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Hello I've started playing this PC Game recently and the main character is voiced by the same person who did Tsume in the English version of Wolf's Rain.

Thought I'd make this known to The Pack, since his voice sounds cool with the new dialog in the Game.

You started playing Gothic 3? I'm sorry. You poor man.

Actually no, Berserker, that's wrong. I shall provide illumination as to why I say that.

Gothic 3 had the makings of one of the best games ever made, it was its ambition that made it fall short. The story was well translated, the voice acting lead to some genuinely heartwarming and intentionally funny moments, but the ambition of the developers killed the game.

They wanted a game which had everything, and they almost succeeded, but the broken quests and the bugginess of the game itself made it next to unplayable, this is also true of another of the PC's greatest RPG moments: Bloodlines.

So what we have is an RPG with a beautiful World, and the best AI anyone will ever see in any game, ever, and NPC schedules that were so good they'd rival Ultima VII (and the previous two Gothic games). The NPCs in every Gothic game lived, they'd sleep, they'd eat, they'd attend social gatherings, they'd work, they'd chat... and it was stunning.

As a comparison...

Gothic 3: A pack of hungry Wolves see a plate-armoured player and a herd of deer, they run after the deer and leave the player to his own devices, they even decide that a scavenger or two (which are ostrich-like predators in the game) might be a better choice than a plate-mailed player.

Oblivion: A lone hungry Wolf sees a plate-armoured player and rushes suicidally at them, thinking they'll be easy prey.

And there's loads of that in Gothic that you won't find in Oblivion, NPCs who'll help you out or not depending on how much they like you, NPCs who react by running away or fighting by how strong they judge their opponent to be, and so on.

And Gothic 3 had grandly detailed quests as well, which for the human side started off with a rebellion and grand battles which lead to liberating enslaved humans from the Orc menace, this was the epic stuff that fantasy should be about.

So why did it fall flat?

The bugs, the killer bugs. I mentioned those before, but I'll elaborate.

The quests were often broken in so many ways and couldn't be completed, and the human AI was a bit broken too where if there was a group of humanoid AI, only one challenger would step forward to take on the player, moreover, humanoid enemies could be easily beaten with a certain sword move, using it over and over.

So the game was ridiculously easy, until that is one came to a quest which was broken, which would halt the player in their tracks.

So why do I call berserker on his opinion? Why do I champion Gothic 3 so?

The community made Gothic 3 Enhanced Edition patch.

This patch fixes nigh on everything, it fixes the humanoid AI issues flawlessly, and from what I've read aside from a couple of strange instances, it fixes every quest in the game completely. This was a daunting task to take on, especially considering that they even added content to the game to make it better, the patch weighs in at a whopping 880MeB~!

The community patch can also be run on an unpatched version of Gothic, as it contains the official patch, but it's smart enough to recognise when that's not needed.

Moreover, the game now has new graphics options, anyone who's seen Gothic 3 running knows it's a breathtakingly beautiful game, but the community have gone above and beyond the call of duty by providing an even more rich graphical experience, and new graphics settings to accompany that. On a high-end computer, Gothic 3 is awe-inspiring and it makes other recent RPGs look... well, frankly primitive.

So, what we have here is Gothic 3 refined to perfection, all the problems ironed out, a flawed gem carved and polished to perfection, shining brilliantly as a beacon to show just how good a PC RPG can be.

Anyone who plays the game without the community patch plays it at their own peril, the game is horribly broken by default and I wouldn't recommend it, but having played it with the community patch again recently, from start to end, I can honestly say that anyone who plays it this way is in for one of the most memorable PC RPG experiences ever.

So if you're going to play Gothic 3, please play it with the enhanced edition patch, it makes a World of difference, in fact, it makes the difference between Berserker's apparently tortured experience, and my gleeful romp through the game.

Hmm, it does tend to crash with the error that it's out of visual memory or something, perhaps that is one of the bugs symptoms.

I can't say much, I didn't get too far into G3 before I thought I should go back and finish 1 and 2 first (I heard they were better also)

I did notice G3 had a novel structure for it's world in the organization and effect of factions. Beyond that, the combat was about as enjoyable to pick up as getting mauled by a wolf. Wait...I'll get around to playing it, it didn't look too bad.

For some real gothic games though, I recommend Pathologic.

Hello guys. I used to own Gothic 3 for a while until money got short and a friend offered to buy it off of me. I still tend to borrow it often. In my opinion the game was great. And I had it before they started makeing the patch. It never crashed and I always thought the numerous hidden caves and tunnles were interesting . I really never had problems with it either. The game always ran smoth without errors practicaly all the time.
And there were only two things I did not like. The fact that you could never learn how to make poison and how ridiculosly strong some of the creatures were . Like the undead high priests in the south east temple in the desert. They were just way to strong!
But other than these two things I found it vary entertaining . One thing I do hope they change though is the number of minions/creatures you can brainwash/mind control. I mean you can't really have a pack of wolves with just one wolf now can you .

This one has turned out really good, I have driven the orcs and their turncoat mercenary scum out of every city, now occupied by the royalist rebels. Except farring where they are dug in with their king and the desert is fully under the control of the nomads allied to king Rhobar 2nd.