Gothic 3: mein Review (70%)

[Gast Elikal]

Ich hab mal wieder ein Review geschrieben, vor allem da mich die Wertungen von Gamestar und PCGames ziemlich erbost haben. Sie sind viel zu gut, und eigentlich sollten Magazine so umfangreiche Spiele nicht so schnell reviewen. Wie immer, leider in englisch, da ich eben für internationale Seiten schreibe.

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Gothic 3 Review

It is remarkable, that a great number of German game mags reviewed Gothic 3 the very day it came to the shelves. A great number has rated it in mid-80% ranges, but a few only gave 68% (4players) or around 70%. Essentially, a huge game like Gothic 3 can not be fairly reviewed in such a short time, as most game mags took. I found those 80+ rating far too enthusiastic, to start with it. Only after playing long hours and days, you can realize how wide and profound the problems of Gothic 3 are, which IMO prevent any rating above the 70% mark. I must admit, it is very, very difficult to give a fair review of Gothic 3. I find myself playing it for long hours, and I get this addictive feeling right away, which pushes me to explore all the details of the world of Gothic 3.

Gothic always had it’s special charm, the moody NPCs, the atmosphere in the villages and cities, castles and hideouts, and Gothic 3 follows that tradition of it’s predecessors. The world is altogether likely one of the most beautiful and rich worlds I have seen. Even though Oblivion was more detailed, unlike in Oblivion, each region, place, city, forest or whatever part of the world is unique and impressive in Gothic 3. It is a completely handcrafted world, and the world designers have shown a great sense for creating realistic regions and catching landmarks. Every place you have seen, you will instantly recognize again, a thing that hardly could be said about the all the same looking forests of Oblivion.

But the detail comes at a high price. It must be said, that the recommended specs are blatantly a lie. Without a real high end dual core computer, you will encounter a game where lags and freezes are your common companions. Every medium computer can only play Gothic 3 at the lowest (and ugliest) settings, which in quality fall even below Gothic 2 then. This is a great failure in programming, since games like Far Cry or Oblivion showed an equal or partially better world, which my computer performed excellent with highest settings, which Gothic 3 only runs with very low settings and still very laggy on the same machine. Playing Gothic 3 on a medium machine, you can instantly forget choosing magic as a career, since magic means a lot more animation and visuals, which is unplayable on anything but real high end computers.

Gothic 3 brings the sheer amount of bugs to new heights. I encountered over a dozen central quests which belong to the main quest, which either do not work entirely or can only be solved in one of two possible alternatives, because the other option is there, but its bugged. Since I haven’t played Gothic 3 completely, it remains to be seen if those quest stopping bugs will influence the end or even make it impossible to finish, if you made decisions for factions which are bugged.

One of the main problems is how often NPCs are killed involuntarily. NPCs who are meant to accompany you in attacks on certain enemy places time and again ran into my sword, and where either killed or never talked to me again any other thing than “you are a murderer” and attack me. Some central NPCs are now locked in that position and can not be talked to, to finish their quests, no matter what I tried.

Other NPCs are supposed to lead you to important places, running ahead, and have an extremely great talent to run into mobs of wolves or zombies and be killed in seconds – if they don’t run into your sword! About a dozen of NPCs who give quests or sell things I was never able to speak to, because they were killed by roaming mobs. In a village besieged by zombies, 2 NPCs were killed by zombies, others by any kind of wildlife roaming around. Or if I killed some Orc, who guards some slaves, the slaves come close, applaud, and get killed because they get too close in the fight. A simple variable to prevent accidental death would have helped a lot.

While the combat animation surely looks nice, better than in many other RPGs, it is very tiresome, especially in the beginning. A starter character is easily and repeatedly knocked down by the hordes of wolves or boars running around. Once you are knocked down, the enemy lands so many blows, and our hero rises so slowly, you are most likely dead before you can make another hit. On the other hand, if YOU knock some mob down, you can’t hit him. He is then out of reach for your swords, until he rises again! The very best weapon, a Flaming Sword, can be bought and used after a few levels, and up to Level 50 and exploring about 70% of the game world I haven’t yet seen any weapon that was better. So the only real reason to collect weapons is essentially to sell them for other things. Oh, and just as a side note: about 80% of all vendors sell all the same stuff, torches, lockpicks, 1 hammer, 1 pick axe and maybe a shovel. It is hilarious to place all those “rare” vendors, some of which you need to persuade to sell their wares to you and then only sell all those basic things!

Also in the small things Gothic 3 is full of lacking and shortcomings. The map allows not to add your notes, nor does the journal. The journal does often not note all details of your quests, so once you forgot what to do, its practically lost. There is no paper map included in the normal version (a must in a huge world like this), and the DVD is in a blank plastic box without any cover. The manual is somewhat ok, but not very detailed. A list of spells and abilities and their requirements would have been helpful. You can not name your savegames, which in a long and epic story is really a disappointment.

There is no discernable AI so far I have seen. On the contrary, the most intelligent thing mobs did, is constantly step back. Endless. If you fight with a sword, you can hack in thin air for many minutes, while you hack forward, the enemy steps back. The mobs more tend to have an Artificial Stupidity instead: often when I was surrounded by a great number of enemies, only one or two attacked, the other stood around me and waited until I turned to them. Humanoid enemies make no sidesteps, no blocks or whatever the player can. They swing their weapon and have zero cooperation. To be honest, I have seen very few RPGs with more AI, so it is a common flaw in RPGs.

The character comes as he is designed, you can not change his appearance, which is a bit odd today, with all those multi-changeable characters from games like Fable or Oblivion. For whatever reason, 99% of the populace of Gothic 3 is male, btw. Why this is so, I can not say, for the few existing human females (like in the Bakaresh Temple) look just as acceptable as the males. Another oddity is, that the clothing and amour is so oversized, in effect many characters will look like they had a shrink-head! Other characters, like the hero, obviously have oversized heads, to fit to the oversized armours and clothing, but alas poor Diego’s tiny head looks strangely miniature, like many NPCs, not to speak that all NPCs wear the exact same few armour sets the hero can buy. Together with the fact that 80% of all characters are bald and have the very same facial feature (and again those few voices) the NPCs feel strangely unrealistic and like clones – with the exception of those selected few special characters, most of them those who also appeared in the previous two Gothic games.

Finally the game has the usual tendency to crash or permanently freeze.

Gothic 3 has a really good game inside all this, which would be worthy of a 90+ rating. As it is now I can not give more than 70%. It is absolutely clear that it was rushed and prematurely launched. The sheer amount of problems will take months, not weeks, to work over. Every Gothic fan is well advised not to spoil this good game by playing it now, but wait half a year until most things can be expected to be fixed.

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[Gast Gismo]

Falls konstruktive Kritik erlaubt ist:

Weil du sowas ja öfter in englisch schreibst, hol dir mal ne englische Rechtschreibprüfung (z.B. die von Word). Du hast in ca. jedem vierten Satz nen Rechtschreibfehler und ein paar Grammatikfehler sind auch versteckt ("The map allows not to add your notes" -> does not allow to. So wie du das schreibt erlaubt die Karte, keine Notizen zu machen.)

Das aber nur als kleine Nörgelei, netter Bericht. Ich wollte ursprünglich Gothic3 ausprobieren, wurde dann durch die negativen Meldungen verunsichert und das hier hat mir nun endgültig die Entscheidung abgenommen.

[Gast Elikal]

Ich bin leider nicht mit Geduld gesegnet, um es mal Milde auszudrücken. Ich tippe meine Texte immer schnell runter, gehe einmal rasch rüber und das wars. Zu Detailarbeit bin ich nie geeignet gewesen, aber dafür haben wir ja die arbeitsteilige Gesellschaft entwickelt. *gg*

Und nur mal in einem Satz, damit es klar ist: Gothic 3 ist ein super Spiel, aber es steckt momentan unter einer dicken Kruste Scheiße.

Ich höre von Feedback aus anderen Foren gerade, dass selbst manche mit High End Rechnern lags haben. Leider nicht unüblich bei Jowood, k.a. wies kommt, denn es sind ja immer andere Produzenten. Jowood hat immer gute Konzepte in seinen Spielen und zahllose Bugs die es wieder runterziehen.

[Gast Gismo]

Darum sag ich ja, benutze eine Rechtschreibprüfung

Ich hab beruflich auch viel mit englischen Texten wie Ausschreibungen, Installationsanweisungen usw. zu tun. Bin da ähnlich wie du.

[Gast Elikal]

Das wär dann aber wohl ne Grammatikprüfung, und das beherrscht Word ja ned so. Außerdem poste ich auf US Seiten (Gamespot usw), und Amis können auch nicht besser Englisch. lol. (ok war jetzt fies, ist aber wahr )

[Gast Lanfear]

ich hab gothic1 ca. 4 wochen vor release von gothic2 gespielt. ich hab gothic2 jetzt seit ca. 3 wochen aufm rechner. bis ich gothic3 anlange vergeht bestimmt noch mindestens nen jahr.

die spiele sind genial, aber die umsetzung katastrophal.

war bei gothic1 so, gothic2 genauso. und gothic3 ... man siehts ja

in 2 jahren iss das spiel gut :-P

[Gast Elikal]

Tja, nur so als Zusatzbemerkung: ich habe jetzt mehrere Bugs in den Hauptquesten, die das Spiel quasi vorzeitig beenden, da ich zwar viele kleine Quests machen könnte, aber es nützt mir nix mehr. Passend erreiche ich grad auch das offizielle Forum nicht mehr, das ist wohl auch nicht mehr funktionsfähig. Passend. ><

[Gast Ghreg]

Für meine Englischkenntnisse war das gut .

Was ich als viel bedenklicher empfinde, ist die Tatsache, dass man neue Games anscheinend nur noch mit High-End Maschinen so spielen kann, dass sie auch Spass machen. Ich frage mich, was das soll. Ich kann nicht alle zwei Jahre nen neuen PC kaufen - also kaufe ich mir das Game nicht, basta!

Einer meiner Arbeitskollegen hat sich Anfang des Jahres einen flammneuen PC zusammen gebaut mit SLI, Dual Core 4800+ usw. für ca. 2400 Euro und ist jetzt am Jammern, dass er eben z.B. Gothic 3 nicht vernünftig spielen kann.

Was soll der Mist? Da bleibe ich lieber bei meinem alten AMD 2600+ mit X800 und EQ2, dass darauf natürlich auch nicht perfekt läuft.

Ghreg

[Gast Gismo]

Was ich als viel bedenklicher empfinde, ist die Tatsache, dass man neue Games anscheinend nur noch mit High-End Maschinen so spielen kann, dass sie auch Spass machen. Ich frage mich, was das soll. Ich kann nicht alle zwei Jahre nen neuen PC kaufen - also kaufe ich mir das Game nicht, basta!

Öhm, das ist schon seit den Anfängen des PC's so, das man seinen Rechner stets aktuell halten muss, um die aktuellsten Games flüssig zocken zu können. Wird auch immer so bleiben. Wenn es nicht so wäre, wären die PC's von heute immernoch lahme Office-Maschinen.

Einer meiner Arbeitskollegen hat sich Anfang des Jahres einen flammneuen PC zusammen gebaut mit SLI, Dual Core 4800+ usw. für ca. 2400 Euro und ist jetzt am Jammern, dass er eben z.B. Gothic 3 nicht vernünftig spielen kann.

Mit dem Teil wird er durchaus noch länger viele neue Spiele hochperformant zocken können, allerdings nur wenn diese gut programmiert wurden

Ist also absolut kein Argmument sich keinen neuen Rechner holen zu wollen

[Gast Ghreg]

ok, vergibt DW Kredite für neue PC´s? An wen muss ich mich wenden?

Hab meinen alten PC mit Müh und Not n´bisschen aufgerüstet, woher soll ich die Kohle für einen neuen nehmen?

Ghreg