Negligently developed, Forsaken God certainly succeeds in frustrating old fans and alienate new beginners
FG - the independent expansion of Gothic 3 - offers a totally new sets of quests and characters. Its main task is clarifying many uncovered misteries in the main version, and at the same time providing a brief prelude for the forthcoming Gothic 4. The background is set some 2 years after the Great War, when the land of Myrtana is separated
into four parts and the conflict between human and orc races leads to an inevitable warfare once more. In the role of an anonymous hero, you struggle for Myrtana's peace and union.
Similar to its predecessor, FS maintains a fairly complex gameplay which may not attract any RPG fan. Along with gaining experience through battles, your character also earn learning points which allow him to study the usage of new weapons (one, two-handed melee,range), one of the magic schools, or item creation. In the huge world of FS, careful management of these points is important for you to carry out quests as well as survive in battle.
It will take from 15 to 20 hours to finish the main quest line. However, few players would find enough patience to do so, for FS contains such a incredible number of bugs and spoilers. Not mention the repetitive nature of the quests, it's very annoying to see that some NPC usually disappear suddenly or stand idly without response to your interaction. Even worse, sometimes you receive a message of quest failure with no way to figure out the reason. Therefore, the only choice is to reload and redo the quest under the fear that it would suddenly fail again. Furthermore, there is a lack of basic supporting features in a Role play, such as quest log or tracking mechanism of NPCs' location. As a result, the game becomes a real challenge to its players' patience.
JoWood advertises that they have upgraded the combat system to a new level, however, all you receive is still a load of flashy, repetitive sword play. They look decent, but the limited number of stroke types is really disappointing. Moreover, even old bugs of Gothic 3 have not been fixed. For example, "Object penetration" becomes extremely unpleasant during battles when your opponents get stuck inside some other objects like a wall or a large rock, making it impossible to finish them; some items can not be picked up even when characters bow to grab them from any angle. Another spoiler is that game run slowly even on computers with much higher hardware configuration compared to the requirement; errors in graphics processing makes the frame rate drop horribly at certain moment in game. It is almost useless to reduce graphical quality or applying new patches: it still takes forever to load FG.
Though severely suffer from these bugs, it is still unfair not to mention some of its truly imposing background scenery with magnificent mountain ranges and peaceful, picturesque villages. Character models and their costumes are also slightly more diversified and realistic although their movements are somewhat cumbersome and unnatural. Magic and light effects are average. Conversely, cut scene quality is unacceptable, especially in high resolution, with lengthy dialogue and even unmatched subtitles! Background music, on the other hand, is inspiring with a wide range of consonance from peaceful to enthusiastic. Sound effects depicting weapon clashing are good too, making audio the strongest part of FG (if we can overlook "lullaby" voice acting).
It may be a fatal mistake for the series to publish such an sloppy expansion pack. Hopefully this is not a sad ending for a popular title like Gothic