I had the same issue with Oblivion on my second playthrough, but as Arkose said, it's all in the build. The leveling system in Oblivion forces the player to make certain gameplay decisions (at least if the player wishes to complete the main questline). However, this is on the player, not the developers.

As for Gothic being neither "good" nor "old", good is a relative term. Many games on GOG are less than spectacular in my opinion, but good is truly a matter of opinion. A lot of us think Gothic 3 is a great game, and you did admit that when fully patched it is fun. And it is 5 years old now, having been released in 2006, making it older than some other games already on GOG, including fellow open world rpg Two Worlds.

I've seen on the forums before disagreements over what constitutes "old". I figure 4-5 years, the game is off the retail shelves and the price point is on a GOG level on other downloads. Gothic 3 fits those requirements. Once again, that's simply my opinion on a game being "old".

Yes, that's true. I wanted my character to be a little unusual, so I specialised at alchemy, sneaking, athletics, lockpicking and similar stuff. It was too late when I discovered this wasn't the best idea. Hopefully I'll finish the game, but I'll have to use mainly sneaking and running.

Well, in my opinion G3 is not entirely crap. Patches (especially those famous fan patches) made it quite playable and it was quite fun over all. But still it remains WAY worse than any of first two Gothic games. I think the main disadvantage is the name itself. If it wasn't Gothic I may be a little more positive about the game...

And about being old, it's really up to every single person how he/she understands that term. When I discovered this site (about year and piece ago) there were majority of games from 90s. That's where I got feeling like there should be mainly *really old* games which are impossible to buy elsewhere. I don't want to point exact age suitable for game being old, I just don't know whether it's good to have games like King's Bounty here. (Yes, it's superb game, but really? It's everything just not old...)

Lol, I just posted a query not to long ago that asks the same thing!

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/gothic_series/when_will_gog_get_gothiciii

I agree, but I'll wager we have to give4 it a bit of time before it gets over here!
They just redid the expansion you can get it on *steam (*Not a big fan, but if I must..)
BTW, Greetings My Dunmer brother!

To be perfectly honest I'd want to see a community patch 1.75 before a GOG release. The CP team thought it'd be a good idea to fiddle around with the number of engaging enemies with the alternate ai, but the game wasn't designed for that and often there can be some buggy nuisances in one-on-one encounters. If they simply kept the limit for engaging enemies at one, throughout all difficulties, I don't think any melee character would have a problem, but as it stands, they just re-broke G3 again.

Of course I'll have to explain myself there; they did a wonderful job for the most part and G3 is still very playable. You now have to time your light swings to take care of beasts, block an attack before going on the offensive and I'd say I've recently become very good at the melee combat, but there are two questionable design issues that the CP team went along with.

A) Difficulty.
On easy mode, a max of one enemy can attack you. Sometimes this enemy can back out and let a friend take over, possibly one who's flanking you. This technically means there's two enemies engaging. This is fine, but it eventually becomes boring when you one/two hit kill everything.

On medium difficulty it's like a jump from novice to hardcore in any other game. Now two can go at you at once and both can be substituted for others, which means engaging enemy possibilities doubles to four and you can get relentlessly juggled (I'll remind you that the being juggled problem is what needed to be fixed on G3's release. So we've substituted one form of juggling for another.) not to mention that in inevitable groups the targeting system is all over the place and will present your back to archers, or focus your attention on a nearby meatbug during a skeleton horde.

The messiness of medium modes and upwards just kills your enthusiasm for melee and while you can run away, abuse the unfinished inventory menu and drink a few potions, that doesn't feel very rewarding. On top of that, you'll likely be forced to use a shield when facing groups. I'll reiterate: Everybody would enjoy G3 more with the engaging enemy limit set to one, with difficulty merely affecting enemy health values and combat ai. While I'm at it, I'll remind everyone of quite a few two handed weapons getting 'stuck' inside your blocks, repeatedly hitting your shield/weapon and draining your endurance until the next issue kicks in:

B) The shield block limit.
You can only block for 2.5 seconds before nameless sticks his big nose into aforementioned Krush Tarach and deafens us with his death scream, the cue for the patronizing music we don't want to hear. Coming from a game design perspective this just seems silly, for want of a better word.

If these two problems were fixed, I'd love G3 more than I already do, but I understand and appreciate each and every person who dislikes G3; it's still an unfinished game. Sure, I can probably get what I want by playing the game on easy and just *not* buffing my strength up high or wielding overpowered weapons, sticking with weaker ones and instead focusing my learning points on something like endurance or something just as useless, but I don't want to.

The 'substituting' enemies thing is an excellent summation of the problems with the latest fan patch. It's especially frustrating if you choose the Innos path and have to slaughter hundreds of Orcs to free the cities and, at the very least, the entirety of Ishtar to kill Zuben. And that's on top of the general tediousness that is having to clear through all of those enemies.

I don't think Gothic 3 is a bad game but I don't think it is anywhere near as good as either of the first two. There are a lot of good concepts that PB had that just fell flat on their face during implementation. Other than the world size I can't think of any area where Gothic 3 improves upon Gothic 2. Possibly in playing as a mage but I've never done it in G3 so I can't say for sure.

It wasn't about the substituting for me. It was simply more than one enemy going at you at the same time, especially with a timer on your shield. Combat's fun when it's one on one and the others stand back. FUN. Watching out for opponents making themselves vulnerable etc.

It's just not possible to have fun with two people attacking you at the same time. One might use a stabbing animation, the other might be vulnerable, but you need to stay all the way back or you'd get stabbed. It's like saying "You want to live? Use a shield or go play on easy."

I just *really* wish the CPT would change those two things. We either get frustrated in melee combat on the medium/hard setting or a feeling of belittlement on the easy setting.