This year after the departure of the original dev team Piranha Bytes, the Gothic gauntlet was selected up by India-based Trine Games, which cut its teeth on a stand-alone interim title–a Gothic 3.5 if you will–called Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods. Making a quality title faithful to another companys well-loved IP is tough so you have to give Trine some credit for trying. Unfortunately, Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods can be summed up in three small words: its a mess.
Previous to we address the games many problems, a small background. Continuing the fiction of Gothic 3, the tale of Forsaken Gods follows the exploits of the Nameless Hero, a soldier whose reputation was built during the years of struggle between humans and orcs. His job in this game is to join up the land of Myrtana which is life torn apart by the squabbling of three warlords, Thorus, Gorn and Lee. To do this he must overcome his weakened state, rebuild his combat, magic and trade abilities and act as negotiator among the factions.
As in previous Gothic titles, the RPG element of the game is extremely complex. The system is based on the earning of experience points and levels, which in turn grant you learning points. Learning points are used at shrines or given to various teachers to buy skill upgrades and theres a goodly selection of skills to choose from. Along with a wide selection of one-hand, two-hand, ranged and heavy weapon skills, you can learn multiple other skills in the magic, blacksmithing, thieving and hunting categories. That sounds like enough customization to send any RPG fan into a swoon, but ultimately all this tasty character complexity is for naught. But how can this be, you say? What could stand in the way of my neck-deep immersion in the fantasy of Forsaken Gods? Bugs, people. Bugs.
The game is so littered with game-breaking bugs it had to have been kicked out the door with small or no testing. Even with the two post-relief patches there are countless times youll find yourself unable to go on due to broken quest triggers. The run prides itself on its “open world” construction and its right, you can run all over the land lacking experiencing a loading screen, but even if the world is open, the quest progression remains in large part linear. If you happen upon a quest NPC previous to youre meant to, you just may break the quest and have to revert to a previous save or even start the game all over. Another fun small quest breaker is a touch I like to call “NPCs Behaving Terribly.” Quest-essential NPCs disappear in adjoin of your eyes, refuse to speak to you, and, once in a while, walk behind impassible geometry never to return.
Aside from the awkward quest point and rampant broken triggers, the other aspect of the game thats likely to make you invent new curse words is the routine. Even on high-end machines, the loading times are long and the game hitches unbearably no matter where you are. The orc city of Trelis in particular is an absolute slide show, and turning the graphics down to their lowest setting makes the game hideous lacking doing anything for the form rate.
Operating system: Windows 98 \ Me \ 2000 \ XP \ Outlook \ September
Processor: 2.2 GHz
Memory: 1 GB
Video: 256 MB
Free hard drive space: 4 GB