Gothic - You Are Not Special

bificommander

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I only played 2, not 1. And... I got a bit of a love-hate relationship with it. I did love exploring the open world and how the strongest creature in the manual was 30 feet of the starting path was a great introduction into the brutality of the world.

But the combat was very bad. Okay, it was actually fine against a single opponent, but against more than one the whole timing your swings to counter the enemy attacks went right out the window. Instead, it was a frantic buttonmash before your target's friend rammed his sword up your ass. And once you almost got your first target down, the two enemies would get near each other. At that point the lock-on system, which I presume was developed by Satan himself, would switch your target to the other full-health enemy while your previous victim would happily proceed to give you a double edged prostate exam. And just forget about manually switching targets in the heat of battle. It got so bad that I completed most of the game by taking potshots at a group, running away as soon as they got close and kiting them until they lost interest. Rinse, repeat, until there was only one left and you could fight him properly.

Also, the ending was a massive anti-climax IMHO. The final boss, who's been hidden all this time and when you meet him taunts about how everything you did to get to him was all part of the plan to destroy you is... another dragon. With the exact same moveset as the previous 4 dragon bosses*. Oh, but this one is a skeletal dragon... meaning it's vulnerable to the highly damaging Destroy Undead spell. On my sorcerer playthrough I killed him within 5 seconds by just casting that spell a few times. Yeah, how's that master plan of leading me to your lair working out for you now?

*Incidentally, the dragon AI was amusingly predictable. They had nasty attacks that made it hard to get close, but they'd always switch targets if another creature hit them twice. I always used summon spells or scrolls. Wait until they target the summon, then run up and get a few good hits in, retreat and let the summon get aggro.
 

Bindal

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I loved Gothic. Orginally, the only fantasy RPG I even considered playing (Elder Scrolls and Baldurs Gate now joined those ranks, but that's still about it). And due living in the country where the game was developed in, I also had the perk of way better voice acting with NO bad performance at all from any of the cast.

Controls are really the only thing that, if the game ever got any form of update or remake, that would require a rework. The basic idea behind them still works (have an interaction key you hold and another to start and end interactions) and general movement worked, but as soon as combat was involved, it was really just barely working at the best of times due its auto aim and because it was 100% keyboard controlled.
And yet, it was working that well, Gothic 2 even got a "use Gothic 1 controls" as option to play instead of the improved ones the sequel got and most people used them.


As an addional note: For any Ultima players, that were upset about Ultima 9 back in the days and still are, you guys should certainly take a look at Gothic 1. That thing is basically "what if Ultima 9 was good?" - obviously not fixing any story issues Ultima 9 had and the engine is still running, at times, about as stable as a wet biscuit. But the overall gameplay is really "Ultima 9, but good"
 

LetalisK

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May 5, 2010
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This review makes Gothic sounds like a wonderful game. It's a game I should try again...if I could ever get over its horrible controls. :(
 

D3s_ToD3s

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Jan 17, 2012
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Gothic was my first RPG i ever played on the PC.
It conditioned me so deeply that i even today, but back when i played Morrowind especialy, i questioned every price and thought "Back in the Mining colony, Books were worth a fortune" and "All those cups and plates and stuff, i had to steal back in the day and here they are found in a dumpster" and "How can food be so cheap? I had to steal everything back in the colony"

So he is right about prison culture i guess

I played this game so much (=I lived in prison so long) that i cant adapt, even years later, to living in freedom (playing Elderscrolls games for ex.)
And it didn't help, that you start as a prisoner who gets released somehow
 

devilmore

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Saying the world of Gothic is not as big as Witcher 3 is kind of unfair. Gothic is easily as big as Witcher 1 and Gothic 3 is easily as big as Witcher 3 (though unplayble without the community patch).

For anyone interested in the series I'd like to point out that Gothic 4 (Arcadia, a Gothic tale or something) is not really Gothic 4, Risen is. Developer and Publisher split after Gothic 3 and the Publisher kept the name and let another studio create a 4th Gothic game while the developer started a similar series with Risen (Risen 2, Risen 3). Unsurprisingly, the developer's new game is more like Gothic than the publisher's.
 

otakon17

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Jun 21, 2010
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I tried to like Gothic but the game's controls feel so clunky and unintuitive it's like trying to use my hands to replicate a spider. And the fact that the game barely even tells you how to play is another huge knock against it. I like the theme and the ideas but the execution has not aged well.
devilmore said:
Saying the world of Gothic is not as big as Witcher 3 is kind of unfair. Gothic is easily as big as Witcher 1 and Gothic 3 is easily as big as Witcher 3 (though unplayble without the community patch).

For anyone interested in the series I'd like to point out that Gothic 4 (Arcadia, a Gothic tale or something) is not really Gothic 4, Risen is. Developer and Publisher split after Gothic 3 and the Publisher kept the name and let another studio create a 4th Gothic game while the developer started a similar series with Risen (Risen 2, Risen 3). Unsurprisingly, the developer's new game is more like Gothic than the publisher's.
Arcania actually.
 

Adeptus Aspartem

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Dornedas said:
MacabreHeart said:
Pick the collection of them all up a while back but never got around to playing it. Anyone got an opinion on ArcaniaA, the the supposed 4th in the series?
Do you want the sort of official German opinion about it?

There is no Gothic 4.
There is no Arcania.
There doesn't even exist an expansion for Gothic 3.
The Gothic series ended after Gothic 3 the main game and nothing came after it.

I'm serious ask any gamer in Germany and you will get this answer.
Gothic 3? You mean the game that crushed my dreams harder than any game before or after it ever? I had over 10 playthroughs of Gothic 2 and not quite as many in G1. I was never more hyped for a game then for G3 (maybe D3) and when it hit it was just... nothing.
You coudldn't play it. It was a wonder in and of itself if you could even start the game. Characters and limbs were sized wrongly, half the quests didn't work, there was 0 balancing - no, that's no hyperbole!
They forgot to put values on ARMOR! You could use whatever you wanted, it didnt increase your protection. Every animal had an attack animation so fast, that i could stun lock you once you got hit. I've seen 2 boars clear the whole main city by stunlocking all the guards to death.

It was horrible! Not even the most horrible game releases we had in the last 5 years comes close to the disaster Gothic 3 was.

Gothic only has 2 games and 1 expansion. The rest doesn't exist. Risen is pretty nice, but they never catched the spirit + tone of the original Gothic series, sadly :(
 

Imre Csete

Original Character, Do Not Steal
Jul 8, 2010
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Adeptus Aspartem said:
It was horrible! Not even the most horrible game releases we had in the last 5 years comes close to the disaster Gothic 3 was.
I completed it out of spite. I locked myself out of content in some city you had to liberate from the skeletons, because looting there counted as stealing retroactively. I turned in the quest then aggroed the whole city.

Thanks for saving our settlement brave hero! Here, have this peasant NPC zergrush as a reward!

What a disaster. I went for the neutral ending, so after grinding reputation in every city to liberate it, which was repetitive as fuck, I had to kill everyone everywhere. And my reward was a poor slideshow narration.
 

stormtrooper9091

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When I first played this game, I was in early middle school, I had absolutely no expectations out of it. It turned out it was actually one of the finest games in its genre, it blindsided me completely and I ended up replaying it at least 10 more times, each time learning something else about it, there was simply so much hidden stuff.

Then came the sequel which was just as good!

Then came another sequel which was absolutely terrible
 

camazotz

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MacabreHeart said:
Pick the collection of them all up a while back but never got around to playing it. Anyone got an opinion on ArcaniaA, the the supposed 4th in the series?
I played Arcania and its expansion....it was, well....try Gothic out first. Arcania had stopped mid-development and was released prematurely "as-is" I have heard, and it really shows. It's a fun but frustrating and sometimes glitchy game, and not nearly as well-conceived as the Gothic series, or the Risen series.
 

K.ur

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Imre Csete said:
What a disaster. I went for the neutral ending, so after grinding reputation in every city to liberate it, which was repetitive as fuck, I had to kill everyone everywhere. And my reward was a poor slideshow narration.
And that's why the ending of Mass Effect 3 was quite acceptable to me. At least the journey there was really good.

Schadrach said:
One thing I'm surprised he didn't bring up was how as your skills went up in combat related stuff your character would actually improve his technique. It literally wasn't just "you get +5% damage", your character would actually adopt a better stance, make faster and more efficacious swings, and generally start resembling a fighter more than a farmer trying to figure out which end is sharp.
Also, the teacher* would actually tell you (as in voiced dialog) what to do better and the animation would change accordingly. I only noticed it the second time. If i recall right, every teacher for every skill and upgrade would talk for half a minute or more. Especially for the magical tiers, called circles, it could go on.

*System was: You level up. You get learning points. You talk to a teacher to exchange LP and money for new skills and skill upgrades.
 

Iago

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Feb 6, 2014
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Ah, Gothic... good memories.
Strange as it may sound - I quite liked the controls. Really. I even changed Gothic 2 control scheme to that old one.
Also, I finished Gothic 1 four times - once per camp and extra one for different route (mage, instead of fighter) with Old Camp.
Maybe we'll see a HD 15th anniversary edition next year?

Also - it was really a shame that copyright laws killed in-game In Extremo concert in non-German editions (unless you had mods/used cheat-mode)...
 

Naldan

You Are Interested. Certainly.
Feb 25, 2015
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Probably the second most played game of mine, only the sequel topping it.

Spent about 15 playthroughs on this, many more on the sequel. There were times when I could remember most of the game. Completely. I think I still could hand-draw an accurate map of the whole of Gothic II DndR, which would in part include the prequel.

Same with Heart of Darkness, actually.
 

Bindal

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May 14, 2012
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K.ur said:
Schadrach said:
One thing I'm surprised he didn't bring up was how as your skills went up in combat related stuff your character would actually improve his technique. It literally wasn't just "you get +5% damage", your character would actually adopt a better stance, make faster and more efficacious swings, and generally start resembling a fighter more than a farmer trying to figure out which end is sharp.
Also, the teacher* would actually tell you (as in voiced dialog) what to do better and the animation would change accordingly. I only noticed it the second time. If i recall right, every teacher for every skill and upgrade would talk for half a minute or more. Especially for the magical tiers, called circles, it could go on.
With the magic, it was the least noticable (but personally, I never used magic), most with the first level up in one-handed. As you literally start using one-handed weapons with one hand from then on, not two when totally untrained. Hell, the entire first training session is "one-handed weapons are called that because you use them with one hand!"


Also something I might want to let people know:
Some folks made the entire first game into two hour long movie. More of a two-hour machinema of the game, but still. They even got the original Voice Actor of the hero to add a few new lines and expand on the original game (e.g. having NPCs help where they don't exist in the actual game - making the finale look more interesting overall).
The only downside: It's in german, so most people here probably don't understand a word. Still, if you want to watch it, it's available for download.
http://www.worldofgothic.de/dl/download_246.htm
 
Oct 22, 2011
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Really glad to see one of my most favorite arpgs ever here. Beaten it 3 times, the sequel and it's consecutive expansion pack - 6 times in total. For someone that mostly only sticks to 1 game = 1 playthrough rule, that's an impressive score. Shame i wasn't able complete 3rd Gothic even once, though... But that's a different story. First two entries really deserve more recognition than they had outside Germany and Central Europe.