JoeTheDestroyer's Gothic 3 review

You see, a Gothicor Risen game -- fix your space error, heathen!

You're right about the Piranha RPG's though. I got a buggy pre-release copy of Gothic 3 waaaaaay back in the day and managed to just about beat it before release (had the first English word review of the game up. Was beaten mercilessly by Germans), but I put on some really long shifts on that one. It wasn;t super stable, either, so I would crash and lose hours and just dive back in and do stuff a slightly different way. Same with Risen. I stopped at the first because it was so draining.

Gothic 4 never looked as appealing. I guess I'll wait a few months and see what you have to say about that one! Gotta beat 'em all. unless you're me!

Geez. I didn't realize you wrote the first English language review. I'm sure it was hell getting through the initial build of this game. I remember you talking about the boars. They're not so difficult to mess with now, but the lurkers can be a pain in the ass when you're at a low level.

With Risen, you're not missing much with the second one. It's probably PB's most disappointing game, mostly because it's incredibly simple. The plot is still kinda fun. Risen 3 is good, but pretty flawed and a little buggy.

I'm a little over 100 minutes into Gothic 4, and it's probably the blandest RPG I've ever played in a while. I've been through just about every early game trope so far, from heavy-handed tutorial missions to delivering items to a witch in the middle of the woods.

The best part is that they make the woods sound perilous and immense, like getting to the witch's hut is going to be a lengthy journey. In almost any other Gothic game, it would have been, and you can guarantee that you'll run across at least one shadowbeast. In Gothic 4, these deep, dangerous woods contain a whole five weak wolves, and it takes less than a minute to reach the witch's hut. You practically have to go out of your way to aggro the wolves, too. Such a stark difference between this and the previous three titles...