5 reasons why Gothic 3 was a fail

5 reasons why Gothic 3 was a fail

Here are my 5 reasons why Gothic 3 was a fail.

Recently, I have tried to replay Gothic 3 after installing the latest community patch, but the game is still unplayable, quality-wise.

Here are the points that demonstrate that Gothic 3 was a fail:

1. The graphics and the technical problems.

I’ve played Gothic 3 during the years, with 3 or 4 video cards, and even with these GPU upgrades, the game had the same issue with far landscape textures.


The water texture is missing, you get to see only a small portion of it.

The mountains and the hills are suffering from the same things, they get normal textures only when you get closer to them.

It feels like you play a broken game and it really hurts the game’s immersion.

Besides these, the game still gets stuck every few seconds, and has frame-rate drops every once in a while, even on a very powerful PC with 8 gigabytes of RAM.

2. Lack of story, main quests and motivation for the player.

An open world game is nice if the towns and all the places wouldn’t look artificial.

You can play the game for 40 hours just wandering around and doing side-quests.


And then you get a lack of motivation to continue, because you don’t know what exactly to do, why you do all these side-quests, and why you gain level and improve your character.

The main quest is very hidden and doesn’t feel important at all for the player.

3. The melee combat system.

It’s terrible.

It looks artificial, doesn’t have any sense of realism, challenge or logic.

You just keep clicking (attacking), and besides alternating left and right click, there is nothing to do.

In some cases, you die with the feeling that you didn’t do any mistake.

Even the combat system from Gothic 1 was better.

You knew that when you get better, learn to use the weapons / gain strength, you will perform excellent vs. weak enemies and feel really powerful.

This feeling is missing in Gothic 3.


Even if your character is high level, you will not feel powerful.

4. Weapons, armor and loot.

They are totally missing.

In Gothic 3 you get to loot all kind of useless weapons, rings and items.

There are tons of items like these.

I remember that when I played the game for the first time, during about 40 hours, I only got two or three weapons.

And at least the first 30 hours I played with that Flame sword that you get early in the game.


That’s not fun at all and it generates the feeling of lack of progression and character development.

Chest loots are terrible.

You know that you won’t get anything powerful except thrash loot that is only good to sell in order to generate gold.

5. The music and voice acting.

Some will say that the music was epic.

I say that it’s really annoying and is far away from the epic music from Gothic 1 and 2.


Not to say that it becomes very frustrating that the music changes every time you get into a fight.

The fighting music is beyond terrible.

The sounds of the orcs that are fighting is ruining any sense of realism and overall ruins the immersion.

The conclusion for 5 reasons why Gothic 3 was a fail

I think the game was unfinished, Piranha Bytes didn’t had time to finish the game, fix the bugs, balance it well.

Even the sound and the music was not finished.

5 COMMENTS

  • Zalazar says:23.01.2018

    You got it right on point. Chapeau.

    I was just now considering to play Gothic 3 again since I am through with Gothic 2 NOTR (for the 15th time or so). But just thinking of G3 subliminally conjures not only a lack of motivation but many negative emotions. For instance hatred. Just this one. -Oh and annoyance, insult and a certain vacuum that makes my head feel empty… I could go on.

    G2, especially for its time, was simply brilliant and somehow the developers have managed to ruin the art they once stood for.
    I love how you put into words that the towns in G3 appear artificial, like they were blatantly placed there by throwing darts onto a G3 world map rather than actually considering the terrain.

    Not only did they screw with the graphics, a lack of story, an absurdly terrible -if not to say painstakingly illogical- combat system. The developers also ruined any proper potential they presented for the first time;
    For example the transformation stones. Transformed as any of these animals you don’t stand a considerable chance against anyone. While a shadowbeast could normally eradicate several people simultaneously, you yourself may only fight one very light enemy, but not even your own transformation type, the shadowbeast. I even think each transformation stone applies the exact same amount of damage onto any enemy in the game. It’s completely ridiculous.

    The truly powerful magic spells can’t be acquired until the end of the game. Are you ******** kidding me?

    The music did not even nearly feel like Gothic. It had nothing to do with it. The soundtrack consists random de- and ascending melodies with no emotional or atmospheric content at all. Especially not a gothic-like feeling. Instead it was pompous and characterless. It could just as well have been the music of a Pokemon game.

    And why in Innos fu**ing name would enemies be enabled to interrupt ANY INNOS-DARN-ATTACK OR PARADE THE PLAYER ATTEMPTS?! (Guuhsfraba. I am the pendulum pointing to the center. Guuhsfraba.)

    Gothic 3 could have become everything. Could have. And that is truly sad. G3 lost the path that G1 and G2 went. The Plot is questionable at best, the new inventions were by no means thought through. Others were bitterly missing which could have made the game somewhat time-worthy after the main story finishes.

    The add-on… well, let’s just say I can’t afford to get into trouble with the police over penile-relating insults towards G3 developers.

  • Zalazar says:23.01.2018

    This is also true to be honest. Which is probably why it’s pissing me off. Scheißdreck.

    “And that’s why Gothic 3 is one of the most brilliantly evil creations to ever be released to the games buying public. Well, in a while anyway. There is no other comparable experience in the world to playing Gothic 3, because while you absolutely hate its awful, rushed state and you immediately want to demand your money back, you just can’t. The game is somehow too much fun and the world is too massive to leave unexplored. The story, while predictable and unimaginative, is enough to carry the limping gameplay and graphics. It almost seems impossible, but the game, despite being bad on so many levels, gives you an odd sense of excitement, as you push further and further into the world of Gothic 3.”

    https://www.videogamer.com/reviews/gothic-3-review

  • admin says:23.01.2018

    Fully agree Zalazar. When I want to play something from PB, I just run Risen 1, one of the 3 games that I have never deleted from my PC. I’ve finished that one 3 times, still there is stuff to do.

    I’ve played Elex recently but it’s not even close to g1, 2, Risen 1 and 2. It’s just bad. The biggest part that is missing is the music made by Kai Rosenkranz which actually composed the music for g3. And the old style and atmosphere is missing.

  • Zalazar says:26.01.2018

    Exactly.

    Risen was really a good game. It did not quite make it to Gothic although it was nearly there. But it was at a proper PB-Game and -also I- am still playing it these days, which can only be said of G1, G2, Diablo 2, Fable, FF X…
    I only wish there was ANY WAY AT ALL to implement mana regeneration; the way it was done through the new balance patch for Night Of The Raven for example. -Great enough to get away from that potion-annoyance, yet too slow to give too great of an advantage. Especially considered that not no npc in Gothic (or Risen) ever seems to extinguish their mana when attacking you with magic.

    As you said, it has always been these games and game publishers seem to have fallen for the trap of capitalism as everything else these days. I loved Diablo 2… I felt insulted for that wow-crap, falsely labeled as “Diablo 3”. The Diablo franchise is different from Gothic, although Diablo also shares some gothic-style elements -sound wise, as well as graphic related, making it is a similar tragedy like the one starting with G3.

    It is curious to see how the change of society (which is indisputably awful on the big picture) has also affected game development.
    We are moving on into a world lacking any intensity, tactile or imaginary. Gaming is seen less of a geek stereotype, now that it is becoming superficial, empty and violent at best.
    I hope game publishers like “thatgamecompany” will continue to lead on a better future with more games like the sheer beauty named “Journey”.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymqBCNMlI80

    Of course there is still that big mother fu***r, like Witcher 3, which I would love to play. But I don’t even dare to, out of fear I wont make it through med school.

  • admin says:27.01.2018

    Witcher 3 is on gothic level. Probably one of the best games I ever played but at some point it was getting so long that it was insane.
    My advice is to stay away from it until you can spare 1-2 months of free time.

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