Gothic 3 - Review @ IGN

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In another review bound to produce some "ouch" responses, IGN has slapped Gothic III with a 4.9/10.00 ("poor") rating. Citing presentation and gameplay issues, the reviewer said:
With the promise of a gigantic game world within which you're free to do whatever you want, Gothic III is certainly a tantalizing title. It's got the graphical backbone to support the immersive gameplay it aims to deliver, a strong character development system, and a great soundtrack. Unfortunately, there are far too many problems with Gothic III to maintain the immersion. In a game where the illusion of a dynamic, realistic world is so crucial to the experience, technical bugs and awkward design decisions do a marvelous job at hamstringing Gothic III's gameplay. It's still possible to wander aimlessly through forests and deserts engaging whatever challenges you happen upon, which can be entertaining, but you'll never be free from the terrifically awkward combat. It doesn't help that some quests flat out don't work, the game frequently crashes, and little besides the soundtrack is worth listening to. Gothic III gives you a giant world and plenty of choice, but is ultimately engulfed by its own aspirations of complexity.
More information.
 
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I just read the review and I must say I'm not impressed at all. I would expect a much more professional review from a site with IGN's reputation. The reviewer is obviously a Gothic newbie as he complains that beating up a friendly NPC with no immediate consequences is immersion breaking. I guess he found Oblivion's psychic guards with stealing a loaf of bread automatically making you the most wanted man all over Cyrodiil much more realistic. He didn't even discover that spamming the right mouse button is more effective than spamming the left mouse button. I'm not at all surprised that he failed to utilize the large variety of combat moves and instead had to exploit the AI together with constant saving/reloading. Oblivion's click-festing combat is, as it would seem, perfectly all-right.

He complains that teleportation stones are hard to find. Obviously, what he really wants, is a GPS compass. Who's to blame him?

I could go on and on... The reviewer simply fails to bring forth the game's strongest points. He talks little if not at all of the revolutionary faction system that allows the player to trace a unique path through the game with every replay, the world really shaping according to the player's actions. Etc etc.

Some sites seem to deliberately publish bad reviews. I like to think that this is not really the case and that it's just that some reviewers are incompetent.

On a side note, I was reading the IGN G3 forum and the hottest thread was titled -guess what- "Buy Gothic 3!".
 
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it amuses me when everyone who whines about bad reviews of gothic stoops to bash oblivion. the games are not mutually exclusive you know. some people, gasp, even enjoy both! WHO KNEW?!?! climb down from your altitudinous equine friend, oblivion is a game that a lot of people who enjoy computer gaming are thrilled by. sure, it's not planescape torment and it's not overly complicated, but it is bloody brilliant.
 
Nope, sorry, but a game which automatically scalles the whole world according to the player level can *not* be "bloody brilliant". Fun maybe, but not brilliant. I strongly agree with LW.
 
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Nope, sorry, but a game which automatically scalles the whole world according to the player level can *not* be "bloody brilliant". Fun maybe, but not brilliant. I strongly agree with LW.

Says who?

Both games have good points and not so good points (be it design decisions or bugs) but by constantly thrashing Oblivion to raise G3 up high, you guys are just as biased and "uninformed" as the reviewers you yell at.

You criticize the reviewer for not seeing the big picture and for giving a low score based an a few bad points yet the whole "level scaling = crappy game" or "psychic guards = crappy game" argumentation is no different.

Am I disappointed that G3 is getting so many bad reviews? Absolutely.

Do I think it is totally undeserving? Unfortunately no. It really shouldn't have been released in the state it was in both in terms of gameplay bugs and technical bugs.

One thing noone can take away from Oblivion no matter how much they dislike the game is the fact that it was one of the most stabile and bug free releases in a VERY long time ... and I finished Oblivion after roughly 300+ hours yet I've put G3 on hold for now after perhaps 100 hours simply because I grew tired of always having to keep count on how many times I had saved to avoid crashing and having to replay a segment all over again.
 
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I just read the review and I must say I'm not impressed at all. I would expect a much more professional review from a site with IGN's reputation. The reviewer is obviously a Gothic newbie as he complains that beating up a friendly NPC with no immediate consequences is immersion breaking.

He complains that teleportation stones are hard to find. Obviously, what he really wants, is a GPS compass. Who's to blame him?

I notice there was no mention of the fact that you yourself can be beaten up and robbed in the same way. Also it seems to me that people who I've previously annoyed, either by attacking them or robbing them and being seen, are more likely to become hostile if I cause another ruckus later on which seems reasonable.

I also find it interesting that the two teleportation stones he mentioned specifically were two of the ones I had the easiest time finding since, in both cases, there was a quest that involved beating the carriers up and therefore made getting the stones very simple.
It's not like it's even essential to have all the stones. It's convenient, no question, but once you have one that goes to a town that's at least somewhat close to your destination there shouldn't be huge amounts of running required to go anywhere.

I do, however, agree that the information recorded for some of the quests is a little lacking. Sometimes the conversation in my log seems to start right after the point where the NPC gave the directions to where I need to be or the name of the person I need to find. None of it was insanely frustrating though since odds are that I'll run into the person/place anyway while wandering around.
 
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it amuses me when everyone who whines about bad reviews of gothic stoops to bash oblivion. the games are not mutually exclusive you know. some people, gasp, even enjoy both! WHO KNEW?!?! climb down from your altitudinous equine friend, oblivion is a game that a lot of people who enjoy computer gaming are thrilled by. sure, it's not planescape torment and it's not overly complicated, but it is bloody brilliant.

The problem is that comparisons are being drawn by the reviewers, stated or not - and most of the reviewers are PC & Console players who are younger and draw from the console (i.e. jRPG) experience. Gothic is very much PC centric and much more in line with 'old school' experience. The exploration is a great experience - in Oblivion if someone 'mentions' a place (since dialogue isn't 'real') *bam* it is on your map to go to without thought. In Gothic is can be frustrating, but travel is *work*.

I think this review is much better than the absolute trash at GameSpy ... but apparently Gothic doesn't lend itself to the quick-turn style of play these reviewers are used to. Heck if I got the same $250 or whatever to review the 6-hour FEAR XP, 15 hour Dungeon Siege PSP or Gothic 3 (which I've already done 60+ hours with no end in sight!), I would be hard pressed not to cheat and just try to get to the end as qiuckly as possible. Which is what these reviews sound like - I find Gothic 3 is much less immersive when I try to rush to get stuff done in short bursts ... it is made to lavish in.
 
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This makes me really worry about the Gamespot review, since I rate these two game sites about even. I haven't seen a game receive such diversified ratings in years.
 
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Nope, sorry, but a game which automatically scalles the whole world according to the player level can *not* be "bloody brilliant". Fun maybe, but not brilliant. I strongly agree with LW.

Like Max Payne, for example?
 
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This makes me really worry about the Gamespot review, since I rate these two game sites about even. I haven't seen a game receive such diversified ratings in years.
IGN uses sweet world about some aspects of Gothic 3 but giving 8.5, 8, 4.5 and 4 synthesizes with a global 4.9 that isn't an average at all. I think that all is linked to the importance that we give to the bugs in a pc game. A console fanatic cannot resist to any bug and rates according this feeling. Complexity has a cost and some people simply cannot tolerate it. But noone can define Gothic 3 "poor" :D it wants to be too rich!
 
Sorry, but just watching these sites build up certain games before release while totally ignoring other developers, I can almost judge the review before release. If it's not a Total war franchise, Star Wars or Battle for Middle Earth game they have been pumping up for months you will probably see a bad review. Especially if it is a old school Rpg. Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion seem to be exceptions.
 
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Being a very avid Gothic fan myself, absolutly love Gothic 1 and 2 and replayed them more times than I would like to count.

Gothic 3 did disappoint me, with the various bugs and what not. So I decided to wait for the patch that will make it more enjoyable. I did play the game when it was first released here in Europe for a couple of days before I got sick of being stunlocked by boars. I am though quite confident that once the game is properly patched I will come to love Gothic 3 aswell.
 
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@txa -- Max Payne is a global leveling game. It keeps tabs on your progress, and if you keep dying, it lowers the difficulty; if you don't die for a while, it bumps it up. Of course it's a very different type of game, but it does have the leveling mechanic and in my personal opinion it works very well to enhance the experience rather than diluting it. I don't see any reason in principle why a global-leveling system couldn't work in a free-form CRPG as well. The fact that it was lousily done in Oblivion doesn't mean it can't be done well at all.

Why do I even bother to comment? Simply because game balancing is one of *the* hardest things to do in a game that allows you a lot of freedom in building your character. If you leave in lots of exploits that allow the player to power level with minimal effort, the challenge is gone and it gets boring. If you take care to close them, the odds are that you'll end up with a game where it's way too easy to create a squib, which will frustrate rather than challenge.

Global auto-leveling is one potential tool that could be used to address this problem. The tough part is doing it subtly enough that it works. How I'd do it would be a bit like it was done in Max Payne:

(1) Create the quests and challenges, and give them a somewhat-imaginary challenge rating, expressed as a character level. Someone above that level should find the quest easy, someone below should find it hard.

(2) Monitor the character's progress. If he's getting constantly whacked/stalled/whatever by challenges of his own level of below, adjust the difficulty/level down. Otherwise, bump it up.

(3) Optional for an Oblivion/Gothic style wide-open world with gobs of side quests that can be taken in any order: create two or three variants of some of them, say low-level, mid-level, and high-level, and instantiate the one appropriate for the character. However, do *not* (VERY important!) do this so much that the player feels that there are no dangerous corners in the world at all.
 
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4.9 is harsh, but it isn't undeserved - and that is due to how the game was shipped. Wouldn't G3 be such a buggy game, and would it have some sane system requirements or even some scalability that would help, only the most ignorant could deny it is a great game. But from a technical point of view, it, alas, falls into the "Descent to Undermountain" category. Now: a great, good looking car with a lot of horse power that consantly falls apart wouldn't deserve a high rating either, would it?
 
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@txa -- Max Payne is a global leveling game.
Hehe ... I guess it is clear that I didn't realize that ;) SiN Episodes did a similar thing. It flowed along at near-perfect difficulty throughout (well, after the patch, initially it had a major jump ~ halfway through)

I think that the thing is that there is a difference between difficulty scaling and monster level scaling. Neither is trivial, but scaling monsters ala Oblivion seems to miss the point being sought through the character tracking and adjustments made in difficulty scaling.
 
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I gave gothic 3 a shot for about 4 hours and I would have to agree with this review for the most part. The bugs completely destroy the game, in 4 hours I had 2 "wheres the guru" errors that crashed me to desktop and encountered about 10 really obvious bugs that any play testing would have picked up.

*I sold all my stuff to a merchant then reloaded and noticed the merchant now had a reduced amount of gold equal to what I had sold before. Obviously an issue with the clearing of data when loading games.

*I managed to kill 3 orc ELITES and a couple of regular warriors with ease and was then killed in about 2 seconds by a bloodfly.

*Fell through the ground once

*Not really a bug but the NPC conversdations are appalling and a lot of options should have really have been repeatable questions i.e. you only get one chance to ask milten if you can with him even though he is still sitting at the camp, meanwhile Gorn lets you ask anytime you like.


The reviewer is obviously a Gothic newbie as he complains that beating up a friendly NPC with no immediate consequences is immersion breaking.

Gothic Newbie? Hardly - There were immediate consequences in Gothic 1 and 2.....For example in Khornis you could only beat up people in the harbour district and even then they would often have some kind response after you beat them up or it would influence a particular quest. Does this happen with Gothic 3's "one line" of dialogue NPCs?
 
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The problem with this review, much like most of the other English Language reviews for Gothic III that I've read so far isn't that the problems pointed out in the review are invalid, it's that the reviews do not examine the game in context at all.

Example:
With speedy humanoids combat quickly moves to close range, requiring you to switch to melee and start up another brainless LMB [Left-Mouse-Button] click-fest.

Now, what the reviewer wrote here is true about Gothic 3. But it's also true for a whole bunch of CRPGs. The author was allocated 3-web-pages for his article and spends nearly an entire page railing against the combat system Gothic 3 employs - a style employed by dozens of other CRPGs. Is that very balanced? I don't think so... it's more like G3 is being examined in a bubble. IGN gives Diablo 2 an 8.3 and Morrowind a 9.4 - both games, along with many many others, which have a lot of LMB action as well.

Example:
If you attack an NPC in a town you're friendly with and choose not to perform a finishing stab once they've hit the ground, they'll completely forget you attacked them even if approached only 10 seconds later. They won't even mention the fact that you just randomly beat the crap out of them, instead offering up a standard greeting. This really breaks any kind of immersive qualities about Gothic III.

Another true statement about G3. But show me any CRPG over the laste 30 years where you can't criticize the NPCs in the game behaving in an unrealistic or stupid way. Again, Another precious paragraph describing something that is really par-for-the-course when he could at least pointed out that when you attack a faction you are neutral to or opposed to, the NPCs do in fact remember you attacked them. Isn't that to the game's credit? Isn't it to the game's credit as well that you can even attack an NPC without killing him out right? How many games do that? Not many. The glass is half empty in this review.

So while I even agree with the many critisims the reviewer makes about Gothic 3 in this review, his ultimate scoring of the game is woefully out of context. The game deserves a much higher score based on criticims that are largely found in most other CRPGs.

This review, like most of the others, lack any kind of balance and context.
 
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his ultimate scoring of the game is woefully out of context. The game deserves a much higher score based on criticims that are largely found in most other CRPGs.

The last action RPG that had a combat system as bad as Gothic 3 was dungeon lords and it got a much worse review from most sites. I can't think of many action rpgs that have had this many bugs that have gotten higher ratings.
 
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