I never played Gothic I. I love deep RPGs. I heard Gothic II might be my cup of tea, so I traded a couple xbox games in at EB and picked it up.
So far:
The first time I tried to load the game, it did a real nice CTD that froze my entire system. Dell PIV with 256 RAM running Windows XP. Hmmm… not very encouraging.
The second time it loaded properly, but the audio in the intro movie kept cutting out. Very annoying. I didn’t buy the game for the movies, though, so I endure the stuttering audio and begin playing the game.
About an hour passes
The instruction manual has got to be the least informative manual of all time. I find it extremely frustrating when I “level up” with no discernable changes. Against all my gaming desires, I visit Gamefaqs to figure out how to increase my abilities, etc… aha! I have to find trainers. That makes sense. Wouldn’t have been difficult to include that in the manual, though.
About four hours pass
I find myself more and more drawn into this world. I really like the sense of immersion the game gives me. I don’t play RPGs for the bells and whistles, but can’t help but enjoy the shooting stars in the night sky and the ambient sound - which I learn quickly I MUST pay attention to if I want to keep living. One nagging thought remains in the back of my mind as I flail about fighting goblins, bandits, and wildlife… I wish the combat controls were more like Sword of Darkness and less like Prince of Persia.
This game is maddeningly difficult if you stray from the newbie path. I’ll always prefer too hard to too easy, though.
I still feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface in this game. I keep hoping I’ll learn a combo or something. I keep breaking the flow of the game to save the darn thing as it seems to like to crash at inopportune times… locking up when I try to look around too quickly inside town. I hate bugged games. I’m hooked on this one. I think I’ll keep playing…
Ryan, go into the .ini file and enable quicksaves. It makes a difference to the way the game flows (just be sure to do regular saves from time to time as well).
Gothic 2 is definitely worth the time if you’re really into RPGs. It’s one of those designs that’s deep, but not very accessible. I had to power through about four hours before it started to take.
The instruction manual has got to be the least informative manual of all time. I find it extremely frustrating when I “level up” with no discernable changes. Against all my gaming desires, I visit Gamefaqs to figure out how to increase my abilities, etc… aha! I have to find trainers. That makes sense. Wouldn’t have been difficult to include that in the manual, though.
Heh, too bad. Looks like Atari didn’t want to spend to much money. The manual of the German version is pretty well done/informative and has like 70 pages. (Which, of course, mention the training aspect.)
One nagging thought remains in the back of my mind as I flail about fighting goblins, bandits, and wildlife… I wish the combat controls were more like Sword of Darkness and less like Prince of Persia.
Btw, have you tried out both battle systems?
I keep breaking the flow of the game to save the darn thing as it seems to like to crash at inopportune times… locking up when I try to look around too quickly inside town.
Check out the gothic.ini file. You can enable a Quicksave mode somewhere. Doesn’t solve the actual problem, but makes saving easier. EDIT: Ah, Tom mentioned it already.
eh… both? right now I’m using WASD and mouse… maybe it’s time for more gamefaqs reading… I tried to skim over any spoilers/walkthrough info (tough to do when it is a walkthrough) when I went looking for levelling info… I obviously missed a good bit of the combat control info…
Now… if you’re referring to both systems (sword of darkness vs. prince of persia) yes I have… I loved the combat in Sword of Darkness, and was actually referring to the original Prince of Persia…
Check out the options menu. You can choose between Gothic 1 controls and an alternate battle system.
The alternate control scheme is a simplified one where a mouseclick translates to a sword strike. When you use the original scheme you have to keep the mouse button pushed to lock onto an enemy. Using arrow keys/WSAD while having the mouse button pushed will result in straight, left, right sword strike and parry respectively. It’s definitely more fun despite the sometimes annoying tendency to lock onto friendly NPCs nearby.
Ryan have you been in the city yet? Its a framerate killer if you have less than 512 megs of RAM. Don’t know if you’re happy with the performance but RAM makes a huge difference in Gothic 2 and 512 is highly recommended.
I too vastly prefer the alternate control scheme. Makes combat much more interesting.
The RAM issue is definitely my problem, then… I’ve got a paltry 256 Megs of RAM (it seemed like a lot just a few years ago).
Regarding control, I’ve apparently been using the Gothic 1 interface… Mouse button 1 plus WASD to attack/parry… which is why I made the Sword of Darkness reference… just similar enough to evoke memories, just clunky enough to make me wish it was better…
Maybe I’ll try the alternate scheme tomorrow… (have a hot date with my wife tonight… we’re going to see The Last Samurai)
I only got it today. Didn’t even get to the city yet. I’m having problems with the two bandits in the cave, curse them. No technical problems observed yet. I don’t get the combat system. Can I realy swing at only one oponent at a time? Also moving is awfully clunky IMHO. Gameworld seems big and I like that.
As I posted in another thread, I picked up Gothic I, and am extremely unimpressed/confused by it, even now after devoting a couple hours to it. Is Gothic II a substantial improvement, or is more of the same thing? (Which isn’t a bad thing, if you liked the original “thing”, but anyways…)
Oh, and to give a quick flavor for my preferences, I normally love RPG’s, I thought the Infinity Engine games were incredible, but I didn’t care much for Morrowind. But I thought Ultima Underworld was truly amazing. (Way back when it was new… obviously it’s laughably primitive by today’s standards.)
Well, if you didn’t like BOTH Gothic I and Morrowind you probably won’t dig gothic, but disliking just one might not be reason enough to discount Gothic II. I loved it precisely because it was a much richer less generic world than Morrowind.
It’s on page 23 of mine, but I bought the British English version a few months ago. Is the US manual different?[/quote]
I have both manuals – the US one is different, and crappier. It’s essentially the same, except trimmed down, and put on unreadable paper. But the section you’re referring to is on page 12-13 in the US manual
I have it and have only tried the early bits. I got killed by two goblins on the path from the castle where you start. I can’t fight to save my life. One piddly dagger and while I whale away at one goblin the other skewers me. I’m already at half health from a wolf up the path. This game is hard it seems. I think I could get to like it but it seems they purposely designed the interface to be awful.
One thing to keep in mind about Gothic that a lot of new players seem to miss is: you can run away effectively.
It seems that years of MMO + single-player RPGs in the 3D style have worked to instill this gameplay pattern where you’re supposed to know beforehand if it’s okay to attack/be attacked by something, and if you’re wrong, well you pretty much pay for it with death.
I don’t think that’s very fun, and that’s why I like Gothic. If you get attacked by something stronger than you, run! Put difficult terrain between yourself and it, etc etc. You won’t always get away, but you often can. If there’s a human outpost nearby, the NPCs there will usually be strong enough to kill the monster for you when you get there. etc.
Also, in Gothic 2 especially, you want to be careful about trying to fight multiple monsters at once. Don’t try and fight 2 or 3 if you don’t already know that you can easily handle 1. In some games, 2 of a monster is not much different from 1, but here, it’s a huge difference. (The game seems to differentiate when people are attacking you from the front/rear/sides).
Makes sense, but in the first part where I was it seems there’s no where to run to–you have to go down that path and there’s nothing behind you but the castle where you started. Ah well. I’ll give it another go soon.
