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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
| Gothic 2 Review @ Mad Gamers |
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A rather negative <a href="http://www.madgamers.net/news2299.html" target="_blank">review</a> of Gothic 2 has popped up at Mad Gamers. The score of 7.5 is better than my reading of the accompanying text would seem to warrant. This opening paragraph summarises their view:
<br><blockquote><em>Which isn't to say, of course, that Gothic II is bad. It's just immensely frustrating. For everything that it does well, it does something else needlessly badly. It creates a living, breathing world full of interesting characters leading fascinating lives, and then hands the voiceover duties to a dozen or so autocue-reading dullards who sap the game of atmosphere with their uncomprehending, flat renditions. It shows you beautiful, magnificent vistas of rolling hills and ancient forests, and then lets you watch the framerate splutter and fail even on the highest of high-end machines. It depicts houses, trees and grasslands with loving detail, and then leaves the game's many hundreds of characters as twitching, clumsy marionettes. And its spellbinding, immersive atmosphere is all too often destroyed by great, galumphing, game-destroying bugs, including frequent crashes, missing dialogue, untranslated German text and even corrupted saved games. |
Mon Aug 04, 2003 1:31 pm |
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Jay
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 07 Jul 2001
Posts: 245
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I'm seeing a lot of similar reviews in the english press. Is the English version that much worse then the German? As for the framerate stuttering, it worked great on my PC, and that's hardly state of the art. |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 1:33 pm |
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Mr Wonderstuff
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 09 Jan 2002
Posts: 30
Location: London |
I agree with the point about the voice over (why dont they pop over to the UK and get some actors to do the voiceovers - certainly there is a wealth of actors here who would do it for a nominal fee). |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 2:52 pm |
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Garrett
Joined: 13 Jul 2001
Posts: 74
Location: Munich, Germany |
how about gothic 1 - was it also so buggy and voice acting so bad? |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 3:54 pm |
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Puscus
Guest
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I have played the english version of Gothic 2, and didn't had many (or any ?) trouble with the game... The game crashed (freezed) only once (I had to reboot my pc) in 100 hours of play... I have a Pentium IV 2,4 ghz with a GeForce 4 MX 440 (64Mo) and all the graphic options set to the max and I didn't had any framerate issue... I didn't experienced corrupted saved game neither... As for the translation, I only encountered 1 or 2 times a word that was left in german... Nothing to legitimate such a bad rating as a 7.5/10. For me this game was a great experience (I find it even better than Morrowind and NWN) and it well deserves a 9/10 maybe 9.5/10. |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 4:10 pm |
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Guest
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Well, I think its a good review. 7.5 to me really isn't a bad score. It is fair, although I personally think G2 should be somewhere in the 8.8-8.5 range.
I guess I've come to realize that whole voice acting thing really is a matter of taste sometimes. There are *some* cases of poor voice acting in G2, but I just don't think its all "dire" like many reviewers are saying.
Overall, there are some sloppy things about the English version of the game that should bring the score down. But I, for one, have never thought that the voices were bad enough to detract from the whole experience. |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 4:25 pm |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
quote:
Originally posted by Mr Wonderstuff
I agree with the point about the voice over (why dont they pop over to the UK and get some actors to do the voiceovers - certainly there is a wealth of actors here who would do it for a nominal fee).
They did.
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Webmaster GothicDot |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 4:28 pm |
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elkston
High Emperor
Joined: 21 Sep 2002
Posts: 691
Location: North Carolina, USA |
BTW, this post from was from me. 
quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous
Well, I think its a good review. 7.5 to me really isn't a bad score. It is fair, although I personally think G2 should be somewhere in the 8.8-8.5 range.
I guess I've come to realize that whole voice acting thing really is a matter of taste sometimes. There are *some* cases of poor voice acting in G2, but I just don't think its all "dire" like many reviewers are saying.
Overall, there are some sloppy things about the English version of the game that should bring the score down. But I, for one, have never thought that the voices were bad enough to detract from the whole experience.
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All shall hear the words of Karras...the words of Karras |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 4:30 pm |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
quote:
Originally posted by Garrett
how about gothic 1 - was it also so buggy and voice acting so bad?
It still has some serious bugs. PB didnīt fix them.
The voice acting was almost identical, except for the 2 replaced actors.
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Webmaster GothicDot |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 4:34 pm |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
I donīt like the overall tone of the review. I have the impression in some passages the reviewer is ranting rather than arguing.
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Webmaster GothicDot |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 4:38 pm |
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Mr Wonderstuff
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 09 Jan 2002
Posts: 30
Location: London |
If they went to the UK for the voiceovers, why are they all american (bar one actually the map maker). |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 5:53 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
quote:
Originally posted by Gorath
I donīt like the overall tone of the review. I have the impression in some passages the reviewer is ranting rather than arguing.
I agree. I don't think the score itself is too bad - but the tone of the review indicates the whole game was ruined and it's virtually unplayable.
I'm in Ch.4 and I've been taking my time to look around. I've had no crashes at all and no framerate problems (admittedly my PC is fairly high end but the reviewer says 'the highest of high' won't work properly).
The voice-acting isn't the best ever but I think it's better than average. I'll take it over Aribeth's strident tones in NWN any day. |
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Mon Aug 04, 2003 9:54 pm |
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dagoo7
Head Merchant
Joined: 07 Nov 2002
Posts: 58
Location: USA |
Ok, I'm somewhat confused as to what game the reviewer was playing. I bought and played the UK version, the game froze once or twice during conversations, but never crashed, framerate was great, never encountered a game stopping bug. The review does make the game sound unplayable or so problematic that it couldnt be enjoyed, and my wife can tell you (after a week and a half of effectively disappearing from her life) that this is patently untrue.
Sure the voice acting was perhaps somewhat subpar and character animation can be done better in this day and age, but everything else was great and so immersive as to make these issues seem like trifles. The one and only complaint (and it is a significant one) is the lack of balance in the later chapters as your character generally becomes overpowered. This is the only thing I would really subtract points for. |
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Tue Aug 05, 2003 12:52 pm |
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California |
I can rip up this guy's review of Gothic 2 in the same way he ripped on Gothic 2.
Let's start with the most glaring:
"It [Gothic 2] depcits houses, trees and grasslands with loving detail, and then leaves the game's many hundreds of characters as twitching, clumsy marionettes." followed up by, "Characters follow their own routines: they get up in the mornings, go to work, visit bars at night, talk to each other, sleep when they're tired, and remember what you've been up to."
This is the best example of a gamer that huge gaming companies like EA LOVE because this kind of gamer puts presentation (graphics, sound, voice effects) first over actual gameplay - and we have literally thousands upon thousands of games that do just that - pretty games that don't offer a whole lot of gameplay.
One could have also addressed the somewhat lackluster character models of Gothic 2 this way:
"Although the character models don't really live up to the beauty of the environment, its sacrifice gives life to those characters in the form of daily schedules and a high level of individual AI - which is a welcome change in comparison to most RPGs."
Some of the other critisims could also be leveled to just about any other CRPG despite this reviewer's overwhelming tone that suggests such critisims are unique only to Gothic 2. I played Ultima 7 on a 80386 16 Mhz machine with the minimum memory requirement of 2MB of RAM. You want to talk about low FPS? You want to talk about numerous crashes to DOS? Or screen freezes? I can play Ultima 7 now (with the help of Exult) on a modern computer and have 0 issues with FPS and 0 issues with crashes or freezes simply because the hardware technology has advanced to the point where the processing horsepower needed by Ultima 7 is child's play on my current hardware.
Anyone worth their gaming salt knows how this works. The latest and greatest games tend to bring even the current high-end hardware to its knees. This kind of stress leads to low FPS and sometimes even crashes or freezes. Play Morrowind 3 years from now and watch how many of the struggles you might be having with that game on your current machine simply vanish on your future machine. This isn't to justify bugs or sloppy programming. HowEVER ( <-- irritating stress at the wrong point) my comment is to level the playing field that such problems are not unique to Gothic 2 - and the review kind of reads (at least to me) that it is.
In another part of the review we have this little gem: "Unlike most other RPGs, gold does not simply lie around in huge piles waiting to be pilfered..." Bleh. I would like to know what 'most RPGs' are to this guy. The better CRPGs have always been a challenge (to me) to gain wealth at the beginning. While this was a comment in favor of G2 by the reviewer, keeping in style I suppose, he slams a lot of 'other' RPGs in the process which is needless.
Moving along: "It suffers slightly from the usual RPG silliness - your mentor, for instance, is supposed to be working in absolute screcy but lives in a large spiked tower five minutes' casual stroll from the nearest town..."
STUPID comment. I suppose had the developers made this 'mentor' a 15 minute real-time walk, the reviewer would have ranted, "Why do developers insist on making the player walk his character back and forth to his mentor numerous times throughout the game? Don't they understand that after you've done the walk one time that subsequent walks to that location are boring?!?" Talk about a serious case of being unpleasable. And besides, it is very possible for a person to be involved with super-secret things in the middle of town. Al-queda planned and trained for its attack on NYC and the Pentagon inside the U.S. - not just in some cave in Afghanistan. This reviewer suffers 'slightly from the usual' reviewer 'silliness.'
Reviews like this one are upsetting to me not just because I may disagree with the review, but because the review largely ignores some of the truely excellent gameplay built into the game in favor of the game not being 'pretty' enough - and I for one and very tired of games that are 'pretty' but devoid of compelling gameplay of any kind. I miss the gameplay that games like Ultima offered. And now we're seeing a resurgence of these kinds of games from the European community with games like Gothic, Arx Fatalis, and Divine Divinity. Shame on reviewers who can't see a great work of art because an i didn't get dotted or a t didn't get crossed.
In the end, no matter how great the work, there will be some reviewer somewhere who will trash it because the game doesn't have the graphical flare of yet another Electronic Arts First Person Shooter. I'm sure there were reviews that ripped on Ultima 7. I remember Ultima 7 very well. I find it difficult however, to remember any particular negative reviewer of it though.
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The Poster Previously Known As NeptiOfPovar |
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Wed Aug 06, 2003 5:40 pm |
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hoyp::.
Guest
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A terrible review.
The diot who reviewed that game gives too much credit to presentation and polish rather than the actual content. |
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Wed Aug 06, 2003 6:25 pm |
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