Note: This review covers Gothic 3 with the Community Patch 1.75.14, Parallel Universe Patch, and Update Pack 1.04 patches installed. The stock game is provided by default but is practically unplayable on most modern computers or even able to be finished properly. Differences with and without these patches will be covered in the review.

Some games were designed by developers with a lot of ambition, but their reach far exceeded their grasp. They had the loftiest goals, but never got close to implementing them properly. Gothic 3 (Enhanced Edition after patches) is still a worthy RPG, but a rather flawed one all the same.

A bit of background. Gothic 3 was designed as the super ambitious followup to Gothic 2, meant to be far larger, more well-featured, and more filled with content than any competitor like Elder Scrolls. Unfortunately, Piranha Bytes ran into trouble making their vision gel. Worse, they were pressed for time due to their publisher JoWood demanding development be wrapped up to make good their investment. Despite the better judgment of Piranha Bytes, the initial release was a disaster, leading Gothic 3 to be an unfinished mess at release. Thankfully, despite PB and their publisher having a bad breakup over this, the devs trusted the fan community to work on things and blessed their efforts to fix it, later re-releasing the "Enhanced Edition", bringing Gothic 3 far back to what they wanted to ship in the first place.

Gothic 3 follows right after the canon end of Gothic 2. Despite helping the efforts of the Kingdom of Myrtana against the orcs on the isle of Khorinis, the orcs managed to win the war and the protagonists of the prior games arrived on the mainland to find the orcs masters of the continent. Worse, a former ally named Xardas seemingly allied with the orcs and ensured their victory. The hero of the prior games must find Xardas, decide on what side he wishes to tip the balance of power, and ultimately settle not just mortal questions of leadership, but also to determine the fate of Myrtana going forward.

Prior Gothic games were action RPGs set in an open world, albeit one with a limited scope with progress divided into chapters. Gothic 3 features three massive and connected continents: Myrtana, Varant, and Nordmar. The player is given the standard freedom given to all protagonists of wide-open sandbox-style RPGs to go anywhere and do anything, with the player free to do quests, slay monsters, find treasure, make allies and enemies as they please, and ultimately choose whatever path they deem fit.

That said, while the world is vast and there are LOTS of things to do and places to explore, this game has a very sparse story, one the players will have to piece together as they play, as the game just gives you a vague overall starting goal and tells you to piece together the rest as you freeform adventure. Like prior titles, this takes place in a low-fantasy setting where all characters follow realistic schedules for eating, sleeping, and patrolling that obey day and night cycles. All actions NPCs can do can also be done by players, ranging from working at a forge to sawing a log. Finally, many skills the player learns have real-world equivalents, such as various hunting, smithing, and swordplay skills acquired from various trainers.

Unfortunately, I must confess the plot is still very weak in places, with a lot of inconsistencies and poorly fleshed-out areas. There is an active German and English modding community that has made great strides to fix this to a considerable extent, but without said mods, Gothic 3 is going to feel sparse to dedicated series fans. Combat also feels pretty dumbed down and the difficulty level is far easier than in Gothic 2, though the Community Patch provides options for a reworked AI and game balance for a harder challenge.

Graphically, Gothic 3 continues the tradition of having a gritty, low-fantasy aesthetic with dark colors and gritty textures. The Genome graphical engine (especially the Enhanced Edition improvement of it) is capable of some truly stunning effects despite the age of the game, especially as regards to lighting and shader effects. It's worth noting the color scheme and redesign of some returning elements do differ from prior games, though there are fan patches to return these elements to a more Gothic 1/2 look for purists. If that is not a concern, I can still say the world is vast and gorgeous looking.

The music, sound effects, and voice acting are superb. Gothic 3 has a full-blown orchestral soundtrack, with (appropriately) gothic tones, dramatic choir, and classic ambient tracks that set the mood as they did in prior games. The voice acting is quite good, with actual quality voice actors (such as Crispin Freeman who voices the main character). The voices of NPCs do tend to be a bit samey after a while though. Sound effects are still as gritty and satisfying as prior entries.

Like prior entries, this game is controlled by keyboard and mouse. There is now a convenient hotkey bar and the game comes with quality-of-life features like a basic tutorial at the start and has modernized the controls to no longer feel as rigid as prior games, with much smoother animations to match.

Stability-wise, while the original printing release of Gothic 3 is installed by default, and they provide the official 1.6 patch version and a beta branch with an earlier version of the Community Patch as alternates, I cannot recommend any of the above. The original release and 1.6 patch versions are hardly functional on modern PCs, and the Community Patch branch provided by Steam does not have the latest version. With the Community Patch 1.75.14 (for restoring the game to its actual functional state largely free of issues), the Parallel Universe Patch (which replaces huge parts of the legacy game engine code to support multi-core processors and optimize loading), and Update Pack 1.04 (to fix some lingering mouse issues on some PCs), Gothic 3 is a remarkably stable experience with at best a very rare crash now and then. This is rated as playable on Linux and the Steam Deck via Proton, though it will require some custom setup for the latter, especially for the controls.

Morally, there is some concerning content.

Violence is fairly tame despite the fact you can use magic or weapons to take down enemies. Bodies do not disappear after death immediately (they will after some time though), but this is without gore or blood (despite what the ESRB says, combat violence is pretty sterile). You can assault and kill in legitimate self-defense or murder, at your discretion, with you only being able to murder non-violent NPCs by deliberate intent.

Language is fairly mild. A fair amount of d*mns and the rare b**t**d, but that's about it. There are one or two women who show a very mild amount of skin at best, but that is about it.

The game world is a low-fantasy world with a mildly polytheistic religion with a god of light (Innos), a god of darkness (Beliar), and a god of balance (Adanos). The in-game morality centers very little around them, though the god of darkness does have demonic servants summonable as spells usable by the player. Enemies include demons and undead. The endings allow siding with the various deities. The Hashishin and Orc endings require allegiance to Beliar or at least condoning the use of demonic forces to achieve victory. The humanity ending requires siding with a generally moral (if in a knight templar fashion) Innos. The last ending requires the purging of all divine influence from the world (save the balance deity), which requires allegiance with an admitted necromancer and killing all the other faction leaders.

Morally, there are objectionable things in all but the Innos path. Siding with the Orcs or Hashishin requires supporting slavery. How you get to the end of the game will involve some fairly gray morality at times and some quests require defying laws, theft, and even murder and assault if you want all rewards. You are given the option to reject some quests or simply elect not to complete them. Booze is a common item for consumption and there are hookah-style pipes and in-universe cigarettes called Black Rhobars. The orcs you meet do call humans "Morras" often, but this has a neutral meaning, merely their way of saying "human", though they do use "human" on occasion.

See the following for some technical notes on how the in-game morality system has some issues:

Murder is wrong and punished in this game. The theft system generally only affects quest items that require stealing, items in buildings in towns and cities, and explicitly owned chests inside the same. The player can choose to steal or not at their discretion, with eventual suspicion they are the thief if not caught eventually reaching the point they are attacked on sight, though some thievery skills can extend the limit. There is a brief window when liberating towns where all items are rendered "ownerless" and thus free for the taking.

Once properly patched, Gothic 3 is a perfectly serviceable open-world RPG that sells for quite cheap and can provide a decent amount of fun. As the canonical conclusion to the Gothic games, it's admittedly got some issues like a weak story and lack of consistency with prior titles. Morally, it's got some concerning content likely not suitable for any save mature teenagers on up. Given it often goes on sale for peanuts and has an active modding community, it's not a bad game, though admittedly it's not the best game of all the open-world RPGs on the market.