So I finally installed this, and was mucking around with it last night.
In a twisted way I like how sadistic the opening is. You are dropped into the middle of an orc battle and repeatedly beaten down. Run outside and get beaten down by scavengers! The game feels as brutal and unapologetic as an early Ultima, and in a way I found it strangely refreshing. Where do I go? Who knows! Run that way, oh look there’s a house, go talk to the guy there…
Crazy swooshy cam, what is the deal with this? The problem of 3rd person camera/mouselook has been solved. It was solved by the time Heretic 2 came out. Why is there this weird system here? Does the patch improve it at all? Weirdly, inverting the mouse X axis seems to have no effect on this control. It’s almost a deal breaker but I think I will force myself to become accustomed to it if I need to.
You are insane, Spect. I’m not joking or telling you what you want to hear either. Gothic 2 might be the best RPG I’ve ever played. It’s better than any of the Elder Scroll series, IMO, because the actions you take matter. You are missing out on a fantastic RPG, and you cannot call yourself an RPG fan until you play Gothic 2.
Gothic 3 is buggy and has broken combat. I loved it, but I like the world. Gothic 2 is brilliant and highly recommended.
Fanboy alert on aisle 2. Gothic 2 also has one of the most frustrating power curves I’ve ever run in to. In G2, you pretty much can be beaten down right off the bat by anything. If you do happen to persevere, and get your character built up, you then hit a power wall where the new monsters can totally romp on you…but since you’ve killed all the newbie(?) monsters, there’s nothing you can grind on to built up to the new monster level.
Great elements of design of G2, terrible power scaling. Killed it for me dead for me.\
Somewhere, there has to be a happy balance between G2’s sheer-cliff progression and Oblivion’s handholding “everything levels up right along with you” progression.
well, the idea is that you don’t go fight the hard monsters until you’ve worked your way up on the easier ones. I absolutely loved that the mobs dont scale.
That’s not the problem. It’s like monster progression goes like:
First tier: lvl 0-1 trash mobs. (Although still plenty to whoop ass on a new PC).
Second tier: lvl 15 not trash mobs.
Third tier: god knows
There’s nothing in between. Your PCs run of out bees and critters and whatnot right around the starting city, but your PCs are still nowhere ready to venture out in the wild world to face the second tier mobs. A bee/wolf-slaying master is no match for their first orc.
I actually felt that after the third act or so, things start to even up and later you can tackle pretty much every thing. The nice thing is that still you can never get careless with how mighty you are. Didn’t time your defense and attacks - you die. Take on many foes at ones - the same. It all felt much better then other RPGs I played.
Oblivion on the other hand - I dunno, maybe it was my crappy build but I felt like hitting a wall all the time. It also has a dead world. I hated it.
I really didn’t have that much trouble with the game. I walked from the tower to the city, doing quests along the way and then when it was orc time, I died a few times, but I learned the combat system and out-fought anything I had a problem with
I did pretty decently against my first orc, but only through sheer sneakiness and determination. It’s basically a run, slash, run, slash, jump somewhere he can’t hit you etc etc fest until the thing is finally dead. But I do wholeheartedly agree with you – you go from shit you can kill easily to shit that can practically 1 shot you with nothing in between. You basically have to find every single trash mob in existence and kill it before you even approach an orc. I know I spent the majority of the beginning of the game doing just that.
I’d probably put Gothic 2 in my top 10 alltime CRPG list. I loved Oblivion too, though.
I don’t recall the initial power curve being too awful. The mid-low part, when I was first forced to confront orcs, was harder. But it was also kind of cool that an orc is a really scary thing. Edit: Oh, I guess that matches Scharmers’ description.
I agree with Scharmers that happy mediums exist, but I didn’t find Gothic 2’s difficulty to be a deal breaker or even that excessive. This was a few years ago, though. Maybe I have been softened by WoW in the intervening years.
Interestingly, there is a dark side to Oblivion’s hand holding rubberband approach. On more than one character I’ve hit a nasty wall once I get into the mid levels. (This was playing it unpatched with the standard aka “broken” leveling system.) On my first toon, I remember running in sheer terror on more than one occasion from a will ‘o’ wisp, for example…
Everyone said Gothic was too hard, and I agree that the combat is really tough at the beginning of the game. And yeah, the first orc is tough. But you adjust your tactics and you get better at taking them on. They key is to specialize. Get good at something and adjust your fighting style to that. I never really had major problems with the difficulty, as many have.
BTW, I love Oblivion. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. I just think Gothic 2 is better.
So this is like going from killing Kobolds to getting fucked by Mindflayers who just so happens were dominating the entire kobold tribe from the lower dens. Awesome.
It’s worth noting that you can beat up pretty much everyone in the mercenary camp for exp and phat lewts with zero repercussions. (Not kill, the two are distinct in Gothic games.)
