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A fun package (revised)

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: December 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

(REVISED REVIEW 1/18/08 - Bump overall rating to 4 stars)

If you have never played any of the Gothic series, this may be a good place to start. Gothic 1-2 were simply excellent games. I would, in fact, consider them to be all-time classics, almost on the level of Baldur's Gate 2 and Fallout (but in a very different style). Gothic 3, unfortunately, was a bit of a misstep, buggy even once patched and jettisoning almost all semblance of plot - and the plot was one of the strongest points in Gothic 1-2! See the Gothic 3 reviews for more details (stunlock, lol)

Apparently this packed DOES include the Night of the Raven expansion for Gothic II - the item description does not make that at all clear, and does not mention it at all. So I've updated this review accordingly.

Great oldschool open ended rpg

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: December 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

In Gothic, the King needed slaves to mine the ore that makes powerful magic weapons to help in the impending war against the Orcs. Prisoners were to be used to mine and to keep them imprisoned in the mine area, the king had wizards erect a shield in which humans may enter but not leave. By some mistake the wizards shield was way bigger than expected and trapped the wizards, the prisoners, innocents, and cutting off the world from the entire mining site. Now the king has to barter with the prisoners who now control the much needed ore. You are a prisoner thrown into the camp who is destined to protect the mining colony from monster and orcs, while working with the wizards to blow the barrier and escape the prison.

Gothic II picks immediately up where Gothic I leaves off, as the orcs have arrived for battle and taken much of the mining camp.

This is a great game. If you enjoy open ended games like Morrownind, Obilivion and Arx Fatalis, then you'll really enjoy the Gothic series. The graphics are a bit dated, but not enough to turn away the hardcore rpg gamers who want an awesome open ended experience.

In Gothic 1, the controls are very bizarre and seem to make no real sense. After the learning curve of the controls you understand why they are so strange. The controls are improved in Gothic 2 but still a bit bizarre by other rpg standards.

The battle system is alot more fun than the ones in other open ended rpgs that I have played. The story is pretty good and the setting is very interesting. There is a big open world for you to explore, and plenty of treasures and secrets to discover.

A+

Wow, what a find!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: February 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

To be honest, I had never heard of Gothic until I was browsing through a message board recently for The Witcher. Many people were mentioning the Gothic games so I decided to research it a bit. After playing a demo I decided to get the Gothic Universe pack from my local Best Buy, for a lowly 30 bucks. Hey, 3 games plus an expansion for the second game for 30 bucks! That's a deal.

Anyway, man am I glad I got these games. I must be honest and say that I haven't played any of Gothic 3 yet, but the purchase was well worth it just for 1 and 2 alone. The story is original and interesting, the land is expansive and a joy to explore, there are many quests and things to do, all the Npcs are voice acted and have personality, and it's just downright a blast to play. The graphics are pretty decent and the music is good as well. I could see people knocking the controls in Gothic 1 but once you get used to it it's second nature.

The only thing negative I would say is in the package itself, as it lacks any game manuals. There is just 3 discs in sleeves. However, Gothic 3 does have a pdf file of the manual on the disc, but 1 and 2 don't. Not a huge deal, but it would have been nice.

I highly recommend this purchase and the Gothic games, at least 1 and 2. Even if 3 is not as good (based on some reviews I have seen), 1 and 2 are definitely worth the 30 dollar price tag, no question. And 3 may be great, I just haven't had a chance to play through that one yet.

Good and Bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I had heard good things about Gothic II; so, I recently picked this game package up. I have completed Gothic I and just started Gothic II. Reviews I have read concerning Gothic III were not totally favorable.

Issues: Gothic I was released in 2001 and does not seem to like running on Windows XP. It continuously and frequently froze-up/crashed. I have a high-end system; but, even lowering all the game setting parameters did not help. Error messages appear to indicate that it couldn't locate the files it was looking for. During game-play, this was very irritating and my forgetfulness to continuously "save" after each successful event proved painful. Gothic I is a "keyboard" game and the controls are difficult to use and initially very frustrating - not getting the right keys while getting beat on gets old in a hurry! Gothic II makes use of the left mouse button for "action," instead control + and arrow key. This set comes as three disks, with NO printed documentation/manuals. Gothic III has a PDF file on its disk; but, you'll need to go to www.replacementdocs.com or similar web site to download the manuals for Gothic I and II - the odd keyboard controls make it a necessity. Even then, in Gothic I, some required keyboard actions were not even documented in the manual and searching the internet was necessary to accomplish things (e.g: swim underwater = control+right mouse button). There are some still some known "bugs" in the game; but, no updates/patches are available for Gothic I. I have found patches for both Gothic II and III on the web. Only Gothic I would auto-install. Both the Gothic II and III disks required that you manually install them. I was initially concerned that my game disks were defective.

Goodstuff: Despite the frustration caused by the crashes and controls (which tempted me several times to just give it up), I found Gothic I to be one of the better games that I have played. The Gothic I story line, while linear, is excellent and the balance within the game made it a challenge from beginning to end (I played as a mage) - I was never "king of the hill" but had just enough to accomplished what had to be done. The Gothic II disk is the "Gold Edition" and includes the "Night of the Raven" expansion game. I have heard that Gothic II is one of the best RPG's of this genre that's been put out. If it proves to be true, then the play-value of this "package" has been well worth its price, regardless of what Gothic III proves to be.

3 favorite rpgs in one

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I love the Gothic series. Each has a few bugs easily handled with a patch download but other than that unequaled gaming delight.

Great with few drawbacks...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this trilogy on a hunch. After having a fallout with DAoC, I started playing Baldur's Gate again; planning to import as much into BG2 as I could, for fun. I often go on hiatus from new games to play retro. Anyway, I was knee deep in ogre's in BG and decided that the games I had could only last me so long. To expand my selection I looked for Baldur's on Amazon to find "like" games for purchase and found Gothic.

I thought long about this purchase due to some neo-primative reviews that were made about the ease of playing this game. I am of average intelligence AT LEAST and I was able to equip a sword within 15 minutes of playing COUNTING the time it took me to attain that sword. With the aid of some internet searching and trial-and-error game play I was able to figure out enough of the game in a few hours to make it more than enough fun. SO, kids, don't give to much attention to the reviews... buy it and give it a run... what is 25 bucks?

The game evironment of Gothic is immense for its time. The player encounters different types of creature AI including some that attack when you get close enough(which often times seems not that close at all), and some that will warn you that you are too close and attack if you don't back off. The NPC's in the game will react to you based on how you treat them. For instance, in the Old Camp you will be asked to pay "protection money" to some "district officials" or he will hire thugs to visit you. Graphics for its time are also VERY nice, the models in the game move their mouths and bodys very persuasively. I got lost in this game for an entire Sunday once I learned enough to play it with purpose.

Mind you, I have owned this trilogy for 2 days and haven't even tried Gothic 2 and 3 yet. I don't think I will have any reservations with the way Gothic is playing. It is staying in my software library for present and future play.

OH! I did gimp it a star on the overall since it doesn't offer much in the configuration menus and the storyline and character paths are not very clear. But, it is still very good gaming material!

Technical mess

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Gothic I and Gothic II will not open on my machine. We have tried everything. With III I can install but get a message that something is wrong with the disc. I go on but can tell some things are missing. I cannot get an inventory on some monsters that the walkthrough indicates should be there. The game is a mess but could be enjoyable if the technical aspects were fixed. I have installed the patches and cannot imagine what it would be like without them. Technical support sent the manuals for I and II but says the manual is one the disc for III. The manuals are sketchy and not much help.

Very good game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: December 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have Gothic 3 Now I can Start from the begining As I did not find in stores Now Im fiding where it all started to get to 3

Varying issues per game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: May 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

All three games suffer from a few common issues.

Animation (and, to some extent, graphics generally) is sub-par for when the games were created.

Once you get hit in combat, it is almost impossible to not be killed/knocked out (especially if you don't already have a melee weapon out). And, if you are just knocked out, you drop your weapon on the ground (and have to manage to pick it up, re-equip it, and redraw it) all while probably being hit by the same monster again (resulting in being knocked out or killed again).

Gothic 1 is pretty much just terrible. The methods for doing things are very non-intuitive and I have RPGs from the 80s that I prefer in all aspects (graphics, animation, gameplay, fun, etc).

Gothic 2 is a little better. The movement/animation and methods of doing things are a little bit better but still not very good.

Gothic 3 is almost a decent game. If it weren't for the "insta-death" in combat and no auto-save (so you have to remember to manually save quite often), I would probably finish this one. Another issue is that there don't seem to be any trainers early in the game so you can't get the benefits of gaining levels for a while.

Tedious rpg universe

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: July 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Gothic is a true rpg game, although if you like constant action, then you'll probably find gothic boring. As most of the people that enjoy this type of game are quest/story driven. The monsters also tend to be mundane, and so are the weapons (you'll tend to find a lot fewer types of weapons - mostly non magical, then you would other rpg games in general). The upside of gothic is that the world is expansive and someone really spent a lot of time in gothic 1 and gothic 2 fleshing out the world so that almost every detail/monster/object in the world has its relevance and place within the game. The story isn't also all that bad.
gothic is also a dangerous place to quest. Unlike many rpg games where you generally encounter monsters and quests of increasing difficulty. Gothic is a game, where you will encounter monsters that are both way too powerful for you to engage in as well as monsters that you can fight on your level.

gothic 1 - an okay game. The big issue with this is that the first chapter, you are so weak, that a fly could sneeze on you, you would die. So you're mostly running around doing chores and quests (you'll have to get used to running around a lot in this world, which is actually semi-large). But after chapter one, the action picks up . An okay game with an unintuitive action interface. And almost no documentation on how to only sell 1 item at a time (you'll have to search through the internet to find that out).
gothic 2 - There is a big different between the "night of the raven" version and the ordinary version in terms of gameplay. Mainly that it is much harder to up your stats in the former. Although gothic 2 improves a lot of the problems found in gothic 1 (it still has a uninituitive interface, but it is still much better). Story is much better, and play and quests are better, imo. You could almost consider this game "great" perhaps if you didn't mind these minor issues. I've only played through part of this.
gothic 3 - haven't played this yet. Gothic is one of those games that will simply take a very long time to play. The world is expansive, and you probably will find yourself dying a whole lot, and doing a lot of running around.

This is not a game for everyone. If you like oblivion, and those types of games, you will probably enjoy gothic. If you like constant action, then gothic will test your patience.

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