Sydius: Okay, long story short:
The time when the original Gothic 3 came out it was a bad game - it had a lot of bugs, some bad gameplay elements, etc. The community patch solved most of these problems, making Gothic 3 into a good game.
The problems were in the engine, the story/setting was OK.

The time when the original Forsaken Gods came out it was a terrible game - it had more bugs than the previous 4 (3+1) Gothic games (okay, maybe a little less...) and the gameplay was awful. The community patch solved most of these problems, making Forsaken Gods into a nearly-bug free, awful game.
The problem is the game itself.

But it's still better than that **** Arcania (no, it's not Gothic, it's a ****). So give it a try... And while you playing it, remember the good ol' times, because this is the last "Gothic-y" game in the series.

AlaCarcuss: Agree with just about everything you say - except the last part. The Risen series by the original developers is the new Gothic in everything but name (even the settings are similar). Risen 1 was great (if a little flawed - especially the last chapter) - now can't wait for Risen 2 later this year!

Sydius: You are absolutely right, Risen is awesome. But it technically isn't part of the series (even thought i would call it Gothic instead of FG or Arcania (oh, that ****). So we can agree on that Risen is a true Gothic sequel (but only in gameplay), but the last gothic game in the actual series is Gothic 3 EE, FG is just a... gothic-lookalike.

Arkose: Risen was at one point intended to be a spiritual sequel to Gothic 3, picking up where the Xardas ending left off, as revealed by the Risen-Introkonzept storyboards. This part of the intro didn't make it into the final game but Risen's plot still follows on from these events.

Piranha Bytes have indicated that they will regain JoWooD's remaining Gothic rights at some point in the future, but after the three games that followed Gothic 3 it's likely that they'll stick to their new, untarnished brand while including various references to their Gothic games (as they did in Risen).