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reg42

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Mar 18, 2009
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I've been wanting to try this series for a while. I think I'm going to start with the first one. It's only $10 at GOG, so I think that's a fair enough trade.
 

Pimppeter2

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Dec 31, 2008
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I think this is one of the strongest reviews you've written that I've come across. Impressive stuff, and I like that you're doing these more frequently. Anyway, congrats.
 

NeutralDrow

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Mar 23, 2009
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This is the review that beat mine by two points?!

...probably should have beaten me by more than that. Such a gaming philosophy sounds appealing to me, I don't get frustrated very easily, and I do like looking for obscure old games. I'll look this up.
 

NeutralDrow

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Mar 23, 2009
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joethekoeller said:
Thanks for the kind words. Personally I'm not too happy with the way this review turned out. It found it a bit lackluster and I'm left with the feeling that I didn't actually cover anything properly.
Aww...when you put it like that, I feel like I'm cheating. I'm halfway through re-writing mine. It might wind up worse, but I didn't figure out just how much I hated that 1500 word limit until after I read the thing after sending it to Pimpeter...

2100 words and counting, now.
 

veloper

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Jan 20, 2009
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I wonder how much I missed not having the NOTR expansion for this game. I liked it for what is was though.
 

Trotgar

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Sep 13, 2009
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Ah, just finished this game today, and I loved it.

It's kind of hard to get into, can be frustrating and have technical flaws, but it offers a very nice world, and has many good aspects that kept me going.

Can't wait to get to play Gothic 3 (patched, of course, I've listened to people) and Risen.

Edit: And of course, a nice review.
 

SniperWolf427

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Jun 27, 2008
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Excellent review mate, excellent review. I've always read yours but had a striking fear of commenting for some strange reason.

Your writing style flows stupidly well, meaning I've never had to read anything twice for clarification, and that's an amazing feat considering all the information you cover in detail.

The only thing I wished you'd have elaborated on is the character system. Is it class based? Are there stats? Do you create a character in the beginning?

As I've been yearning for a good RPG, I'll have to check this out. It does work on Windows 7, correct?
 

SniperWolf427

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Jun 27, 2008
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joethekoeller said:
SniperWolf427 said:
Excellent review mate, excellent review. I've always read yours but had a striking fear of commenting for some strange reason.

Your writing style flows stupidly well, meaning I've never had to read anything twice for clarification, and that's an amazing feat considering all the information you cover in detail.

The only thing I wished you'd have elaborated on is the character system. Is it class based? Are there stats? Do you create a character in the beginning?

As I've been yearning for a good RPG, I'll have to check this out. It does work on Windows 7, correct?
Thanks for the kind words chap.

The character system isn't class based. Gothic II breaks RPG convention in the regard that you don't get to change anything about your character before going into the game, neither in cosmetic nor mechanical terms. Instead of picking out a distinct class the game gives you the chance to pick freely which skills you want to learn and perfect throughout the game. Well that's not completely honest: One of the factions you get to choose from are a circle of mages, so this decision would pretty much narrow you down to a "magic user" career path (though it still offers a lot of choices). The other two factions however leave it more or less to you (safe for the fact that you obviously won't be using magic all that much). Melee or ranged combat, one handed or two handed swords, your choice. On top off that there's a whole number of useful secondary skills like pickpocketing, lockpicking and the like. All of these options are constantly there, however the slim amount of experience points you can spend forces you to specialize and pick only a few of those. Kind of like going to the supermarket. Obviously everything that's on display can be bought, but you really don't have enough money to do so.

To be honest I don't know. I don't have Windows 7 yet, and while I own a computer that runs on vista I never really tried to play this on anything past Xp-models due to the low system requirements. They do have the game on Good Old Games though, and don't they make sure they still work on current day systems there? At least I always thought so.
Excellent. I rather liked the days before classes. Hell, I'll even take the class/skill hybrid in Oblivion. I much prefer the notion that you only level what you use the most, meaning you don't have that nagging thought that tells you you should put points in Mercantile, even though you know bloody well you'll never use it.

I've never heard of Good Old Games, but I'll go look there now. Thanks for the information and another good review.
 

Trotgar

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Sep 13, 2009
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joethekoeller said:
Trotgar said:
Ah, just finished this game today, and I loved it.

It's kind of hard to get into, can be frustrating and have technical flaws, but it offers a very nice world, and has many good aspects that kept me going.

Can't wait to get to play Gothic 3 (patched, of course, I've listened to people) and Risen.

Edit: And of course, a nice review.
Well, it's always nice to see people enjoying the games I recommended. Makes me feel less useless as a reviewer.

Sadly I can't recommend getting your hopes up even for a patched version of Gothic 3. I just felt kind of let down when I finally got around to playing it and the changes above changes above changes for the worse in not only gameplay but gameworld, character design and arguably story just kind of ruined the experience for me. I guess it's still worth trying out and you might actually happen to like it. All I can say is that I had more fun with the Risen demo than then what I played of Gothic 3.
Well, I got Gothic 3 for a cheap price, and I've been playing it for a few days.

I rather like it, but I think the more sandbox-like world took it's toll from other parts of the game.

The large in-game world made places shallower (Oblivion suffered from this, too), the monastery doesn't offer so much chances in this game (I wanted to join it, but it seems I can't) and combat system is pretty poor (not horrible, but I could kill trolls on first levels or so because their attacks are just a bit too slow, so my attacks always interrupted theirs).

I like some parts of the game, though, but like in the case of earlier Gothic-games, it's kind of hard to point them out. Maybe it's some of the same things that made Gothic 2 good, but here they aren't just as good as they were in G2.

So, Gothic 3 is in my opinion pretty good, but I wouldn't recommend it either, except if you can deal with the many flaws.

And I played the Risen demo and liked it, though it was perhaps a bit too short, so it didn't really show enough features of the full games, but I don't think they could've made it any longer, judging on the border it ended on.