worst game of the year
Con: poorly optimized engine, graphics are mediocre, and combat is less then impressive
At first Gothic 3 seem to be a really fun RPG. It had some potential to be better Oblivion. The story line was alot more interesting in Gothic 3 then Oblivion. Orcs have over ran most of the humans towns and cities. You are there to either help the orcs get rid of the "rebel" humans or join the humans and get rid of the orcs. Its really your choice to decide. The game would have added some replay value if you were to decide to go one way and then decide to go to the next and see a different outcome of your choice. However, I did not reached far enough to know if this is true.
Gothic 3 uses the engine called "Genome" it appears to be an in house developed engine, capable in optimizing hyperthread technology. The engine is very poorly optimized in video cards. It will constantly lag, stopping for a few seconds before continuing on again. Quick movements like running or turning makes the engine lag really bad. Freezing and crashing does sometimes happen, though it is not as bad as Oblivion's constant crashing. The graphics are fairly poor compared to other games released. Other games with much better graphics and detail have lesser of an issue of lag and crashing. Games like FEAR and Prey having better detail quality graphics have less lag and better stability.
Combat is something I am attracted to when it comes to RPGs. Always love to be the melee classes, fighting up close with a sword. This is not ment to be. The combat is less then impressive at its best. NPCs humanoids and monsters throughout the game will commonly move back while you swing. Sometimes a player will miss or not even do damage to a creature even when it is right in front. Small swings would do damage, but much larger powerful swings would have missed the npc or monster fighting.
In the end, this game would be considered the worst game to be released this year. I will back this game up and say it had some promise if it had another year of development to fully complete the content and optimize the engine so it is stable with today's video cards. Perhaps it would have better to license or hire someone to create an engine to be more stable then Piranha Bytes used.