Oh kingdom come. In theory I would have highly enjoyed the last one. But I only managed 5 hours or so. It’s just too “realistic” for my taste somehow.
Oh yeah for sure. Personally I quite liked its experience of travelling in it. That’s a kind of realism that I enjoy, because the cost (in terms of time) of travel made me think about whether I want to travel.
But its combat system was certainly really polarising. The Souls comparison is a really good one, I think. Usually in an RPG, your chances of success depend mostly on your character’s stats. But KCD’s combat is more like a soulslike or an action game than an RPG. It’s more about your skill as a player than about your character’s skills or gear. And it’s designed to be extremely punishing if you’ve got multiple opponents. Which is realistic, but not usually very fun.
But…Gothic isn’t a big open world. It’s like the size of bg3’s tutorial
To be honest, I find some gamers’ obsession with the land area of open world games rather tedious. I remember the same criticism being levied at KCD during its Kickstarter, saying things like “oh, that’s less than a quarter the size of Skyrim” or whatever it was. I don’t really care. The density of things to do within the area is much more important. And even more important than that is the verisimilitude of the world. That quests feel interconnected in believable (not forced) ways, that questgivers feel like the quests they’re giving are things they would actually care about and that would actually matter, given the worldbuilding and story. That’s all stuff that, from what I’ve heard about it, it sounds like Gothic does really well. Idgaf if Skyrim or BG3 have a larger land area.
Good point about the travel in KCD. And yes, i actually found the battle in KC1 extremely unsatisfying. KC2 had it a bit better. But still, my patience grew thin over the last decade, i must admit :-)
For me, personally, that skills-approach doesn’t went well with an RPG. Skills belongs to things like Destiny(2) (which i love btw), but in an RPG it should be about the character I’m playing, not ME. As it’s literally in the name RPG :)
But no complaints, I love everything that is not US-centric for a change and KC totally wasn’t.
Totally agreeing with you on the map-size-topic. I really hate the bigger-and-bigger-trend that usually (logically?) comes with less and less value. Even gothic did fall victim to the trend. G2 was “triple the size!!!” (or whatever, but THAT was the leading argument) And G3 was “EVEN BIGGER!” …and what was it? more walking, less exploring, less interesting stuff, just large plains of nothingness filled with filler-mobs. Nonetheless G2 was absolutely great, and had a fucking great Addon (when addons actually were like 1/3rd more of the base game, not just cut content resold as “DLCs”). G3 was …good.
Also questing in G1 was really great. And actually felt absolutely fitting. Not some “kill a dragon” shit but “go clean the toilet you piece of shit”. Or “steal this”, then you steal it, and they give you a beating not a reward :-) You really work your way up. Every weapon-, armor- or skill-upgrade REALLY mattered and changed everything.
Back then it also had a fantastic unexpected gimmick in it (which now is removed due to licenses): Suddenly in act 2, a famous midage-band had a “live-concert”. Back then it was one of my favourite bands and suddenly they perform in game…that was a chin-dropper :)
And it was one of the (or the?) first game(s) that had NPCs do have an actual job/routine. They ate, drink, pee, work, sleep. Ah you see, I could go on and on …
Skyrim was very vast, but at least they really tried to fill it meaningful. Most of it. So exploring mostly paid off. But without mods it was just okay-ish anyway. But it’s THE game that got the greatest mod-community there ever was (and sadly probably will be). Last time i spent like hundreds of hours modding until i ended up with like 2000 mods, kid you not. Didn’t actually PLAY for half as long :-)
BG3 was also incredibly good. Very memorable!
Oh yeah for sure. Personally I quite liked its experience of travelling in it. That’s a kind of realism that I enjoy, because the cost (in terms of time) of travel made me think about whether I want to travel.
But its combat system was certainly really polarising. The Souls comparison is a really good one, I think. Usually in an RPG, your chances of success depend mostly on your character’s stats. But KCD’s combat is more like a soulslike or an action game than an RPG. It’s more about your skill as a player than about your character’s skills or gear. And it’s designed to be extremely punishing if you’ve got multiple opponents. Which is realistic, but not usually very fun.
To be honest, I find some gamers’ obsession with the land area of open world games rather tedious. I remember the same criticism being levied at KCD during its Kickstarter, saying things like “oh, that’s less than a quarter the size of Skyrim” or whatever it was. I don’t really care. The density of things to do within the area is much more important. And even more important than that is the verisimilitude of the world. That quests feel interconnected in believable (not forced) ways, that questgivers feel like the quests they’re giving are things they would actually care about and that would actually matter, given the worldbuilding and story. That’s all stuff that, from what I’ve heard about it, it sounds like Gothic does really well. Idgaf if Skyrim or BG3 have a larger land area.
Good point about the travel in KCD. And yes, i actually found the battle in KC1 extremely unsatisfying. KC2 had it a bit better. But still, my patience grew thin over the last decade, i must admit :-) For me, personally, that skills-approach doesn’t went well with an RPG. Skills belongs to things like Destiny(2) (which i love btw), but in an RPG it should be about the character I’m playing, not ME. As it’s literally in the name RPG :) But no complaints, I love everything that is not US-centric for a change and KC totally wasn’t.
Totally agreeing with you on the map-size-topic. I really hate the bigger-and-bigger-trend that usually (logically?) comes with less and less value. Even gothic did fall victim to the trend. G2 was “triple the size!!!” (or whatever, but THAT was the leading argument) And G3 was “EVEN BIGGER!” …and what was it? more walking, less exploring, less interesting stuff, just large plains of nothingness filled with filler-mobs. Nonetheless G2 was absolutely great, and had a fucking great Addon (when addons actually were like 1/3rd more of the base game, not just cut content resold as “DLCs”). G3 was …good.
Also questing in G1 was really great. And actually felt absolutely fitting. Not some “kill a dragon” shit but “go clean the toilet you piece of shit”. Or “steal this”, then you steal it, and they give you a beating not a reward :-) You really work your way up. Every weapon-, armor- or skill-upgrade REALLY mattered and changed everything. Back then it also had a fantastic unexpected gimmick in it (which now is removed due to licenses): Suddenly in act 2, a famous midage-band had a “live-concert”. Back then it was one of my favourite bands and suddenly they perform in game…that was a chin-dropper :) And it was one of the (or the?) first game(s) that had NPCs do have an actual job/routine. They ate, drink, pee, work, sleep. Ah you see, I could go on and on …
Skyrim was very vast, but at least they really tried to fill it meaningful. Most of it. So exploring mostly paid off. But without mods it was just okay-ish anyway. But it’s THE game that got the greatest mod-community there ever was (and sadly probably will be). Last time i spent like hundreds of hours modding until i ended up with like 2000 mods, kid you not. Didn’t actually PLAY for half as long :-) BG3 was also incredibly good. Very memorable!