Did you play the Gothic games?
Yeah definitely. A friend gave it to me on steam a while back knowing it was my fav game, or I would`ve prolly bought them already at some point. :D
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Never got around to finishing the first due to an HD failiure the other year, but yeah, it was pretty great (after some community patches. Of course, I came to Gothic from finishing (and enjoying) the first Risen game, so much of what was there already appeared.
Edit: dammit... now i need to re-d/l from gog and figure out the community patching again! -__-
:D
Edit2: thats actually a pretty good video for those that havent played. Pretty much spoiler free, but gives you some solid idea of how open the game is, and doesnt gloss over the flaws *which for me was the godawful controls more than anything - though pinnacle did good job of making it work with a pad I remember!).
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The community patch is entirely straightforward as I remember. There are however other "patches" that are a bit more complicated to get running but they are entirely worth it imho. If you are interested you should check them out. The links below are a good place to start although some of the information was outdated when I last did the patching.
Gothic - DirectX 11 and HD Graphics
Gothic 2 - DirectX11, HD Textures and Tessellation
The improvements for Gothic both regarding graphics quality and actual performance are particularly impressive.
Edit: The control scheme is not really that bad once you get used to it though. It should be said that I also pretty much hated it at first. It's been a while since I set it so my memory is a bit hazy but I think I'm using the alternate controls with some of the keys remapped
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Thanks for the comments and links. Didn`t wanna post too much. Yeah I never really had a problem with the controls, it really came fairly naturally to me. A bit weird the first few minutes but you get the hang of it. :)
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Didnt end up patching it at all - GOG version seems pretty stable (and may already have some of those fixes). Sdly now I'm about the point I was at in chapter 3 before and losing the will to play. Time for a break!
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I suspect it's more stable than with the graphics mods installed since they are primarily implemented to enhance the graphics but I never had any trouble running with the graphics enhancements either.
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Played Gothic 1 like 3 times and I had to restart each time after ~ half an hour because I forgot to save :D
(Though the video does an excellent job at promoting the game)
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Haha, well one way of playing that game is doing everything you can before choosing a camp and saving so you can go back and replay (that means no skillpoint usage either :P), but I dont think I ever really did that.
And with Gothic 3 there is a way of getting an exp boost skill or something at the very start of the game if you run all the way into Varant to some guy that can teach you the skill. There is a guide for it regarding the way of the water mage, but I remember just doing it for the initial exp. Was funny running so much 5 mins into the game hahaha.
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pretty good deal, bought the Arcania + Gothic Pack on Steam last summer sale for 10 bucks though.
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This is one of the few occasions I actually feel like something is too cheap. If I didn't already own them all I would definitely buy
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Yeah, it is pretty amazing that a game made in 2001 had so many things that a lot of games made today dont have. Truly a shame it wasn't more popular. To my knowledge it was mostly popular in Germany/Poland/Russia
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Most of the modding community seems to be German at least
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oh its week long deal also on steam...
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/6375/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/12075/
never bundle before?...
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Steam has a similar deal, that also includes 2 ArcaniA games: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/12075/ (it's 10 EUR in my region)
WEEK LONG DEAL! Offer ends 28 August
So if you prefer to have the games on Steam, or if you prefer to also have ArcaniA, or if the GOG deal already expired by the time you see this thread (and the Steam deal is still running), you can pick up the package on Steam.
Edit: meh, beaten by 3 minutes ... nvm, I shall leave this post here anyway :P
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You took the time to comment, and I didnt know about the steam deal, so thank you also.
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Gothic is such an amazing Series...but even though there are now a lot of mods that make it a really good game, I'm still pretty sad about the release fiasco of Gothic 3 thanks to JoWooD....when playing it back then it wasn't bad after release...no the opposite...is was really fun but on every turn you could see the game was unfinished and it was such a pity to see what the game could have been ;(
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Yeah, the biggest thing about that game for me is the soundtrack, also vast spaces to explore which still had the familiar gothic feel albeit slightly different. Also once you start killing 1000 orcs to liberate a town, running to the forest with 20 elite orcs chasing you, while you are low leveled and actually killing them after 2 hours of hit and run tactics, roof climbing and physics abusing haha
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Gothic series from my childhood. Too bad only after Gothic 2 Night Of The Raven. Gothic 3 + Forseaken Gods + Arcania + Setariff's Fall are abominations.
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I found Gothic 3 (with community patch) to be quite alright, sure it wasnt as good as the first two, but it had the interesting aspect of liberating towns, a lot to explore and run around, and Ive already mentioned the awesome music. :)
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Ohh and even though it wasnt really up to Gothic standards, I found Risen 1 to be a lot of fun. Then I tried Risen 2 and didnt finish it cause the combat was too weird and whatnot but after playing Risen 3 which was also pretty great - I loved the exploration aspect plus flying around as a freakin parrot to discover shit was awesome haha. After that I played RIsen 2, didnt finish it but I came almost to the end of the game and found it wasnt as bad as I remembered it.
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Risen is not bad at all. Allthough i still need finish it. xD Since for Elex idk why, but don't have much hopes.
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Is that the bar where you gotta fight that guy? I remember something like that haha. :D
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Be aware that the GOG version of Arcania does NOT have german audio so better buy the Steam version instead. ;)
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An interesting video about cancelled Gothic I addon
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I'm not a graphics whore, it's just that the first game has horrible compatibility issues(on GOG, 1 doesn't work for windows 7 and beyond, 2 has similar issues but runs a lot better). I played through 1 for a few hours suffering through constantly gave up on it, albeit 2 ran a lot better than 1, but I didn't finish 2 due to a very specific issue.
They're not very good games in hindsight. Sure, for their time I'm sure they were great, but starting out in 1 is more of a fetch quest and very very boring Not to mention that in both 1 and 2 the combat isn't easy and the difficulty isn't very balanced. This isn't even talking about the issue 2 has with the expansion on GOG where if you buy the version with the expansion, it can't be turned off and it makes the game harder than it already is. Sadly, the review that pointed this out to me came too late and I had bought the games years ago in blind ignorance, taking everyone's praise for the games as objective fact. They're just very painful and annoying games to get into, just the same Morrowind(although Morrowind is still one of the hardest and most uncomfortable games that I've tried).
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In fact, just to clarify, 1 wasn't as hard as 2 but it took a long time to even get to a point where virtually all enemies didn't just kill me instantly. The first few hours were just straight up constant grinding and fetch questing(or the closest it comes to in that game), which, in case it has to be pointed out, isn't fun.
The game gets a negative on my side because of compatibility issues. If you don't believe me, just go look it up on the forums yourself. I also never got any responses back when I contacted support or posted on the forums. ALSO, the store page doesn't list anything higher than vista as compatible. So, no, I'm not bashing this game for no reason. If I did that, I'd have to deal with yet another horde of rage-induced fans.
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Also, something I forgot to add : If you do ever decide to try the series, start at 2 as it has the best compatibility results, XP up to 10, while 1 only has XP and Vista.
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Dont know what your issue was, but since people play it to this day it should work on modern OS.
People today also play them with graphics patches and the like, maybe one of those fixes the issue you had (whatever it was)
Which forums are you talking about?
Not everything kills you instantly, but the whole point is you start weak, and if you run into something you cant defeat, you better start running away if you wanna live, at least till you get stronger. It doest scale to your level.
In any case, they most certainly are good games, but people usually either love em or hate them for one reason or the other and they had something a lot of the games today dont have, a living breathing reacting world. Check the video I listed if you wanna know the exact examples.
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The issues wasn't a graphics issue, it was a straight up compatibility issue with the OS(i'm not an expert, that's why I said to look it all up because other people stated it a lot better than I did back when I played it. Besides, the GOG page itself says what the compatibility is for the game and if you know what GOG is then you'd know it's accurate.
Everything does kill you instantly when starting out because you have virtually no health and armour, and without a weapon you're basically unable to fight. The original path for 1 is go to camp, do a 'tutorial' fetching inside of the camp, then go outside and hope you make it to the other camp(the blue-shirts, so to speak, and IIRC you deliver a package or something, there's also a similar part with the swamp faction), which has wolves on its path(and are pretty tough without a weapon or armour).
No, I checked the video and I know all about what made the game good(I played it quite a bit, as well as 2) but it has severe nostalgia problems. As I said, 1 isn't as hard as 2 but it certainly doesn't start out fun and it takes a while for you to get to a point where you aren't baby-stepping around every single encounter. At some point, I DID need to grind because I was finishing all of the quests quickly enough that I was under-leveled. Not to mention that the human fights are just simply difficult. Once you get a strong weapon and armour(both of which either require you to dedicate yourself to a faction, or have a lot of gold(weapons)).
1 isn't even the issue really, because 2 got even worse with fetch-questing and avoiding certain parts of the game. In 2, when you get to the town, there's a fight over by an inn/tavern that, in my experience from it triggering when you get too close, is unavoidable without going around it. That fight had me getting, what, 2-hit killed if I'm lucky? Even when I started to get some good armour and weapons, I still wasn't really able to do the fight. 2 basically had me running around for a good 10+ hours looking for even the smallest sources of gold and xp.
The games are fun if you get to the fun parts, but they're not easy and they don't start out fun. I played Risen and I feel like that game did it a lot better, albeit I can only run the first game barely.
Also, er, obviously the GOG forums. That's the version I was talking about.
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Haha yeah that fight is a bitch. I dont remember having insane problems with the difficulty or anything of the sort, but maybe I played it a bit differently, I like to usually do side quests before I try do go on with the main mission in games.
Yeah in the first game you go from camp to camp first, staying out of the forests for a while.
Risen 1 was pretty great as well, Risen 3 I still though was fun, RIsen 2 I didnt like when I played it the first time cause of the combat but when I played it later I found it quite alright.
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The problem with the Gpthic Series is that is pretty much caters only to the type of person who talks to everyone, listens to everything the npcs say (which often hints to different ways of solving a quest than just headbashing into it) and does every quest he sees.
If you play it that way you are rewarded with one of the best experiences and the game actually never really gets "hard" (because you don't even try to kill the Troll at the beginning of the game.
On the other hand if you are the kind of person who doesn't care about each and every quest and "unimportant sidecharacter #57" and just want to play the mainstory these games really can be tough and a pain....
My cousin never could get into the Gothic games, but he loved Morrowind + Oblivion where you can ignore all but the MainQuest and all enemies scale with your character so you never really run into any troubles if you progress too fast.
Though from my point of view it's a shame how he plays them, because he pretty much misses on everything the world has to offer...Can't recall how long Morrowind took him, but with Oblivion he was done in a couple hours and a lvl 3 or 4 character...while at that point I was probably still doing quests in the first or second town^^
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Enemies most definitely don't scale in Morrowind, it's one of the strong points of the game. Enemy scaling was the biggest disappointment for me in Oblivion
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Guess my answer was too short there with mentioning the two games without separating them...while Morrowind didn't have scaling (scaling actually was one of the selling points bethesda made for Oblivion back then) it still was way way easier to just do the mainquest and ignore the rest of the world without having too much trouble and finishing the game quickly.
And trying this in the Gothic series is pretty much impossible on your first playthough when you don't know the world.
If you do only MainQs in the Gothic games the game will be hard/impossible.
If you do every quest/explore everything in the Gothic Series the game will be normal/easy.
If you do only MainQs in Morrowind - Skyrim the game will probably be challenging but still not too hard.
If you do every quest/explore everything in these games the game is more or less just a cakewalk from start to finish.
That's what I wanted to say :)
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on gog, the current version works on both win 10 and 7 (tested over the weekend) out of the box. secondly, gog does refunds if it dont work.
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I'm talking about the GOG version, and outside of fan-made patches. On the GOG store page for Gothic 1, XP and Vista are the only listed compatible OS.
Refunds is iffy. I'm not going to refund it because at the very least, I own the game. Consider part of my collection.
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as i stated already: "on gog, the current version works on both win 10 and 7 (tested over the weekend) out of the box." - OUT OF THE BOX
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I don't understand, why would you say "out of the box"? The GOG version is digital, not physical. Can you get physical copies from GOG? Would it presumably help me play the game?
EDIT: I looked it up and can't find out what "out of the box" is. Never heard of that, so I'm surprised.
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Out of the box simply means it works without modifications directly from GOG. I was actually about to make a joke about not getting any boxes with my GOG purchases yesterday but I decided against it in the end
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Sorry to continue this discussion, then, but how do you get "out of the box" GOG games? I really don't understand this concept. Google search just brings up results about what games are out of the box or asking question about certain out of the box games, nothing about what it actually is.
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No problem
An out-of-the-box feature or functionality (also called OOTB or off the shelf), particularly in software, is a feature or functionality of a product that works immediately after installation without any configuration or modification.[1][2] It also means that it is available for all users by default, and are not required to pay additionally to use those features, or needs to be configured
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yeah, its a metaphor. some games PHYSICALLY work "out of the box". in the case of games from gog, it means "as downloaded" - a digital box if you will.
had poor net today, so hence lack of reply from me.
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It is a QA term , it means it should work without any necessary modifications from the customers , simple as that !
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Gothic was one of my first RPGs I've played.
The choice of RPGs wasn't too big back then (besides Baldur's Gate, Ultima IX, Diablo 2, and Morrowind which I've also played naturally),
so I've replayed Gothic (later Gothic II&Exp) multiple times.
Gothic III was great (content-wise) but had its starting problems. Thanks to all them community patches/fixes, I can call it a perfect successor. Even though the disppointment on release.
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Yeah for me it is a bit under perfect successor, but awesome nonetheless (with the fixes) and as I prolly mentioned already, my favorite gaming soundtrack ever (for movies it would prolly have to be Conan, cause that shit is classic)
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and since I mentioned Conan, here is something hilarious Conan the Musical - Arnold
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Played Gothic 1 on a Pentium 3 800 MHz computer with a graphiccard, that slowed down the game to a frame after a few hours computertime...
Gothic was nice, but I REALLY hate those no reg things(health/mana) and the economy was BS(cheated due duping). I try to remember where the sleeper was located, but I don't know it anymore. Where was he located in the bubble?(I played it through and defeated him, just can't remember this location cave after several years or even decade?)
Gothic 2 was afair played on the same computer. :D Was really nice and not so stupid economy-wise(but still this awful no reg system). The paladin armor was the only thing broken displayed by my graphic card. xD
Else very nice game(especially loved the expansion with Thorus returning)!
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Been quite a while since I played it, but chugging pots is stupid in general. (apart from buff pots pre-fight if you take Witcher for example...)
Gothic 2 was awesome. Yeah sleeper was in a temple through the orc lands or something like that, I forgot the exact location too.
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The pots in witcher though always irked me...they lasted like 5seconds (only could stand witcher 2 with a mod that extended potionduration - and even then i hated it) and there were potions vs pretty much any enemykind but unless you exactly knew which enemytype was coming they'd be a waste to use (too short duration) and (if i remember correctly from witcher 2) infight they were not usable.
Also f*** that animation for the menu to drink...felt like half the game you spent in those damn animations...cool looking stuff is nice and all but I'll never understand why I'd want menus I'll use a lot with a long unskippable animation.
It's the same plague like unskippable intro logo movies when starting a game (for fks sake i know that you guys made the game, can you now please just let me play it?^^)
And not to forget unskippable anti-piracy ads on bought blurays/dvd...which moron though "Hey lets hassle our customers who PAY for our product with some shit about piracy"...seriously?
/rant end :D
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Yep, to all of it. I also played witcher with mods, I think some of them extended the pots duration (or maybe I remember wrong). In any case I was talking about the idea of buffing pots, not the actual application in said game. (although one doesnt make sense without the other)
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Oh yeah sure buffing pots and the strategic element it does bring on when to use them is pretty nice.
I just hated how "consoley-userunfriendly" the whole game felt.
Sure with a gamepad you have to design menus way more nested/convoluted,but with keyboard/mouse I want things to happen instantly and be faster to access.
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Yep, I feel like consoles stand in the way of pc game development. Although, since I dont have a super powerful PC, thats not always so bad... When talking about graphics and stuff ofc, but when it comes to the UI it sucks.
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Yeah even though my "middleclass"-pcs nearly always was good enough to play games in high-ultra settings it really confuses me how graphics can be an issue/gamebreakerl for so many people...while super graphics in a game are pretty amazing to look at when starting the game and every now and then still get an eyecatcher while playing for hours...they really get secondary/unimportant really fast and don't make a game better if it lacks everything else.
Even the Crysis games had to offer something additional with their nanosuits and the strategy this added to make those games good besides their graphic
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Np mate, thats kindof why I made this thread. (apart from my love of sharing great music, and it being one of my favorite if not the favorite game franchise)
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Key: R6Z02-PBLRC-QI4P6 | Status: Fail/DuplicateActivationCode | Items: [91065, Zonitron Productions Ten Games Pack]
Ninjad
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Thanks for the info, I already own all the games on GOG and Steam :D !
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https://www.gog.com/promo/20170821_special_sale_gothic_series - 21hrs left
EDIT: It's also on steam :D
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/6375/
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/12075/ - I cant really recommend Arcania since it's really not a proper Gothic game and wasnt made by Piranha Bytes.
Also lets hope ELEX turns out great. :)
If you havent played them, please do. Gothic 1 is awesome, there are graphics mods to upgrade the graphics a bit, the controls are a bit weird when you start playing but you get used to them pretty quickly. Gothic 2+expansion is the best of the 3. (lets not talk about ArcaniA since it wasnt even made by the same team and is a template of how NOT to make a gothic game) Gothic 3 with community patches is great and has my favorite soundtrack ever recorded, also completely connected world with no loading screens...
To this day my favorite games of all time.
A cool video talking about why Gothic 1 is one of the best games ever made, which you prolly missed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSc-WRl-0pM
Also, do yourself a favor and listen to this amazing soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgrgPqGoKk4
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