The only game I haven't played from the series is Gothic 3 Forsaken Gods. Because it was completely broken since the day one.

Now with the new enhanced edition and 2,5 euro price it's a steal. Runs better, no bugs so far. I am 5 hours in and having a blast.

Major gripe I have with Gothics/Risen since 3 is the graphics. They are kind of sharp and not oiled. When I turn around my camera every freaking pixel hurts my eyes. Had to remove blur and other shiny effects because it's painful. It's the darn crappy engine they use.

It's not fair to say that Gothic 3 is a bad game after so many community patches. The game runs much better, no game breaking bugs and for such a price it offers hundred of hours fun.

Gothic 4 on the other side is a joke, joke to the Gothic series.

Truth be said, the communauty patch for Gothic 3 makes the game completely bugless. And balances up the game a lot.

Now, the story has not changed, unfortunately.

Yeah I never found the story of any Gothics appealing. I just do the quests without much thought involved.
I like the open world games, shame there is not much sandbox like in TES series.

Well, if the gameplay's good, the story can be a bit poor without it affecting your enjoyment too much.

Don't buy the Gothic 3 Addon and Gothic 4, they are terribly bad, ... even worse. And I am a Gothic fan from part one on.

Gothic 1-3 are the best of the series and also on Sale on Steam for less than 10$. Go for the Gothic Universe bundle:

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/6375/

If you decide later to buy: Gamersgate has them for 20$ DRM free
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-GU/gothic-universe-bundle

Gotta love how the Universe pack + Gothic 4 is cheaper than the Complete pack.

It misses out the Gothic 3 expansion though, so factor in an extra £2.50 for that.

Gothic 3 did not happen. It's Gothic 1, 2+NOTR. I haven't played Risen yet.

I found Gothic 3 with the community patches quite fun.
I thought Gothic 4 was fun as well as long as you don't expect it to be Gothic.
The terrible voice-acting just added to my entertainment but than again, I am a B-movie kinda guy.
I think you're definitely getting your money's worth.
Plus, having an extra copy of Gothic 1 and 2 is never a bad thing.

Gothic 2 and 3 are sub par compared to the first. They aren't horrible games, just lacking some of the story polish and combat is still kind of lame (but that was never the whole point of Gothic anyway).

I believe 3 had an expansion out for it, this bundle isn't worth the price if you can't get the expac with it.

I played the demo for G4 and it felt like I was playing some crappy version of Two Worlds, I can't recommend it on its demo.

Gothic 2 with no modifications at all on my modern machine won't run. Crashes every single time. I looked into it and I am not the only one with that problem. Much like how some machines can't run JoWood's published "Silent Storm" game. Same company selling the game (even if it was developed by someone else). Same fact that a game won't run without messing around with the game. I downloaded Gothic 2 *twice* off steam, and never did it run at all either time. Perhaps I'll download it again, and this time it'll be the magical time when it actually runs. Given my track record to JoWood games (They suck), I doubt it.

As for Gothic 3, I disagree entirely on the community fan patch fixing the game. I had serious performance issues and it never felt right. When you walk there should be a registry that you took a step. That you've just hit something. I never had that in Gothic 3 even with the absolute latest fan patch. It was a ghost like feeling, where nothing registered. That and basic functions in the game just felt weird. You could tell the game was a cobbled together mess to try and make it halfway functioning.

And then there's the morality issue. Any game (and that includes many games on GOG too) where you have to actually do the work of the developers to play the game cannot be a great game. It can be made into a great game, but that has nothing to do with the developer's initial work. Why should you even pay for a game like Gothic 3, when all the real work was from the fan patchers? Why not just pirate the game, and then donate to the fan patchers? That seems a much more sensible thing to do seeing as how they did all the work themselves.

My main thing is I'm not saying you can't like the Gothic series. By all means do so. But it needs to be 100% communicated to people that the games A) Might not run well and B) for G3 need an intense amount of work to make it even playable at *any level*. I bought those games off the talk in these forums about how great they were, and my reward was a multiple hour investment to fan patch one game to get a sub par game (In my opinion), and a game that never launched a single time. So, yeah, I am a little bitter over the money I lost, and I want to make sure people don't fall into the same trap I did on this forum.

I just played the demo for the first game. It was interesting, though I now understand what people mean when they talk about the game's weird controls. However, the demo was very... limiting. I didn't get to test out magic (you can use magic, right?) and it just didn't really give me a good picture of the game. I'm still considering buying the bundle, though.

hmm despite all the warnings you could take the plunge and buy them and write a honest review after playing the game saying we were wrong or else you make a better choice in deciding between buying neverwinter nights 2 or the witcher enhanced edition if you dont own them both

The expansion pack is so unbelievably terrible that it's absolutely no loss if it's not included.

And Gothic 3 with the fan patch is essentially Oblivion done right. Nothing like Gothic in other words, but a damn fine game in its own right, and worth checking out even if the first two games weren't to your tastes.

Without the patch it is, of course, a completely worthless mess. It's one hell of a "patch."
Because a fan patch that turns a terrible game into an amazing one is still built on the foundation of that terrible game. The engine, the assets, the writing, the acting, the mechanics, and so on.

The fan patch may help the game cross the finish line, but the original developers were still the ones who ran the majority of the race. Saying "all the real work" was done by the fan patchers is just nonsense. At the end of the day they fixed some bugs and re-balanced some things. Important work, but hardly heavy lifting compared to actually creating everything in the game.

Gothic 3 is, at its core, a good game that just didn't have the budget it needed to be properly finished (blame for that completely goes to JoWood by the way, not the devs). If there were no potential, then a fan patch wouldn't have mattered. As it stands, the world is massive and frequently compelling and the quests can be pretty involving. That a fan patch made the game a lot of fun is a testament to how close the original devs got to greatness. Something like Lionheart could never get that kind of treatment because it's bad at its core.

I have all of them, including Risen and excluding 4 and Forsaken Gods.

Gothic I was a classic but it's really hard to look at - it looks worse than a PSOne game.

Gothic II is easier on the eyes and a decent game but I wouldn't pay more than $15 for the Gold Edition which is the usual asking price.

Gothic III is awesome with the community patch IF you have the right combination of components in your computer that will run it smoothly but it's a gamble rather or not your rig will agree with it and it can play very choppy even on newer computers.

Risen is the most refined of the series that I've played but if you sat all the way through the previous three, Risen might feel like old hat.