Gothic 3 - Review @ Gamebanshee

[magerette]

Gamebanshee's Sue York has done an in-depth review of JoWooD and Piranha Bytes' Gothic 3, playing with the latest v1.6 community patch installed. The overall score is 7.8/10. It's a lengthy review, and hard to quote without spoliers so here's just a small sample:

Both reputation and character development are gained by completing quests. As with many RPGs, a number of the game’s side quests are mundane - even simplistic - such as hunting and trading, fetching and carrying. Those which are more challenging involve the recruitment of other characters, sometimes to form a group. Here the trick is to survive and keep your partner(s) alive whilst they charge into the fray. The best approach to quests of this nature is arguably to clear the way first, allowing for the safe passage of group members to the point where their skills are needed for completion of the quest. It is not necessary to complete all of the side quests, so the player can select those which appeal. Furthermore, the epic nature of the game is reflected in how long it takes to build reputation.

More information.

 

[Bartacus]

A bit weird for me is that I never encountered such a huge list of problems the author describes with the patches installed. There's sometimes something weird, like a quest that gets canceled without a reason, but overall I haven't experienced any crash.

 

[Burress]

Too bad the melee combat can never be fixed. All of the monsters are missing retreating animations after their attacks, so they lunge at you repeatedly like they are cobras. This makes melee combat against anything that isn't human or orc (which are both way too easy) a masochistic affair. Some could argue that was how it was meant to be, but that is a big departure from their earlier two games, where melee combat was a viable path against any opponent. I think they just never got around to finishing the animations and left it as is.

 

[Zaleukos]

I did have issues with 1.6 (installed on top of 1.52 so that might account for some of them as that isnt recommended), but except for the void issues and infrequent crashes they were different from the ones she describe and that's on a much weaker system. 1.6 improved performance by a fair bit.

Otherwise a fair review. I would come up with almost the same verdict but be a bit less forgiving in my assessment of the combat system (which is pretty boring outside archery)

Too bad the melee combat can never be fixed. All of the monsters are missing retreating animations after their attacks, so they lunge at you repeatedly like they are cobras. This makes melee combat against anything that isn't human or orc (which are both way too easy) a masochistic affair. Some could argue that was how it was meant to be, but that is a big departure from their earlier two games, where melee combat was a viable path against any opponent. I think they just never got around to finishing the animations and left it as is.

Melee combat in the game has a fair number of flaws, but it is perfectly viable against almost all enemies besides ogres. It is ridiculously biased towards long weapons though...