Gothic 3 – PC – Review

Where to begin … Well for
starters, this is what single player RPGs should be about (and I will get into
detail about this below). Yes, I know that online RPGs are very popular, but
if Morrowind has taught us anything, it’s that the single-player RPG is alive
and kicking. Yes, Gothic 3 is here and in the hands of a reviewer who has
played the first two installments. More importantly, you do not have to have
played the first two (it is third in a series), but each game stands on it’s
own and does a good job of making you understand specific events that have
happened in your past. Yes, your past; you play the unknown hero who has
single handedly changed the course of the land without fully understanding
it’s ramifications. So let’s just pick up here. In the past two games the
humans have been at war with the orcs; yes, lots of things happened in those
two games, but I don’t have the room to explain everything. So know now that
the war is over, because the Orcs won. You arrive in the land of Myrtana
having just kicked a bunch of butt in Gothic II on the isle of Khorinis, only
to discover Orcs walking around freely with humans, and the humans don’t care.
Because they are all now slaves, so the choice is yours as it would seem, do
you side with the human resistance and drive the Orcs out, or do you become an
Orc sympathizer and betray the humans? All is not what it seems because there
are bad humans and good Orcs. Let the adventuring begin.

All right, first things first –
Gothic 3 needs a patch, and thankfully there is one to be found on the Web, go
to google.com and look up Gothic 3 patch you’ll find it soon
enough. The patch does not fix all the technical issues that the game is
having at this point, but it does help. What also helps is having a seriously
beefy computer. It recommends a 3.0 or higher Pentium or a 4000 or better AMD
with 1 Gig of RAM and a 128-MB graphics card. In reality, you need a Intel
Core Duo and two gigs of RAM with a 256 or 512 graphics card. The holidays are
coming, time to ask for what you really want, hehe. But seriously, the game
does benefit from a really monster rig.  

Now let’s talk about why…

 "3900 square feet, five bedrooms,
a steal at the price if you don’t mind the nightly attacks by orcs…"

First off Gothic 3 is played very
similarly to it’s prequels, a third-person perspective with you running around
hacking at baddies and trying to inventory everything that isn’t nailed down.
Now you are going to want to play with the video settings, as the framerate
does become a bit of a nuisance what with you skipping around and freezing up
from time to time. My first test machine was an AMD 2800 1gig, 256mb, and I
could play the game if I dialed down most of the graphical settings.
Interestingly enough, when I did install it on the big one (P4 3.2, 2gig,
512), there were still some visual hiccups that even the patch did not clean
up. So, even with a fairly tough rig, I realized that the game still needs a
patch (that hasn’t been made yet). Regardless, the game – when you do hit a
smooth stride (yes it does happen) – is quite easy to control, the game can
pretty much be controlled by using the mouse, the arrow keys and the "I"
keyboard button. Pressing "I" opens an inventory system that is the easiest of
the series, you can examine found items, review quest logs and distribute
skill points. The controls themselves during action are easy if not plain,
clicking the left mouse button makes our man hack with his weapon, improve the
right skills, and you will be dual wielding swords, improve other skills and
other buttons become necessary, as magic starts to become a much more useful
asset. In fact, by the time you are done with your first good gaming session,
you should be using weapons and magic. A good balance given you pretty much
run the show all yourself; sure, there are times when allies fight along side
of you, but plan on getting your hands bloody by yourself for the most part. 

Sheathing your sword allows you to
speak with darn near every character you run across; some may only have one or
two canned responses, but often enough, you can engage in a conversation where
you can select from a set of pre-made responses. Select the right ones and you
may make an ally and get new quests to go on. Tick off the wrong one and you
could end up in a fight or worse, unable to obtain information crucial to your
quest(s). And so, this is the meat and potatoes of the game, speak to people,
gain quests, speak to more people to help you on your quest, but they will
only help you if you do something for them, and so on and so forth. This is
the gold standard for pretty much any RPG, so you can expect some of the same
here, and this translates into learning the new skills that are found. Want to
become a better hunter (and therefore better with ranged weapons)? Then ask
for help from the local hunter, he’ll send you on a quest to kill the wolves
that have been thinning the game. Want to learn fire magic? Then bring the
fire mage some raw material to work with, oh and if you stumble across a fire
chalice (I.E. very important artifact sure to not be laying around) then bring
that to him as well. What I am saying is, very quickly in this game you can go
from having two missions to 15 in like 12 minutes. 

"Forest union, local 278."

Now the game does have voice work
to go along with all the speaking you will do; it’s a bit strained and
emphasis on some phrases and words doesn’t seem to really match the hand
gestures all these characters seem to have. It’s not horrible mind you, it’s
just that it isn’t great either, it’s very average, with occasional glimpses
of unintentional humor. It should also be noted that I didn’t hear what I
would consider enough noises from the creatures you do battle with. Wolves
have a low snort, other strange creatures seem to barely make any noise, it’s
all very under effected as far as I am concerned. The clang of weapons and
battle was also just kind of average, but before you write off the audio
completely, Gothic 3 has a really good score to go along with the game. It’s a
full sounding, very epically scored arrangement that just by listening to it
makes you think of high adventure and incredible deeds. In short, it pumps me
up to play and pulls what would be an average sounding game into a comfortable
realm.

The graphics, which I have spoken
about already, are a mixed bag; the stuttering that occurs while running
around is simply inexcusable when you are running it on a machine that is more
powerful than their recommended system requirements. Enemies seem to be able
to run through solid walls in some situations and you as the player can get
caught up what appears to be small insignificant items, like blades of grass
or twigs. Yes, there are some issues with how the game looks in some
situations, and yes I fully expect some more patches to come out but I cannot
review what may be, I have to review what is. However, when things start going
right, Gothic 3 is a decent-looking game, and one of the few RPGs that allows
you to see far into the distance. Running around the land of Mytana, you can
see cabins in the distance, giant creatures stomping across the landscape,
packs of wolves sleeping on the side of a hill, there is tons of places to go
and even more things to find. In fact, the exploration factor of this game is
easily one of the game’s most defining qualities. In fact running across the
countryside, you could easily stumble across a pile of disheveled wood, upon
closer inspection there may be a chest hidden in the thicket. Upon opening a
really great item could be found, it’s this sort of thing that I enjoy about
Gothic 3, some things are just so random, it’s great.

And speaking of random, since this
is a real time RPG, you can usually spot a monster before it sees you and
choose whether or not you want to attack. Giant creatures will usually be
avoided until you become powerful enough to engage. The map, when accessed,
will allow you to see important places in Myrtana, and clicking on these
places will also pull up what quests you have taken for that area. Like I said
above, this game is all about the quests, and you can easily get a ton of them
very quickly. It’s clear that you cannot complete every quest in this game,
because as you play, you will gain reputation amongst certain factions. Doing
quests for some groups will have you fall out of favor with others, you can
try and walk the fence and do quests for opposing forces, but the game
ultimately makes you choose one way or the other – no playing Sweden in this
game the whole way through.

 
"Yes, this armor is as heavy as it
looks."

Defeating creatures and completing
quests will gain you experience points, which in turn can be converted over to
skill points. They are the same typical skills that games of this type all
have so there is nothing unexpected here, what was nice though, is when you
find new weapons or items, it is clearly shown whether or not you possess the
adequate skill to wield it. You can hold on to it until you improve enough, or
you can sell it to one of the many traders that are all over the game for
gold. In fact, I would like to thank the developers for coming up with a
simple yet effective trading system. Nothing worse then an overblown trading
system.

The game is rated T for teens, and
I think it should be noted that there is quite a bit of blood and violence,
fighting against humans will result in you winning without making a final
killing blow, you can choose to execute that final blow, but chances are you
won’t make any friends by doing so. Of course, there are some instances where
it is completely necessary. When it comes to fighting monsters, this feature
simply does not exist. Apparently in the middle ages you can kill wolves to
the point of extinction and no one will give a crap, but kill the wrong human
even if you are defending yourself, then all sorts of problems could come your
way. The game possess some complications that others do not.

Gameplay: 8.0
I would have liked to have seen
more variance in the fighting moves that you have, but things get better as it
moves along and the game does allow for some creative combat situations.
Navigating the inventory and other character stats is easy and effective.
Fighting multiple enemies is still one on one as other baddies will wait in
the wings for their turn; could have done without that.

Graphics: 7.0
For everything that is good about
the game there is an average or less than average answer to it. Characters
skip around, people get caught up on objects big and small. Monsters look
pretty good, but I think the game could have benefited from some more
development. Yes, there is a patch, but we need more to smooth things out. 

Sound: 6.8
The voice work is average, the
monsters are uncommonly quiet, I never got the sound effects to really pump
out the action like I would have wanted, but, the very gothic (no pun
intended) musical score is spot on and therefore rescues the game from audio
collapse.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
This is not a game for the rookie
RPG player; know that you could potentially play this game for more than 75
hours. There is a ton of quests that split off from the main core quest, and 
unlimited exploration. 

Concept: 8.0
The fact that you can play this
game (character wise) so many different ways means you can play it several
times and go off in completely new directions. Do you fight for the orcs? Do
you fight for the humans? Or do you do your own thing and try making a mess of
pretty much everybody else. There is so many things you can do; I would say
it’s like Morrowind, but this series has always operated this way, so I’d say
that Morrowind is like Gothic.

Overall: 7.7
Look, this game is not without
it’s flaws, but it is ambitious and when things are running smoothly, a real
treat to play. Players who enjoy RPGs will enjoy the dickens out of this
title, but they need to be sure they have a really awesome system to run it
on, and all the patches that go with it.