I like to play Gothic just to piss off the NPCs :P

[LGN-76]

Thread title aside, IMHO the game (series) is EXTREMELY underrated and underappreciated.

 

The game's title (like with this thread's title) can really throw you off; It's actually a medieval-fantasy RPG, similar to The Elder Scrolls.

 

Wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_(series)

 

It's such a shame that Gothic 3 released with so many major issues and little support, otherwise it could possibly have given TES4 Oblivion a run for its money (They both came out the same year). Thank heavens for the publisher releasing the source code so that the small legion of loyal fans were able to fix everything up...

[Tetzlaff]

The confusion with the name probably has to do with the meaning of gothic ("gotisch") in German, where it primarely describes a medieval art style, while in English gothic primarely seems to describe that darkish romantic vibe (art and literature) that originates in the 19th century.

 

Never played any of the Gothic games though. Which one would you recommend foremost?

[AnonimVio]

Everywhere I go people are praising this game like it's the second coming of christ and the holy grail of gaming. In reality it's just a shitty RPG with more bugs than lines of code and stiff controls. It's unfinished, it's ugly and it's highly overrated. I know that it played a big part in many people's childhood but holy hell you are blinded by nostalgia.

[DooM_RO]

1 hour ago, AnonimVio said:

Everywhere I go people are praising this game like it's the second coming of christ and the holy grail of gaming. In reality it's just a shitty RPG with more bugs than lines of code and stiff controls. It's unfinished, it's ugly and it's highly overrated. I know that it played a big part in many people's childhood but holy hell you are blinded by nostalgia.

 

You just have shit taste.

[Tracer]

Daaaaaamn!

[LGN-76]

18 hours ago, Tetzlaff said:

The confusion with the name probably has to do with the meaning of gothic ("gotisch") in German, where it primarely describes a medieval art style, while in English gothic primarely seems to describe that darkish romantic vibe (art and literature) that originates in the 19th century.

 

Never played any of the Gothic games though. Which one would you recommend foremost?

Well said. If you wanna play the games, try Gothic Universe, which includes Gothic I, II Gold, and III. I don't know very much about Forsaken Gods (III's standalone expansion), and as for Arcania, skip it. It "used" to be Gothic 4, but got recently reworked and made a non-canon spinoff. 

[Cynical]

One word of caution on Gothic 2 Gold -- play it without the expansion pack.  Night of the Raven just makes the game really awful.

[DooM_RO]

If you like Dark Souls you will love this but the controls are a bit clunky.

[torekk]

Did you know that the US version of Gothic is different in color than the european version? So to get the actual gothic feeling, get yourself an european version, it has slightly less colors and so a more "darker" feel to it.

 

Back then the publisher thought it's a good idea to pump up the color brightness for the US version.

 

I can just suggest World of Players, or World of Gothic in that case. Has a lot of nice mods, such as a DX11 Renderer.

 

As for playing, play the first, then the second with the addon(imo), but don't get into the ring of water before finishing act 4, because that will basically skip most of the game.

 

I haven't tried Gothic 3 with all the community patches, but I guess everything is better than a non patched Gothic game.

Edited May 18, 2017 by torekk

[DooM_RO]

6 hours ago, torekk said:

Did you know that the US version of Gothic is different in color than the european version? So to get the actual gothic feeling, get yourself an european version, it has slightly less colors and so a more "darker" feel to it.

 

Back then the publisher thought it's a good idea to pump up the color brightness for the US version.

 

I can just suggest World of Players, or World of Gothic in that case. Has a lot of nice mods, such as a DX11 Renderer.

 

As for playing, play the first, then the second with the addon(imo), but don't get into the ring of water before finishing act 4, because that will basically skip most of the game.

 

I haven't tried Gothic 3 with all the community patches, but I guess everything is better than a non patched Gothic game.

 

I think you are talking about ArcaniA Gothic 4 (which was utter GARBAGE). That was the one that had that option.

[Doominator2]

I've played gothic 1 and really enjoyed it.

Started playing gothic 2 two years ago but never got anywhere with it 

[Cynical]

4 hours ago, DooM_RO said:

 

I think you are talking about ArcaniA Gothic 4 (which was utter GARBAGE). That was the one that had that option.

The nudity was censored out of the American versions of 1 and 2, though.

[negke]

On 16.5.2017 at 9:20 PM, Tetzlaff said:

Which one would you recommend foremost?

Can't decide whether to recommend Gothic 1 or 2. First one has the benefit of being the origin of the story and has a tight-knit/compact world; second one is a little more refined with a slightly bigger world, but in parts builds up on themes and skills established by the first game. Both are great, in my view, raw gems; I suppose they look and play fairly dated if you don't have a nostalgic connection, with awkward control schemes (especially in G1) to boot, but they are special in that they have a unique flair of their own that doesn't seem to draw from other "mainstream" rpgs.

 

I like how they manage to create an interesting setting that's rewarding to explore despite the small scale of the world, and how unrestricted the player is - not much gating at all, you can visit most areas from the get go, except monsters and npcs will likely destroy you quickly if you do.

 

G1 and 2 also have a suprisingly creative modding scene (predominantly German) with many ambitious releases featuring completely new worlds (islands) and quests, voice acting etc.

 

[DooM_RO]

2 hours ago, negke said:

Can't decide whether to recommend Gothic 1 or 2. First one has the benefit of being the origin of the story and has a tight-knit/compact world; second one is a little more refined with a slightly bigger world, but in parts builds up on themes and skills established by the first game. Both are great, in my view, raw gems; I suppose they look and play fairly dated if you don't have a nostalgic connection, with awkward control schemes (especially in G1) to boot, but they are special in that they have a unique flair of their own that doesn't seem to draw from other "mainstream" rpgs.

 

I like how they manage to create an interesting setting that's rewarding to explore despite the small scale of the world, and how unrestricted the player is - not much gating at all, you can visit most areas from the get go, except monsters and npcs will likely destroy you quickly if you do.

 

G1 and 2 also have a suprisingly creative modding scene (predominantly German) with many ambitious releases featuring completely new worlds (islands) and quests, voice acting etc.

 

 

I played Velaya and it was very authentic and polished despite a few oddities. I would like to play more mods but I have a feeling most of them have that amateurish feel to them. Are there any mods as good as Velaya?

[Albertoni]

I remember playing Gothic 3 at a friend's house. He was level 30 or so. I proceeded to clean a village of orcs on his savegame, then while running around in the woods saw two wolves.

 

Those wolves killed me, doing in few seconds what 30+ orcs couldn't. It was scary.

[negke]

@DooM_RO Velaya is good. I think the reason it feels polished is to a large degree because it uses the original world from G2, and the voice actress did a good job.

I played quite a few good mods over the years, though I'm ashamed to admit I can't think of many names. Diccuric is one that comes to mind. And I played Odyssee somewhat recently, which is huge and very impressive, having you travel between several new islands, a modified version of Khorinis, and even the main land from G3 including the desert of Varant, the kings palace, and so on, with hundreds of quests - essentially a new game. Great stuff, although I felt it's too long overall. And it has, much like most other mods, parts where there are way too many enemies turning combat into a grind. Found myself resorting to god mode several times, because I simply wanted to move on.

The voice acting in most mods is a bit mediocre and I suppose this is what adds most strongly to the amateurish feel you mention. It's all done by members of the community, no professional voice actors. It ranges from surprisingly good to hillariously bad, but I can live with it all things considered and I appreciate how they help each other out.

 

The go-to place for Gothic stuff is worldofgothic.de and its forums.

 

As for Gothic 3, I enjoyed it, but it's obvious they ran out of time (the publisher forced them to release afaik). Quite ambitious with three distinct climate zones and all. However, they messed up two of the most important factors for rpg gameplay: combat and loot. Combat is for the most part button-mashing without any variation or technique. Haven't checked if there are mods that fundamentally improve this. The loot system is poor, too. Instead of hand-placed stuff like in the previous games, they went for a pseudo-random system with two types of chests, generic ones and special ones. Problem is both contain almost exclusively useless crap, things you soon carry truckloads of, and even the special chests which are supposed to contain better items the more you find do not have satisfactory loot most of the time. This effectively devalues exploration, because what's the point of going out of one's way to find hidden chests if there's no proper reward.

It's not a bad game, just several things that drag it down.