DarrkPhoenix: 1) Story is pretty meh. It ties things together well enough, but exploration is what really drives things in this game, so you'll need to decide if that's enough to do it for you. As for length, if you're thorough you're probably looking at around 60-80 hours, although it can also be completed much faster than that if you skip a lot of the optional stuff.

2) Control scheme is pretty straightforward (in contrast to the first two Gothic games). Melee combat can take a bit of practice to get good at, but that's pretty much part of the game.

3) Numerous bug fixes, balance fixes (skill costs, enemy stats, item stats, etc), much better enemy AI (optional).

4) Yes. Blood is very minimal and gore is pretty much non-existent.

DarrkPhoenix: The community patch is already included in the default install, so you only need to worry about the options that can then be set when starting a new game. The primary options the CP introduced that can be changed are alternative balancing (toggled on the main game menu) and alternative AI (toggled in the difficulty sub-menu). Alternative balancing changes the skill system with respect to how many skill points skills cost and similar adjustments. In the base game you tend to end up swimming in skill points and don't have to be particularly picky about how you spend them, while with alternative balancing you have to be a bit more judicious and specialize more. I'd personally recommend using alternative balancing, as otherwise you tend to become overpowered by just the mid-game, while with it there's still a feeling of character progression through most of the game. Alternative balancing is the only option that can't be changed mid-game.

Alternative AI changes enemy combat behavior, making combat more difficult and enemies much less exploitable. In the base game most humanoid opponents could be defeated by constant attacking, while with alternative AI you have to use a much wider array of tactics to fight effectively. I'd personally recommend using it even for a beginner, but it can be turned on and off at any time, so try it out and if you find the combat too difficult then you can switch it off (however, the game starts off with a pretty big fight, so you might want to leave it off for this otherwise things can be very overwhelming for a beginner).

DarrkPhoenix: That's correct. The GOG version uses CP 1.74, while the most recent version is CP 1.75. Most of the changes are fairly minor, and the changelog can be found . Download locations for the 1.75 patch can be found [url=http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1140053-Gothic-3-Patch-1-75-release]here.

auroraparadox: I have one last question. One of the younger members of my family has expressed interest in playing the game. Can you shed some light on why it was marked as including Sexual Themes?

Arthandas: This game is an unoptimized mess even with the community patch. Don't buy it if you can't stand stuttering or choppy framerate.
I just did and I regret it. I get 35-55 fps on LOW settings with a 4 core 4ghz cpu, 4gb ram and r7 260x 1gb gpu.

Arthandas: This game is an unoptimized mess even with the community patch. Don't buy it if you can't stand stuttering or choppy framerate.
I just did and I regret it. I get 35-55 fps on LOW settings with a 4 core 4ghz cpu, 4gb ram and r7 260x 1gb gpu.

Urnoev: I do not think it is a mess at all. Yes, there are a few stutters here and there, this is due to the huge open world Gothic 3 has to offer (they did not know their limit, obviously), which caused most of the bugs, to be honest.
My old system was quite similar to yours now, and I could play the game on high settings with 60 frames per second, so it seems you have another problem somewhere.

UniversalWolf: My personal opinion: I would never suggest Gothic 3 for anyone's first Gothic game. Some people like it, some people think it's bad, but in either case you should play Gothic 1 and 2 first. Those two are the games that made the series famous.