Gothic Universe

List Price: $29.99 Discount Price: $25.00

Features:

• Follow an incredible story over the course of three intense games
• 3D action adventure with over 300 hours of exciting gameplay
• Immerse yourself in the most realistic and fascinating game world possible
• Liberation or annihilation - the fate of the world of Gothic lies in your hands!
• Huge living and breathing environment reacting to the player's actions and creating endless choices of interaction

Customer Reviews:

Very good game [Posted on 2007-12-29]
I have Gothic 3 Now I can Start from the begining As I did not find in stores Now Im fiding where it all started to get to 3

Wow, what a find! [Posted on 2008-02-16]
To be honest, I had never heard of Gothic until I was browsing through a message board recently for The Witcher. Many people were mentioning the Gothic games so I decided to research it a bit. After playing a demo I decided to get the Gothic Universe pack from my local Best Buy, for a lowly 30 bucks. Hey, 3 games plus an expansion for the second game for 30 bucks! That's a deal.

Anyway, man am I glad I got these games. I must be honest and say that I haven't played any of Gothic 3 yet, but the purchase was well worth it just for 1 and 2 alone. The story is original and interesting, the land is expansive and a joy to explore, there are many quests and things to do, all the Npcs are voice acted and have personality, and it's just downright a blast to play. The graphics are pretty decent and the music is good as well. I could see people knocking the controls in Gothic 1 but once you get used to it it's second nature.

The only thing negative I would say is in the package itself, as it lacks any game manuals. There is just 3 discs in sleeves. However, Gothic 3 does have a pdf file of the manual on the disc, but 1 and 2 don't. Not a huge deal, but it would have been nice.

I highly recommend this purchase and the Gothic games, at least 1 and 2. Even if 3 is not as good (based on some reviews I have seen), 1 and 2 are definitely worth the 30 dollar price tag, no question. And 3 may be great, I just haven't had a chance to play through that one yet.

Good and Bad [Posted on 2008-03-07]
I had heard good things about Gothic II; so, I recently picked this game package up. I have completed Gothic I and just started Gothic II. Reviews I have read concerning Gothic III were not totally favorable.

Issues: Gothic I was released in 2001 and does not seem to like running on Windows XP. It continuously and frequently froze-up/crashed. I have a high-end system; but, even lowering all the game setting parameters did not help. Error messages appear to indicate that it couldn't locate the files it was looking for. During game-play, this was very irritating and my forgetfulness to continuously "save" after each successful event proved painful. Gothic I is a "keyboard" game and the controls are difficult to use and initially very frustrating - not getting the right keys while getting beat on gets old in a hurry! Gothic II makes use of the left mouse button for "action," instead control + and arrow key. This set comes as three disks, with NO printed documentation/manuals. Gothic III has a PDF file on its disk; but, you'll need to go to www.replacementdocs.com or similar web site to download the manuals for Gothic I and II - the odd keyboard controls make it a necessity. Even then, in Gothic I, some required keyboard actions were not even documented in the manual and searching the internet was necessary to accomplish things (e.g: swim underwater = control+right mouse button). There are some still some known "bugs" in the game; but, no updates/patches are available for Gothic I. I have found patches for both Gothic II and III on the web. Only Gothic I would auto-install. Both the Gothic II and III disks required that you manually install them. I was initially concerned that my game disks were defective.

Goodstuff: Despite the frustration caused by the crashes and controls (which tempted me several times to just give it up), I found Gothic I to be one of the better games that I have played. The Gothic I story line, while linear, is excellent and the balance within the game made it a challenge from beginning to end (I played as a mage) - I was never "king of the hill" but had just enough to accomplished what had to be done. The Gothic II disk is the "Gold Edition" and includes the "Night of the Raven" expansion game. I have heard that Gothic II is one of the best RPG's of this genre that's been put out. If it proves to be true, then the play-value of this "package" has been well worth its price, regardless of what Gothic III proves to be.

Technical mess [Posted on 2008-03-30]
Gothic I and Gothic II will not open on my machine. We have tried everything. With III I can install but get a message that something is wrong with the disc. I go on but can tell some things are missing. I cannot get an inventory on some monsters that the walkthrough indicates should be there. The game is a mess but could be enjoyable if the technical aspects were fixed. I have installed the patches and cannot imagine what it would be like without them. Technical support sent the manuals for I and II but says the manual is one the disc for III. The manuals are sketchy and not much help.

Varying issues per game [Posted on 2008-05-13]
All three games suffer from a few common issues.

Animation (and, to some extent, graphics generally) is sub-par for when the games were created.

Once you get hit in combat, it is almost impossible to not be killed/knocked out (especially if you don't already have a melee weapon out). And, if you are just knocked out, you drop your weapon on the ground (and have to manage to pick it up, re-equip it, and redraw it) all while probably being hit by the same monster again (resulting in being knocked out or killed again).

Gothic 1 is pretty much just terrible. The methods for doing things are very non-intuitive and I have RPGs from the 80s that I prefer in all aspects (graphics, animation, gameplay, fun, etc).

Gothic 2 is a little better. The movement/animation and methods of doing things are a little bit better but still not very good.

Gothic 3 is almost a decent game. If it weren't for the "insta-death" in combat and no auto-save (so you have to remember to manually save quite often), I would probably finish this one. Another issue is that there don't seem to be any trainers early in the game so you can't get the benefits of gaining levels for a while.

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