Each quest you complete will give you experience and sometimes reputation for a specific faction, allowing you to access different bonuses. For example, for the paladin, the best armor from the rebels can be obtained only if you have a reputation of 75 out of 100 with them. In addition, the prices for training with a certain faction will drop if you increase the reputation with them. Each level you pass will give you 10 training points, which can be used to train in the 5 main categories: warrior, hunter, mage, thief and alchemy. We also have blacksmithing where you can do your own weapons or even make a profit out of it.

By spending the points the right way, you can become a stealthy guy, a spell-stocked mage, a mighty warrior or a feared hunter but in the end you will be an all-around warrior, because this makes your life easier. Raising your skills unlocks other skills that are achieved by training, which involves lots of money. Sometimes you're helped out by other people who join you for a while (sometimes even friends from Khorinis), helping out in fights so you can quest a little easier. At least, that’s what you hope. Instead, they slow you down as you wait for them to catch up, and half the time they don’t bother fighting anyway. Let them tag along at your own risk. I have warned you! In addition, sometimes they die or disappear, and the game doesn't know. Then you are stuck alone, because you can't take anyone else with you.

The fights are hard at first, because the combat system was changed and because of a few issues. For example, the wild boars and wolves, the animals that are very common in the game, give you no choice when they throw you on the ground. You don't have time to get up, block, or respond with an attack, so in most cases you need a quick load. Regarding people, the fights are easier and these fights are the cherries of the combat pie. Blocks, parry, and special abilities come into play when facing a human or an orc. JoWood tried to patch the game and resolve the issue with the animals, but I couldn't see any difference. Maybe because by the time they released the patch, I was too high in level and the fights were easy.

The Flaws

The game is plagued with problems from which some are small and some are big. For example, if you find a cave while you are roaming the land, but you don't want to explore at that time. What can you DO? Well, I can tell you what you can't DO. You can't put notes on the map (which is small anyway), so you must remember its position in order to come back later. Lucky, most of these caves have glowing crystals at the entrance so you can find them easy at night, if you dare to adventure at night in the forest. Another feature, which was weakly implemented, is the journal. Most of the quests are added to the journal and some information is available there, but when it comes to a big quest, the journal is useless. The information is small and sometimes it's missing the essential, leaving you with no option, but to write it all on a piece of paper.

Another flaw that is present in the game, regards the escort quests. That person finds lots chances to be killed as soon as possible, making your life a living hell. He ventures away from you, trying to be killed probably, and if in the process of helping him you accidentally hit him, he attacks you eventually. The best way to deal with this kind of missions is to clear the path before and only after that to accept the mission.

However, all these good and bad components create the unique atmosphere in the Gothic universe. Pyranha and JoWood will surely address some of the problems and will improve the game but it's a shame because Gothic 3 could become the RPG of the year.

The Rig

Gothic 3 offers a beautiful environment to the player. With the help of SpeedTree, the forests and not only are looking amazing, if you tweak the ".ini" file a little. It rivals the graphic in Oblivion, which at that time was considered the best. However, to benefit from all its beauty, you need a beast-machine, because Gothic 3 requires many resources, maybe too many for what it offers. With a little tweaking, you can get even a 50% performance increase, which translates in an easy flowing game, but this should be done by Piranha, not by the players. The game is not called Gothic for no reason. The shades that Gothic 3 uses are there to create a believable medieval atmosphere. You get an amazing forest with ruins hidden by the depth of field effect, caves luring you inside no matter the danger that lay inside, all this adding to the beauty of the game.

The music is superb, maybe ones of the best I have heard. It fills you inside and makes you invincible. Nevertheless, if you listen closely to the various sounds you can get ready to a wolf or boar attacking you from the bushes. I remember the first time I stepped into the desert and in the background a woman was singing, it was awesome.

The voice acting is ok, not as good as the music and are not as serious as they should be. Not very Gothic. There aren't many actors speaking. However, when you think how many people are in Myrtana it's understandable.

To play the game properly you will need a NASA PC. Not even with my system which features a 3800+ dual-core processor, 2GB RAM and a Radeon X1900XTX I couldn't make the game run smoother. When I finally managed to make it run like I wanted and tweaked the ".ini" file, I had the 'brilliant' idea to install the 1.08 patch to get rid of the lens flare effect, which could even be seen in caves. Well from that time on, I barely managed to have more than 25 fps. Should I add that, when you want to do a quick-load you must wait around 30 seconds to 1 minute? With the HDD fully defragmented.