Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Highly addictive"

NOTE:It's strongly recommended to install the comunity patch otherwise you'll get an ugly and disastrous experience

Gothic 1&2 were great games,and for sure Piranha Bytes surprised the world with Gothic 1.Didn't see that coming....
Gothic 3 is for sure,a game that was rushed to be released,so PB didn't have to much time to polish this game.Too bad,it could be a unbeatable rival to TES4:Oblivion.
The game's main aspects,and the core RPG mechanics themselves work well for the most of the time but expect to die a lot because of the annoying enemy AI(they will jump back,and hit with their strongest punch killing you) and the loads of bugs and flaws that can hold back your overall game experience.One of the main points of this game is to make reputation among different groups,towns and races.You can do this by simply accomplishing quests,and this where g3 shines,the quests,rpg structure and the leveling up system.Damn if it isn't just fun to pull of a quest succesfully and see your reputation growing or receiveing gold and experience.As for the leveling up system it's utterly unique and complex,and it's just like no other(at least from what RPG's i've played).You improve your main abillities and skills by asking a person to train you.Also a certain domain like "hunting" for example will unlock new features and skills like skinning an animal or taking their teeth,or the smith domain which lately unlocks you the skill to hone your blade improving their damage.You'll be constantly rewarded in this game as long as you do quests and stuff like fighting in the arena which is improving your strenght abillity with one point for instance.
The world in G3 is gorgeous,greatly detailed and most of all open-end and big with lots of caves with loot to boot as well as plenty enemies to kill varying from basic wolves,wild boars and bandits to minecrawlers,sandcrawlers,shadow beasts and the most important aspect of this game:THE ORCS.So,the story is beginning by putting you in the role of a nameless hero which found himself in a town(Ardea,more exactly) assaulted by orcs.Your main quest is to find a strange dude Xardas which rules the orcs.The orcs won't attack you but they will call you Morra(probably from morron),it's not annoying but considerating that you can easily slay an orcish scout that calls you Morra gets a bit weird.
You can choose from about 4 races to be allied with:The rebels(the best option you can make),the Hashishin,the Nomads and the orcs(it seems to be so,i didn't finish the game so i can't know if there are more)
Personally,i had a greeeeatttt time liberating Cape Dun(a city full of orcs) and i felt for the second time about so that i'm really involved in this war between orcs and rebels,it wasn't on that,you know EPIC scale but it was enough for me.
As for the l00t you can't complain.You can buy them from the merchants or just exploring the rich,beautifully detailed world...don't expect dungeons but expect a lot of caves,orc camps,bandit camps all filled with loot.In G3 exploration is very rewarding....
About the graphics,hmm...well G3 really shines and it's very beautiful but there's one MAJOR drawback..the optimization.I still can't figure out why my 9500GT(count the 2,8ghz dual-core processor and the 2gb of ram) can't handle this game.The loading times are awfully long and the game's framerate stutters when a lot of stuff is going on screen.In fact i think that the bad optimization and the rough around the edges gameplay drag this game down,because in rest i don't see why this game is bad
Conclusion?
Patch the game,and enter the marvelous yet flawed universe of gothic3,enjoy the last bit of this game because rarely you'll catch a game like this.IN YOUR FACE OBLIVION!!!!