I didn't think something that performed this poorly would be sold on GOG; I expect better from this website. You can put the blame on Bethesda, but they didn't force the sale of the game onto the marketplace of GOG. You would literally be no worse off just downloading it from some random "abandonware" site.

I realize that Bethesda is used to the PC community fixing the vast bulk of the issues in their games, but the community for this game just isn't there and it shows. Something has to be fixed on this.

What's your point? Are you STATING that Redguard is a mess (in your eyes) and GOG shouldn't be selling it, or are you asking for help or problem solutions or workarounds? And what do you mean by "something has to be fixed on this"?

3dfx emulation through dosbox runs like shit, this isn't news. If you are having framerate issues increase the cpu cycles dobox is using.

I'm stating that the game shouldn't be digitally re-released in this poor of a condition. I'm looking for ways to speed it up, but I'm not that hopeful as I've tried a few

This game was initially released for PCs of the future (for that time). But when actual PCs of the future appeared, they had different technology (different hardware and software to operate that hardware).

So the only way to play it now is via emulation and I didn't hear of anything better than DOSBox for this kind of stuff. It is indeed sad, that such games require PCs from the future again.

System requirements for Redguard (according to UESP) initially had this line: "3Dfx video card recommended". Does it mean that game can be launched without 3Dfx emulation? It would mean worlds of difference.

It runs ok on my computer. I dont see any slowdowns just a weird line in the intro.
I have the original game with a iso image and it plays better using SVN Dosbox than the Gog version.

Oh and if your trying to run it in windowed mode it wont work you will get ultimate slowdown this game has to be run in fullscreen.

Yep. You are correct. The game runs like a turd, but some will insist it runs great. Honestly this should have been free along with Daggerfall and Arena.

:-) Yep. You are not correct. The game runs great, but some will insist it runs like a turd. :-)

To each his own. Redguard runs as good (or as bad) as it did when it was originally released. It's what you can say about every other GOG game, too (more or less).
Do you seriously expect GOG to put a general disclaimer on their site (or add it to every product page) of the kind: "Do not expect our games to perform better or to be more stable than when they were originally released"? Or "At the time of the original release, there were several issues with this game reported, some of them associated with crashes or bad performance. We can not say whether or not these reports reflect reality adequately, but we feel you, dear customer, ought to know"? :-)

And if you think Redguard should be released as a free game, like Arena or Daggerfall, then you should address Bethesda, not GOG.

By the way: There are probably thousands of potential causes for crashes or unsatisfactory performance. Some of them are real game bugs or insufficiencies, but quite a high number lies in the realms of user hardware, software, configuration or simply overly high user expectations.
I have a very high respect for those who can pin down the real culprits reliably. I myself remember (too) many cases where I blamed problems to games, only to find out later that I should have better blamed myself or my equipment.
Which isn't saying there are no game bugs ...

I don't think a disclaimer would be inappropriate, and I don't think the original poster was out of line. I believe his point was in his very frist sentence: "I didn't think something that performed this poorly would be sold on GOG."

His post informed my purchase, as I was going to purchase it this morning. Now I'm not. Not everyone knows the history of the game's release and I, too, have come to expect that games released here will be running correctly. Gog has worked hard to create that legacy, and something like this undoes it pretty quickly. Cheers (and rep) to the OP for telling it like it is, and for calling attention to a situation that should be addressed, as that how things improve.

Fine. But you don't know WHY Redguard doesn't perform well on the OP's PC. All you know is he blames the game, with or without justification. Redguard performs well enough on 3 of my PCs of varying configuration and age (XP, Vista, Win10). This is no proof that all is well with Redguard, but it shows at least, that bad performance is not a general problem of Redguard and very likely has to do with one or several components of the OP's PC or with incompatibilities between Redguard and those components (which may or may not be present in YOUR PC).
You will have no problems finding similar statements (that some one is unhappy with the performance, stability or what-have-you) regarding probably every other game, too.
To buy a game or not is obviously your decision, and to inform the community of problems one or many people are having with a specific game is legitimate, but both are personal things and shouldn't be generalized without sufficient evidence.
I myself am happy that a working Redguard is available again, as it has always been a pain to get the original Redguard running on newer PC's (that is XP and newer in this case). Which is also a personal statement and should not be generalized.

just sayin, this game rly runs like a "turd". i just experienced the ~5FPS myself. GoG, i call upon thy to help me with my unsatisfied needs for fun!
GoG, you already managed to fix that capitalism 2 bugs in only two days of time, can you beat your own time now? I'll check back.

EDIT: Well i kinda posted close to a weekend so i'll extend this time by two days.

That's all I'm sayin',.:)
And I'm also very happy to see the game available again, as it's historically important, I believe. I'm just going to wait until things settles down and Gog (or a fan patch) have a chance to catch up to the complaints. This is definately not the first time this kind of thing has happened, so I'm optimistic someone, somewhere, will figure something out.

i'm still kinda disappointed. the game still runs horrible, which only leaves one conclusion. i can't blindy buy stuff from gog anymore without worrying that it might not run on my machine.

Sorry to say this, but there have always been GOG games which didn't run on all PC's. My first experience of this kind dates back to 2011.
I can say, however, that I have not experienced a single case where a GOG game had a new issue, one that hadn't been there before the game was released by GOG (with the exception of one or two which were fixed by GOG immediately).

The Problem with your points is that if you read literally EVERY review on the Redgaurd page on GOG all of them say that it runs like crap. And it does. It is a known fact that 3DFX Emulation runs like shit in Dosbox. To be fair, this isn't really the OP's fault, because everyone is experiencing this issue (except for the few minorities like yourself). It isn't Dosbox's fault either, because getting old software to run on new software (and consequently hardware) is a challenge, and almost every other game runs at least decent. It Isn't really GOG's fault either, as I imagine it is Bethesda who prepared the games release to how it is currently. I just wish that maybe a warning that it would run a little slow in it's current state, because as of (I believe) a couple months after release there hasn't been a single update to help this problem. And the fact that they are asking for us to pay more money for this broken game then they do for some great games that work on most computers.

In summary, It isn't GOG's fault it runs bad, but is is their fault for not telling us that their will almost most definitely be issues.