Gothic 3 Sucks -- A Critique From a Longtime Gothic Fan
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 พ.ค. 2024
- A critique/review/retrospective/analysis of Gothic 3 by Piranha Bytes, the open-world action-adventure-RPG from 2006. Gothic 3 was a huge disappointment when it first launched because of all the bugs and technical issues associated with it being released in an unfinished state, but fortunately fans have continued to support the game over the years with unofficial patches that aim to fix most of the problems to make the game actually playable. However, I still find the game thoroughly underwhelming as both a Gothic game and as its own stand-alone open-world RPG as I find the core design principles fundamentally misguided and unappealing. It's not all bad and there is still some of that original Gothic charm to it, but after playing it three times -- once when it first launched, once a year later with community patches, and once several years after that -- I've found myself liking it less and less, to the point that I'd say I now actually dislike it and consider it my least favorite Piranha Bytes game.
00:00 - Intro
01:31 - #1. Unimmersive Design
04:10 - #2. The World is Too Big
07:24 - #3. MMO-Style Quests
11:39 - #4. Randomized/Scripted Loot Progression
14:12 - #5. Boring, Broken Combat System
16:46 - #6. Nonsensical Enemy Hierarchy
18:26 - #7. Unrewarding Character Progression
22:13 - #8. The Really Loose Faction System
23:37 - #9. No Regard for Lore and Backstory
27:24 - #10. No Main Story
28:58 - #11. Illogical Design Elements
32:01 - #12. Vengard, King Rhobar, and Lee
44:52 - What's Actually Good About Gothic 3?
49:17 - In Conclusion...
Read the text version of this video on my blog:
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Eh, at least the music is timeless.
indeed
Agreed!!
Actually it momentarily sucks as well, whereas previous Gothics had no weak points. Combat and Myrtana Open Field music are atrocious. It's too pompous and takes attention away from the world, it illustrates, not assists. Combat music is the worst. Every time I see a bandit or a scavenger, I get shocked by the aggressive brass.
The Myrtana Explore track has the same problem, just hear 4:10 in the video - suddenly fucking *attacked* by the strings.
Don't get me wrong - it's good music in of itself, but for a game it's terrible and there's no question about it.
The music was beautiful overall. In some moments was better than Gothis1 and 2 music. "Vista" and "Welcome to Varant" are incredible.
The combat music is so boring and repetable. TUDUDUDUUUUUUTUDUDUDUDUDUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Well sadly phirana bytes were forced to release the game incomplete due to them selling the rights, and as they said in interviews the game is not even 30% of what they wanted.
Yes, they even scrapped horses and weapons such as polearms and other stuff. Also, one of their chief producers died at the beginning of development.
Also, they didn't exactly sell the right for Gothic, they never had it. Rights belonged to Jowood production who went bust later.
It was Jowood who always pressured Pyranha bytes to release their games before they were complete.
@@janchovanec8624 I mainly blame Jowood for what happend in G3. You can see that Phirana bytes didn't even had the chance to finish quests.
But I have to admit that the game concept of a massive open world without loading times was fairly ambitious maybe even too ambitious for 2006.
@@darkmetallord666 Jup couldn't agree more with you. Thats why I wrote "mainly". I personaly didnt have a problem with the new design path they chose in G3. It's just that it was so unpolished and riddled with bugs.
@@darkmetallord666 I think Piranha bites proven to us, that they can make good games with Gothic 1-2.
I don't think they would like to underachieve themselves with a half finished Gothic 3. They have bitten big, but I think they would love the chew on that till they can swallow it.
Risen games and the Elix or what, didn't caught me at all. Those felt like came from a completely different devteam. Shame.
@@Muckytuja They feel like having been made by a completely a different dev team because that's what they are.
None of the Gothic key staff are still part of PB.
What kind of monster kills the first sheep in gothic 2 !?
Dat 10 xp though
It feels good when you see that sheep surviving through out all chapter´s In front of Xardas Tower all by his own.
I will spare it next time :D
@@Blackhuf same XD
@BOOZE & METAL if my memory serves me well, it wasn't 1000 for the sheep, but I don't remember exactly how much. 1000 was an additional fee for joining the monastery.
Yo.. About the quest with bringing healing plants for Yberion.. I did load up game like 10 times because I was thinking that I wasn't fast enough and I really didn't want him to die. It was sad.
on one of my playthroughs, I've already cleaned most of the world apart of Sleeper's temple at that point. I also had the plants with me so the resulting dialogue was quite funny. On another occasion, I killed everyone killable in the camp which actually led to a glitch that didn't allow me to start a ritual, because there was some dude missing & you needed to get into a dialogue with him or something. Good ol' times, good ol' times.
@@ayasugihada I am playing Gothic again after many years and a few days ago I was at that point in the story where I have to walk to this guy to start the ritual.
I could see him looking at me from a distance just waiting for me to get near him so he could start the trigger of the video sequence. Haha
fucking fly
About Lee: When I met him in G3 it felt really odd that he suddenly blamed the King, but I was going along with it thinking that there must be a way to sort this stuff out.
So when we reached the capital he was like "Lets go kill the King." and I was like "WTF bro?" Killing people was never something you just do in the first two Gothic games, so why so bloodthirsty now?
Then, in the throne room, he just attacked Rhobar on sight and I didn't do anything since I actually didn't want to kill anyone. Lee gets his ass handed to him but doesn't die. Then he gets up and just starts hanging out with the King, until me talking to him turns him aggro again.
That was the point where I had finally lost all faith in this game.
Lee's fine. His story is revealed in previous parts of the game.
@@rivz8374
How is he fine then? Could you let us know?
@Rivz Except that, as I already indicated in the video, Lee's beef was never with the King -- it was with the nobles who murdered the queen and framed him for it, because they viewed Lee's relationship with the King as "a threat to their dirty businesses." In fact, in the original game Lee almost sounds GRATEFUL to the king for NOT killing him, and he makes it sound as if he doesn't blame the King for having him imprisoned because, although he opted to spare Lee's life, Rhobar HAD to impart some type of punishment given the circumstances of the (framed) evidence against Lee. And then suddenly in Gothic 3 he's purely mad at Rhobar for throwing him in the Colony. So not only is Gothic 3 wrong about WHOM Lee is seeking vengeance against, but it's also wrong about his motivation for WHY he's seeking vengeance.
@@TheNocturnalRambler
And we shouldn't forget that Lee storming straight into Rhobar's court and trying to murder him in front of all the royal guards is quite unlike the Lee from the previous games.
Lee in the previous has been described as a master strategist and a calm and calculating persona. For example his epic takeover of Varrant and how he opted to starve the Paladins in the second game instead of going for an all out war, which would ultimately prove detrimental to both sides.
In the third game, he goes for a bravado which not only looks unplanned but makes zero sense from a militaristic point of view.
Two guys just storm into the King's palace and decide to take on the full platoon of royal guards, paladins and fire magicians. It seems storyline and logic didn't matter to the developers in the third game
@@Kevin5279 It didn't. The publisher wanted the game out and Piranha Bytes had to ruyh what they had into some kind of finished product.
Yeah, the game was a heartbreaking disappointment. The game itself actually contains a great example that perfectly alludes to it's own pathetic emptiness - I'm talking about the tower of Xardas. Think about it - you spend hundred hours running through an entire country looking for him, expecting some great revalations, you run up the serpentine road to the top of the highest mountain in Nordmar, you see the tower, and what is it? It's not even a tower, as it only has one floor! What are all those high walls for if not to hold more floors up above? Have you ever seen a tower with one floor? Well there you go, Gothic 3 is a one floor tower.
Hah, that's something I didn't even think of or notice. Something like that would surely fit well under #11 for Illogical Design Elements.
There is even better example- when i played for the first time, i kept to the coast- and to explore, as previous games taught me to crawl into every corner to see if there maybe is something to loot- to get some experience, so i could invest in strength and combat... And i went so far, i actually found Xardas` tower by accident... Never went to Cape Dun, never met any task giving NPC outside Ardea... I returned with enough experience to get 200 str points, 250 of stamina and full mastery of one handed, two handed, bows and shields... When i went inland, i already was strong enough to make a short work out of ANYTHING with basic sword alone...
and you finally talk to him and he's just like "hey sup bro? you deal with the orcs yet?"
Gothic veteran here. Been playing it ever since 2002. I finally put aside my disappointments with 3 and am now 70hrs in. With all the community patches and restored content, it really isn't that bad. Granted it will never be like 1 and 2.
Also literally every town has more people than homes or beds. And there isn’t even a house where there are stairs INSIDE that lead to the next floor(s). Plus some “cities” aren’t even believable to be consider a village. (Braga, Ben erai, lago, especially Ben sala)
the loss of ponytail of Innos' chosen was saddening to me
What amuses me the most perhaps is how this game has so many flaws that even talking about it for 50 minutes, there's still so many things you didn't even get to touch upon. Even some major, jarring things, like the hero once again unreasonably losing everything (under both Illogical Design and inconsistent lore), or to mention under the "bad combat mechanics" that one of the reasons for why your character advancement is meaningless being that the new damage/armor formulas for the game are completely fucked - a 300 damage weapon hardly deals more damage than a 100 damage weapon, while armor is a whole less meaningful than it used to be in the previous games as well, where having it vs not having it became a radical shift in the game's balance, helping character progression.
What's even more screwed up in the damage formula is whatever causes NPCs to deal very little damage to each other, comparatively to how much you do to them or they do to you. I'm not sure if it's the fault of the community patch or not, since I refuse to even try playing the game without it, this aspect causes companions to be useless for anything other than meat shields, and it also makes fights between NPCs seem even more slow-paced and ridiculous than the regular combat in the game.
And, of course, can't forget the abysmal balancing of the game - with magic being unreasonably more powerful than either the melee or ranged options, including for the AI which will annihilate you with homing Ice Lance projectiles that deal literally hundreds of damage, while no other source of damage can even remotely threaten you to that degree (except by stunlocking in the unpatched game).
Overall you mentioned a lot of world design aspects of the game, which I certainly agree with and consider important, but even with your complaints, I think you still underplayed just the actual degree of bad design that are put into this game's actual mechanics. It can't even be a mindless hack and slash because it's far too obnoxious for it.
I played as a mage in my first play through, although it was a bit hard at first due to mana issues, eventually the game became extremely easy afterwards. When I tried playing as melee character the game really becomes insanely hard resulting me to have to cheese the Ai by getting to higher ground and shooting them with bows if I'm facing multiple targets or I'm if fighting animals.
I think patches rebalanced NPCs fighting each other. I remember that when i played it back then their HP bar wasn't even shortening after hits ;P
you had the balance mod on and the new Ai turned on, this turns the melee harder .@@rddtdx444444ex
I geuss what saddens me the most, is that Khorinis is supposed to be a small harbor city yet it's the biggest city in the game. I think they went too far with quantity over quality... (the lack of harbor in G3 is also hilarious, never noticed it before xD)
Another point I would like to add is inflation and the lack of meaningful progress equipmentwise. Just by looting the very first tutorial village, you easily get around 2-3k gold, which you can use to get advanced armor, before even doing any of the other quests. In Gothic 2 it takes you around an hour to get your first peasant armor and that feels like an achievement.
Some of the quests reward you with 500 gold just for doing fetch stuff like killing a few wolves or talking to another guy. It's such a cringe to reach Gotha with like 30k gold, just for the orc leader to tell you that he will sell Gorn to you for more gold than you morra will ever be able to obtain (2k), when in fact you get more gold from a random NPC in a previous village by telling him what the other mercenaries think about him, that can be completed within a few minutes.
The only factors that prevent you from buying best vendor gear right away are skill points and reputation. Gold is almost meaningless.
So different from Gothic 1. Any way you can make ore was to backstab someone, steal, take the ore you were given to buy a sword questline or find very far away quests to accomplish (like going to New Camp) and doing a sidequest that was hard to find and didn't expect to make money for it. There's a very long questline to achieve 200 ore for instance but not many would be able to find how to get to it. From the very beginning if you SKIPPED everything dialogue option Diego was giving in the beginning you had to pay 10 ore to get into th Old Camp. How much of a fuck you this game gives you that is actually good, the game punishes you for skipping dialogue options. Which makes sense, if you don't get into the good gracious of a person they don't give you their backing and you have to pay to get into the camp.
If you didn't fully talk to Diego in the beginning, you have to salvage whatever trash you can find outside of the camp, find a person to sell them to (this also takes some exploring) to get 10 ore to get into the camp. The crazy thing is I keep replaying the new game just to do this. I must be messed up but I like how the game not only NOT holds your hand but kicks you in the ass for your choices.
I know this comment is 4 years old but you are wrong.
In the first 5 minutes you get the peasant armor from lobart, 30 seconds later you can loot the chest at the gate to get the commoners clothes.
I never understood what I didn't like about Gothic 3 and it always bothered me. I played Gothic 1 and 2 hundreds of times and Gothic 3 I have never beat....just keep losing interest.
This video essentially outlined all the issues that I didn't understand.
Well it's so obvious, like literally if you want to complete most of the quests you have to slain atleast 10 times more orcs than you slained in G1 and G2 combined, thats just too much. And same with almost every other creatures and quests.
@@koks49045 Ya I just never really thought about it, I was just always so disappointed how bored I was so quickly like I have never gone beyond the first area, I just never got enough rep with anyone to move past it.
Probably the reason why you (and me as well) kept loosing interest is because every area / region beyond first is unfinished. It has empty, big lands that devs didn't have time to fill with proper content so what is left is probably just some random boilerplate quests that they just placed there for testing :P
Same here! Finally understand why this game sucks ass
@iamalovingguy in gothic 3? Dude that game is easy af!
Worst thing in Gothic 3, apart from its optimalisation, was fightining system, you didn't really learned new combos like in previous ones, most of the game you just spam left click, that being said I finished it 2 times, one on premiere and second one years later with community patch and I wasn't dissapointed. I'd take Gothic 3 over Anthem any day.
@Főfasírozó Can't say the same
The system had combos. I don't realy understand how it works but when you play a little with you mousputens you can creat combos.
The Morrowind and Oblivion effect is pretty obvious with Gothic 3. It's the only PB game that I never finished.
Its unfinished so not a big deal
There is no story in gothic 3 :(
I'll never forget running from Xardas' tower to some are in Myrtana, where paladins *fall from the sky* and try to beat you to death with their fists.
Wait, that’s Skyrim……You sure you are in the right game bro?
@@bonyfax2345 I can't tell if you're joking...
I was so angry of the story, they make everything that we hear in g1 & g2 no sense. I even change computer just for this game and I was so disapointed.
How they handled the whole Lee plot in G3 is what really ruined the game for me
I don't know why, but I keep getting back to this video, lamenting how much it sucks never to have gotten a proper sequel to two of my all time fevourite games. Shame.
Me too. It's not even a real sequel. It's basically a whole different universe and story, with a few elements borrowed from the first games. Even the characters personalities, goals, and looks are different, and only their names are the same. To make things worse, the third game doesn't give any final resolution to the situation and story in Gothic 2. Not even about your whole ship crew that followed you, based on your previous choices. Only a vague mention that the now totally different orcs took over Khorinis and that the water mages used magic to leave Jharkendar.
I was 13 when I played Gothic for the first time and loved it
Remember how disappointed I were with gothic 3 since i imagined the kingdom of myrtana waaaaay more epic than it was in the end.
Gothic 2 Old Camp Siege did it right, G3 Capital City should've mirrored this.
Completely razed.
Completely closed off.
Front gate locked.
Side entrance a bottleneck.
Literally no word from the outside.
The moment you get through, literally everyone heralds you for getting through.
"Holy Shit, you're a mad man, how ever did you get through!"You are the one who managed to get through in an out so you are now the messenger.
They sent messengers in and out but none made it through.
If you open the gate, oops, now everyone dead. Entire keep gets seiged and totally taken out.
i recently saw articles in a german gaming magazine from a guest author stating he doesnt like G1 and G2 but loved G3... modern media i guess. this channel is way more objective and conclusive than any recent media outlet. you obviously admire the first 2 games, but you do not sound blinded by nostalgia.
Do you have a link for that article? No problem if it is in german.
not really, gothic 3 is a spectacular game, period. but people think that best is just more of the same over and over again. devs just needed more time to refine the formula and finish, but the new additions were factually incredible, and many of us weren t blinded by the previous 2, so enjoyed it by the gem that it actually is
@@jh5kl what part did you enjoy most? the boring WoW quests? the missing main plot/quest? the bugs? the terrible combat system? the missing relations between characters?
dont get me wrong, if they invested 3 or 4 more years G3 could have been good - but that never happened.
I feel like you have read my mind, then processed it into words and produced a video for my thoughts. I love it!
Talking about breaking the lore: Gothic 3 even destroys the story's central motif, namely the humans' need for magic ore, without which they cannot continue the war. In Gothic 1 there is not really a smithing skill, the ore is very easy to obtain, and therefore (if I remember correctly) it is at least implied that every sword or axe you find in the game is made of that blue ore (hence also the weapons of the king's army on the mainland). But in order to unlock the full potential of the ore and forge the most powerful weapons, you need special craftsmanship, which is also explained already in Gothic 1 and is a thing for the player to do in Gothic 2 after the ore has become scarce. In Gothic 3 the magic blue ore is scarce as well (not in Nordmar, which is consistent with the lore), and you need it to create the best weapons. So far, so good... But there is also the ordinary grey ore, which is not rare and apparently used to make ordinary weapons. These ordinary weapons, however, work just fine against the orcs, as we all know, so why put so much effort into mining the magic ore in the Colony when there is more than enough ordinary ore in Myrtana?! I mean, in Gothic 2 we learn that only the most worthy paladins are allowed to wield pure ore weapons anyway (in fact, no paladin, not even Hagen has got such a weapon; they all use the same generic paladin swords), so why does the king even need large supplies of magic ore? The ten crates Garond gets in Gothic 2 should be more than enough to forge a few powerful blades for the highest-ranking paladins, but when you tell him about Fajeth's two crates, he explodes and says he doesn't need two crates, he needs 200 crates! This only makes sense if the ore is supposed to be used for ordinary weapons for ordinary soldiers... So the king is basically a retard who doesn't know anything about the resources of his country; why else would he send his last ship and so many of his best soldiers far away from the front line to obtain some raw material of which there is an abundant supply on his own doorstep?
I dont think you make the swords from pure magic ore, it is mixed with normal steel. Most all weapons in Gothic are normal since nobody inside the barrier has the equipment or skill to make such weapons. Only in gothic2 you have Harad that can make weapons with magic ore.
@@golarac6433 Yeah, but in Gothic 1 they say in order to make special steel/weapons from the magic ore, you need special craftsmanship (like Harad), otherwise you just get ordinary steel/weapons. So there only is a difference between magic and normal ore if you have the ability to use the magic ore correctly.
@@alexanderlauer4565 I guess, though that's a bit simplistic, since steel is not just some steel ore either. It's a complicated process to get a good metal.
@@golarac6433 Agreed, but in my original comment I was trying to say that it made no sense for the king to send so many men to Khorinis when he could just use the ordinary iron ore from Myrtana, since this whole endeavour was obviously not about getting magic ore for pure magic-ore weapons (which are used by almost nobody anyway). The problem is that this ordinary ore is never mentioned until it appears in Gothic 3: nobody is mining it in the Colony, there is only the blue ore, and I guess the king doesn't exchange grey ore for blue ore... So we are led to believe the blue ore is the only kind of ore in this world, so there can be no steel without it (be it special or not), which is why the humans' war effort depends on Khorinis. Then, in Gothic 3, we learn that there are actually several iron ore mines all over Myrtana (Reddock, Okara, Nemora and many smaller ones), just as large as the mines in the Colony. So why not send your troops there in order to guarantee the supply? (In fact, the Rebels ARE there during Gothic 3, which makes this even more baffling...)
@@alexanderlauer4565 I always thought that normal steel wasn't a problem but it was weak against orc, therefore the king needed special magic ore weapons
i watched a streamer quit gothic 3 as soon as i told him that "coastal bandits" were actually in the middle of the map at top of the mountain... he was like I WAS SEARCHING FOR THEM FOR 2 HOURS on COAST :D... i was laughing my ass off :)
Damnit... Seriously?
You mean Ortegas Gang?
@@_Winfried_ ye
25:30
turn on auto-generated caps
omg ^^
The worst is the lack of character progression. I can't tell how many times I have tried to finish G3 one more time just to lose interest after a few hours. The same animations, the same spells, the same enemies. And as you said the patch, CM and other mods can't fix those issues.
yeah, you might want to try the game properly, because its the opposite of that
@@jh5kl Yeah, please explain to me how am I wrong when it comes to spells, animations, and enemies.
I hate to admit it, but yeah, your right, Story and bugs, the two main things that really killed it for most people. I personally still liked it a lot. It stood for me the direction I felt Gothic could have gone without changing the quality of the story and combat system. It represented a world that would change more dramatically with player influence, but was sadly limited to towns swapping hands, what Npc's survived and end game decisions being the only real outcomes, that changed. But otherwise I think Open-world was not a bad idea, just a poor implementation. just because a game evolved past its relatively archaic predecessors doesn't mean the decision was bad. Piranha bytes even said as much when they did point out that they lost the rights to the game, and were forced to release the game with what they estimated to be no more than half the content intended.
It made me sad, but great analysis.
Ok but since the game was released incomplete, can't mods make up for it?
@@TechSupportDave They've been making a mod called Story Community Project for more than 10 years... Check it out.
it is a great game , a masterpiece for it's time , from my point of view bug's just give the game more freedom to create more memorable experiences , and that is to make something even if you can't , just find the glitches , take advantage of them and play the game , just finish the game and after watch reviews , i like a game to be challenging and frustrating , if it's not i get bored , thia game has more then Gothic 1&2 to offer in terms of world regions and skills , what i didn't like is the way npc's die ... and the combat was not coordinated
@@clauscuty "from my point of view bug's just give the game more freedom to create more memorable experiences" How can one man cope this hard?
Another idea i had is that they should've focused on Myrtana alone and do it in same style like Gothic 1, II and NoTR to add/reveal next areas like Varrant and Nordmar. That way they could design it nice and dense keep it completely inline with Gothic 1 and II.
While making expansions or sequel more impactful and easier to do justice to just like Notr with Jarkendar and Khorinis itself inregards of Gothic 1 in the sequeI.
Forgotten Gods is vaguelly what base Gothic III shouldve been by limiting it to Myrtana.(of course it doesnt fix other issues like design and other things but still tries to have something there)
fuck gothic 1 and 2. gothic 3 is the best.
Another thing is clothing and armour, it looked amazing on the first ones considering the amount of polys, on gothic iii i looks so bloated
Your review is such a detailed and well done piece of work. I can't begin to imagine how much effort you've put in making it. What entertains me the most is that the best part of this G3 critique is this really amazing explanation why Gothic 1 & 2 are such great and unique gems in the RPG genre. You really did a great tribute to the first two games inside this video.
I don't think the world of Gothic 3 is too big per se; rather, it is the lack of content that makes it appear so, like, the lack of complex questlines that would encourage you to revisit areas. In itself, the world design is superb. The vast emptiness of Varant is precisely what makes it so great: endless dunes, lush oases, signs of a once prosperous life swallow up my the sands, packs of migrating animals, etc. But then there are the towns. Moral Sul is supposed to be the biggest slaver fortress in the known world, but instead it is just one half ring and a couple of buildings. Very disappointing. The world suffers because there's not a single believable city-hub in the whole game, with the exception of Geldern perhaps, even though it is too small. Vanguard is supposedly the capital of the whole kingdom, but it looks like a peasant town, and so on.
Just finished Gothic 3 for the first time, and while I had fun exploring the world, I can’t help but agree with your review. In so many areas it’s painfully obvious that the game is simply unfinished. I mostly finished it for the sake of closure, but in the end I didn’t even get that because the story is so bare-bones.
even with this trainwreck of a game, you notice the huge amount of talent, the dev´s undoubtably had.
I can replay G1 and 2 every 3,4 years or so, I will never touch G3 again. Can't even remember anything nice about it
i grew up on the gothic games too as a kid, and while i completely agree with most of the things you said about the third one i still played the shit out of it, and appreciated it for what it was. i think all three games have something great in them, but i'd say they nailed the first one the most. great stuff tho!
Same here man
I´ve killed around 90% of the enemies in Gothic 3 with bow and arrow. Its tedious, it takes a lot of time, but you can do it almost risk-free... and i found it more enjoyable than dying from another boar that stun-locks you indefinitly.
When you hit a boar or most of the animals and move backwards for about second them you can risk-free kill most of the beasts
So you've killed 90% of the enemies in Gothic 3 with bow and arrows, by exploiting the broken AI and shooting them from a place they can't reach? (even though it should be effortlessly reachable, some enemies even having wings)
I don't think the game was meant to be played like that, sounds like a glitched mess.
Only someone who grew up as the games were coming out,can review this game as you did. Great job
I'm quite surprised that people till today point out that Gothic 3 is one of their favorite RPGs. There are even a bunch of gaming youtubers who share that opinion and go as far as defending every nonsensical element in the game
Those people and those TH-camrs can suck my ballz 😂. I mean, don't get me wrong,I enjoyed Gothic 3 aswell,but 1&2 deserve a Nobel prize 😁
@@adnan4688 Come now, with the Com Patch and a few other mods the game is maybe not a masterpiece, but at least a good one.
They are the same type of people who bend over for Chris Howard and his shenanigans. They just like games because they are grinding a mindless sandbox world, could be playing wow or minecraft they would still enjoy it cause they dont know anything about story development and immersion.
ur right with everything u said!
i haven't played Gothic 1 yet.. i might give it a try
I finished the 2 maybe at least 5 times and I don't exaggerate
but the 3rd? oh boy... i started it like more than 10 times and got bored at around 20%... the combat was the deal breaker for me.. i didn't even bother with the story
I remember in Gothic 2.. it was scary to fight face-to-face with an ORC!
but in 3? it felt like ur fighting angry sheeps... sad
Truth be told, Piranha Bytes has not made a really good game since Gothic 2 NotR. Gothic 3 was okay to me, I liked its atmosphere with great soundtrack, but it obviously can't compare even slightly to Gothic 1, and especially not Gothic 2 with it's expansion. The first Risen game was the step in the right direction. It was a game heavily inspired by original Gothic formula which gave hope for the franchise. Risen 1's combat still my favorite of all their games, but can't understand why Piranha Bytes has not simply improved upon it, instead of always making a brand new one and always sucking at it. Still, I can't raise Risen 1 to the heaven because it was way too unoriginal with too many influences by original Gothic games. Then we move onto Risen 2 and 3, which were all mediocre at best, while ELEX feels just like Risen 2 and 3 to me, but with way more interesting world. Piranha Bytes has games with it's unique charm that no other developer has to me, but I can't ignore the fact that I have not enjoyed truly a game from them since early 2000s. Weather you like Gothic 3 or not, this was a good video. Like I said, Piranha Bytes has it's unique charm and in all their games there's something to be loved a lot, but they lost it's touch way back then before Risen series. I know people like to say they lost it with Risen 2 and afterwards, Gothic 3 being a failure because of JooWood and such, but reality is, even if Gothic 3 came out finished, it's core mechanics would stay the same. I hope Elex 2 will be better, but I expect more of the same sadly.
@Neil O'Donnell Even Risen 2 was orders of magnitude above Risen 3, though the whole focus on the pirate mechanic wasn't really my thing.
But I didn't even play through Risen 3 completely, because I got bored with driving around the boat.
And I managed to finish Arcadia + expansion.
imo the game that comes closest to the Gothic 1 and 2 charm is the community game Legend of Ahssun which based on Gothic 2. They did a great job of reviving the original immerson in an entirely new, massive world and quest line. 10 times better than Gothic 3 or Risen imo.
@Neil O'Donnell problem with risen is that it's only good in the first two chapters... from chapter 3 on it drops hard into dungeon crawling through same looking temples, also the combat system is only fun for the time where you don't kill everything in a few hits anyway
it really got boring so much that I quit before the final fight last time I replayed
in gothic 2 it's similar but the final part of the game is quickly done and doesn't feel like a chore
@Neil O'Donnell yeah I didn't think of gothic 1 to be honest it's really boring later on because your decision which camp to join ultimately means little to nothing (except for the skills you can learn) and it's kind of similar to risen
it's so sad that they didn't do gothic 3 on the same engine with a similar concept like gothic 2 a nice scenario would have been being shipwrecked on another island so they could have focused more on the content but ultimately it's just the publishers fault how gothic 3 went unfinished
I think PB's strenghtes are very subtle like modeling landscapes which are interesting to explore or NPCs reacting to your behaviour, and doing their own thing, also great soundtracks and other things. Until Risen 2 - before going nuts - they also had a clear low-fantasy, down to earth design concept about "normal" people in a rough world that just worked.
But overall they don't seem to be able to produce a coherent concept and I consider Gothic 1 and 2 (basically a copy of G1) as a happy accident. They still appear as some kind of hobbyists tinkering in the garage and don't deserved that high praise as game designers.
While I agree that compared to 1 & 2, Gothic 3 sucks, I'll still happily replay it sometime this year. Yeah.
Honestly it's not that bad of a game, he complains about the tutorial windows - bruh just disable it you moron you dont even have to read it
@@ninetynein6853 problem is gothic series used to be about immersion, when the first thing that meets you in a game is world pausing microsoft popup's you know somethings wrong, it used to be about zero hand holding. The games awful at its pacing and immersion.
@@zalandarr So they wanted to draw a bigger crowd... dude they have been developing it for 4 years and I imagine that since that time there was no other game that was near graphicly or on scale, so it would be great if they got every money from every gamer... and you can turn them off and they are only at the begining fight... Stupid skyrim went for similar equasion about "civil war" but that is just laughing matter because after 5 years with 100x bigger studio than PB and they did like half the job with pretty much everything.... and guess why its pacing and immersion and combat are bad ? cause spoilers jowood and rushed development... but hey judge the game on what it doesnt have because they were forced to leave it that way... skyrim has one click mashing combat and final main quest boss is reskin of a first dragon that you fight in the first 5 minutes of the game, fetch and kill quest are everywhere, no decision making civil war is not working at all, exploration is worthless because after one hour of the game you have pretty much best gear, enemy scales with you so there is no point in getting better and leveling... but hey no one is complaining there and you can play it on your fridge cause its that popular...
I always described gothic 3 as a game you could somehow play for 60 hours hating every minute of it.
Gothic 3's combat was fucking hilariouslly broken. I pumped so much strength i could use orcish weapons and i used a polearm and stun locked Trolls for crying out loud.
I agree with all you said. I don't think even the Community Story Project (if it ever releases) can salvage the game. And even if it does it was still the worst PB game to date (worse even that Risen 2, which mostly had problems due to being their first console title). The exploration is nonexistent (who tf thought tying loot to the number of chests you opened, not their location, was a good idea), the story stretched out thin, the armor/weapon and generally progression system fundamentaly broken. And so on, and on, and on. Honestly, the only good thing about G3 was the music.
What is that music in the background in chapter 9? It sounds soo familiar.
It's from the Gothic 3 soundtrack, called "Trelis Liberate," however the main melody is the same as the pirate camp music from Night of the Raven.
The companion / follower "AI" made me tear my hair out.
i lost count how many people i had to follow for a quest only for them to run into a boulder and never come out again.... quest stayed unfinished forever
Gothic 3 has a special place in my heart as first RPG I've ever played when I was a kid, but even now when I'm enjoying it a bit, I know that deep down it's flawed as shit. The only good thing about G3 is the music...
To me the main theme is maybe the best ingame song ever made.
for me it was gothic 2 and i am very much happy it was gothic 2
Damn, you nailed my thoughts about this Game, despite i got more like a love/hate relationship with this game.
I recently bumped into your channel and I must say I absolutely love it! Great review with many strong points, while not being overly critical. Great job :)
While watching I was only wondering what graphics mod package do you use for G1 and G2? It looks amazing and I would like to try it out.
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you enjoy the reviews. The Gothic 1 and 2 footage was done with the DX11 mod, which also seems to come with higher resolution textures.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Thank you for the quick reply, I'll check it out.
Again, you do astounding work here, keep this phenomenal content coming!
I'll be sure to check out some of your written stuff as well :)
I don't understand why this video has so many dislikes, you literally got the the heart of all my frustration about Gothic 3 and made an extensive in depth explanation of all the things that are wrong with Gothic 3. Nobody who was ever a Gothic 1 and 2 fan could possibly not see this. Everything feels dead and sterile, no attention to detail, maybe the worst part that killed immerson for me is the fact that all those characters like Milten, Diego, Lares, Gorn etc with which you share a very long personal history with, with who you went to thick and thin with, from first meeting them when arriving in the mining camp in Gothic 1 to becoming friends through small acts of friendship and adventurous quests that have a deep connection to the main story line to eventually becoming your ship crew when you sail to the cave of the devil himself, are now completely dull insignificant NPCs with no connection to the story at all.
If they dislike, it means they disagree with this movie. What do you not understand? Everyone has their own feelings about the game. Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean that others too.
@@bloody1454 Because this video doesn't feel like an opinion you can disagree with, it is stating facts about the game.
You can disagree with the statement that Gothic 3 sucks because you like it, but that doesn't change the fact that the issues this video covers are real and detrimental to the game.
Maybe they didn’t watch the whole video. The beginning is full of nitpicks about a video game being too “gamey”. I get annoyed by people complaining about tutorials and quest logs. Although he makes a lot of good points later on.
A very good analysis and comparison. You should advertise your channel more on some forums. The video is very good, your voice is pleasant to hear and you have good diction. Very surprising you have so few views.
I wonder what exactly happened that G3 went SO downhill compared to the first two games. Almost as if the company fired 80% of the developers and hired some cheap labour who didnt know anything about previous games and just created a big cartoony world map. This video also made me realize that the best thing about G3 was its outstanding soundtrack.
But the music of this game is just godly.
It's on the level even A class movies struggle to achieve.
Imo sountrack suffers a lot because of the fact that in 90% of encounters you hear the same song, which lasts less than 2 minutes and starts so abruptly that it always takes you out of the mood.
Totally agree with your Review...The biggest bummer for me, which you also pointed out, was the unlogical Lee story.
Oh and btw I foretell that ur channel goes through the roof this year, you really deserv it! Nice voice, good editing, passionate, top tier informations! :)
One more thing. After watching your video, which was done perfectly, I realized how I actually miss a proper Gothic 2 sequel. Thinking of a real sequel, a real Gothic 3 in a way original Gothic games were made. If PB ever decides to make another Gothic game, I am scared of what it can become. We would be better of with a remake of this game completely from ground up, but at the state that PB is rn I m not sure if I would want that. But I am glad you touched on what made the game actually good in the end, because those aspects saved the game for me.
Risen is the closest they got to Gothic 1-2.
Talking Orcs kinda killed Orcs uniqueness. It would be better if you had to learn their language and not even being allowed inside cities maybe for entire game even until you liberate it or some interesting quest to gain the trust and become their actual mercenary. Something if done well could be interesting as well and that is making your character dumped down by some sort of capture, perhaps ship crashes into cliffs and you emerge on shore enslaved by orcs and little tutorial while prison break which would have couple ways to gain freedom perhaps. Maybe sneak out, win it on the arena or uprising?
Theres a full conversion mod for Gothic 2 called Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos. Its a prequel to Gothic 1 and it was made by a Polish team and its incredible. 60+ hours of gameplay and honestly is a wonderful truthful interpretation of the Gothic gameplay style.
@@BKNimaruIchi this is the gothic 3 everyone was hoping for, and we get it. I played the entire game loving every second, in the end I just wanted more, gothic fórmula its something really unique
@@BKNimaruIchi I fullhearteadly agree. Chronicles of Myrtana was a behemoth of a project, and it pretty much is just a completely separate professional release. If you ever loved Gothic II, please give it a try, I promise you won't regret it.
I completely forgot you talked for about a hour. I agree on mostly everything apart from the lore/quest parts because I've never finished the first Gothic and I barely played the second one. Great exposition indeed. It's a bit sad thinking that it could've been the definitive gothic experience or even that it could've surpassed or even beat Oblivion as an open-world rpg.
You're so on point with everything, I agree with you 100%, like as if I have writen the script for this review myself. Excellent job! It's a shame PB went downhill, I really wanted a Gothic 3 game.
Tell me something new. Gothic 3 only works properly when it is heavily patched.
Thank you very much for putting it in such well selected words and aspects of critique. I, as an ultimate Piranha Bytes and Gothic universe fan myself have just completed Gothic 3 for the first time ever ! I have tried a couple of times before but wasn't able to finish it because I mostly lost interest through mid game and most recently, my savegames got corrupted due to a crash. After playing through, I am so utterly disappointed with so many things which are wrong in the game, and it feels kind of really satisfying listening to your analysis in this video because it displays my issues with the game so accurate as well.
However, the only reason that I am so mad and disappointed and emotionally involved in this game is that Gothic I and II are my most favorite games of all times and will ever be. Only the fact that I do care so much about the Gothic games is the reason I get so upset about it.
I will continue to see Gothic 3 as a great exception to what is normally a masterpiece of RPG game design and I will continue to jump on further releases of PB. By the way, Elex was awsome !
Thanks again for the Video, thumps up, and keep up the good work.
#2 Is always a huge issue for me in not only Gothic 3, but the majority of the RPG (or similar) games where it feels like games are competing over map size. Quality > Quantity
I know hikikomori gamers hardly leave the house but c'mooon.
So when are you gonna do Arcania ? I know it's not canon anymore but it would be fun to hear you opinion.
Damn what a good video. Ditching my nostalgia glasses was pretty hard but it’s even harder to argue with any single point you’ve made, especially since i remember noticing some of the problems you’ve mentioned even back when i was 8 years old, and playing the game for the first time. Wish you all the best and i’ll be looking forward to any future videos.
Played G3 for the first time around that age as well, but I rembember always having that agressive tought: "Why are the wolves so strong? Why are the wolves so strong? Why are the wolves so strong". I always laughed at the way killing an army of orcs was easier than killing a single wolf.
@@pooloom3821 thats actually not far from the truth. I remember watching one of the rare instances where NPCs fight animals, and laughing at how a single wolf was able to kill a whole squad of orcs thanks to the fast attacks and ridiculous stagger effect. NPCs were helpless against it
@@bulanet271
Hahaha yeah. Don't forget the wild boars either
Great review, super entertaining and great job presenting thoughts that I've also had whilst playing the game and being a fan of the series for the last 15 years
For a moment I was trying so hard to remember when did I post this comment...
Gothic 3 just doesn't have the vibe that Gothic 1 and 2 has.
I enjoined the video very much. I'm happy to see someone that has almost identical opinion on G3 as me. You covered and pointed out every single issue I too have with this game. I agree with you 100% on everything, both bad and good things about G3. Besides that, I appreciate the work and time you put into making of this video. Job well done!
I have same exact problems with it. Ontop of just not looking like Gothic 1 or 2 in any way. Architetcture doesnt look anything like what we seen on Khorinis, paladins and rest of npcs dont look like themselves from GII. Its really bad because it makes it even less like Gothic loosing on even graphical side of things :/ not even location from thombstones found in GII appear. Its just incredibly inconsistent with first 2 games + expansion to GII
So much potential, such a shame.
Gothic 3 felt like a complete different universe, compared to the first two games.
Even the booklet that came with the game painted a different world than that turned out...
I played Gothics 1 and 2 for the first time last year and I really enjoyed them. Moving on to Gothic 3 was bleak at best. It felt like anti-Gothic; the antithesis to what made the first two games what they were. I couldn't bear to finish it. About forty hours in, with a quest log full of tedious bullshit I didn't want to engage with, regularly getting stunlocked and thus killed by wolves even after sinking so many points into my stats and combat skills, with no end in sight, I threw in the towel. I didn't even understand what the story was supposed to be about. Fuck this game. I know a lot of Gothic fans don't think much of the Risen series after the first one, but Risens 2 and 3 are much more palatable than this load of clunky, unengaging wank.
Such a good video, did you make a video about Arcania yet?
Great video, I have mulled over Gothic 3 every now and then over the years and was pretty sure that I have counted down every single flaw, yet your analysis covers some things that I never really considered. I completely forgot the awkward dialogue boxes prompting you to "Press 1 to draw your weapon" or "Find Lester on the beach", and your analysis of Vengard, Rhobar, and Lee situation as a perfect simulacrum of the game itself is brilliant. You however don't focus on (but do touch upon) two things that I think went against the 'Gothic feel' the most, the connection to characters and the world in general.
Let's take Diego as an example. He is the first major character in the series that you meet, and he is right away portrayed as a very realistic good guy, which is to say that he comes off as a good person that might actually exist in the real world. You won't meet people that either want to kill you or pledge their life to you in the real world, you will meet Bullits and Diegos, bullies and people that won't bend themselves over backwards for you, but will go out of their way to help you. Diego keeps doing this through the game, giving you a hand when he can until he eventually stops due to the chapters 4-6 having barely any side content, but remains one of your four closest friend. Then in Gothic 2 he goes through hell and back with you and finally manages to end up on top, with ensured life of luxury in the upper quarters of Khorinis, only to throw it all away once you ask him to help you with the journey to Irdorath. We get some perfectly written male comradery, i.e. he doesn't tell you that he loves you or that he would die for you, instead he comments that is getting bored of the high life and would much rather go on an adventure. As in, he is only doing this because you, his best friend, asked him to go with you, but since the game cares about the quality of the dialogue we get this great back and forth from the coolest character in the series who is too cool to tell you that he really cares for you. All of that buildup goes for Gorn, Lester, and Milten as well. I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into this or simply misremember things, but one of the main hooks of Gothic 3 for me was to see where all my friends will end up.
I can't say that Gothic 3 does this badly because the game doesn't even attempt to have a meaningful relationship with the characters. You see your friends once, do one quest for them IF you find them over the course of he game and that's it. After that journey on the ship they might as well end to exist since their portrayal is so weak that they feel like stand-ins that share the name and look vaguely similar to the original, but are obvious fakes.
Another major theme was the gradual expansion of the world. Before you even start to play Gothic 1 you are told about the kingdom of Myrtana. When you play the game you don't get to visit this far away place, but are reminded of its existence and fill the gaps as much as you can. Then in Gothic 2 the world expands to cover the entirety of Khorinis, but Myrtana once again remains this far away place, described only in books and retellings of people that came from the mainland. It is never shown. Finally, Gothic 2 ends in a such a way that there is nowhere to go but finally visit Myrtana, but of course all that hype is ruined because the game sucks.
What makes it suck even more is the fact Piranha Bytes were seemingly aware of this theme and wanted to continue with it, i.e. the Adanos ending, the one that was meant to be canonical, ends with your journey to unknown lands, which to me at first seemed to come out of nowhere. It looked as a convinient copout, but eventually I came to believe that the unknown lands were originally intended as a new Myrtana of sorts, some new journey that our hero would undertake as the credits roll and the Gothic series ends. And much like Myrtana, it would need to have a lenghty buildup. This of course doesn't work because the concept is brought up in the last ten minutes of the game, not counting the one hour walk to the stone portal.
I could mention plenty more, the role of Xardas, the faction systems and so on, but the post is already too long. A final thing to say, as funny as it may sound Gothic 3 remains the most original PB game to date. The company seems to be trapped in the cycle of constant Gothic 2 remakes, trying to live off their past glory. This might sound completely nuts, but I think that this can be attributed to G3 sucking too hard and the company being too scared to try something else after getting burned. So in a way, the worst part of it isn't that it wasn't a better game, but that it affected the future development so much that it prevented other, different, better games from being made.
Once again, great video and analysis. Your blog rocks. And fuck this game.
Finally a Real Gothic lover that does not try to talk Gothic 3 good at all. Because it isnt. Greetings from Germany!
It is absolutely solid lol
@@LEK u think Gothic 3 is solid ???
@@ErikvsLenny Gothic 3 had the most amazing soundtrak and the most amazing world ever created in a virtual reality, if you can't apreciate that and play this game for the world itself and it's atmosphere (only enchanced tenfold by the amazing music) then ure empty inside and ur opinion is invalid (invalid just like u are). Cheers mate!
@@ErikvsLenny Well with the metric shit ton of fan patch it's ... well playable at least. I can see why some people would like or even love it, for me it's always a bit disappointing, but still an enjoyable mess after the brilliant first 2 game.
Uuh compared to G1 and G2, if you value the things that made G1 and G2 so awesome, you can consider G3 a big disappointment. However, it offers an awesome soundtrack (thanks to kai rosenkranz. just listen to ishtar/nordmar/vengard music he really did his job) and really lovely atmosphere here and there, well thought architecture and alot of typical gothic humor/slang. What I mean is that the artdesign is not bad or so and many of the crew did a good job and we can enjoy all that thanks to the great work of the community patch team. But as stated above, it lacks the true G1,G2 spirit and has a miserable empty illogical story.
Agree with everything, for me Gothic 3 was a huge failure and when I first played it "my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined".
Really? How old were you back then? Compare to previous Gothics, Gothic 3, seems quite good at first, I mean a lot of stuff changes, combat feels worse, but bow feels way better, world is prettier and the promise of fighting orcs with rebeliants also shows a lot of potential. I remember that when I was about 12 years old I played the whole series in one year, but Gothic 3 was obviously too much for my PC. Although until my attempt to realese Montera (I tried it right after I realesed Cape Dun and did a bunch of quest there) I thought it was playable.
My best flashback from playing Gothic 3 was mission of defeating the very first orc patrols - "Things should start to become serious", but then came Cape Dun, I felt very weird that, this time I should do a favor to orcs, not kill them and spell was broken.
@@koks49045 dont remember, around 12-14 yo.
I dont know man, it honestly is a really decent game, he complains that the desert is just sand...WELL THATS WHAT IT IS
They made the areas too wide and empty. Myrtana and Nordmar were enough, the desert of Varrant, although mentioned in some gothic 1 textbooks, is too big, scattered and empty to be interesting.And what the hell they were thinking when they eliminated the amazing and satisfying meele combat of gohtic 1 and 2. Risen 1-2-3 could have been avoided. After gothic 3 they should have had to backtrack, and work on Gothic 4 whit a clear mind.
Really good review, man. I became gothic fan not long time ago, I played gothic 3 on release but go on to the Oblivion, and I've completed first two games and all Risen games not long time ago, but I can't play in Gothic 3 because I always think about what a great game it could've been and it makes me sooo sad
I simply love these reviews, what do you think of Risen 2, 3 or Elex?
It's been a while since I played Risen 2 or 3 so I don't remember much about them other than general feelings. Risen 2 felt like a huge step back from Risen 1 in both style and quality. Risen 3 was better, but still had a little too much of the Risen 2 influence. I loved Elex, so much so that I played it three times back-to-back-to-back as each faction. I'm planning to continue reviewing the rest of PB's games, so I can give more proper opinions later, but it'll be a few weeks before I can get to replaying the rest of them.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Keep up the good work, you will definitely grow in subscribers just based on the quality of your work!
Played 1 hour of Gothic 3 got bored as hell and left. It doesn't seem to link very closely with Gothic 1 and 2. Gothic 2 off the bat you felt the effects of leaving the penal colony, how everyone treated you, suspecting you as a prisoner/criminal. The reason I like being treated like shit in a game is because that's how it is in real life. People don't kiss your feet the moment you start walking around them. Who the hell does that. Random loot does sound awesome though. The one thing that Gothic does fail in general was lack of many different types of weapons, armor etc. And of course giving bows/crossbows an overhaul. Of course I still found ways to pretty much go with a bow build in Gothic 1 and 2.
I know you got some bad criticism for making this video, but I just want to say that you did a really good job at pointing out all the shortcomings and weaknesses of the 3rd Gothic game when compared to it's predecessors.
I agree with pretty much everything that you've said.
Also, I'm looking foward to any Gothic related content that you'll releasing in the future.
Keep up the good work!
Fortunately it was developers themselves who warned people that game was at best finished by 30% at release. So when I eventually got to play it I was not disappointed too much since my expectations were tempered beforehand.
It is kinda unfortunate that we got this instead of proper, finished game :(
Thanks for properly summing up everything that went bad and what was kinda OK in game, great video :)
(Ridiculous) Big world is such a condemning asset for many games. And yet it's what players want. Or think they want.
CESSKAR I think that the isometric Fallouts and Fallout: New Vegas show that you really don’t need a gigantic world to make an amazing and immersive game, and i only wish more people noticed that.
@@PSEUDOSOPHER I'd argue New Vegas has a massive world, albeit one that is considerably smaller than F3. What it is though, is a much more meaty game with a bit more depth and focus. I think the reason people want a bigger world is because they want scope but also fantasy - They want to have their cake and eat it. Let's take two polar opposites, a JRPG and a randomly generated voxel game like Minecraft. A JRPG has a considerably smaller world, not only because it is limited but also because the creators spend more time crafting the environments and stories and lore, worldbuilding. They don't skimp on the gameplay, but a JRPG is a storyteller (in comparison to a Western RPG, which is more akin to a dungeonmaster). Minecraft, on the other hand, has no story - It is a limitless world with no boundries and nothing to really stop you from doing anything. That being said, it's a sandbox - And it's as deep as one. But what the sandbox formula allows the devs to do with Minecraft, is to focus on gameplay where story would've taken up the bulk of an Isometric/Japanese/Western RPG, and thus it helps create emergent gameplay a lot better. These two styles of game are fantastic, but when you put them together, they sort of detract from one another. I'd rather a puddle as deep as an ocean when it comes to an RPG. Because the world will always be at least somewhat limited if you're playing an RPG that's sort of stretched out to miles of content - It'll always be a limited world unless it's randomly generated. And either way, its content won't be all that fantastic. It's better to me, to focus all your effort on creating big quests that feel bigger than the sum of their parts. All games are is code dancing on a screen - What makes them good isn't how big you can make the worlds, it's how real you can make the worlds.
It's not the size, it's what you do with it ;)
No doubt why i never finished this game
My favourite part of Gothic 3 is landscape around Faring and Nordmar. That feeling you get when you approach the town for the first time and then you take the pass into Nordmar. There's something really great about this whole region for me and Nordmar, its landscape, architecture, its people and their culture is what made me interested in Skyrim as it seemed to offer a similar aesthetic (I haven't played earlier TES titles at the time of Skyrim's release). However, looking back, G3 isn't a game I'd like to replay unlike G1 and G2 which I return to every now and then.
The Myrtana section would have been much better if there were only 3 major settlements. 1 free city, 1 orc occupied city, and the besieged capital were the 2 sides clash. Make them bigger and more detailed, have a much larger density of content. You can still tell the whole story with this composition. If you need you can add 1 major settlement each in the southern Varant and northern Nordmar. Gothic 3 has a little over 20 settlements. Quality and density of content in most of them is piss poor and most have absolutely no reason to be there outside of just being there. Gothic 3 feels like someone designed a huge worldmap and said now make a game with it. There isnt even a main story (just a setting) or any reason for 80% of the map. I know they didnt finish the game but stuff like that is planned in pre-production. I think they learned this with Elex, the game has its own issues but its a similar size to Gothic 3 and has only 4 major settlements and nearly no minor settlements.
I quite like your idea.
Gothic 3 died the moment the creators deicded that they're gonna have Myrtana living under a peaceful orc occupation in which people just kinda live their lives relatively unbothered by the fact that they were conquered by orcs.
This was it. No patches could never repair this. The problem was not the bugs, boring and repetitive quests, boring and empty world or broken combat system. The problem was this very idea of the presented world which was so completly inconsistent with the previous games.
What Myrtana should have been, is basically something like the Mining Colony in the 4th chapter of Gothic 2. A dangerous, deadly wasteland destroyed by the war, with just a few bastions of humanity remaining and under a very real threat of being anihilated in any minute.
What we got instead... doesn't even feel like Myrtana is occupied. It kinda feels like King Rhobar lost the election and orcs now created the new government, which some people don't like and that's why the "rebels" exist. Maybe the King went donaldtrump or something.
Just finished the game and this is exactly the right kind of video I wanted to "reminisce" with on the experience. I also love Gothic 1 and 2, and I bought this game almost at launch, but couldn't play it due to terrible hardware requirements and anti-optimization. I tried to finish it several times over the years, always running into some bullshit that made me quit or just getting bored, but still every time I finished Gothic 2 I wanted some closure. Now I finally got my closure, the hero got corrupted by the Claw of Beliar, joins Beliar in Gothic 3 and everybody dies. The End.
Best ending ever!
Ahh, Gothic 3. I really, really, really wanted to like this game. Gothic 2 especially with its add on is hands down my most favorite game of all time. I played this countless times back when I was in middle school and play it now when I need to phase out after particular stressful work days. Ever other year, however, I install Gothic 3. I go through the same old forums as I did years back, download all the newest community patches and go through the tidious process of making the game run (which usually takes the better part of the night). This is always followed by me playing the same sequences up around the time when you hit the demon haunted city. By this point in the game, it becomes a slaught fest. There are the waves upon waves of enemies which are not hard to kill, but boring. The gameplay becomes boring, even more than it is in the beginning. Usually I lose my patience in these encounters and die one too many times and deinstall the whole thing.
It is so sad. My love for the series can make me look over many of the flaws. For example the empty open world. I'm unsure whether it's my clouded mind, but I liked Varrant when I was there years ago. It actually felt like a desert - it's wide and it's empty. But then again, all there really is to it is an amazing soundtrack. As you pointed out in this video, Gothic 3 has just too many bad ideas. The breaking of lore is the worst part to me. I spent the time and listened to Vatras' speech about the gods in Gothic 2 time and again. I discussed the inner workings of how the prison colony on Khorinis worked on my very first IRC. I even spent many weekend days of my childhood writing stories for an online forum RPG set in the world of Gothic and Gothic 2. But for the "final" chapter of the saga I only feel disconnect.
Your conclusion is that Gothic 3 does not really suck but is just a mediocre game. I think it sucks because it is mediocre. I was supposed to be so much more. It is good to hear that other fans of the series feel the same way. Thank you for your review!
I still don't understand what youtubers like Click4Gameplay admire about Gothic 3. It is mind boggling how a game like Gothic 3 happens to be the guy's favorite game. Although I enjoy his channel, he isn't half the game critic Nocturnal Rambler is
Stumbled upon your channel a couple of days ago, and still I don't understand why you only have a few suscribers.
It has become a habit of mine to watch videos regarding Gothic, even though I've never played it. The game has something that makes it really atractive to me; a dark, grim, realistic atmosphere and great world design (The latter being the one I consider most important, though maybe It is because I really enjoy exploration and discovery).
Regarding one of the things you say when comparing the third entry to the other gothic games: The fact that a game is open world doesn't mean it has to be underdeveloped or feel empty, they can be vibrant and encourage exploration at the same time. The best example that comes into mind is Skyrim. The game has a lot (A LOT) of hand holding, which I've never enjoyed, but the world, the landscape, is made in such a way that has always managed to both captivate and encourage me to keep exploring it, resulting in finding new places, little stories, easter eggs and even lore-related stuff. After 1.000+ hours, the world still throws new and interesting stuff at me.
Ofcourse, this was only one example and it always comes to personal preference. As stated, Skyrim does tons of things wrong, can't even be called a proper rpg, but the world Bethesda created is still being explored to this day, and I beleive other companies have the same potential if they put effort into it's development.
Keep up the great content!
I loved it. I was kind of child when i started with g3, i had about 10-11 years. I loved it, it was big, epic etc. Later on I played Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 which i loved even more. I am still very sentymental towards G3 but I do understand its cons.
Same, I think the critics are a bit too harsh... But they got a point. Still although I like Gothic 1 and 2 more, Gothic 3 was a great gaming experienced and I loved every second of it
Its hard to hate/dislike something what you played as child.
Games i liked as teen or child are terrible in the eyes of todays teens and childs.
Youre free to like what you want but ypur opinion is to based to be taken serious when you played sth as kid.
@@kingsguard5614 not really, what you say is just a claim, even besides nostalgic factors I can make an objective review about a game
"what you say is just a claim" lol? His claim is 100% true.
Ewa420 So i can't judge all games i have also played as a kid? Dont be foolish
This is the best critique I’ve seen of Gothic 3 by far, so good job!
I can’t remember if you mentioned it in the video, but another detail that bugs me about Gothic 3 is the lack of female NPCs. And children for that matter. Gothic 1 and 2 also don’t have many female characters, but their sparsity makes sense in Khorinis, given that it was mainly a mining and penal colony. Their rarity in Gothic 3, however, makes zero sense on the mainland. There should be families struggling to survive amidst a full scale war, but instead we get a sausage festival across an entire continent. That single oversight honestly takes away so much from the atmosphere PB was trying to achieve with this game, and to this day I don’t understand how they could have missed that.
Good catch! That's definitely something I noticed while playing, but forgot to include in the review. Would be a perfect fit for the "Illogical Design Elements" sections.
@@TheNocturnalRambler i think you mentioned it when you first reached the king, and also showcased the strange bug where npc's hair was on the ground next to them instead of on their head
I´m playing Gothic 2 and it´s full of females
matternicuss aahhahahshshhshshsshahahs true man true
The thing about dragons is just so ridiculous I have no idea why people overlook it like it's nothing. Dragons were INTELLIGENT beings from another dimension, not some random chicken-looking monsters, and I'm pretty sure the ones in G2 were the only ones that were summoned by the Sleeper.
And there is a ton of other bullshit: shadow beasts look like harmless puppies and are super slow, snappers are green and have arms for some reason and they don't even look like snappers in the first place, bloodflies are cartoonishly pink (???), minecrawlers look like mutant-bugs (with something on their faces that to me always resembled a smile), zombies don't behave like zombies (and what the hell is up with those sticks they fight with). = And that's only a tip of the iceberg, since G3 retcons almost everything left and right, even to the point of making Lares look totally different (and a bunch of other characters too).
I have no idea who the hell was responsible for all those incompetent decisions that lead to Gothic 3's creation but man, what an atrocious job he did.
For me G3 is the biggest dissapointment in my entire gaming experience. I love G1&2 and finished G3 just after release, and I hate hearing that after those community patches it's a good game, because technical problems aren't the biggest issue with G3. It's lack of story, friends from G1&2 that are just random npc with nothing to tell, different lore (wtf happened to orcs!?), big and nice world but filled whith absolutely nothing satisfying to discover or loot. One Khorinis from G2 is much more interesting than all the cities in G3 together. So fixing bugs with community patch doesn't change anything at all. I hate this game. Finished it twice, second time after many years with community patches and while I still come back from time to time to G1&2 I will never ever even install G3 again. It just sucks and ruined the lore. F.ck this game.
I am trying very hard to struggle with the need to object on at least half of the issues which I consider to be underrated to an infinite extent, so I will try to change the subject:
What do you think about THQ Nordic's Gothic 1 reinterpretation ?
Have you played the "playable teaser" ?
What say you about that ?
I found it to be 70% disappointing and 30% full of potential.
...while I found Gothic 3 to be the opposite back in the day (of course, patched and repaired all the way to the Enhanced Edition).
I am eager to hear your opinion because if you'll keep your thoughts as congruent as you did making this review, the result is predictible.
Nevertheless, congratulations on spending such an amount of time to make this very comprehensive and somewhat exhaustive review. I have to give you that.
@David Mircea In fact, I have played the Playable Teaser for the remake and already put together a ~1 hour review of it up on my channel. It's currently my most recent upload, so it should be easy to find.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Yup, found it yesterday. Enjoyed every bit of it, you even put up aspects that I didn't notice, but after hearing you gave me a lot to think about.
On that you were 110% accurate.
Thank you for your time, I hope THQ will take notice and decide to make a Gothic as it should, and not destroy it like Spellbound did with Arcania.
IMHO, the single milestone they have to cross is to make the decision to either make the game for today's "flower power" generation and leave it as it is (thus selling probably tenths of thousands of copies), or to simply keep all the Gothic 1 Immersion, with absolutely no handholding and making the hero "everybody's bitch" (exactly as you said, very spot on) but with the risk of selling probably thousands of copies, only for the "hardcore" generation which we were.
All in all I am very sad that today's gamers don't seem to enjoy the roughness of a manly game and prefer the easy way (gift boxes, freemium, etc).
WTF did they do to the orcs. They were intimidating, powerful and mysterious now they're just another human faction. Fine if they're the faction but I want to join them and wear a loincloth, animal hides and smash my enemies. Not just be another templar/knight
Felt nostalgic the other day so I played G3 again after 10-15 years and I had fun playing but I have to absolutely agree with everything you said, so many time I was walking around or listening to dialog and felt like "that doesn't make any sense" and the combat was just not good. Mostly when I had to fight the whole city, I had to cheez them by unreachable position and bow/magic them until I Killed them all. Didn't remember much of the G1 and 2 story but the game don't realy care to refresh your memory either so seeing what it was actualy about is nice.
How can you play Gothic 1 and 2 without crashing every 5 seconds? I have them on steam but I can't play them 😕
Fantastic video. How do you have only 1.15k subs is beyond me. Shows how broken is modern youtube - shit cat video - 10mil subs / proper content - 1.15k.
Maybe its just nostalgia, but I still enjoy this game with the community patch. Wonder how great this game could have been, if they would have let Phirana Bytes finish it. This was like 30 % of the whole game as they said in interviews.
Why they couldn’t finish it in time?
The publisher JoWood ran out off money so they had to release it early
@@bobby5972 how is it even possible after success of previous Gothic games
@@shahaman5694 "To be fair, if we had finished it in the time that we promised, it would have been fine. But as it was, the development took longer on the project, and instead of trying to find a solution with us - how to get this right - they just wanted to release it. It was because of their stock market orientation, I think. So we decided to go separate ways then."- Piranha Bytes co-founder Michael Hoge
Man I remember when me and my best friend bought Gothic 3, we played the first 2 parts religiously, mastering everything there is. Here we were with the G3 cd installing it at my friends house, we looked at the first cinematic we were ecstatic! But after that we got a blackscreen, friends PC was too weak, shit we pack up and go to my house because I had a stronger PC. We finish the cinematic and start the game but it was so laggy like 1 fps, couldn't play at all, but we were happy to see at least a sliver of it. We proceeded to grind money to up our PCs. Damn the happiness when we could finally play it, yeah it was still stuttering because optimisation was garbage but duck it. Sadly all of our euphoria died rather fast and was replaced with disappointment when we realised this was a far cry from what we expected, story, combat, gameplay... Sad times. Still play G1 and G2 to this day though.
are you going to play and review Elex as well? :D as an original piranha bytes gothic fan I really enjoyed that game!
i just grabbed this game and followed a video step by step on modding it. everything from visual to game systems and combat. I never played this game before but I was totally thrown off by the combat within seconds...if this is the "fixed" combat modding, im so scared to see how combat is unmodded….wow
unmodded combat was like this: versus fast attacking enemies like wolves, you had to spam light attack or you would never get the chance to hit back, because the wolf would hit you like a machine gun.
ahh were do i start ? first of all AN AMAZING Review...i enjoyed every second of the content and look forward to more stuff from you...Now as a child My first ever open world was Gothic 3...at the time i was 7 yrs old and the sheer fact that you could explore such a massive world without any restrictions at that time was Phenomenal ...i instantly fell in love with the game...keeping in mind that i never played the original gothic games..the story did not matter because being 7 years old I dint really understand the story anyway...the only thing that mattered to me was the feeling of exploration and the combat system only improved my experience , at that time being an unstoppable god who could solo towns and use mystical magical abilities at the same time was awesome. I did multiple replays of the game for the next few months and in my mind the game become the gold standard of open world RPG (ik the worst opinion ever) However after i grew up and matured, my taste started to develop and upon playing other open world games ( such as the likes of Skyrim and The Wicher) I was left befuddled as to how boring the game actually was.....I Recently Decided to Replay Gothic 3 but only after i played the first 2 games...And i must say..i was again amazed and horrified ...amazed at how good the the first 2 games were ( Gothic 2 Notr ftw) and how horribly Gothic 3 performed to its predecessors...I absolutely agree with every single word you said in the video..the game is developed to appease to dumb and immature audience and i think that is why my 7 year old self found such solace and pleasure from the game ...Nevertheless the game still holds a special place in my heart and still love even through its faults and issues....it is by no means a good game...I myslef wont recommend it to anyone....Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 are miles better !!!!! Anyways these were my thoughts...on the game..
P.S look forward to a gothic 1 and gothic 2 review from you...would love to see your ideas on them
7:10 that's... Actually true. Both Gothic 1 and 3 started with the map (although in G1's case it was literal map one of the creators drew). Main difference is that in the first game JoWood didn't came in at the begging of the process and was like "we're out of income sources so you have to finish your game earlier than you planned, although you were very late when you were making the engine from the start last time. Good luck!"
Perhaps the thing with the two dragons under the city could be a reference to the arthurian legends?
If I remember correctly there was a story where Merlin found 2 dragons under a city.