"A step in the right direction"

Gothic 3 sets you in the shoes of a nameless hero and picks up right after the events of Gothic II. You land in the Kingdom of Myrtana with your rag tag group of heroes you assembled in the second Gothic, only to find your kingdom has fallen to the orcs. Now it is up to the nameless hero to find new allies, choose alliances with the rebels or the orcs--or even his own mysterious path--and help change the situation in Myrtana while hunting down the evil Beliar.

The Gothic series is kind of unknown in the mainstream RPG market--I found Gothic II while deployed overseas and taking a chance on a game in our PX that I thought kind of looked like Morrowind. I'm glad I did because I spent a lot of time with Gothic II despite its flaws.

Some touted Gothic 3 as the game that would challenge the Elder Scrolls for the RPG throne and unfortunately that didn't quite work out. Let's look at the specifics while I try to make minimal comparisons to Oblivion.

Graphics 8/10

Gothic looks pretty good overall. The world itself is engrossing and feels more alive than Oblivion--which I only mention as a frame of reference. The forests look nearly as good, but you have animals that behave like animals in this game. My hero was wandering through some grassy prairies when suddenly a pack of wolves loped across the horizon, howling as they went. I followed them and saw a pack of deer disperse at sight of the wolves. They all looked great too. The cities are big, the mountains look intimidating in the distance, and the forests are thick with vegetation.

Unfortunately the water looks terrible (and hey, I understand we have to have an invisible wall out there in the ocean, but what happened to Gothic II's creative "death by sea monster" cinema?), the people of Myrtana are just bland, and some of the creatures could use a bit of work--for example, the Lurkers from Gothic II were much better looking than their graphical updates. Also you will experience huge load times and horrible lags. I have 2 gigs of ram, a Pent 4 3.0, and a Geforce 6800 yet still have a hard time running this game.

Story 8/10

The background I wrote above. The main chunk of the story is performing quests in various cities and those quests typically send you to the wild to retrieve, hunt down, or do some small favor. The quests aren't very long and once you figure out what to do it's just a matter of quickly getting it done. There are an abdundance of these though and they keep you busy if you're tired of just exploring the countryside.

Basically you eventually pick sides with which faction you want to join and work to find the evil mage Xardas who betrayed you in Gothic II. The story isn't inspired, but it's fun and certainly as good as any other recent free roaming RPGs.

The game is rated T which is a disappointment from the darker M rated Gothic II. Tone wise the game isn't so dark, though it has its moments. The land in Gothic II was scary. If you explored a cave you'd often find pools of blood and dead people strung about. This happens much less often in a land where it should be more common under Orc control. I expected piles of the dead, plagues, horrible things that would make me feel the fight was hopeless, but unfortunely that sense never grows on you.

Gameplay 6/10

This is a hard one to rate. Some things in Gothic 3 are amazing. How the quests work, the leveling system is very deep and rewarding if you like to take the time to build your character, but there are some things this company seriously has needed to fix for some time now and they just can't seem to get it right. Yeah you get on rocks while fighting and quickly die, yeah it's hard to play in first person even with reduced mouse sensitivity because the screen is so jerky, and clipping issues are pretty horrible all around. Tighter controls, better combat--which I'll cover in more detail shortly, and a better interface for using items is mandatory for this game. Some of it might be design choices but a lot of this stuff just seems sloppy on the parts of the developers.

Combat...a two edged sword. Easier than Gothic II but so much less fun. Where is the difficulty? Early in the game I ran into the Bandits hideout expecting a quick death like in Gothic II but hoping to find some treasure first, and the next thing I know I worked my way through a good 15 bandits all at once--including their infamous leader. Most of the villains just stand there (usually, not always) while you fight one guy. In Gothic II they would have killed you fast. Let alone if you somehow survived you might walk two steps ahead and then BAM! Shadow Beast out of nowhere finishes you off. This kind of difficulty is gone from the series in place of a strange combat system that doesn't make sense, isn't necessarily a lot easier, and much less fun. Reloads take a good 30-40 seconds too so when you die a lot (which still can happen) it is frustrating.

Audio 9/10

Great music. Decent voices as usual. The world of Gothic has an audio style and this doesn't fail.

Playtime/Replayability 10/10

You can definitely play this over and over. Play against the rebels, play for the rebels, or just say "who needs ya" and ignore the piddly factions. The game's shortcoming are not enough to stop you from replaying.

Rent or Buy? Rent. Just kidding. Can you even rent PC games? Definitely worth buying if you like RPGs. Will be much different than anything you've tried before if you're new to the Gothic series but it is definitely worth it. The problems with loads and lag probably won't be fixed--it seems like these are issues the games always have, you'll just have to live with it unfortunately.

This is a great game that deserves your attention if you want some adventure in a grim and dark fantasy land.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/18/06