Gothic I was really great! I liked the atmosphere, being inside that prison, all the people being kinda rough. And there was a lot of humour, too.
Gothic II had a little better graphics and the gameplay was greatly improved, but I think the atmosphere was not as good as in Gothic I. Still a great game, though.
What was really great was meeting characters from the first game! This was even improved in the addon, where you meet a bunch of people from the old camp (or whatever the red guys are called in the English version).
I didn't really play Gothic III, so I don't know much to say about that.
Martin Gruber
[HF]-Major, bomber- and fighter-pilot, awarded with the Silver Star, commanding officer of the HFC-Fafnir
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Schmeling (for RP-purposes only)
Independent trader, owner of Schmeling Transport GmbH, Gruber's grumpy uncle
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Schultze
Employee of Schmeling Transport GmbH, transport-pilot
My favourite is Gothic 1 because it has such a great atmosphere, although graphic is not as good as in Gothic 2,
but that's not important.
Gothic is one of the first RPGs I ever played and I liked it right away.
Control is maybe difficult to understand, but when you're used to it you'll kick ass.
I played Gothic 1,2 and 3. I can tell you that the first to episodes are great, but in my opinion : DO NOT TOUCH GOTHIC 3.
It's graphics is great, no question, but Piranha Bytes changed the whole combatsystem and factions.In G3 you do not press e.g "space" + an arror button to hit your enemy. You just klick,klick,klick on your left mousebutton until your enemy is dead, very boooring.
Also you cannot "choose" a faction to which you would like to belong.In G3 you earn rep for 3 factions (Rebels, Orcs and Assassins), but even when you're bad with Orcs, because you do some quests for the Rebels against the Orcs,they won't kill you on spot.For example: When you chose to fight for the rebels, you have to destroy some Orc cities (on orc side you have to destroy the rebels' hideouts).So when you've destroyed a city, you travel further and you come to another orc city, you can walk into it, talk with orcs, do quests and stuff, although you destroyed an other orc city some minutes ago... they just still like you - strange heh? But I think, that they will start to hate you when you destroyed a number of cities, but I don't know excatly, because I didn't finish G3.
In G1 and G2 people would have been pissed off if they see e.g an mercenary in Khorinis (capital and home of the paladins).
Of course you can try G3, but I wouldn't touch it. This new combat and faction system just killed that game. That's what I think...
I have a complete different point of view to Zingultus.
Last year as Gothic 3 was released i've played it three times at once.
I have to agree, there were many bugs in gameplay. Physically and atmospherically, but the World of Gothic community got the Game source code from publisher Jowood and some great members of the community made a lot of patches to fix the main bugs. They have done a really good job.
Now i can recommend Gothic 3 with a good feeling.
The best of Gothic 3 are the characters and their rough speaking, especially swearing in its finest manner.
The unnamed hero is pure sarkasm. Also the three zones are very good. The green Myrtana, the frozen Nordmar and the desert of Varant with its fields of ruins and Mora Sul, the best city i have ever seen in a RPG.
Lovely details everywhere.
In the foreground you can see the temple and the ruins of Al Shedim and in the background is Mora Sul.
This shot was made in average graphic settings. It shows not the best possible graphic.
The very best is the music. I cannot describe my emotions when i hear it. Kai Rosenkranz, the composer has done an awsome job. So many famous musicians have worked on and 25% of the budget was spend for the music. It is better than in every other game, even better than Hollywood blockbuster scores.
As soon as Gothic 3 will be available as budget version, it will be a must for everyone to have it. In common with the community patches it will take you on a exciting voyage.
G3 is a good RPG but you cannot compare it with G1 because it is too commercial.
All the funny stuff like Mud or 'In Extremo' is gone. And the good old combat system too.
@Zingultus: If you start a second rebellion in a city the Orcs will hate you all over Myrtana.
@AoM: There were never any souce code released. I was one of the first WOG members who fixed the memory bug by myself. And there are still critical bugs in G3. Another example of Jowoods crapyard.:angry2:
btw: My first real RPG was D&D and my fist video RPG was Eye of the Beholder :cool:
Sorry Myriadic, but Mud wasn't funny. He was just annoying. The gig of In-Extremo was a nice gift, but all the time i tried to figure out where they were comming from and where they went after the gig in this open air prison. It was a good decision to hire Corvus Corax for part 3.
Sure Gothic 1 was a nice RPG with a new setting and the best atmosphere of all Gothic parts, but it had many bugs too. The combat system in G1 was as strange as in G3 and the Mythologie, which is important for fantasy games, was practically inexistent.
Concerning the source code. Sure Jowood has not given the source code to everyone, but some good programmers. As i said before, they have done a good work with fixing so many bugs and opening many quests.
Btw, i never had the memory bug and have played Gothic 3 without problems and was possible to make 90% of the quests.
And please stop to blame Jowood only. Piranha Bytes might have promised to much, when they started to develop Gothic 3. PB's were to small to develop such a huge world (should have known it better) and Jowood have given them one ful year extra to finish it. Remember release should have been Fall 2005 and it was released Fall 2006.
You don't know how many bucks Jowood have invested in Gothic 3. I guess millions and they wanted to see a result after all these years.
Btw, i think we would not have the amazing music without Jowood.