Gothic 3... worth the effort?

[CaptHawkeye]

Lo and behold all ye underlings, this disgruntled army doctor wishes to have a new "Oblivion Style" video game yet seeks one that show's a degree of competance. I've heard mixed things about Gothic 3 and am, hence, unable to decide if the game is worth the effort. The screenshots looks beautiful, the world looks pretty damn big, and it looks like their is a lot happening. I gave the demo a spin, but I don't feel it gave me enough of a taste to decide properly.

And one other thing, I actually hated Oblivion's dumbed down gameplay and combat systems compared to Morrowind. So where would one place G3's complexity between the two?

[Cincinnatus]

Lo and behold all ye underlings, this disgruntled army doctor wishes to have a new "Oblivion Style" video game yet seeks one that show's a degree of competance. I've heard mixed things about Gothic 3 and am, hence, unable to decide if the game is worth the effort. The screenshots looks beautiful, the world looks pretty damn big, and it looks like their is a lot happening. I gave the demo a spin, but I don't feel it gave me enough of a taste to decide properly.

And one other thing, I actually hated Oblivion's dumbed down gameplay and combat systems compared to Morrowind. So where would one place G3's complexity between the two?

The combat system in Oblivion isn't dumbed down compared to Morrowind, in fact, it's a lot better. Why do you think it's worse?

As for Gothic 3, the thing takes forever to load a game on my machine. It was so bad I stopped playing it, even though I liked the game itself. I don't know if it was my hardware (I have a pretty decent computer), but I've heard that other people have had lot's of problems with bugs as well.

If the demo performed well on your computer, then I'd go ahead and get the game.

[CaptHawkeye]

The combat system in Oblivion isn't dumbed down compared to Morrowind, in fact, it's a lot better. Why do you think it's worse?

Really? Then where did all those spears, crossbows, halberds, throwing stars, long/short bows, and cutlasses go? But oh wait, Oblivion has, player controlled shields. *gasp* Because we've never seen that before.

As for Gothic 3, the thing takes forever to load a game on my machine. It was so bad I stopped playing it, even though I liked the game itself. I don't know if it was my hardware (I have a pretty decent computer), but I've heard that other people have had lot's of problems with bugs as well.

If the demo performed well on your computer, then I'd go ahead and get the game.

My 7800GS didn't seem to have many problems kicking the shit out of the demo. The temporary lock ups still happened but according to random forum visits that happened to everyone.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I personally did not like Gothic 3 at all. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed entirely too hard, to the point of serious frustation. But what really turned me off is the huge lack of character customization. You play some dude with a sword, and the only real customization possible are the skills which you take later on, which to my further displeasure there were not a hell of a lot of, nor were they especially complex and/or interesting.

I gave the game several tries as I seriously dislike just dropping a game, but in the end I did drop it after finding some rebel dudes and doing a few very difficult quests for them and eventually getting to a point where I spent more time loading than doing anything interesting.

[Cincinnatus]

The combat system in Oblivion isn't dumbed down compared to Morrowind, in fact, it's a lot better. Why do you think it's worse?

Really? Then where did all those spears, crossbows, halberds, throwing stars, long/short bows, and cutlasses go? But oh wait, Oblivion has, player controlled shields. *gasp* Because we've never seen that before.

Yes, lot's of weapons categories were combined together in Oblivion, and some useless weapons like spears were removed (I certainly never used them in Morrowind.) Whether you think that was a good or bad decision, it only indirectly effects how combat works.

The fact of the matter is, in Morrowind, you'd just walk up to someone and wail on him until they died. In Oblivion, you do a lot more than that. You block. You try to get around the enemies block. You use the power moves. And you actually use different strategies against different enemies. When you fight those dinosaur looking deadra, for example, you always want to give up ground and use the back power attack, because they always charge you. The same tactic doesn't work on enemies like Daedra warriors because they're a lot more cautious.

Oblivion had its fair share of problems, but the combat system was definitely an improvement over Morrowind.

My 7800GS didn't seem to have many problems kicking the shit out of the demo. The temporary lock ups still happened but according to random forum visits that happened to everyone.

I didn't have any problems running the game smoothly, it just took an obscenely long time to load a game. As Brother-Captain Gaius pointed out, you die a lot, so having to wait five minutes to reload your last save is extremely frustrating. If you didn't have that problem, then you'd probably enjoy the game.

[Vendetta]

Really? Then where did all those spears, crossbows, halberds, throwing stars, long/short bows, and cutlasses go? But oh wait, Oblivion has, player controlled shields. *gasp* Because we've never seen that before.

You mean all those things that were a different graphic with the same effect? Hell, they didn't even have different ranges without a mod...

Morrowind's combat was shit. Anyone who says different will be pecked to death by Cliff Racers.

[Stark]

I played Gothic 1 & 2 back in the day (I was a big fan of Gothic, actually), and I *hate* Gothic 3. It's slow, it's buggy, it's totally generic, everything BCG said. I'm not a huge Oblivion fan but Oblivion is WAAAAY better.

It's fascinating to see the 'lolz no spears, axe-y maces' stuff still floats around. Aside from skins, Oblivion's combat system isn't missing anything except the TO HIT ROLL, which was utterly stupid anyway.

Then again, if CH is looking for this kind of first-person explore-em-up, what else is there?

[CaptHawkeye]

I played Gothic 1 & 2 back in the day (I was a big fan of Gothic, actually), and I *hate* Gothic 3. It's slow, it's buggy, it's totally generic, everything BCG said. I'm not a huge Oblivion fan but Oblivion is WAAAAY better.

It probably is, but i'm looking for something like it and Morrowind. And frankly, the stock is short.

It's fascinating to see the 'lolz no spears, axe-y maces' stuff still floats around. Aside from skins, Oblivion's combat system isn't missing anything except the TO HIT ROLL, which was utterly stupid anyway.

Wow, everyone seems to think Oblivion's system was better. I guess I still might be suffering from the after effects of the horribly dumbed down clusterfuck that was Deus Ex Invisible War. In other words: Damnet, now i'm paranoid.

Then again, if CH is looking for this kind of first-person explore-em-up, what else is there?

Thar she blows.

[Zixinus]

Gothic 3 has...problems. It's a system hog, the combat is weird and sometimes ridiculous, although it had some good points and it was not totally worthless.

What bothered me, and bothers me too often when it comes to RPGs, is that crossbows and bows are treated as equals, even though anybody who tried to fire a bow and a crossbow knows that a crossbow is much, much simpler to learn and crossbows are often more or at least equally powerful as any bows.

Beyond that, Gothic 3 feels...awkward to play, and at some points, the AI and game is screwed up.

I killed a dragon without any damage with nothing but a cheap bow and lots of arrows.

What also annoys me, is that Gothic 3 was supposed to have a great physic system, but it is only available to PhysX cards. Are those things even worth their money?

[Covenant]

You're probably just reacting primarily to the fact that at low levels, the combat system is entirely flat. You get a weapon and you swing it. Until you get power attacks (ideally more than one) you have nearly no incentive to do much besides get into something's face and just bash the hell out of it. The Arena's enemies are a bit smarter, but not by much. And until you get the power attacks, you don't see exactly how many special moves you have that are capable of stuff, which removes some of the importance for them.

Modding it, like with OOO, ramps up the difficulty immensely. OOO removes your starting HP bonus, so I exited with about 50, and even a goddamn mud crab can take off a significant chunk of health. I am currently level 4, packing an Elven Shortsword I got off of someone the guards killed (I had to run back to town due to the fact my ass was being kicked) and it really shows no signs of rolling over and dying--it will be a rough time until I get an enchantment or something. It doesn't help that I'm trying to be a Thief-style character, with bows, a little magic, and some blades. Combine it with the "No Running Backwards" mod to keep enemies and yourself from kiting people, and combat ends up being pretty brutal.

There may be LESS choices, but in Morrowind the combat dynamics were pretty terrible anyway. I have yet to see a game that properly makes advancing into a spear-user's point as scary as it should be. Oblivion, at least, makes combat pretty dicey at times. I'm STILL wondering what I need to do to get an edge. The only way I can take down, hell, nearly ANYTHING is either one-on-one or by riddling it full of arrows and then pecking it to death in melee. If I was a heavy-armored Orc, I bet things would be easier, but I can't imagine by much.