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Gothic 2 Gold Gothic 2 Gold is the name for the version of Gothic 2 that includes its expansion, Night of the Raven, which by all reports makes the game somewhat tougher, adds a bunch more NPC's, areas and quests, and also, in the finest traditions of immersive sim RPG's(looking at you, Ultima 7) adds some busted-rear end gear to wave around in the rest of the game. The backstory is that in Gothic 1, you, a nameless prisoner, got tossed into an island prison colony that had been largely taken over by the prisoners, but which was still providing resources for the King's war. It turned out, however, that it was also providing a cult for an ancient evil demon that was going to gently caress everyone over. You, the nameless prisoner, stopped this, and got buried under several thousand tons of stone as your reward when the Sleeper's temple collapsed on top of you due to his being a load-bearing boss. Surprisingly, you're still alive at the start of Gothic 2. But what do you do in Gothic 2 now that the great evil has been smote and peace and joy clearly suffuse the land?  Pray to Satan.  Admire cool fantasy vistas.  Smoke weed.  Work the fields.  Get ready for the evening's blood sacrifice.  Okay and maybe battle a new and exciting existential threat and get some cool gear and some poo poo like that. Jeez. Get off my back, dad. Ahem, the actual content of Gothic 2 is a third-person action RPG where you can collect herbs, skin animals, work the fields, smoke weed, eat bread, kick people's rear end and steal their wallet, join one of three factions and explore a pretty large and intricate island as well as the Valley of Mines from the first game(though the death of the Sleeper and the collapse of the magical barrier keeping everyone sealed in has destroyed some locations in the valley). This will be a hybrid RPG but mostly screenshot, with the video sections mostly devoted to showing off longer sections of character dialogue, especially on first encounter so everyone gets to hear their voices(I've found a "script" dump that contains all of the dialogue, albeit mixed in with AI instructions, so that'll make my life a lot easier). Also thanks to Rocket Baby Dolls, a good LP'er and all-round nice person, for helping find the patch that actually made OBS willing to record the game. Spoiler Policy Gothic 1 is fair game, since I don't intend to LP that and am not LP'ing that and some of it provides a bit of extra context. Gothic 2 is, however, quite good about letting you play an amnesiac hero who's completely forgotten all his old buddies and rivals so they'll re-introduce themselves and it generally doesn't feel forced when they re-explain things to you. Also please don't spoil Gothic 3. While it doesn't quite deserve to be given any reasonable treatment, assuming I can make it work after Gothic 2 and hate myself sufficiently, I intend to show that off as well. Reader Participation Gothic 2 is very open world for the most part, so there will be a lot of chances to choose where to go, and a lot of quests have multiple solutions(or at the very least one actual solution and multiple profitable failure states). If I called out a vote on everything, this LP would be over sometime in 2032, so instead I'll call out votes for what I consider are important choices(i.e. things that actually branch what we have to do, what abilities we gain, etc.), general approaches for areas(are we going to be nice or a huge dickhead) and when/where to run off the beaten path into the bushes to get eaten by a Shadowbeast or a bunch of goblins. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Jul 27, 2022 |
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Jul 27, 2022 15:38
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I'm looking forward to this LP. I tried to get into the Gothic games after hearing about them for so long and finding a "Complete Collection" with all 3 games and their expansions (may have been missing Gothic 3's expansion) for $20 at Toys R Us, and bounced pretty hard off the control scheme. I dunno why, just could never get the hang of the controls. What was this about worshipping the evil you killed in the first game?
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Jul 27, 2022 15:54
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I remember playing this a long time ago, one of the last RPGs I've actually finished (and the first one, too!). Never managed to get into 3 for the hat trick, though.
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Jul 27, 2022 15:56
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Randalor posted:What was this about worshipping the evil you killed in the first game? Oh no this is a different Satan. Technically Beliar, Satan Prime, was subcontracting the destruction of the world to the Sleeper, Satan Secundus. The world of Gothic 2 features at least one shrine to Beliar, and nothing stops you from walking over, dropping to your knees and sacrificing part of your lifeforce to Beliar.
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Jul 27, 2022 15:57
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Awwww... that actually makes me kind of sad. I would love to know what the outcome would have been from praying to the Great Evil that you just shanked a week prior would have been. :"Oh Great Satan, I beseech thee-" :"Hang the gently caress on, you just killed me, you fucker":"Yeah. That means I own your rear end now, right? That's how these things work?"
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Jul 27, 2022 16:01
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I know absolutely nothing about this franchise beyond that it exists. 
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Jul 27, 2022 16:24
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I have only passingly heard of Gothic, but I'm looking forward to this LP as well.
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Jul 27, 2022 16:45
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Mandalore did a video of the first game a couple of years back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvpnl24kFxs Thought he did one for the second game, but it was just for the first one and the demo of the remake that came out two years ago and got panned by the fans.
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Jul 27, 2022 16:55
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I had so much fun playing this many times as a stupid teenager and I'm very much looking forward to this.
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Jul 27, 2022 17:55
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I played this; made it surprisingly far, too, given my computer could only barely run it.
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Jul 27, 2022 17:57
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I enjoyed the first two games but never really played too far into the third one. I tried to play Gothic 2 again a few years ago, I cant remember what happened exactly but I accidentally sequence broke the game and then my save file became corrupted. I've been meaning to replay these games for a while but haven't found the time. Have I missed something or have you skipped the first game?
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Jul 27, 2022 18:17
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Looking forward to this, spent a lot of time playing Gothic 2 specifically, although I eventually made it through Gothic 1 as well. Also, I think others might be just as surprised to find out that Gothic 1/2 had/have a thriving mod community split across Germany, Poland and Russia. There's even a multiplayer mod with various active servers that have been running for years. I was so confused when I found out, because as far as I knew the Gothic series was one of the most obscure games I'd played. e: And for people who get excited reading the above and want to go try it out, you'll find it by Googling the obvious phrases; unfortunately basically all the info you'll find is in either German, Polish or Russian; and basically all the MP servers are the same. Red Mike fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jul 27, 2022 |
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Jul 27, 2022 18:54
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I think I tried to play Gothic 3, got past the tutorial and then there were wolves. Far from being a reasonable enemy for a starting character, in Gothic 3 they were nightmares whose attack animation was as long as the pain animation they inflicted on you when they hit. This meant that a single wolf would stunlock and kill you dead if you let it hit you once
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Jul 27, 2022 19:11
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I enjoyed the first two games but never really played too far into the third one. I tried to play Gothic 2 again a few years ago, I cant remember what happened exactly but I accidentally sequence broke the game and then my save file became corrupted. I've been meaning to replay these games for a while but haven't found the time. I skipped the first game as it's the one of the three I have no experience with, and I feel like playing it completely blind would be uninteresting to follow along in. Red Mike posted:There's even a multiplayer mod with various active servers that have been running for years. I was so confused when I found out, because as far as I knew the Gothic series was one of the most obscure games I'd played. I learned about that while trying to figure out my own solution to the windowed/OBS issue. Gothic 2 MP kind of blows my mind but... at the same time, holy poo poo I want it. Gort posted:I think I tried to play Gothic 3, got past the tutorial and then there were wolves. Far from being a reasonable enemy for a starting character, in Gothic 3 they were nightmares whose attack animation was as long as the pain animation they inflicted on you when they hit. Welcome to Gothic 3! This is the threat with multiple animals in that game, most infamously boars. It also released as an insanely buggy mess that would cause even high-end gaming PC's of the time to melt down into smoking slag, as well as graphics errors like the sun shining up through the ground/sea when it was supposed to be on the far side of the planet and similar issues. Years of patch releases have fixed the worst issues but it's still... it's still not good. Man is it ever still not good. It does provide a lot of open space for loving around, backstabbing NPC's(sometimes literally) and other things that I feel would work well with thread interactivity, especially considering how little respect anyone would have for the game or its characters. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jul 27, 2022 |
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Jul 27, 2022 19:12
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I mostly remembering saving and loading taking forever and every enemy pretty much had a slightly faster attack animation than your stagger animation for getting hit. Brilliant game design.
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Jul 27, 2022 19:54
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I mean there is an reason why they're also described as "peak Eurojank".
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Jul 27, 2022 20:02
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This game was my first experience with the series, and I absolutely loved it. Even with the jank. Eventually picked up and finished the expansion then went back and played the first one (at least until I hit a game breaking bug) about 75% of the way through. I think I own the 3rd, but have yet to touch it.
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Jul 28, 2022 01:43
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Black Robe posted:I know absolutely nothing about this franchise beyond that it exists. I know twice as much as you: I know that it exists and that every game is janky as gently caress. Fake Edit: I also know that Purple is a looney.
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Jul 28, 2022 02:07
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Gort posted:I think I tried to play Gothic 3, got past the tutorial and then there were wolves. Far from being a reasonable enemy for a starting character, in Gothic 3 they were nightmares whose attack animation was as long as the pain animation they inflicted on you when they hit. In the first game, the basic enemy is a featherless emu-chiken mix that WILL stunlock to death*. When you learn to get pelts and loots from enemies, the "learning speech" (a couple of sentences you get each time you learn/improve a skill related to the topic), is how to actually fight the drat things in melee without dying**. I don't remember the other two games do it, but the first one had a very cool/obnoxious thing where your melee combos suck early game, but learning to actually fight would unlock, faster, longer combinations. Your newbie character wields a one handed sword two handed and swings it like a bat, your late game character is a dervish of slashing and death. I love this series, jank and all. * They also travel in packs, Arisen. **Be very, very, very sure that you hit them FIRST.
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Jul 28, 2022 08:07
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Oh, hey, awesome. I'm currently playing ELEX 2 and keep thinking how Piranha Bytes keep remaking the same game for the last twenty years and I'm perfectly fine with that. Lots of memories of this one.Cooked Auto posted:I mean there is an reason why they're also described as "peak Eurojank". anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 08:41
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anilEhilated posted:Piranha Bytes keep remaking the same game for the last twenty years and I'm perfectly fine with that. Are the ELEX games actually good/same as Gothic then? I heard that the Risen games were basically Gothic with a new story, but everything I heard of ELEX was that it'd gone off the deep end and lost "all the charm" of Gothic. Combat is absolutely one of the parts of the game I absolutely hated, not least of which because my machine wasn't powerful enough when I first played it, so any hesitation would usually mean I'd get hit because it was rendering at 10fps and processing input at less than half that. And even playing it much later on a modern PC, the combat was never really fun; if anything it felt like an odd combination of realtime/first-person combat and RTS/MMO/third-person combat. You have to actively tap the buttons to perform combos in realtime, but your attacks target highlighted enemies (including at range). So the combat usually ends up feeling like very low-level MMO combat of kiting/luring enemies unless you're a lot stronger than the enemy...at which point it's more or less auto-combat. I wonder how much better it'd feel if it were MMO-style auto-attack with hotkeys, and the only real-time component were your movement (and I wonder how much of the combat is baked into the engine vs scripted in).
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Jul 28, 2022 09:16
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Red Mike posted:Are the ELEX games actually good/same as Gothic then? I heard that the Risen games were basically Gothic with a new story, but everything I heard of ELEX was that it'd gone off the deep end and lost "all the charm" of Gothic. ELEX 1 was pretty good (in the same way Gothic is pretty good, it has no qualms with killing you if you take a step in the wrong place), and you get a jetpack which means a) better exploration and b) more jank. I managed to fail joining the first faction by being too greedy in a couple of quests and had their leader tell me to gently caress off in no uncertain terms, which was a surprise and something I want other games to do.
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Jul 28, 2022 09:26
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They're fun. They don't have quite the minimalistic charm of the first two Gothics but if you're into deadly exploration and lots of faction politics, there's definitely plenty of that. The combat issues are mostly solved by the simple fact of there being guns. ELEX 2 has a considerably less lethal early game, though, so it might lose some points over that. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 09:30
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the gothic games are notoriously unforgiving with their gating of zones by level, and night of the raven ups the difficulty across the board to start off with, so this will be very interesting early on.
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Jul 28, 2022 10:42
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anilEhilated posted:Oh, hey, awesome. I'm currently playing ELEX 2 and keep thinking how Piranha Bytes keep remaking the same game for the last twenty years and I'm perfectly fine with that. Lots of memories of this one. The .ini is interesting to read, because every option has comments. For instance, the game actually has quicksaving! It's just off by default because the devs didn't like it and the option to turn it back on is in the .ini Controls default to Gothic 1's(which I honestly prefer), and the .ini comments for Gothic 2 controls are that they suck and you shouldn't turn them on. But yeah, the constant remaking has a strong Spiderweb Software vibe, but I also feel that unlike Spiderweb, all their good stuff was at the beginning not the end. mortons stork posted:the gothic games are notoriously unforgiving with their gating of zones by level, and night of the raven ups the difficulty across the board to start off with, so this will be very interesting early on. They're not exactly level-gated, sufficient skill and patience will allow you to take out practically anything with a stick. The main thing is that in the early-game you won't survive making a single mistake, so the focus is on the patience part, and since the good loot(in terms of weapons) has stat requirements, there isn't a huge benefit to going vastly off the beaten track early on. Like, there are some games where taking a right instead of a left early on, and squeezing past one nasty encounter, will allow you to trivialize the rest of the game, Gothic 2 doesn't have that. Because even if you get the Murderfuck Doomslayer Stick from behind the Killtree of Obliteration, you'll still be missing the 200 Fight Points needed to actually wield it. 'course, it's nice to have it for when you actually get the necessary stats, and it'll help you do an end-run around the game's economy, and some useful items have no stat reqs. JustJeff88 posted:I know twice as much as you: I know that it exists and that every game is janky as gently caress. Hey, I was going to LP a competently made game about which I have basically no comments and which has near-zero jank, but OBS didn't want to play ball and no one had a good suggestion for that one. 
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Jul 28, 2022 11:14
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PurpleXVI posted:there isn't a huge benefit to going vastly off the beaten track early on. Arguably there's quite a few downsides. From accidentally breaking quests you haven't started yet ("oh I found a satchel, oh some gold [...] oh you want to recover this satchel that I already found and opened, welp") to accidentally making the game move you from the first chapter onto the sixth chapter because they didn't think you'd be able to reach a particular area that serves as the trigger for that. I do like some of the things they planned for around sequence breaking though, especially that there's even special dialogue for doing some things that you wouldn't have thought they'd plan for (won't spoil any in case it comes up in the LP).
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Jul 28, 2022 11:29
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Oh, hey, I was wondering why no-one ever made an LP of Gothic. Great game, especially the first one. I will not spoiler Gothic 3, I will only say they moved away from the original control scheme and somehow made it worse. That game is horrible.
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Jul 28, 2022 13:11
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Recently replayed of the original 3 gothics and got into risen/elex series' as well. Decided in my last playthrough to see if a pure ranged build was acually a viable way of playing through it, and oh boy, it's not just viable complete murder in some locations. One thing I did notice is how much Piranha Bites reuse a lot of content or make reference to, this game and the first one in their later games.
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Jul 28, 2022 13:12
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Tevery Best posted:Oh, hey, I was wondering why no-one ever made an LP of Gothic. Great game, especially the first one. I will not spoiler Gothic 3, I will only say they moved away from the original control scheme and somehow made it worse. That game is horrible. I don't think its fair to say that Gothic 3 is horrible, it's just a very different experience from the original two games, and also clearly was significantly more ambitious. It falls flat in many respects, it's fairly short on story, the sheer size of the world means you mostly interact with most characters exactly once and the hilarious fact that men outnumber women by like 100:1 and there's about three named women NPCs in the whole continent. I mean that's a better ratio than gothic 1 but at least that game has the excuse of taking place in a prison colony. And hey it's better than it's expansion, Forsaken Gods, which was in its entirety outsourced to India and well, somebody has to LP that game at some point, if only because everybody hates it.
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Jul 28, 2022 13:22
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Zeniel posted:And hey it's better than it's expansion, Forsaken Gods, which was in its entirety outsourced to India and well, somebody has to LP that game at some point, if only because everybody hates it. Getting big Postal 3 vibes here. But guess who got gifted that years back and has been eyeing it with trepidation ever since then? If I don't yell "gently caress IT" and toss Gothic 3 out of the window halfway through, I'll put it in the lineup.
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Jul 28, 2022 13:37
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Ah, back from the day when base games bundled with their expansions got called "Gold" to help advertise and drive sales. Man, that was ages ago. Says the guy who did his own "Gold" LP a few years back, mind. But I'm looking forward to this as I only really think I remember the first one, and nothing about the second.
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Jul 28, 2022 13:47
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Fat Samurai posted:That's not Gothic 3, that's Gothic in general. I'm playing Dark Alliance 2 that was just re-released on the Switch, and it has a similar thing for a probably simpler game. So, there are essentially five fighting 'styles' in the game: one handed (with or without a shield), two handed, pole weapons (which are also two handed), dual-weild and distance (includes thrown and fired). Some characters have more or less potential pips in certain styles, and not everyone has every style. The barbarian gets the unique ability to hold 2H weapons in one hand. Your damage goes up as you invest level-up points into these styles, but it also makes for more fluid combos. For example, I'm playing the cleric who is a very short-range character. All of her spells, including turn undead and Flame Strike, are melee range, but she can use any type of weapon, not just blunt, including bows, crossbows, thrown knives & axes etc. With 0 or 1 pips in two-handed non-pole weapons, she does nothing but a very simple forehand slash. When I put a 2nd pip in it, she does forehand-backhand combo. I believe that pip #3, the max, does forehand-backhand-spinning cross slash. It's a nice incentive. As contrast, the monk (who is a lovely character until class change, then she's fun) basically has no incentive to do anything but either bare-hand or staff: the former for 1 on 1, the latter for when she is surrounded. PurpleXVI posted:Hey, I was going to LP a competently made game about which I have basically no comments and which has near-zero jank, but OBS didn't want to play ball and no one had a good suggestion for that one. I suggested several low-jank games, you Danish ding-dong! JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 17:31
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Zeniel posted:And hey it's better than it's expansion, Forsaken Gods, which was in its entirety outsourced to India and well, somebody has to LP that game at some point, if only because everybody hates it.
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Jul 28, 2022 21:32
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anilEhilated posted:See, people know about Forsaken Gods but no one (thankfully) remembers ArcaniA: Gothic 4. Probably because Risen was a thing by then and the fans followed PB instead of the series but still. Honestly, I know about Arcania but never gave it much thought until recently. I read a review of it that wasn't just gothic fans screaming about how it wasn't gothic, and it seems okay, it's not Gothic but I might give it a go and see what it's like. I'm sure it's not earth shattering, but it would be interesting to see where it goes at least. Forsaken Gods though, I recommend just watching the opening cutscene to see how bizarre it gets. It features the main character (whose hair turned black for some reason) chastising Xardas and everyone for screwing up all the peace he brought to the world and Xardas looking all sheepish and, well it's just gotta be something special. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Jul 29, 2022 |
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Jul 29, 2022 11:02
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Oh, oh no. God Speed onthis. I played the crap out of this game when i was younger, recently tried it again and bounced off of the controls, so hard. i played this game so much though, i still know roughly where everything and everyone is.
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Jul 29, 2022 16:05
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This is one of my favorite RPGs of all time, and the first game also rates pretty high up. It's also janky, yeah. But I'm surprised you prefer the control style from the first game rather than the second: when I first played this, it was one of the first options I enabled and it feels bad whenever I go back to play the first one because of its control system
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Jul 29, 2022 20:01
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I get the weirdest graphical glitch that happens in both Gothic 1 and 2, where if I play for long enough some textures start turing into weird green matrix patterns. Eventually these glitches grow till the map/main menu and text becomes unreadable. Only way I figured out how to fix it was to restart my game one they started appearing. Was annoying having to reboot my game every 20mins or so.
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Jul 29, 2022 23:56
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Zeniel posted:I get the weirdest graphical glitch that happens in both Gothic 1 and 2, where if I play for long enough some textures start turing into weird green matrix patterns. Eventually these glitches grow till the map/main menu and text becomes unreadable. Only way I figured out how to fix it was to restart my game one they started appearing. Was annoying having to reboot my game every 20mins or so. I'm no expert, but that sorta sounds like your graphics card is freaking out for some reason. I'd normally think it was overheating, but I can't imagine a game this old would be able to do that to even vaguely modern machines... right?
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Jul 30, 2022 02:06
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I think it is definitely graphics card related. But I dunno, im rubbish at figuring out hardware related crap. I think theres something weird about the original gothics graphical implementations that just does not gel with my graphics card.
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Jul 30, 2022 07:29
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