I haven't played Gothic 1 but from what I've seen of it, it's a solid game. Gothic 2 is just fantastic, and a must-get at that price. Don't get Gothic 3 though, it's crap.
The game is extremely laggy, the fighting is very annoying (especially when fighting against 80 Orcs at the same time when liberating towns) and the game itself is so repetitive and boring.
RE: the Gothic games, I would *highly* recommend the first two. Be warned though that they are quite difficult, and a bit clunky to control. However, they are great open-world RPGs. Sadly, the only way to get the 1st Gothic is to buy it in a pack, so...
Buy the Gothic Universe Edition. It's half the price of the full pack, and although Gothic 3 is a bit crap, it becomes playable if you install the community patch. And it does not include the horrendous abortions that are Forsaken Gods and Arcania.
This Gothic sale has brought up the usual stuff I hear about the quality of the games but I've never really heard or understood why Arcania is so bad. Of all the games in the series it is the only one I've played a bit of (part of the demo) and I didn't find the experience bad in any real way - it was neither one of the better or worse games I've played. It didn't leave any lasting impression anyway, or I would probably have got the full game. I'm not likely to now (nor do I have any real interest in the series as a whole) but I am curious.
I haven't played Arcania myself, that's why I'm not saying if it's good or bad (I know that Spellbound makes good games, I mean... come on, Desperados and Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood anyone?). I suspect that it's hated by Gothic fans because it doesn't have that 'Gothic feel'. Basically, different developer + different RPG style + hard relationship between Piranha Bytes and JoWood (the publisher) = practically every Gothic fan dissing ArcaniA. I honestly think that had it not been part of the Gothic universe, it would've been received better (although, I don't say that it would make the game instantly awesomely great, but at least it would be judged independently).
EDIT: It's really similar to Monkey Island, really. Non-MI fans love Escape and it was critically very well received, while a lot of MI fans hate it. Arcania is critically received pretty decently (not as well as EMI was in its time), but a lot of Gothic fans still hate it.
EDIT 2: Hey, apparently I have Arcania (bought it at a similar sale last year with all other Gothic games), I'm curious now I should check it out.
EDIT 3: Damn... here's what Steam sales are doing to you - sometimes you don't even know that you OWN a certain game...
I haven't played Arcania myself, that's why I'm not saying if it's good or bad (I know that Spellbound makes good games, I mean... come on, Desperados and Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood anyone?). I suspect that it's hated by Gothic fans because it doesn't have that 'Gothic feel'. Basically, different developer + different RPG style + hard relationship between Piranha Bytes and JoWood (the publisher) = practically every Gothic fan dissing ArcaniA. I honestly think that had it not been part of the Gothic universe, it would've been received better (although, I don't say that it would make the game instantly awesomely great, but at least it would be judged independently).
The thing that ArcaniA threw out was the believeable world. No one cares if you step in their house and take their stuff from chests while they have breakfast or something. That is a no-go in a Gothic game. (They used the name only to sell more copies of this anyway.)
The story never was that epic in the series but ArcaniA takes the cake. Near the end of the first chapter the hero has everything he wants. A girlfriend he is finally allowed to marry and he is looking forward to having a happy family. This is surely to go over well isn't it? I stopped watching someone play it at that point. I knew what was going to happen during the rest of the game.
Maybe it gets better after that but the DRM used made me not even consider buying the game at this price.
Also there was ton of bugs and after the "Gothic 3 experience" the community grew very cautious of that.
And the metacritic scores speak for themselves I must say.
And the metacritic scores speak for themselves I must say.
Ah, metacritic... a congregation of arbitrary numbers, most of which were converted from one scoring system to another (skewing the already skewed arbitrary system), all summed up and divided to show an 'objective average'. I don't care how high or low the metacritic score is - it's total crap.
So, no, regardless of how poor Arcania is, metacritic scores never speak for themselves, they're crap Sorry, but I just have a really big grudge against metacritic, heh.
Metacritic is indeed crap, but generally if you add 5 to non-AAA games, and subtract 10 from AAA games you will get an unweighted score. But regardless of Metacritic's uselessness, I don't think there's any way you can spin 61 as good critical reception, and Arcania and Forsaken Gods are terrible for reasons way beyond some sort of fan's fervor. Horribly buggy, unimaginative, RPG-elements stripped out, and just generally lazy. Forsaken Gods is, if anything, even worse.
Bought Forsaken Gods, Arcania and Sarif. Don't know why. Maybe to complete my collection. Or maybe just to see first hand how horrible they are.
Installing Gothic 3 now too. Last time I played was with the last official patch before the fanpatches when JoeWood didn't want to finance more patches, the fans stepped in and Piranha Bytes left to make Risen, the true and only Gothic 4.
Let's see how far the FanPatches have been able to change the game.
On Gothic 3: What version is on Steam. The last official patch was released after I finished the game and basically just included the FanPatches up to that point.
Today's Daily Deal is James Bond 007: Blood Stone. Still kinda expensive at £7.49 / $14.99, but if you're interested, I doubt it'll get much cheaper for the PC.
Picking up on the top 10 most played steam games -
1) Left 4 Dead 2 361.7hrs
2) Left 4 Dead 111.6hrs
3) Borderlands 49.4hrs
4) Total War: Shogun 2 49.3hrs
5) Sid Meier's Civilization V 40.7hrs
6) Two Worlds II 34.7hrs
7) Alien Swarm 33hrs
8) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 30.8
9) Audiosurf 29.6hrs
10) Dead Island 24.8hrs
Unfortunately I'm mainly a console gamer, so it's only really shooters and strategy games I buy on PC, unless it's on sale.
Today's Daily Deal is Hydrophobia: Prophecy, an improved version of the original Hydrophobia initially available on XBox Live. At 99p / $1.24, it's definitely worth a look!
Today's Daily Deal is Hydrophobia: Prophecy, an improved version of the original Hydrophobia initially available on XBox Live. At 99p / $1.24, it's definitely worth a look!
I refuse to buy it because I will not play it. It'll sit there staring at me forever and ever gathering virtual dust.
Today's Daily Deal is The Ninjabee Collection, which consists of Cloning Clyde and Ancients of Ooga. I enjoyed CC, though I've yet to try AoO. It's £2.70 / $4.05 for the pair - not too much for some half-decent puzzle platformers.
Today's Daily Deal is The Ninjabee Collection, which consists of Cloning Clyde and Ancients of Ooga. I enjoyed CC, though I've yet to try AoO. It's £2.70 / $4.05 for the pair - not too much for some half-decent puzzle platformers.
Everyone that wants those probably already got them when they were in the IndieRoyale NinjaBee pack a week or two ago.
Today's Daily Deal is Choplifter HD. You control a chopper and you lift things. Shocking! £3.49 / $4.99.
Also, the Midweek Madness is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which has a third off at £20.09 / $40.19. The DLC's also on offer (except for the latest one, Teeth of Naros), as is the complete pack, which I recommend if you're gonna get the game, since that's a mere £26.79 / $53.59 and includes ALL 3 DLC packs with the game.
...I suspect those prices haven't been properly converted. Nice to see Americans get screwed over for once instead if us Englanders.
Well, after all the hassle we had with The Witcher 2, let's have something simple and straightforward.
Today's Daily Deal is Runespell Overture, an RPG combining poker with collectable cards which is the very definition of a game not made for someone like myself. £1.99 / $2.49.
More deals! These are the Weekend ones. (Thanks to ketzer for pointing out they were up)
First up is the absolutely terrible Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. It's £17.99 / $23.99, but for the love of god do NOT buy this. I'm not joking when I say it's bad - it's pretty much a spit in the face of the original games. AVOID.
Better is the Mount & Blade series. You can get the whole lot (The original, Warband, Warband: Napoleonic Wars and With Fire & Sword) for a mere £7.50 / $8.75, which is pretty damn good value. If you've already got one or more of the games, then they're all at 75% off (except for the DLC), so the individual games are bloody cheap too.
Today's Daily Deal is one we all probably already own. It's the Monkey Island Special Edition Bundle. Both of the remastered Monkey Island games for a frankly ridiculous £3.56 / $5.09.
GamersGate has 75%-off of Square Enix games this weekend. Some of these, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and Just Cause 2, redeem on Steam.
Today's Daily Deal is one we all probably already own. It's the Monkey Island Special Edition Bundle. Both of the remastered Monkey Island games for a frankly ridiculous £3.56 / $5.09.
GamersGate has 75%-off of Square Enix games this weekend. Some of these, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and Just Cause 2, redeem on Steam.
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Here's a full list of the Steam-enabled games:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (and DLC packs)
Dungeon Siege III (and DLC pack)
Just Cause 2 (requires Vista or Win7, DO NOT BUY if you have WinXP or older)
Kane & Lynch II: Dog Days (Angry Joe Says NO)
Order of War
Supreme Commander 2
It's also been Ubisoft week, and there's some Steam'd games there that are 30% off:
Bloody Good Time
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
IL-2 Sturmovic: Cliffs of Dover
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (and DLC pack)
RUSE (and DLC packs)
Yes, get these.
Also, I highly recommend getting the following mods/fixes for Secret of Monkey Island:SE.
- Hella load of stuff -
Ah yeas, thanks for reminding us of those. And for posting the images. Yes. Thanks for that.
If you desperately, desperately need Jagged Alliance: Back in Action (and I cannot for the life of me imagine why that would be the case given how atrociously awful it is), then it's under £10 (so around $13, I'd imagine) at G2Play.Net.
Bear in mind me and one or two other people have had issues with the site wanting us to identify ourselves with... questionable methods (pictures of your ID? Yeah, that sounds kosher), but if you kick up enough of a fuss they generally just give you the OK.
Today's Daily Deal on Steam is Hoard. £1.74 / $2.49, or four copies for £5.24 / $7.49.
There's also a couple of DLC packs, and the Complete Pack (which has the game and both DLC packs) is £1.87 / $2.87. So if you're gonna get this, you might as well get the Complete Pack.
Comments
(I played it so much, I broke the ingame clock! XD)
The game is extremely laggy, the fighting is very annoying (especially when fighting against 80 Orcs at the same time when liberating towns) and the game itself is so repetitive and boring.
Buy the Gothic Universe Edition. It's half the price of the full pack, and although Gothic 3 is a bit crap, it becomes playable if you install the community patch. And it does not include the horrendous abortions that are Forsaken Gods and Arcania.
EDIT: It's really similar to Monkey Island, really. Non-MI fans love Escape and it was critically very well received, while a lot of MI fans hate it. Arcania is critically received pretty decently (not as well as EMI was in its time), but a lot of Gothic fans still hate it.
EDIT 2: Hey, apparently I have Arcania (bought it at a similar sale last year with all other Gothic games), I'm curious now
EDIT 3: Damn... here's what Steam sales are doing to you - sometimes you don't even know that you OWN a certain game...
I have no clue what level I am in, but odds are it was 9 and was REALLY close to 10.
The thing that ArcaniA threw out was the believeable world. No one cares if you step in their house and take their stuff from chests while they have breakfast or something. That is a no-go in a Gothic game. (They used the name only to sell more copies of this anyway.)
The story never was that epic in the series but ArcaniA takes the cake. Near the end of the first chapter the hero has everything he wants. A girlfriend he is finally allowed to marry and he is looking forward to having a happy family. This is surely to go over well isn't it? I stopped watching someone play it at that point. I knew what was going to happen during the rest of the game.
Maybe it gets better after that but the DRM used made me not even consider buying the game at this price.
Also there was ton of bugs and after the "Gothic 3 experience" the community grew very cautious of that.
And the metacritic scores speak for themselves I must say.
Ah, metacritic... a congregation of arbitrary numbers, most of which were converted from one scoring system to another (skewing the already skewed arbitrary system), all summed up and divided to show an 'objective average'. I don't care how high or low the metacritic score is - it's total crap.
So, no, regardless of how poor Arcania is, metacritic scores never speak for themselves, they're crap
Installing Gothic 3 now too. Last time I played was with the last official patch before the fanpatches when JoeWood didn't want to finance more patches, the fans stepped in and Piranha Bytes left to make Risen, the true and only Gothic 4.
Let's see how far the FanPatches have been able to change the game.
On Gothic 3: What version is on Steam. The last official patch was released after I finished the game and basically just included the FanPatches up to that point.
Today's Daily Deal is Fractal: Make Blooms, Not War. No clue what it's like, sorry. £2.49 / $3.49.
Back to my shiny doodahs!
It's a fairly slow-paced puzzle game. Not bad, but you're not really missing anything either.
1) Left 4 Dead 2 361.7hrs
2) Left 4 Dead 111.6hrs
3) Borderlands 49.4hrs
4) Total War: Shogun 2 49.3hrs
5) Sid Meier's Civilization V 40.7hrs
6) Two Worlds II 34.7hrs
7) Alien Swarm 33hrs
8) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 30.8
9) Audiosurf 29.6hrs
10) Dead Island 24.8hrs
Unfortunately I'm mainly a console gamer, so it's only really shooters and strategy games I buy on PC, unless it's on sale.
I refuse to buy it because I will not play it. It'll sit there staring at me forever and ever gathering virtual dust.
Everyone that wants those probably already got them when they were in the IndieRoyale NinjaBee pack a week or two ago.
Also, the Midweek Madness is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which has a third off at £20.09 / $40.19. The DLC's also on offer (except for the latest one, Teeth of Naros), as is the complete pack, which I recommend if you're gonna get the game, since that's a mere £26.79 / $53.59 and includes ALL 3 DLC packs with the game.
...I suspect those prices haven't been properly converted. Nice to see Americans get screwed over for once instead if us Englanders.
Today's Daily Deal is Runespell Overture, an RPG combining poker with collectable cards which is the very definition of a game not made for someone like myself. £1.99 / $2.49.
More deals! These are the Weekend ones. (Thanks to ketzer for pointing out they were up)
First up is the absolutely terrible Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. It's £17.99 / $23.99, but for the love of god do NOT buy this. I'm not joking when I say it's bad - it's pretty much a spit in the face of the original games. AVOID.
Better is the Mount & Blade series. You can get the whole lot (The original, Warband, Warband: Napoleonic Wars and With Fire & Sword) for a mere £7.50 / $8.75, which is pretty damn good value. If you've already got one or more of the games, then they're all at 75% off (except for the DLC), so the individual games are bloody cheap too.
Yes, get these.
Also, I highly recommend getting the following mods/fixes for Secret of Monkey Island:SE.
Alebrush's "Guybrush Hair patch" (download)
original SOMI:SE ---- PATCHED SOMI:SE
MI2:SE
----
LordTrilobite's "SOMI:SE Backgrounds fix" (download)
Classic mode; SOMI:SE; patched SOMI:SE
LordTrilobite's "SCUMM Bar Smile Mod" (download)
Classic mode; SOMI:SE; patched SOMI:SE
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (and DLC packs)
Dungeon Siege III (and DLC pack)
Just Cause 2 (requires Vista or Win7, DO NOT BUY if you have WinXP or older)
Kane & Lynch II: Dog Days (Angry Joe Says NO)
Order of War
Supreme Commander 2
It's also been Ubisoft week, and there's some Steam'd games there that are 30% off:
Bloody Good Time
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
IL-2 Sturmovic: Cliffs of Dover
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (and DLC pack)
RUSE (and DLC packs)
...I think I got all of them.
If you desperately, desperately need Jagged Alliance: Back in Action (and I cannot for the life of me imagine why that would be the case given how atrociously awful it is), then it's under £10 (so around $13, I'd imagine) at G2Play.Net.
Bear in mind me and one or two other people have had issues with the site wanting us to identify ourselves with... questionable methods (pictures of your ID? Yeah, that sounds kosher), but if you kick up enough of a fuss they generally just give you the OK.
Listen to him. It is bad.
Today's Daily Deal is Postal III, which is £15.99 / $19.99.
Despite the low, low MetaCritic score of 24, I'm still buying this, so colour me stupid.
Today's Daily Deal over at G4Play.net is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, which is £8.18 for a Steam Key.
There's also a couple of DLC packs, and the Complete Pack (which has the game and both DLC packs) is £1.87 / $2.87. So if you're gonna get this, you might as well get the Complete Pack.
Today's Daily Deal on Steam is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. This one's 10.19, whatever your currency (grr).