Gothic III

From the island of Khorinis, to the mainland.

System requirements: Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP1,Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP 64 minimum 512 MB System RAM, 2.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4, Athlon XP or equivalent processor
128MB DirectX compatible video card, DirectX 9.0c, 8x DVD-ROM drive, 4.6 GB free hard disk space,DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card

Developers: Piranha Bytes

Publishers: JoWood Productions, Deep Silver and Aspyr Media

Platform: Microsoft Windows

Release date: 13 October -20 November 2006 (latest version 1.74, June 11, 2010, with many bugs fixed but not all of them)

Genre: open-ended action-RPG

MSRP: GBP £29.99

PEGI: 12+

After the events of Gothic 2, in which the main hero defeats the undead dragon and leaves the island of Khorinis in the Paladin frigate Esmeralda, and arrive at the mainland which is consisted of 3 main locations: Myrtana, a fertile land, formerly occupied by paladins and now ruled by orcs. Varant, with its hot and vast deserts that lurk many dangers, and Nordmar, freezing cold, savage beasts and undead that hide in the snow makes this place a deadly trap for all passengers. The dark magician Xardas using ancient magic has stolen the rune magic of the Paladins and the Fire Mages. The last without their rune magic were no match for the numerically superior armies of orcs. The capital of Myrtana, Vengard is now surrounded by a barrier, formed by King Rhobar (just like in Gothic 1) leaving no escape for the besieging orcs. Our hero unaware of these events arrives in a town called Ardea and there he sees orcs enslaving the city’s population. It doesn’t take long before he engages the orc’s without any hesitation. Later you find out that all Myrtana has been taken over by the orcs and their human mercenaries, while slave traders capture any free citizen they find, while rebels try to restore the King’s authority by trying to recapture all their lost cities. Under all these events you start your journey in Khorinis.

There are two paths that our hero can follow,

The path of the rebel: becoming one of them the hero will try to restore order by eliminating the orc garrisons.

The path of the orc: by becoming an orc mercenary you will assist the orcs in the assassination of King Rhobar and the demise of all the human rebels.

Gameplay

Unfortunately the gameplay hasn’t remained the way it was in Gothic 2. Now you can virtually do anything just by using the mouse. You can take any item you find on the floor, on tables, bookshelves or in chests, talk attack and cast spells just by using the mouse totally substituting the action key.

There is an FPS like part in the game which is the targeting mode with either the crossbow or the bow. A small triangle appears on the center of the screen showing where the arrow or quarrel is going to land. There you will face some challenges because even though you supposedly know where you are going to hit, you will actually hit quite far from where the target shows. It will require you lots of practicing before you are able to shoot down opponents before they get at a closer range.

The swordsmanship is quite horrible. It is monotonous and there are only two moves that you can do, a slow strong swing, which drains lots of stamina and a faster but less powerful move which gives no chance for the opponent for a counter strike. Unlike Gothic 2 the hero can’t do any combos and soon you will find that the fights are quite boring, in fact u can obliterate a whole city just by clicking the left mouse button, well at least until your stamina is drained. To make things even better opponents can run through walls, not every wall though just the ones you don’t want them to, and they do it surprisingly regularity. To those of you ready to judge the game please don’t be in a hurry they also get stuck at seemingly random places allot. For instance, just piss off a group of foes and then run to the other side of a bridge to see them all get glued together. The hero gets stuck as well just by stepping up on a small rock he moves his feet just a little, trying to climb the rock,instead of jumping over.

We all love shields and Gothic 3 has totally failed giving us that nice sensation. Parrying with the shield is horrible and the way the character holds it looks very fake and “unrealistic”. Even without the shield, when parrying the hero just stands still and holds his sword in a vertical position and the enemies’ attacks seems to be blocked more easily than it should be.

In Gothic 2 by pressing the parry button we could see the hero doing some moves and not just holding the sword still.

Furthermore the Level up has been under some changes. Each time you level up you earn some learning points which later you can spend on skills or attributes. Those attributes now are Strength, Hunting, Ancient Knowledge, Life Force, Endurance and Magic Power (mana). For each weapon type (one/two handed, bow/crossbow, staff) there are 3 skills (except the dual wielding sword technique) which allow our hero to cause more damage with each swing or each arrow (quarrel) fired.

What is not as realistic as it was in Gothic 2 is that everyone who can train you can actually train you for as long as you have learning points. For example: a Fire mage novice can teach you nearly all the ancient knowledge you need!!!

Experience, necessary for leveling up, is earned by killing beasts and enemies and by doing quests. Each quest when finished gives you an award of experience and sometimes gold. Additional experience and gold rewards can be earned (but now always) when talking back to the one that gave you the quest to inform about its completion.

The only thing that will really make your life hell is the liberation of towns or the extermination of rebel camps. Most towns have more than 30 orcs and they can easily surround you and kill you at will, despite the fact that there are slave who have picked arms and fight by your side, but they have no skill against the orcs and their mercenaries. The rebels at the camps just sit at their caves and wait the towns to get liberated by them-selves. Finally there are quests that can’t be completed because either the one who is supposed to give you a quest is dead or he just don’t wants to talk to you for an unknown reason of his own.

Each town has an arena in which our hero can gain not only experience but also fame amongst the orc occupants, allowing him enough standing to enter the upper quarters of the city, in which the orc leader of the city is located. To your information, after having liberated more than 3 cities from the orc rule, any contact with their leader in the upper quarter should be avoided, unless you want the whole garrison running against you. Undertake one of these larger scale missions, such as aiding the rebels and free a town, the rebels will afterwards take up residence here. This gives you the sense that your actions have actually an impact in the world. 

Sneaking is difficult to master but can be very effort saving. You can either silently kill or knock down and opponent and acquire a valuable item from his inventory or stealthily avoid your enemies and steal some items from their chests or bookshelves without waking them up. Stealth can’t be used at all times. Most times you will have to fight your way in or out (mostly out). There is also a bug that you activate when sneaking. Pressing the sneak button and then the forward movement button when facing an opponent or friend, will have the camera removed from the hero and focused on the enemy or friend you were looking before!! Any reset camera button will not work; simply save the game when you come up with this bug and load it. The camera will reset during the load.

Graphics

Graphics are nonetheless magnificent. The land of Myrtana will be your favorite for sure. Forests, mountains and plains are a paradise to the eyes. For sure none can complain about the background but the character design is another story. The armors are not as well designed as in the previous title. Some armor look weird on when you wear them and they lack the beauty they had before Gothic 3. Finally, if you equip a shield and a crossbow you will see the crossbow coming through the shield and armor giving a bad impression.

Sound

The ambient is quite relaxing and very nice when walking peacefully to your destination. This is ruined by the countless beasts and enemies you encounter on your way there. Each time someone or something attacks you the ambient stops and another soundtrack is being played which is not suitable for any battle situation.

At boss fights however and at important locations you can enjoy some great soundtracks that reminds (simply reminds) Lord of the Rings.

Each NPC that you can interact with has a voice. The bad thing is that nearly all of those NPCs have the same voices. There must be about 10 people who did all those voices for different characters which gets a bit annoying.

Generally

You can buy this if you just want to complete your collection, but we don't really recommend it, in a period with serious competition, Piranha Bites should have worked more on the gameplay part and offer the variety and “epicness” of Gothic 2. Finally, there are some (and by some we mean zillions) bugs at the game that will make your Gothic experience a living hell. A quick save key will save the game quickly without the annoying ESC button and save game sequence. However at some time this quick save button will betray you and take you to the beginning of the game without any skill at all and without any quest done so far.

Pros: We get to know what happened next to the "nameless" hero after G2, graphics, background

Cons: Poor AI, battling again hordes of enemies alone, sometimes you stuck at a simple rock, bad map navigation

Plot 7

Gameplay 5

Graphics 8

Sound: 5

Constitution: 6

General 4,5

Shall i buy it?

To be honest with you i can't take really any position here. Well G3 is the 3rd title of one of the best RPG series. Yet, unlike its predecessors, it complete failed to keep up with the Gothic motive and its characteristics which made it famous. I think you should buy it only if you really want to learn what happened next. For any other reason i wouldn't advice it.