So… Gothic 3. A highly-anticipated, ambitious RPG released in a rushed, broken state and later adopted by the loyal community who would finish the game and bring it closer to what it was supposed to be.

Compared to the earlier games, gameplay has received many changes, both good and bad. Most of the clunkiness from the previous games is gone - you can now make potions/roast meat in bulk, there are more skills to learn, you can sprint, teleport stones are much more common, better inventory management, quick-looting, fully-working first-person mode and full mouse support. Melee combat, however, has gotten worse. In the vanilla version you just had to mash LMB to win. The community patch tried to fix it by improving enemy AI so it blocks more often, but it didn't improve much. However they did remove the critical hit system from the previous games, so all your hits do full damage now. Fighting with bows is better, as you can now aim manually. I don't know about magic combat, as I almost never used it, but I heard it's more fun than melee or ranged. Companions act like meat shields or distractions, as they deal a stupidly low amount of damage. There are many quests, but they don't have much variety. It's like you're doing the exact same thing in each city. Bring X of that, beat a couple guys on the arena, kill the animals near the city, etc.

The main story is disappointing. It's not as deep as in the previous games, there's less dialogue and it barely moves forward for the majority of the game you spend trying to do your first main objective. At least the ending gives a proper, satisfying conclusion to it. I would've expected the world to look much worse than in the previous games, given how rushed it was… but it's actually very good! It's beautiful, vast, has plenty of good sights, doesn't feel too copy-pasted and is full of things to discover - there's plenty of hidden caves, camps and loot. The soundtrack is decent. Some of the tracks are really good, but I just wish they gave more variety to the combat music. Hearing the same "DUN-DUN-DUNNNN, DUN DUN DUN-DUN-DUNNNN" every time you get spotted by some boar gets old real fast.

While the community did a good job fixing most of the remaining bugs and improving many features, Gothic 3 still remains inferior to its prequels. If you liked the previous games or you crave for a proper ending to the story, then play this game, otherwise stick to the first two.