor.
What I really liked is the absence of quest markers. You were given instructions to follow to the destination instead of chasing a marker. One thing I remember was a large jump in difficulty in the snowy region in the late game after you had built up your character to be pretty powerful, it was a throw back to earlier in the game where you were underpowered.
For me one of the bigger disappointment in G3 was main story too. Especially fact that our closest friends: Milten, Diego, Gorn and Lester were totally marginalised from main story.
Gothic 1 was immensely ahead of its time in my opinion and it was incredible well balanced in many ways. The player learning curve was great, the small, lets say meaningless, quest you could pick up around the camp and how they eventually get more and more meaningful and have greater and greater impact on the world and the ways you choose. The in-game money system/ore was very nicely balanced also in the amount and costs within the game, also how you are forced into dealing and seeking out more and more as you progress. The skill system is good but i wish there were a bit more enemies around to level up on and inhabit the world but as it is you must always advance into unknown terrain to get more EXP and levels which works very well. It went downhill from here. G2 lost some of the magic, G3 lost even more. the Risen 1&2 (I did not play 3) series can best be compared with G2. G1 is where it was at. Good 'ol times.
I feel the economy of gothic 1 is giga broken had a semi blind playthrough a few days ago and I kid you not I ended up never worrying about ore after at mid-late chapter 1
And i feel like the game balancing is all over the place it felt like super bs the first 3 lvl ups after that you steamroll through the game with some minor stopping points until temple part 2 broke my leg ans brain 😂 build was str 2H xbox merc no magic unless necessary for progression
I dont know what game you played. The money system was easily broken, even unintentionally. Meaningless quests, i assume you mean side quest stayed meaningless in the big story and the game didnt have any side quests after chapter 1. There wasnt really any meaningful choices either. And overall G2 was everything great that G1 was, but it was better pretty much in every way.
@@theRobson0908 All games of those times have work-arounds, broken mechanics and loopholes or even cheats. Thats a positive. The bugs are not game breaking but once you find a cool shortcut you use it.
This game was incredibly dissapointing for me as a big fan of the previous games and the melee combat is horrible and unfinished (maybe only Two Worlds comes close to this).
The story is bad and unfinished, the quests are boring and the retcons to the world (especially the Orcs) are bad and don't make any sense.
gothic 3s launch was ridiculous. you mentioned animals stunlocking you by attacking. board attacked so fast at launch, they sometimes cleared full settlements, because npcs got stunlocked forever. nothing that was loveable in gothic 1 and 2 was left in 3 imo.
but if you think gothic 3 is bad, try gothic4/arcania :D
bad game. exploration was fun though and music great.
myrtana looks decent, even today, nordmar much less and varant is a joke (low res low poly dunes and mountains). bugs are topic for whole another video - there's a quest where you have to "escort" an old hunter (follow him really) to a place he wants to die in and to this day i remember that after losing him from sight for five minutes he just slipped under some textures and ended up in literal "underworld" in "area" below ground where killed npcs end up before clearing memory (found him with cheats, "teleport to" or something like that).
If Gothic 3 is bad, check Forsaken Gods standalone expansion or Arcania, they are so bad that are outside of canon
no thanks, bro.
I'm still not sure what people see in these games lol. 😅
I personally really liked that there isnt a forward ending like in the previous games because both in gothic 1-2 the main boss battles were terrible. What i really didnt like in Gothic 3 the chaotic difficulty gaps. You could defeat an entire orc gang with relative ease but a bunch of goblins or wolves or a boar kicks your behind.
The imbalance in combat style is partly due to the community pack turning on 'alternative AI' for 'immersion purposes', which means multiple enemies can attack you at the same time, whereas the original game setting was balanced for having them attack you one after the other, which makes melee a much more viable option albeit fairly 'unrealistic'.
Now it's time for Forsaken Gods and Arcania 😂😅
What G3 did great was the music and the world. They re the first for me to do open vistas right where you can see important landscape elements (castles landscape geometry) from far away. (with a proper PC of course). It feels like a really open world. Also the music. Also the feel of Nordmar.
I do think that it takes one hell of game to gather such a loyal community around it
I’ve always wanted to get into the Gothic games, but now I can vicariously experience them through watching your reviews instead! Thank you 🎉
The trilogy is available on steam for $20 if you are interested. I just grabbed it myself.
You could see how much you hated the game in the video clips.
Massive open world without loading screens and its atmosphere and music are still nice.
15:28 LOL
Gothic III is just a Skyrim alfa.
One of the reasons I loved G3 was the main story, since it felt lime a more naturalistic journey if you followed the level curve loosely and roleplayed hard. I think in a lot of ways its a game that rewards role players and ignores metagamers, building off the high immersion qualities of the series that this game still excels in.
Yes i agree fully
Thanks for the video Mort! I remember this being one of the first games that I ever bought from a country retailer and, unfortunately to much of my dismay, Gothic 3 was extremely bad and broken game at launch that made it impossible to finish and back then I couldn't download any patches, because I didn't have internet back then. I was extremely disappointed by it. I put the game aside for almost a decade and waited for the modders to do their whole "unnoficial" mods thing and then I finally went back to it and managed to finish it. It wasn't even in the same ballpark as Gothic 1&2 of which I loved dearly and then Jo Wood and Piranha Bytes started breaking up and they wanted to bank on the Gothic fans and made a few games in the Arcania series (which all were pretty mediocre).
This game to me is the black sheep of the family and it would probably be best for everyone if it's not brought up at all (much like Deux Ex Invisible War) when talking bout the Gothic franchise.
Since this is a video regarding Gothic franchise again I would like to remind again to try out Chronicles of Myrtana Archolos, which in my opinion, is the true follow up to Gothic 2.
As some comments suggested, Playing chronicles of Myrtanna Archolos is quite a fun experience. I think i would say for me Gothic2 -> Chronicles -> Gothic 1 -> Gothic 3 (tho the first 3 are defenietely all close together in terms of how much i loved them so dont take it as i think gothic 1 is bad). The game itself is more focused on a personal quest that takes you through but in the end also have a grand scale of things. The new systems added expand on the work from gothic 1/2 and qutie frankly its a blast. Some quests left me giggling and some quests i was geniuenly surprised that a group of modders can come up with so many differnt turns and angles of it. I love your reviews and even tho i absolutely loved Archolos i would love to see your take on it. Only issue is, i dont think there is an english voice pack for it - only polish one (tho as a polish person myself it is high quality voice acting tho i actually still played without it as my brain now a days gets bad with polish as i live in Scotland so more english working brain) but text pack is still working and English version issnt too bad. You can also i think have the voices going but just have english subtiltes so it doesnt feel like its just silence. None the less Great video
One addition, maybe I missed it. The terrible loot system.
Loot isn't put into the world 'by hand' but you have 4 types of chests one generic type with only garabage in it and 3 specific types. Money, Warrior and Mage chests. The more chests of each type you get the better the reward (it follows a list).
While this system might have its merits - you don't go out into the gameworld to get this one item you absolutely want for your playthrough. There are lots of dungeonstyle locations to clear out and at the end you find only 3 generic chests giving you a tiny amount of generally pretty useless gold and some low level garbage.
For the rest: fest quetch to kill x of that quest to fetch quest...
With a very sorry heart I gave this game a thumbs down on steam.
I hope you would check out Gothic 2 Returning 2.0/Alternative Balance. It's a mod of Gothic 2 with 250 hours of gameplay.
I want to thank you for your clear voice. English is not my first language and I understood everything without any captions. I'm definitely subscribing!
Thanks for videos on Gothic! Would be great if you continued this series with Archolos and MAY BE Arcania 😃
I had Problems with other Jowood Games back then, overall i just skipped everything published by them.
As an og gothic fan (playing since 2003, playing g1-3 at least once in a year since 20 years, and I can tell you only one thing: the chronicles of myrtana is exactly what people like me were dreaming about, and knowing that it is impossible for it to happen - but it happened. It might be better than g2 notr and i should state that g2notr is my favorite game of all time
Chronicles looks promising... I can't play it yet, because my wife is in a team of guys who do voiced translation of this game... There are literally hundreds of lines for each character... Massive detalization... Can't wait to play it.
The Gothic series is always something that appealed to me on some level, but at the same time it's so janky that I could never get into it. And I've felt like this for 20 years, so it's not just that I am used to modern games. Even back in 2002, choosing between Gothic or Morrowind was no real competition because Gothic just looked so rough and clunky. I also hated that you have to play as this generic guy. He's not The Man With No Name, he's the Nameless One, and although neither have a name (well, the former has a nickname at least) the latter has no personality either. I did play about half of Gothic 2, and it had things going for it like the townspeople going about their business, but it was painful to play, like an extremely bad souls-like. Heck, I had way more fun playing Two Worlds, which is supposed to be the ultimate Euro-jank RPG, and the RPG equivalent of The Room.
Gothic 3 appealed to me slightly more, but it came out with Oblivion, and once again there was no real competition. Based on this video, I'd be more tempted to try it than 1 or 2, but with "finishing the game being unrewarding" I am not sure I want to bother.
I played this game as a teenager when it first came out, and I hated it. It ran like a turd on my PC and I didn't understand the game at all. I was hungry for another Oblivion... Didn't get it sadly, but it's cool reading all the comments here and seeing how many dedicated fans there were. Shame I missed out
Im playing it now with mods.. if you can get over the melee combat animation (imagine its morrowind or put 250 pts in strength as a cheat to fix it a bit) then the world the RPG mechanics are simply amazing something even Baldurs gate 3 cant achieve.. you can betray people,mix and match classes, transform into beasts, be a crazy fire mage warrior knight...its incredibly deep and massive.
Gothic 3 is a decent game, I appreciate the risk they took with moving it to an entirely new engine. They could have made it in the old engine and it would propably be a much better game - but still, it was quite OK for what it tried to accomplish.
Melee sucks because of how relentless the enemies are and how they can stunlock you, to the point where a pack of ordinary wolves is a deadly encounter even at level 75 with top-tier equipment.
Hunter is OK until you get bumrushed by 10 orcs (and you will). At that point it becomes a game of climbing on something and safely picking them off like ducks
And magic just runs in and goes brrrrrr. Especially if you take your time to grind ancient knowledge off tablets scattered around the world. You need 250 points to learn Mana Regeneration - at this point it's GG, your mana passively regenerates at a rapid rate, to the point where potions outside of combat are useless.
In typical old Gothic game it would be like melee is strong early but tapers off late, where mage sucks early but is by far the most satisfying extermination machine late. Here, mage is strong from the get go and stays #1 through the whole game.
I played this at release, and liked the game well enough. Despite the horrible bugs. As a game it was OK, as a Gothic game it was horrible. This just wasn't a Gothic game anymore to me. It didn't belong as a sequel to the first two. It should have been its own game instead, with no connection to the world of Gothic. Just change the name of the characters and the world. Tweak the story a bit and I would like it a lot better. Names are a powerful ting, and this game has the wrong name.
I really enjoyed the open world of this game. I love exploration, and unlike a lot of large open world games, this felt handcrafted. But they should have cut the Desert and the Nordmar and instead given all their focus to Myrtana. It's by far the most complete zone. The other two almost feels like an afterthought. Could have added them as expansions or something later.
Gothic 3 was pretty underwhelming for me as a long time Gothic fan - however, I did quite enjoy the desert area and the path of Beliar. The conflict between the assassins and the nomads is really interesting, some of the areas were beautiful and fun to explore and seeing almost all of the water mages again was great. Nordmar was really underwhelming and disappointing, though, even more so than Myrtana.
I enjoy only G1 and G2... G3 for me feels meh - especially combat - bad...
I honestly had a blast playing Gothic 3 yh i only finished it one unlike the previous 2 games, but it still took me around a 130h to do so. Its a shame what happened to it but I really think people should give it a try
maybe some gamers can help me out on here. a pc action rpg that came out between maybe 1999-2003.
its starts out with the protagonist waking up from a car crash in the middle of a trailer park in search of his daughter...if i remember correctly. you get some weird abilities along the way you can mix and match. i remember all psychic abilities had yellow outlines and did lots of blind or stun damage. they had magician abilitles was purple outlines. there was a magic sword ability that rained down a set of magical swords. it was as if each level introduced different ability groups to solve puzzle.. but most of all it was a story base action rpg i could never remember the name and wanted to finish it. i also remember this one level that was very egyptian based with many character teleporting and having pharoh like designs and they were like a illuminati class..with pyramids in the background. it was a classic for me and i was still in middle school when this had come out sooo i totally cant remember the name of it... maybe someone can help .. if not it was worth a try here . thanks
Pls review iron danger it's a very short crpg
Game have bugs, stiff combat system and not many secrets, but world itself is somehow amazing to explore.
At least the music was great. But I would lie if I said I didn't enjoy playing it back around 2008
Gothic 1 and 2 are the best
@noname I agree for Gothic 1 but Gothic 2 with graphics mods are fine for me even looks better than gothic 3! You can find tutorials on RUclips how to install them!
@noname I didn't play Gothic 1 and 2 until around 2017-2018ish and I loved it. It became basically my addiction at the time. This is coming from someone who despises Morrowind. Both games are janky, but Gothic is the right kind of jank imo, where as I cannot like Morrowind no matter how hard I've tried over the years.
for some unknown reason after eating like 100 roasted bugs or whatever the game randomly gave me 50 or 90 strength , rather hilarious
the first piranha byte game i've played was Risen 3 on the 360. It was the shittiest game i think i ever played, but i loved it.
I cant believe they act fixed the freezes and crashes!!! community is the best community
What is the best way to play? Does it have full mouse and keyboard support?
Tried to get into this game multiple times but could never get into it. The beginning was a slow burn and excruciatingly boring to me.
The game was released titally unfinished so that is why the story is also bare bones. They were forced to release it tho way by their owners. That was a big reason why they parted ways.
Damn i was playing those games all day as a teenager at school. Really brutal games
P.s i remember waiting so much for a gothic 4 and when it finally came out it turned to be so disappointed i was so depressed 😂
When ever i try to play it my keyboard dont work. Love this game but my keyboard hates it
Hi Mortym! Piranha Bytes is probably my favorite AA developer. Absolutely love Gothic 1 and 2, Risen 1, and the Elex series. Gothic 3 w/ mods and updates is pretty good if not different from the previous Gothic games. Curious to see what your thoughts are on Arcania...
This game was like bioshock 2 for me, it's great for new comers in the franchise but divisive in the community. Appreciate the review Morti, this game was special for me, understanding that there's great aspects and fun underneath it's flaws typified as a eurojank.
Again thanks Morti.
I keep to myself to not let perfectionism be the burden of a good game.
I group it a lot with BioShock 2 as well, as in "games that I had an unambiguously better time than the first game, but is super controversial."
Bioshock 2 is better than the first imo
Wer bist du? Was just das für ein Ort? Wonach suchst du? Was kann ich tun?
...
Zeig mir deine Ware.
Good show sir
It was my very first RPG ever and i spent many many hours in it, played it like 3 or 4 times with different decisions and i absolutly LOVED it. After the community patch 1.8 (i think) it was almost bugfree, at least for me. I can't understand all the negative things you said. Of course you can't compare it with an 2023 AAA title, it's a really small game studio. The soundtrack is a masterpiece, and at least in German, also this rough language they use, is hilarious :) Well, the story,... i never really cared about this "main quest" to find Xardas. There are way more other things to do in every city.
Ah, Gothic 3 my favourite bad game
If I had money to give you, I'd pay you to 100% Ancient Domains of Mystery (classic.) I spent 20 goddamn years beating that game and I'd love a review from a non-roguelike fan as thorough as you. Alas, disability doesn't pay me enough to pay you to play it.
im really surprised you didnt mention the music
in the nexus there is a mod to improve the animation of the combat system
The Gothic 3 Community Story Project (G3CSP), is still in development. Their goal: Fix the story and pretty much the whole game. Remarkable. That is what I call fan dedication.
The faction system sounds a lot like how New Vegas handled their factions, I would not be surprised to hear that they were inspired by Gothic 3.
I completely forgot about this game. I loved Gothic II. I remember reading articles in game magazines about the upcoming release of Gothic 3, their amazing graphic an AI improvements.... But in the year of its release I was too busy with Battle of Middle Earth II (best birthday ever) and Anno 1701 and forgot about it.
thanks for the review. i always fet the same about the story - i never knew why i was about running and finding artifacts in the first place. thanks for pointing it out. another thing i really hate is the abysmal low number of items that canbe found in such a huge world. you always knwo what is in a chest, regardless of it being in myrtana, varant or nordmar. such a shame, could of been an epic game
Are you going to check out Chronicles of Myrtana?
At some point possibly
I loved the first couple of hours in the game; the music is really good and the world seems believable and nice to explore. But after finding Xardas after a hundred hours, after exploring all other areas and getting REALLY tired of the "MMORPG"-like quest design that wasn´t interesting in the least, I got the final quest by Xardas... and realized that I would have to keep searching for the LAST quest item that I hadn´t found by myself! And there is NO way (not even with a guide) to know which of the items I hadn´t found since they are all called the same name; I would once again basically with the help of a guide re-visit all the locations again to find the missing one.... No way in hell, I watched the ending on RUclips instead... I played a sort of ranger character with a mix of bow and melee, so my combat basically consisted of me shooting arrows at the enemies, waiting for their pathfinding to make them return to their original place, and shoot another arrow... rince and repeat with up to 10 enemies.
I really love Gothic 1 and 2, and this game made me really disappointed. Never touching it again...
If there is anybody who is thinking about playing the game who has not played it before, I recommend try it just for the music if noting else. This game has one of the vest soundtracks ever and together with the world immersion in the game its the most pleasing experience.
Exactly. Atmosphere and immersion is what this game excels in. There's no other game like that. Unmatched until today in his own way.
@@Smurez Yeah, the more modern games they make, the better G3 looks!
Broken combat system - you're goddamn right.
I wish someone ported G2 combat system into G3, but 10+ years after it seems that it's impossible
I'm surprised you didn't mention my personal biggest problem with this game - quests. And I don't just mean the main quest. I mean almost every single quest that there is in this game. 'Cause every single one of them is effectively just a fetch quest, with maybe a single pretextual line telling you why a certain npc needs you to bring him those 10 wolf pelts. So even if you play with a quest pack and content mod (which I'd highly recommend) for every actual quest with some story to it you still have to deal with an absolute deluge of the vanilla fetch quests and it is pretty embarrassing (even regarding the problems the game faced in its developement) how much better of a job the fans have done in regards to giving you the side content you actually want to play through, with some quests even being stretched throughout the whole map, giving you this feeling of actually being on some epic and important adventure towards your goal (the quest with the sword of elements or "Where is the guru?").
That being said I just can't help but love this game even in its vanilla state. It's probably one of my most played single player games ever along with Fallout: NV
IMO bad balancing is not rly a big downside considering that gothic 1 and 2 were TERRIBLY balanced too (like for example turning into animal and wiping out all the monters in area really fast)
(and the melee combat was even more of a stunlock fest)
Have you heard of Arcania: Gothic 4? It's a terrible game in my opinion, but you could give it a shot if you want the full Gothic experience.
It was one of the best game I ever played. Like it more than first two games. People say it was buggy and quests was broken. But it crashes only if I played too long, so I simply restart the game every hour and it never crashed on me. Bugs wasn't big deal either, sometimes it makes whole game less predictable and I like it. Maybe it was wrong for purists, but I more like simulation fan. In real life your quest giver also can be eaten by a wolfs.
Mortismal if you feel the need for some more Gothic, i recommend Gothic 4 Artania. Its not as good and the story takes some liberties, its still decent enough to warrant a play. I havent played other Gothic games after Arcania (so 4 Gothic games total) so i cant comment about any other. However i would absolutely recommend Risen 2 and Risen 3, even if you never play Arcania. I will add to this comment once i see the video.
The Gothic series is kind of appealing to me, but it feels a bit outdated. However, I will give it a try. Thank you so much for this review, hugs.
Thanks for the retrospective. Kinds of sad to see what could have been a "dynastic" series in on such a flat and sour note. Onward to 200k. All glory to the algorithm.
Playing the game with alternative AI does make the game less frustrating and makes the combat less luck oriented, however there are some moments where although alternative AI has good intentions. It doesn't jell well with some of the design elements of the game. Gothic 3 throws many more hordes of Orcs and Undead at you compared to the first two games. Mage is the best way to play this game because of this since you get access to fire rain and destroy hordes of enemies that bow and fighter characters would have trouble facing.
I would summarize this game like many good ideas not executed well (due to rough development, overambition, whatever might be the case).
Is it possible that you didn't turn off the alternative A.I. (which isn't connected to the Alternative Balancing, is kind of hidden in the difficulty setting, which you seem to have overseen, and is on per defaul) which changes the combat fundamentally, so it get much harder. Without alternative A.I. the combat is actually pretty easy.
But anyway, I enjoyed the review a lot!
Getting stun locked by wild animals was kinda like a meme when the game was released
Ah yes, Gothic 3. I remember playing that despite my pc barely being able to handle it. Furthest I ever got was I liberated all the towns for the rebels, finally got myself paladin armor, started to head north into the mountains to find Xardas, only for the game to crash and all my saves were suddenly corrupted and I lost everything
Gothic 3 and its creator, as well as similar studios, is one of those janky RPG games i cant help but love. I dont play them a ton, but they always capture my attention.
Yeah, a shame they just got shut down recently
@@MortismalGaming Wait what ? Piranha Bytes shut down ???
Great video. I enjoy the Gothic series to this day, but I have to agree, that Gothic 3 is not the best game out there. I still like it (mostly because of nostalgia I guess) but it sure has it's flaws.
Thanks for playing it so I don't have to, although I can tell by the comments the game meat a lot to some folks... Thanks brother!
I played it after release and it was so buggy that it was basically unplayable. It soured everything in regards to euro jank and piranha bytes for a long time for me.
best
17:08 Gothic 3 in a nutshell, imitated by that wolf. It can't decide on what it wants to be and ends up being undercooked on most accounts.
One thing you forgot to mention. Gothic 3 is big, i started the game 2 or 3 times back when it came out and i had plenty of fun in the green and white areas hunting animals and exploring, but without fail around that point i had enough of the game and put it down for the next attempt.
The only sin i did in the Gothic series is that i never played Gothic 3 because of the problems at the Release. Thank you
Arcania Gothic 4 next?
Despite it being a mod I do hope at you at least do a short video on Chronicles Of Myrtana