The Gothic series

[Husar]

Wow, I liked 1 and 2 best and I think the combat system in 3 is worst, it was reduced to mere button-smashing that can go on for hours because even wolves can block and retreat etc.
One and two have some bugs, yes but overall I found them a great gaming experience and I played through both of them numerous times, joining different parties etc. If you get the addin for two that makes it quite a lot harder(bit more grinding to become strong enough) but it also adds a whole new island location and a lot of fun, new quests, new characters etc. One thing I also liked a lot was that you get to see and talk to/deal with a lot of old "friends" from Gothic 1 so it pays off to have played that first. I don't remember either crashing a whole lot, at least not with all patches applied.

I have to say I also still like the graphics of Gothic 2 and I got it to run in Vista(IIRC even in XP using compatibility mode can pay off) as well, the combat can be a bit tricky but it requires skill and stats to be successful, which also depends on the enemy. Even a level 1 char can beat a troll if you know how but some other enemies will eat you alive anyway until you level up a bit.

In Gothic 3 you get an even bigger seamless world (one and two really reload only at very few places, like when you enter a big mine or so), better graphics but a lot of other things are worse, without patches it's really buggy and with them not all things have been fixed(there are "community" patches I haven't tried yet, not sure what exactly they fix, read about performance, crashes and some story/quest related things). The combat system I actually find worse, it's been pretty much dumbed down to the point where you just keep pressing some attack button hoping to get some random hits on enemies and I hear once you get mana regeneration you can fry hundreds of enemies with fireball-machinegun-casting if you're playing a mage.

If you can, try to start with one, if you like that, you should like two as well and it may pay off to install the addin later and play through two again because I found it made things a whole lot harder, very challenging but still fun.

Hope that helps, for the low price I would give at least the first two a try.

[frogbeastegg]

Thanks, all. Gothic II gold and Gothic 3 are both available on GamersGate for a shade under £12 each; they caught my eye as I was downloading the new EUIII expansion. That seems like an excellent deal, and reminded me that these titles have been on my "I'll look at them later ..." list for years.

Gothic I doesn't seem to be available anywhere nowadays, so Gothic II gold is the first one I can get. From the comments here that may be the best choice, so I have it downloading now. 637kb/s, wow! Gamersgate wasn't that fast when I downloaded paradox's own games. Either they allocate you to a better server wehn you download big files, or someone on high says froggy should play Gothic II right now.

The thing which worries me about Gothic II gold is the difficulty level. The unanimous verdict is that the expansion made an already tough game harder, to the point where it seems most new players struggle very badly. It doesn't look like there is an option to install the base game and then add the expansion later.

Any advice for a newbie frog? Since I don't have the option of gaining understanding and experience with the game before heading back to the start with the expansion installed.

[Husar]

Well, weasier to give advice with a particular problem but one thing that is good to know about combat is that there are strafing keys, and one should use them, when you focus on an opponent and strafe to the left then you walk to the left but keep facing him so you can run around him, that is useful against some enemies and less so against others. In the addin you also have to specializein chapter 3 a new type of enemy shows up and at first you may want to try to avoid them, they have 130 armour against melee and ranged weapons and doing more damage than that by that time can be a bit hard (weapon damage = damage of weapon+strength for melee and weapon damage + dexterity for ranged) I don't want to give away too much but the first of them you have to fight and it often took me a lot of attempts, a bit later they do become beatable though almost to the point of being no problem at all. You have to know that in this game you're not supposed to kill everything you come across all the time, sometimes you just have to run but I do not want to spoil anything yet.

[Fragony]

Haven't played the third but the first two are fantastic. Are they worth it?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

YES

[frogbeastegg]

I played for a whole 10 minutes before I had to put the game down for something else. Not long enough to form any opinions.

There's definitely no way to play this version of Gothic II gold without the expansion. I'm stuck with the ultra hard difficult and altered skill prices and levelling whether I like it or not.

With that in mind, is it better to invest in combat skills before the non-combat ones? Or should I look at some of the non-combat resource gaining skills to make some early gold with the aim of better equipment? Or a balanced approach? Out of the 4 weapons types, are there any which are particularly good or bad to invest in? From everything I've seen my early levels are going to be very hard to get, and all skills cost more to improve, so choosing poorly could make the game impossible.

What's with that god statue in the starting tower? Most of the dialogue options say it will lose you health, and the option to merely pray gets you hurt.

I've enabled quick save/load and potion hotkeys via an .ini edit I saw on some forums. Anything else like this I should know about?

[Husar]

Heh, I'd try to invest in one combat skill only at first, I think one handers are good for a start, the other skills you can get later. You have to find a balance between strength and the actual weapon skill, neither is really good without the other, strength + weapon damage is what you do when you get a full hit, the possibility of which is determined by the weapon skill. Other hits will do IIRC 10% of that or so with an overall minimum of 5.

The statue at the start is probably a Beliar statue, I wouldn't bother with statues early in the game, they can give a few boni and the Beliar statue can be used later in the game but nothing to worry about yet.

Never saw those hotkey edits for some reason, no idea what else you could do.

[Sjakihata]

I recommend starting off with number 1. This is for two reasons mainly:

1) The story line is easier followed if you play thorough the first game, a lot of hints and dialogue is pointing back to number 1.
2) If you intend to play them all, you really should start with the first, since when you begin on the second you'll be surprised in a good way, since it is very stable, awesome graphics (compared to 1) and generally feels a lot better. If you had started #2 and went back to #1 Im not sure you'd be bothered to complete it.

i have completed #3 since my PC cant handle it, just played a bit - but generally it felt good so you got a lot of playing hours ahead of you.

Just found a few older threads about Gothic II and III

Gothic II Gothic III