MaximumPC 2007 02

 MAXIMUMPC february 2007

reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized

T

he open-ended nature of Gothic 3 ’s

gameplay and world can’t help but

evoke comparisons to one of the big-

gest hits of 2006, Oblivion. In some ways,

Gothic 3 is the better RPG. Unfortunately,

when it comes to the most important aspects

of a game—polish and stability— Gothic 3

falls well short and wastes much of its con-

siderable potential.

In Gothic and Gothic II you work to save

the island of Khorinis from the infamous

forces of evil. In this installment, you at last

travel to the mainland of Myrtana, where you

find a nation of people enslaved by invading

orcs. As you visit various towns and talk to

NPCs, you discover a growing rebellion of

humans who lack only a hero to lead them

to overthrow their captors. You must decide

whether to help the humans or join the orcs

and follow the path of evil. Your choice will

ultimately decide the fate of humanity—the

game offers multiple endings, and your

actions determine which one you see.

Myrtana is incredibly vast and densely

populated with cities, towns, camps, caves,

and ruins to explore, as well as plenty of

NPCs to interact with. The environment is

rich with detail—grass and trees bend and

sway in the breeze, the weather changes,

the land cycles between day and night,

and all manner of wildlife flits about. In fact,

there’s almost too much fauna. Battling

scores of wild animals while traveling from

point A to point B gets tedious, especially

when the herky-jerky combat system and

damage modeling make it harder to fight a

wild boar than a massive, heavily armored

orc wielding a ginormous ax.

As in Oblivion you can decide

to play a ranged- or melee-com-

bat expert, thief, or mage, or any

combination therein. And you can

develop subskills, such as hunt-

ing and blacksmithing. Unlike

Oblivion , each time you level up,

you get 20 experience points

that you can spend with trainers

to increase your skills in a given

area. The points come slowly and

require a great deal of money to

use—trainers don’t work for free,

you see, but this system gives you

more control over your character’s

development. Getting buffed up

can take quite a long time, which

we actually prefer to Oblivion’ s

fast-track leveling system.

The legions of new RPG fans who

completed Oblivion may get a

bit lost in this game, thanks to

Gothic’ s kludgy quest-log system.

It doesn’t direct you to the exact

location of a particular quest,

which is fine, but it is needlessly

difficult to track quests and back-

track to places in order to com-

plete tasks.

Unfortunately, we also expe-

rienced a mind-numbing number

of bugs—corrupted save games,

random reboots, system lockups,

and crashes—while running the

game on a dual-core Athlon sys-

tem. Switching to a single-core P4

system solved many of the more

severe issues, but we still had a

few crashes, and the game is filled with

minor problems—some subquests were

broken and lines of voice-over dialogue

were dropped. And the combat AI has a

bug that makes it possible to kill power-

ful enemies from long range with a bow or

crossbow. Shoot them and back away, and

then watch them run in your direction only

to give up the chase and go back to where

they were standing. Rinse and repeat ad

nauseam. D’oh!

If JoWood and Piranha Bytes can

come up with the patches to really finish

this game—fix the bugs and address the

balancing issues— Gothic 3 could be the

Oblivion killer serious RPG fans want. Until

then, it’s fit for only the hardest of the hard-

core who are in desperate need of a fix.

—STEVE KLETT

Gothic 3

An Oblivion-killer wannabe misses the mark

Fighting the orcs and human mercenaries is a hoot! Fighting Gothic 3’ s overly

aggressive and overly lethal wildlife is another story.

$40, http://www.gothic3.com, ESRB: T

gothic 3

humanS

Huge, detailed game world;

deep, engaging story with

multiple endings; interesting

leveling system.

orcS

6

Game does not play nice with

dual-core systems; lots of bugs;

extreme system hog.

The orcs don’t take kindly to humans who don’t

follow orders. Will you join them... or kill them?

Gothic 3’ s myrtana can be a beautiful place—if you’ve

got the Pc muscle to run it, that is. We experienced

chugging frame rates on Pcs vastly exceeding the

game’s recommended requirements.