English Version of Gothic 2 Add-on

[Desslock]

An English version of the add-on to Gothic 2, Night of the Raven, may finally be released in the UK in the next few weeks, according to a representative from publisher Jowood

It's a very substantive add-on - it may only be available as part of a "gold edition" and, as mentioned, will only be available in the UK (so you might have to rely on a retailer that sells imports, like gogamer.com).

If you haven't checked out Gothic 2, this wouild be an ideal opportunity -- it's easily the best RPG in the past several years, in my opinion (and yes, that means I think it's better than the KOTOR games).

[Jonah]

Wow finally, this is good news. I actually have the German version but will be buying again just for the english voices (I actually got EQ2 only because I think fully voiced RPGs are great)

Hopefully it will sell well as I agree with Desslock that the Gothic series is the best RPG series by far - I even love the controls.

I'm now glad I have never got around to finishing the Expansion and look forward to starting again from scratch for the 4th time (No that is not sarcasm, I like trying different characters)

Im now ploughing through KOTOR 2 which is a bit of a chore despite loving the first one and at least now have something to look forward to.

ETA - This guys signature on Jowood forum made me smile:

[Gendal]

That's awesome news, both Gothic 1 & 2 are great once you learn the interface. Note that minus some inventory shennanigans it's actually very usable, it's just different than anything you are used to except maybe Die by the Sword.

Will definately import the expansion from the UK if they follow through with this.

[Jonathan Blow]

I will be buying it from gogamer as soon as it's available.

[Jason McMaster]

I will totally be getting this as soon as I can

[extarbags]

At this point, I'm more anxiously awaiting Gothic III.

[Desslock]

At this point, I'm more anxiously awaiting Gothic III.

It's probably mid-2006 at the earlierst for an English version, at least.

The Gothic 2 expansion is essentially an entirely new game - it's on par with BG2 - Throne of Bhaal, not a few mediocre extras, like in most RPG expansions.

[extarbags]

At this point, I'm more anxiously awaiting Gothic III.

It's probably mid-2006 at the earlierst for an English version, at least.

The Gothic 2 expansion is essentially an entirely new game - it's on par with BG2 - Throne of Bhaal, not a few mediocre extras, like in most RPG expansions.

Ok fine.

But there's not another playable class, right? Someone explained this to me already, but I'm not sure I remember, but Water Mage is not a playable class, correct?

Hey, here's the big question: do I have to advance through the regular G2 stuff to advance through the expansion, or can I just play the expansion?

[Desslock]

Extrab, it's basically the same game "souped up" - everything is redone (and made more challenging, which some people probably won't like, but the Germans seem to love difficult games), plus about 30 hours of new content put in.

Basically since the original game was playable with 3 characters and they each had pretty different experiences, the intention is that you'd restart with one of the types you haven't played -- you have to restart in order to play the expansion, but the new content is all in the first couple of chapters, if you're just interested in that -- there's also a bunch of tie ins to the original Gothic. You do get access to water mage spells (and some other new magic), but it's not a new (4th) character type.

[Dhruin]

At this point, I'm more anxiously awaiting Gothic III.

It's probably mid-2006 at the earlierst for an English version, at least.

I would be very surprised to see it before mid-2006 but JoWood's last financial results listed it for Q4 2005. One can always dream. :)

[JD]

But there's not another playable class, right? Someone explained this to me already, but I'm not sure I remember, but Water Mage is not a playable class, correct?

Yes, you will join the Fellowship of the Water or whatever it'll be called in the English version, but that's just in addition to whatever guild you you chose to join earlier in the game. Fire mages will benefit the most as the water mages provide a new set of spells - non-mages can only cast the low-level ones. Naturally, there's a bunch of new items such as belts and new weapons available.

-Julian

[extarbags]

Extrab, it's basically the same game "souped up" - everything is redone (and made more challenging, which some people probably won't like, but the Germans seem to love difficult games), plus about 30 hours of new content put in.

Does more challenging == an even worse experience curve? I had a really hard time in G2 standard because the levelling curve is just way off... by the time I got to Chapter 2, I was just getting slaughtered by everything. I was level four. Gamefaqs told me I should have been level 14. My second playthrough I made sure I did everything I could find in Chapter 1, and I still only made it to level six.

[Jason McMaster]

I was like level 12 when I hit chapter 2. I did the same thing you did and got murdered my first time through.

[Foom]

The higher difficulty mostly comes from the way learning points have changed. Instead of paying a fixed cost for stat or skill gain, you pay an increasing price as that attribute rises. This means the end game is less easy (it used to be too easy) and playing a mage is very challenging. The early game hasn't changed apart from the new content.

[Sam Jones]

Does more challenging == an even worse experience curve? I had a really hard time in G2 standard because the levelling curve is just way off... by the time I got to Chapter 2, I was just getting slaughtered by everything. I was level four. Gamefaqs told me I should have been level 14. My second playthrough I made sure I did everything I could find in Chapter 1, and I still only made it to level six.

The idea is that you go hunting critters in addition to doing the quests needed to advance the plot. In fact, most of your experience should be coming from hunting that you're doing off your own back rather than someone telling you to. I think I usually hit about lvl 9 or 10 before I trigger the chapter 1->2 transition. Level 14 would assume you've slaughtered almost every critter in the parts of the world you have access to at that point, so I would guess that's a high estimate, and difficult to boot. This is in vanilla G2, BTW, not with the expansion.

[extarbags]

Does more challenging == an even worse experience curve? I had a really hard time in G2 standard because the levelling curve is just way off... by the time I got to Chapter 2, I was just getting slaughtered by everything. I was level four. Gamefaqs told me I should have been level 14. My second playthrough I made sure I did everything I could find in Chapter 1, and I still only made it to level six.

The idea is that you go hunting critters in addition to doing the quests needed to advance the plot. In fact, most of your experience should be coming from hunting that you're doing off your own back rather than someone telling you to. I think I usually hit about lvl 9 or 10 before I trigger the chapter 1->2 transition. Level 14 would assume you've slaughtered almost every critter in the parts of the world you have access to at that point, so I would guess that's a high estimate, and difficult to boot. This is in vanilla G2, BTW, not with the expansion.

Yeah, but that's the problem... grinding sucks :/. They really should have given you more experience for quests.

[Marcin]

Yeah, but that's the problem... grinding sucks :/. They really should have given you more experience for quests.

Yeah, this is where I exited. I couldn't see myself poking my nose out of the city for fear of Death by Mosquito (or whatever those annoying flying things are), yet all the quests required I do so. That's when the grind detector went off. Well, that and the interface.

It's still on my drive, waiting for a burst of (HAHA!) free time... got way too much on my plate at the moment though. Wish I found G2 back when I had time - I even finished Morrowind, a feat I doubt I would be able to do today.

[extarbags]

Yeah, but that's the problem... grinding sucks :/. They really should have given you more experience for quests.

Yeah, this is where I exited. I couldn't see myself poking my nose out of the city for fear of Death by Mosquito (or whatever those annoying flying things are), yet all the quests required I do so. That's when the grind detector went off. Well, that and the interface.

It's still on my drive, waiting for a burst of (HAHA!) free time... got way too much on my plate at the moment though. Wish I found G2 back when I had time - I even finished Morrowind, a feat I doubt I would be able to do today.

Well don't get me wrong, it's an awesome game. It's weird, every specific detail I remember is something negative, but I loved the game overall like crazy.

[Kalle]

Part of what I loved about Gothic 2 was how lethal the environment was. You literally feared for your life at midlevels as you walked unknown forest paths. And what I loved even more was that the combat system made it possible for me to take on creatures altogether too dangerous for me as long as I was skilled enough. It had a very good mix of skill based and stat based combat IMO.

At times it was very frustrating, but it was just so rewarding.

[Jason McMaster]

I agree completely, but another big thing that I liked about Gothic 2 was how attractive it was. The game world was very VERY nice looking andhad a real personal feel to it. That's my biggest problem with Morrowind. It was big, and some of the stuff looked nice, but it was so surgical feeling that it kind of bored me.

[JD]

I find the 'grind' remark interesting since one of the things I enjoyed while exploring the island was that I never really cared what level my character was right now. I just played it. Sure, it's quite challenging in the early parts, but I usually got around by using the 'one-after-another' tactic or luring enemies near friendly NPCs/town guards.

-Julian

[extarbags]

I find the 'grind' remark interesting since one of the things I enjoyed while exploring the island was that I never really cared what level my character was right now. I just played it. Sure, it's quite challenging in the early parts, but I usually got around by using the 'one-after-another' tactic or luring enemies near friendly NPCs/town guards.

-Julian

One problem with that, aside from the fact that you can't always do it: every time you run past an enemy because you aren't high enough level to kill it, you fall even further behind the level curve. I loved exploring the island too, but I was pretty much forced to care what level I was because it's hard to see the sights when an orc just ripped your head off.

[Kalle]

I don't agree that you fall behind that much on the level curve. If you run past a group of difficult monsters they will likely be around later in the game when you're a bit stronger. I never felt like there was no place to go that was appropriate for my level, as long as I was careful about it. This, btw, was when I played with a mage, who are especially weak in the early levels.

[extarbags]

I don't agree that you fall behind that much on the level curve. If you run past a group of difficult monsters they will likely be around later in the game when you're a bit stronger. I never felt like there was no place to go that was appropriate for my level, as long as I was careful about it. This, btw, was when I played with a mage, who are especially weak in the early levels.

But you never get stronger by running past them. Maybe you were higher level then I was and could take some of them or something, but my dinky level 4 militia wasn't taking out any of the shit in Chapter 2, no matter how good I was at combat. I just think that more experience from quests would have been a good thing, because there are a lot of noncombat options in the game, but none of them are very rewarding from a levelling perspective.

[Dhruin]

Level 4 is certainly too low for Chapter 2 but you can go well past lvl 4 just based on the opening areas around and in Khorinis. You won't get any better by running past everything obviously but there's plenty of lower level critters (and quests) that you can take out. This exploring a dangerous world stuff was easily the best part of the Gothic series for me and I didn't feel forced to watch my level at all.

I hope they leave this more or less as it is for G3...it makes a refreshing change to games like KotOR where exploration has been minimised to the point of disappearing altogether.

[extarbags]

It wouldn't be so bad if you had some spin moves or something that made it so you didn't get completely owned by two of anything. Seriously, it took me like three hours to get the wolfskins for that one guy, because I had to fight three wolves at once.

From what I hear (this was a long time ago, so don't ask me where), G3 picks up where G2 leaves off, with your character already levelled. So maybe they'll even let us import our G2 guys. Who knows?

[Kalle]

Honestly, I think the fact that you're dead meat when facing multiple enemies is a good thing. Not that this should come as any surprise to anyone who'se been following this thread. :) It just makes sense to me that defending yourself against two enemies at once is a lot harder than fighting one-on-one.

[extarbags]

Yeah, I know. It makes sense to me too. It just doesn't jive with the part where you don't get any experience if you don't fight multiple enemies.

[scharmers]

I hated Gothic2 because of the walls it threw up. I mean, I like grinds as much as the next guy, but there just didn't seem to be enough newbie mobs to grind up to the level you needed to proceed to be able to face insta-death baddy. After a while, I'd be wandering around, going, "OK, now who can I fight now? I've got uber-mobs, and nothing else. Fuck this."

--scharmers

[Desslock]

I hated Gothic2 because of the walls it threw up. I mean, I like grinds as much as the next guy, but there just didn't seem to be enough newbie mobs to grind up to the level you needed to proceed to be able to face insta-death baddy. After a while, I'd be wandering around, going, "OK, now who can I fight now? I've got uber-mobs, and nothing else. Fuck this."

There's tons of stuff you can kill at the beginning of the game - but since the game is relatively open (a great feature), you can easily get yourself over your head, so you just have to be careful when wandering into a new area.

I also think that the fact that you can explore broadly (and potentially get some great rewards for doing so) is a great strength of the game. Finding a place where you could pick off a lethal creature with a bow, in return for a ton of xp, is pretty cool. I never, ever felt the game to be a grind - I just explored as much as I could whenever I could.