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Old 01-20-2007, 04:05 AM   #1
CerebroDragon
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Greetings,

I'm on somewhat of 3rd person perspective cRPG kick at the moment, having just played and completed kotor for the first time. So I was looking to my as yet unplayed 'to play next' shelf, for some more 3rd person action and I pick up the original I purchased of Gothic 2 about a month ago. That similar ol' cRPG feeling of an itching for immersion and a wonder for exploration came over me simply staring at the box.

I have had a copy of the game for longer than this however and have resisted the urge to install it on the basis that I've yet to find and play the first game.

Thus to my quasi-obsessive question for the fans of this seemingly under appreciated series:
How important is it for me to have played the first Gothic in order to really get into the game? Will I miss many hidden references/characters from the first game that will lessen the enjoyment, or does Gothic II play just as well as a stand alone experience?

I tend to be a fussy-chronological completionist when it comes to games connected in a series and this is certainly no different. But I have held off launching it for awhile now, hoping to have found the first game locally, to no avail!

Subjective opinion based with knowledge (but no spoilers) on the matter would be most appreciated for this Gothic neophyte!
[img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Cheers,
CD
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Old 01-20-2007, 01:03 PM   #2
PurpleXVI
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I played Gothic 2 without ever even having read about Gothic 1, and I enjoyed it perfectly fine.

It's not a flawless game, but it's pretty dang good, especially if you like robbing people blind. First time since Ultima 7 I really got my sneaking and plundering on good.

Generally any characters with a background in Gothic 1 you have a chance to ask them about the events of the first game and such, so you're not missing out on a lot.
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Old 01-27-2007, 08:59 AM   #3
CerebroDragon
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Man, I'm really enjoying my time with Gothic II so far. It's so unforgivingly hardcore when it comes to combat - I love it! Makes me grit my teeth in ardour for the trial of the challenge.
Truly a nice change from the relative ease by which I finished Kotor.

Indeed, it plays like a nasty uncompromising medieval hybrid of Morrowind and Arx - though I tend to like the latter games' stories a little more so far. There's a very heavy emphasis on exploration, survival and using your environment to your advantage, which I really like. Makes for a more primally charged experience, that's for sure.

I'm only level 9, chapter two. Been playing in-game now for about 15 hours. It has a gorgeously immersive atmosphere, sweet soundtrack and all. Obviously its not perfect though - the dialogs are a little too simplistic for my tastes, with sometimes no real choices. I also thought the cut scene for the brothel was downright puerile and unnecessary.

I'm not a huge one for kleptomania in most games I play - its a bit of a run of the mill stereotypical thing to do, I reckon, roleplaying a thief being an exception. But in this case, I'm feeling almost goaded into it - especially where health potions and herbs are involved! Can't get enough of them...
Doing it in Ultima however amounts to blasphemy, especically post IV. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

One really amusing encounter that I had recently involved an Orc Scout and a Shadowbeast. I must have reloaded a good 10-15 times trying different tactics on the Orc, jumping up rocks, fleeing and hiding around corners and whatnot - and though the fights were close, the Orc would kill me in the end! I got by him by fleeing into the path of a Shadowbeast unwittingly, stopping to realise that they'd started fighting. I watched under a tree as the Orc made a few solid blows, only to be slaughtered in the end! I jumped with glee into the fray and frantically carved up the Shadowbeast before it could have me for dessert.

I had a darwinian epiphany at that moment.

Anyway, not many posters around it seems - most are probably playing Gothic 3 anyhow - Hmmph!

Needless to say, I'm happily enjoying this.
Cheers,
CD

[ 01-27-2007, 09:22 AM: Message edited by: CerebroDragon ]
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Old 01-27-2007, 11:05 AM   #4
PurpleXVI
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Nah, I doubt many people are playing Gothic 3, it's a big pile of instability and bugs. No one really seems to like it.
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Old 01-31-2007, 11:52 AM   #5
CerebroDragon
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Yeah well, that's not unusual, the series isn't that commerically popular anyway, like I said. Still, I've read enough positive reviewers defend it at various websites and those lucky enough to not encounter any bugs still vouch for it. So it depends where you read your reviews, I guess.

But um, back to Gothic II now!

I'm about level 13, taking my time beyond the doors of the valley pass to step toe to toe with a plethora of Orcs. I don't like taking more than one on at a time yet though, so progress is slow but steady as I draw them out and get my tactics sorted - I tend to use lots of reactive counter strikes with sidestep.

I've had alot of great fun around the Onar farm, roleplaying an amoral militia-man wandering around picking random fights with mercenaries and experimenting with certain choices. I found it a bit frustrating at one point to be accused of murder after defending myself against Bullco, who initiated a fight with me after I'd tried to speak to Sylvario. When I tried to return to the farm, I was hung drawn and quartered into a reload. This just meant that I had to be more surreptitious in my killing next time.

I really like the Ultima-style interactivity with every day objects like cooking, weaponsmithing and such. I'll be saving a few learning points for more hunting oriented trophy skills if I can, since I'm starting to notch up a few shadowbeast kills.

As for Gothic I related plot points, there are characters I'm meeting who assume I recognise them from the previous game (Lee for instance) but so far there hasn't been too much that's given me concern for my knowledge void.

The fun continues!
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Old 01-31-2007, 03:26 PM   #6
PurpleXVI
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There's another path through to the Valley, look up on the cliffs above before you hit the big mob of Orcs.

Most of the Gothic I links are in the Valley of Mines, really, and generally then only as out-of-the-way minor things and notes you can find to let you know what happened to Character X or the remains of Location Y that you can raid for fat loots, etc.

As a member of the Militia, I wouldn't suggest an excess of points spent on the smithing, but if you're the fletcher's apprentice you should really go heavy on the hunting. Lots of money to be gained there. As a member of either the Militia or the Mercenaries it's generally a good idea to check out all the abandoned mines(Like the mine areas near the bandit camp around Onar's farm.) for ore. This is especially important as a mercenary, but as a militia dude you can still learn how to craft a thing or two that's occasionally better than what you can buy/find.

Every time you finish a chapter, it's also worth it to go through the places you've been in the previous one, I'll note, since new monsters tend to spawn in old areas, occasionally even new treasure. It's also a good idea to sweep the entire chapter before you start a new one, since otherwise you can, later in the game, enter a dungeon to find it full of two or three chapters worth of spawns, rather than just one.
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Old 03-24-2007, 07:57 AM   #7
ChrisHwk
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I played Gothic 2 with all 3 choices, paladin, merc, and mage. I really loved the way the game was so 3 dimensional. You can climb up walls and sneak around one rocky mountian peaks. The combat took a while for me to get used to , but eventually I got the hang of it. when you first get to chapter 3 and get to the mine area, be carefull, you can get your butt handed to you. But it's a blast when you get high enough in lv to have wiped out the 4 dragons, to go back and kill everything in sight.

I'm currently playing Gothic 3, they have changed the combat a bit, but it's ok. It's a lot like the previous version in some ways. It always bugged me that no matter what your armor class, even a lv 1 mob will kill you quick if your not paying attention. My biggest gripe with Gothic 3 is they wrote a whole new game engine for it and it takes forever and a day to load a previous save or even to quick save while playing. Hitting the F5 (quick save key) will pause the game for at least 10 seconds , sometimes as much as 30. When you first load the game and select the save game you want your gonna look at the load screen for 2 minutes minimum. And it's usually that long, or very close to it to reload in the game if you die or make a bad choice. It really , really sucks when you're trying to win a tough fight and get killed more than once. Other than the load times, I enjoy it though. I'm running patch 1.08 with the no cd hack. I hate having to pull out what I had in the machine just to play a game that's all on the HD anyway.

Chris
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Old 03-24-2007, 12:33 PM   #8
PurpleXVI
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The loading times are better with the later patches, I think, either that or it's because I've got a lot of RAM and a good CPU that I load faster, eh, who knows.

Armor seems mostly decorative, yes. I like the combat better in a lot of ways, even though animals are still terribly tough for a long time, and I like the open structure of the game, though a lot of it feels more structure-less, than open-structured. A lot of the time I'm just wandering around with no purpose, but it's still fun to play, really.
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Old 03-27-2007, 07:15 AM   #9
CerebroDragon
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I ended up completing my Gothic II game about a month ago now with the paladin class. Had a blast with it generally speaking, though some of the dialogue did grate and irritate after awhile. I hadn't had such a thrill in exploration in a game since the first time I played Morrowind, which is the most obvious comparison a part from Ascension.

I thoroughly enjoyed working out some of the puzzles in the later dungeon - had to take my time and think those parts through - which is a feature I would prefer to see more of, rather than endless hackity slash slash.

I'm actually currently waiting for a friend to give me Night of the Raven, the expansion for the game. Have many people played this? Keen to hear some personal reflections on the differences it made (without spoilers of course). Perhaps I'll get to try it out when the first term uni holidays arrive. [img]smile.gif[/img]
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