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You got such an underrated channel. Wouldnt wonder if you hit next 100k and the years following a million Sub. Keep up the content, all of your Videos are really good
For anyone who's wondering about Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos, I still haven't actually played it yet; it's on my to-do list but I have no set time frame for it. It's been on the last two Patron/Member polls for "what game do you want me to cover next," and it's been in last or next-to-last place every time. So until it starts getting more votes, it's going to continue sitting on the back burner. I just put up a fresh poll, and once again Archolos is one of the options, so if you want to give it a push then be sure to sign up and cast your vote; all Patrons and Members get access to polls regardless of what level you pledge at. Or, of course, you could vote for either of the other two options, which are currently Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and Arcania: Gothic 4. As usual, the winner from the combined Member/Patron poll will get bumped to the top of my priority list. I'm also considering Drova: Forsaken Kin, which is actually due to release in full on October 14th, so if that's something that would interest you, then let me know in a comment and I can consider it for future polls and coverage.
You want more content for gothic 2? Its Archolos, it beats gothic 2 AT gothic 2. I wouldn't wait for a vote to tell you to play it, as a fan of these games I cannot fathom why you haven't played it yet. It is the PEAK content of Piranha Bytes games even if they themselves haven't made it. I suppose you cant fully be blamed, you haven't played it yet so you don't know...
Still need to finish that one myself. Extremely curious about how it might compare to the games on this list given that what I have seen so far has been really good for the most part.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I would love it if you'd review Archolos. But I am fine with waiting for it too. Just don't expect v2.0 to be coming out anytime soon. Some people from the Archolos team are currently working on Gothic Remake btw
I tried playing G1 in 2006-7 - don't remember the re-release or original - it was uncontrollable unpolished POS. But then again I didn't even played turds like Morronwind or Oblivious- just got a wind of what they are - a mod fest of Bethesda's bugfest and the games looked ungodly ugly. I prefer to run Serious Sam 2 for the 100th time or Quake 4 , or Diablo 2 LOD than these games
@@ineedavacationbadly I'm a german millenial, of course I'm a Gothic fan ;) A Gothic medley is as likely as Piranha Bytes hiring me as composer for the Gothic 5 OST.
A really top notch video. Its such a shame I found about your channel so late as you introduced me to the Piranha Bytes games which I thoroughly enjoy. Keep up the great work, I look forward to your future vidoes. Thanks Chap
For me it's : 1) Gothic 2 - improved upon on lots of things of Gothic 1 2) Gothic 1 - best game world / story out of all the games. 3) Risen 1 - managed to recapture a good amount of Gothic 1-2 feels. Best combat system (magic was pretty meh). Pretty poor story tho. 4) Gothic 3 - a potentially great game ruined by you all know what. Rep system and fantastic music was what saved it for me and made me replay it. I'd put it on third place , but the combat mechanics are really bad, just that last point would make Risen 1 go on top of it for me. 5) Elex 1 - huge world, ton of quests , and a complete mess of a story and 0 pacing. It suffered from everything an open world game could suffer. The classic faction progression and how unique those factions and the overall setting was made it a decent game for me , making me replay it a couple times picking new faction. 6) Risen 3 - tolerable combat, the skills you get from factions was a nice touch. Overall combat balance was a mess tho. Factions were alright but nothing special, generic story, lots of handholding. But it managed to keep you busy completing a good amount of quests , decent factions tasks. 7) Elex 2 - never improved on anything from Elex 1 , was really unimaginative with their story especially closer to the end , following it up with horrible "kill 50 enemies" quests. Never made me replay it even to try out any other factions. 8) Risen 2 - a mistake of a game. Have not seen your rankings , would be interesting to compare them with my own now! Thank you for your video!
I'm glad that I found someone who shared my view that Elex 1 was better than Risen 1. That being said, your ranking lined up exactly with my own personal ranking for the PB catalogue. The only exception being R2 because I never played it. So yes, for me G3 is still the absolute worst PB game
Thank you for this detailed analysis! I completely agree with your take on Gothic 1 and 2-absolute classics. I thought Risen was decent, but I bailed out after Risen 2 and stopped following Piranha Bytes. From what you described, though, I might just give ELEX a chance, as it seems to be the best game they've produced since Gothic.
I was expecting that in the first place so much. So glad you placed those games in the first place, they truly deserved such a mention. Praised be the Indian studios who worked on them 🙏
I'm aware it's the basic pick, but my personal favorite simply gotta be Gothic II: Night of The Raven. A missed opportunity for other games to take the concept of returning to a familiar world in an completely different condition like the Valley of Mines (really neat concept). Echo your sentiment on most points when it comes to Gothic II. Even if Gothic II had a more 'conventional' environment then GI, GII still has the upper hand due to the size of the world (three zones), more elaborate faction pathways, amount of quests & more impactful shifts in the environment during the chapter progression (plus a more vibrant color scheme for the environment). While some make the case that GI had the better story, the plot wasn't the strong suit of either Gothic titles to begin with. Hence the higher replay value for GII in comparison to GI in the long run (in my humble opinion). Going back to Gothic I+II during the 'global pause' days & being fully immersed with the proper spiritual successor Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos was the first time that I've genuinely enjoyed playing games since 2015/16. Nostalgia (for simpler times).
Idk why, but I just love Gothic 3. It was my introduction to the Piranha Bytes games and I know it's bad and clunky. But I can't help myself, even after playing the other Gothic games, I still come back to the worst one with high nostalgia. Nowadays I'm playing with like 200 mods to make the game run and it just add's so much to the game experience. I think I just love how the community put in the effort to make that shitty game playable and I think they made a great job. Also the kind off Skyrim-esque, sandboxy, especially when you play as a mage, gameplay just does something to my brain that makes me keep playing for hours, also the soundtrack just slaps hard.
The whole internet disagrees with me, but I would rate NotR way below the base Gothic II game. The rebalanced difficulty made it way too videogamey, made mages unplayable. The side quest broke the urgency and general flow of the main quest. The pirate theme also feels out of place. Oh, and you asked Lares to take you to the farm instead of Saturas first? Your save is now bricked, but you will only notice hours later. Still happens in the Steam version in 2024.
Fair points all around. Those issues aside, did you like the actual content of NOTR? For me, I enjoyed all the new content so much that it made up for any shortcomings I might've experienced otherwise.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I enjoyed the new stuff happening around Khorinis, the missing persons quest was really good, it was mainly Jharkendar that I wasn't vibing with. It did not feel very Gothic to me, broke my immersion and the content there started to feel like a list of chores. Never felt that way with any part of the base game. But I admit, thanks to your video I got the urge to replay Gothic 1&2 again, might give NotR another try.
I agree - there are many reasons that make Gothic II a beter game without NotR. More coherence, less bloat, gameplay that makes sense. The addon adventure is great fun, but NotR was designed for people who already played through the base game and want more, so they go and buy the expansion. Unfortunately if you get gothic 2 today you get the addon installed automatically and think that is the way to play gothic II as a new player.
Also not official but an important mention to archolos that improves gothic 2 world a lot with a new story, a giant world and a lot of interesting quest, none of them felt generic, every one of them is an absolutely original quest and i love that
I agree with your Ranking of elex. I think the developers did not understand why elex was successful. Because instead of keeping the strengths of elex and improve its weaknesses, they made a game that is just worse. Big disappointment.
NotR difficulty spikes are rough and in chapter 3 and 4 things can get very confusing with the main quest and the addon-main-quest to get access to the portal going on at the same time... but it is really an immersive world and the three factions system makes for replayability. In contrast to this all settlements in Gothic 3 are mostly meaningless... and in the end you have to mass-murder them anyway... which is such a bizarre game-design decision. What kind of stuff the devs smoked between Gothic 2 and Gothic 3?
For me, Elex 2 seems like the worst game on the list. Some points you had made about Gothic 3 can be easily placed upon Elex 2. Repetitive quests and the most shallow main story that I have ever seen. Having completed all of the previous Piranha's games, this one I couldn't finish due to lack of interest and constant frustration. Nevertheless, thank you for the video and hope to see more!
Gothic 2 was the 1st game that I bought. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 12. I saved up some money from my birthday, and finally bought that huge 2CD(or was it 3?) box with a sexy lady on the cover. To be fair, my ass got wooped in the 1st act, and I haven't finished Gothic until some years later. But damn, it's 18 years later, and I still keep coming back to this magical world at least once a year.
Man, say what you want about ELEX 2 perhaps disappointing in terms of sales, but it hurts to hear Piranha Bytes was essentially collateral damage of Embracer's financial fumble.
I respect you a lot for putting G3 ar the bottom. Not only are there a lot of things about it that make or made ot a bad game (or mediocre maBe), but the weight of the disappointment it brought is what truly brings it down so, so far in my eyes. It could have been good. It could have been many great things, but it turned out to just be a disappointment and a crappy game.
While I would disagree with anyone's list being "wrong," I still want to thank you for sharing yours. Obviously you like Gothic 3 a lot more than I do, so I'm glad you enjoy it!
gothic 1 and 2 sadly also destroyed my gaming live because there are nearly no games outside that catch me the same way and let me feel so engaged with its world .....
Haven't played any of the risen games or gothic 3, yet every time I see elex mentioned I get this itch to replay it. same with new vegas. I've beaten new vegas 6 times, elex 1 4 times and elex 2 3 times, gothic 1 3 times and gothic 2 around 5 times. amazing games. I never played them when they came out and only got into gothic around 2020 after buying them all on gog.
Overall I agree with you, and my list is the same. Risen 2 should be just different - "Pirate" series, it would be better. And Gothic 3 is good simply to walk - because of nice graphics and great music, but its is a bad game
Piranha Bytes always seemed to me like a small group of ambitious and passionate people making the games they wanted to make, so sad they were friendly-fired by Embracer
@@MattMcMatt they should have simply fired Bjorn and Jenny. But given the fact that E2 hardly made the revenue they were looking for, it was the end for them
i agree with this ranking apart from risen 2 and 3. 2 in my opinion is filled with great quest which IMO is arguably the most imported quality of a piranha bites quest, while risen 3 feels more MMO like similar to gothic 3 in some instances.
I agree with you, Risen 2 was pretty unique, quests and characters were well written. Risen 3 was lazy, it recycled a lot from Risen 2, but it was poorly written and was clearly rushed.
Good list. I would place Elex higher though. The game has as much complexity as Gothic II but without any way of minmaxing. Gothic 1/2 you will only play the game one way once you found out which routes give maximum exp. It is HEAVILY underexplored, most guides are halfway broken and halfway incomplete, missing out a lot of details, many quests are unregistered, including unlogged quests. For example meeting Thorald before you are supposed to causes different outcomes and possibly a relationship bonus with him depending on your companion, or Drog has an unlogged Quest after he's been banished. The companion reactions are barely covered and can drastically alter quests - for example taking Duras to Kral and Grimar forces a violent outcome onto the quest as Duras will interrupt Jax before he can explain himself. The Cold choices are barely covered, making planned replays like a pure cold, pure emotional or pure neutral play through (picking all +/- cold choices whenever possible regardless of consequences or avoiding them the entire game) impossible. I think Elex is a much better game than Gothic I, which is on the other hand though probably the most artistically well crafted out of the bunch. It has a unique setting, people get what the plot twists with the Swamp Camp and the Old Camp are about (while Elex is arguably hard to access), it looks phenomenal even today due to being heavily stylized...soundtrack is amazing. But if I want the gameplay formula alone I would play G2 NOTR any day over G1.Especially the classes have actual meaning in Gothic II, while in Gothic I, if you know the game well and clear the map completely each chapter and do every quest, you can pretty much skill everything, or be angry that you cannot skill everything (Swamp Camp). Elex also has three classes, but imho the lack of complete guides undermine its replayability. The more often you replay an RPG, the more you want to explore roles rather than play your own role and for that you then need to know all the little secrets so you can plan your idea through. I hope people eventually realize how much more is in this game.
My list: 1) Gothic II:NotR 2) Gothic 3 - with mods, the art, the music, taking in the sight... it is that good 3) Elex 2 - the unlimited jetpack you get after finishing the main quest was a great idea. The controls and combat are pretty smooth. These thing make it the best game to explore secrets in the game world. 4) Gothic - the best narrative, of course. The OG 5) Elex - the lore is just interesting, e.g. finding out about C****n. The quests around the Domed city. 6) Risen 1 - a good game but plays it too safe 7) Risen 2 - Yeah it is different but it was the first PB game I bought myself, also had a new PC back then. Sentimental reasons. 8) Risen 3 - Not a bad game! Just last on this list. BONUS) The Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos - were it a PB game, it would go to No.2 maybe even No.1
I liked the video, to me however, Gothic 1, 2 and 3 are the only playable games... Despite all the years, Elex feels beyond clunky and too rigid. I just hate playing it. The 2 Gothic games, are old and nostalgia driven enough where their static movement plays into the charm, Risen, 2 especially might as well be on rails with combat being the biggest offender.
I think Risen 2 is better than Elex 2. Apart from that i kinda agree with this list. You didnt mention but all companion quests are fetch quests in Elex 2 too, not just the main quests (also lot of side quests too). If I want to play mmorpg I can play wow or something else, thats not what I expect from a single player rpg.
The industry lost a group of very creative and talented people with the closure of Piranha Bytes. The artists and visionaries have been replaced with share holders and board room execs and the medium is a shadow of what it once was.
I really enjoyed Gothic 3 back in the day and had a blast playing it. Since then i never replayed it and dont know if i want to. Gothic 1 is amazing simply because of the first two chapters, in which you can explore everything and do anything you want. The later portion of the game is completely linear, but i dont think it is a big negative. It would be nice to have more things to do, but it makes sense that you in the first part of the game you explore and in the second you only do the main quest. Gothic 2 is for me better than 1 because of how big imporovement gameplay wise it is. Yes, it not as good storywise as 1, but i am person who prefers gameplay over story. But if we are ranking PB games, the main reason G2 is #1 for me is Archolos. It is the best Gothic game in my opinion and G2 is the reason we got it. I enjoyed Risen but played it only once, and tried Risen 2 but stopped playing it really quickly because i found the controls to be atrocious. I played Elex for like 20 hours but then stopped playing and never got back to it. I want to finish it but cant get myself to it for some reason. So my ranking is: Gothic 2 Gothic 1 Gothic 3 Risen 1 Elex 1
As far as I'm aware it's not available to the public so I can't comment on it from any first hand experience. I did watch someone else's stream, but I don't really like speculating on things without having the chance to test things for myself, and I didn't want to make a reaction video based on other people's exclusive footage. I did, however, type up some initial impressions for all Patrons and Members, but I don't want to reveal too much of that since the article is meant to be an exclusive bonus for paying supporters. But to summarize simply, I thought it looked promising, however I had some minor concerns over some things, and I couldn't tell if those were just side-effects of being an unrelated demo scenario or if they were representative of what the full game direction will be.
I have the advantage of playing G3 after fixes made it playable. I played G1, G2, and G3 in order. Got hours of enjoyment from them. The only one I've replayed is G3. I tried replaying G1 an G2, but didn't get far, as they are simply outdated by current game standards. But I will play G3 again for maybe the sixth time. It holds up very well indeed.
Great video, I agree with most of your choices. However, I think Gothic 3 should have been ranked higher. If you install the latest community patches, you can actually enjoy the game. The landscape and some of the cities look amazing and the music is wonderful. Still, it's far from perfect, but IMO better than Elex 2 or Risen 2 or 3.
Artistically, Gothic 3 got somethings going for it though: While Gothic is about camp ideology, and Gothic 2 is about social position, with NOTR being specifically about position mobility, Gothic 3 is about "liberation". You can either play the game out, but then there won't be liberation, regardless of wether you chose Innos or Beliar, or you can leave the game and then... Well, there won't be liberation either. Gothic is not a fantasy game, it is a sci-fi game about the Matrix. The are no real humans in Gothic, everyone is an NPC, except for the Nameless, who is a PC. Xardas is the GameMaster, and has been screwing with us all this time: He created the barrier, his Ork contact Ur-Shak wasn't whom he is supposed to be, Xardas was only out for the essence of the Sleeper and when he finally got it with the Undead dragon (*insert evil laugh*) he destroys rune magic and is revealed as the leader of the Orks all along - who would have thought given he's hanging around in Sauron's tower. The promise of the Unknown Land is false, he only lead the Nameless into the next Matrix, which is Risen - the sequel of Gothic according to Mike in the very same stream you are showing. "It is not important where we are, but rather what has happened!" (quote Risen intro) Yeah, Gothic has happened! And if Risen is the sequel, then Elex is the prequel. Elex is Magic Ore, Magalan the Unknown Land, Albs (older word for Elf) are Orks ( remember Xardas sits in Sauron's tower and LotR Orks are corrupted Elves, there is also the quest with ORiK the opposite of Jax), Berserks are Nomads/Druids/Nordmars/Builders, Clerics are the Innoschurch (Calaan = Cologne, capital of the roman catholic church in Germany), Sky-Ants are Minecrawlers, Dawkins is Xardas and I think Jax is the "Beast" and Dex is the Sleeper... A game about Evolution, Evolution of the world of Adanos (Adonai, God) starting in the Garden Edan. Adam...remember the name of the engine of these games: GENOME. Dawkins fails to absorb Jax, because the Eternal Wanderer slays him but finally succeeds with his son, Dex in the halls of Irdorath. Between Risen 2 and 3, the Nameless leaves the plot, possibly to find Xardas, because he realized he is actually someone else, trapped in a Matrix. To leave the Matrix, he musst say his name, hence why he is always prevented from doing so. And the name is MARVIN. If you type that in Gothic you can break the Matrix. It all makes perfect sense. Really sad what happened with PB :(
Maybe five minutes of disclaimers at the beginning wasn't necessary. People who get irrationally mad about game opinions aren't going to stop themselves and say "wait, he painstakingly explained that these are just personal opinions at the beginning" and change their minds about flaming you.
In fairness, there are only two minutes or less of disclaimers stating that there will be subjective bias in my rankings; that my explanations are only going to provide a brief overview of the main talking points and that people should check my reviews and other videos for more comprehensive thoughts on each game; and that there may be minor spoilers. The remaining four minutes of the six minute intro section is explaining who Piranha Bytes are and their history, my personal history with their games, the criteria I'm going to be using to determine my rankings, and musing about how the rankings might shape up and where I anticipate the most interesting discussions will be. So it's not like I spent five minutes saying "please don't flame me for having an opinion " Regardless, I've found that disclaimers like that are somewhat necessary, because if I don't explicitly warn people that there may be spoilers, someone will be upset at me if I inadvertently spoil something that I don't consider to be a spoiler; and if I don't explicitly state "this is my opinion" someone will inevitably assume I'm claiming everything to be an objective fact. I feel it's also helpful to point out that I've already covered all of these games in detail, and that there are existing resources that explain everything in this video and more in greater detail, for anyone who might be new to my channel and thus unfamiliar with my previous work. Additionally, I've found that for some reason some people do take it personal when someone online criticizes a video game they like. After being sent literal death threats and utterly vile hatemail and being relentlessly harassed to the point of borderline stalking by an entire community of irate fans because I had the nerve to write a mildly critical but ultimately balanced review of a game they like, I've found myself much more guarded about these sorts of things and would like to preempt toxic behavior and negative reactions in whatever way I can. I understand there are people who won't listen to or care about those disclaimers and still be toxic a-holes regardless, but I still feel like it helps to set a rational and polite tone at the start of the video so that perhaps more people will be inclined to have an open mind and hear me out when I immediately come in with what will inevitably be some people's beloved childhood favorite in the bottom spot of the rankings. I also have clearly marked time stamps and chapters so people can easily skip sections to get right to each ranking if they so desire, so it's not like anyone is forced to sit through the entire intro if they don't want. All of which is to say that I believe those disclaimers do more good than harm, but I still appreciate your feedback and will keep that in mind in the future, if there's perhaps a better way to express those considerations.
I haven't really played Risen 2 and Risen 3. Without those two games, my ranking would be: 1. Gothic 2, 2. Gothic 1, 3. Elex, 4. Risen, 5. Gothic 3, 5. Elex II.
Gothic 3 - a good idea, a good game, but its a RPG game and 80% of the time you fight and the combat was and is utterly hoooorrriiibbbllleeee!!! xD But I still love Gothic 3 for its beautiful world, music and my old NPC friends... But yes, so many things sux so hard and many new ideas were interesting but implemented in a hoooorrriiibbbllleeee way. Not enought polish here... Risen 2 - same problems as Gothic 3. After 12 hours of playing I give up and go play Risen 1.....that was yesterday... maybe I will try it again sometimes in the future but...meh... Elex 2 - didnt play. Risen 3 - bought it, didnt have the courage to play it xD Risen 1 - its like Gothic one but better in some ways. I really like how it looks like Gothic but has it own feeling. A bit small but still it has a playce in my heart. I replay it once every 3 years. Some thing could be better but still its a great RPG game. Elex - I have mixed feelings on this. Plus I played only half of the game. But its a solid good "Gothic style" game. I really enjoyed the "post-apo earth" world and the open world map. Gothic 1 and 2 are two halfs of a single heart... most of us, The Gamers could name 50% of all the NPC in this game and yes even the Swamp people xD Plus the NPCs make the world beliveble and alive. They would chat, go on walks, drink at night, sleep, cook, clean, etc. etc...... I agree that Gothic 2 NoTR is in fact a separate game...but I still think of it as part of Gothic 2...
16:28 : well ,you say "unfinished" yet , ... ironically ,Gothic 3 is the only Piranha Bytes that i have actually "finished" to the end ... *twice* !! everyone was complaining about game's rushed release and its technical problems/bugs ,but when you love something you always find the way ,thus although i bought the game day-1 ,full of bugs(full of stutters actually) and with a mediocre PC( Athlon64 3000+ / GeForce 6600GT / and i believe 512MB RAM but i can't remember for sure) ,i learned to overcome all those stutters and as i said i finished a huge-broken game like that... 😜twice !!! ---Nevertheless my greatest love is by far *Gothic 1* , a masterpiece which made you feel like you are inside *a world in which every action there is a reaction* !!! *the atmosphere and immersion of Gothic 1 is something unmatched* !!! *my most PERFECT game i've ever played* !! My own list is : Gothic 1 : 100/100 Gothic 2 : 95/100 Gothic 3 : 80/100 Risen 2 : 80/100 (*obviously i haven't played the rest that's why i don't rank them )
Once I've heard a bit of Gothic 3 combat music it reminded me of the PTSD that I've got while playing it and tried my best to enjoy it (spoiler: It's one of the worst games I've ever played)
When I first read that PB closed, I genuinely cried. I did not love every single one of their games, but seeing them go saddened me deeply. I really hope that wherever they are, they made enough money from Gothic, Risen and Elex to live comfortably, and maybe even work on another game someday. Thank you PB for all the hours you've filled with joy!
I think you give JoWood waaaay too much credit regarding Gothic 3. It was their job as a publisher to check the pitch of the project. It was their job to check if the studio is capable to make such game. It was their job to check the progress in regular intervals. It was their responsibility to step in if things go wrong. In the end, it was their decision to release the game in such state. And it was their decision to kick PB out of the project and take modders, because they would agree to work for free. There's a reason why they go bankrupt only few years later. With beter oversight this game could be much better, because what we've got is excatly what you've said - just a tech demo with some quest and systems thrown in. Oficial artbook that came with collectors edition state clearly, that many of the assets in the game were just a placeholders. If something as basic as textures on Varrant buildings was not finished and we;ve got some random pictures from berlin museum thrown in, then I'm pretty sure that quests, reputation systems, etc. were also write down on the knee just before the release to have ANYTHING to show up
Those are fair points to bring up. JoWood certainly shares the blame for mismanaging Gothic 3's production. My point mainly was that PB shouldn't get off scot-free by blaming everything on JoWood, since PB failed to meet their own internal standards/agendas, and still could have delivered a better game without stricter management from the publisher if they'd just managed themselves better.
The key word there is "ostensibly." Meaning, both Morrowind and Gothic 1+2 are (1) fully three-dimensional (2) open-world (3) fantasy-themed (4) role-playing games with (5) real-time active combat systems (6) from around the exact same era of gaming. We can point to all kinds of specific things that they do differently which can lead to vastly different player experiences, and I agree that they are ultimately different sorts of games that will appeal to different people for different reasons; however, they are still ostensibly similar types of games based on those overarching characteristics and belonging to the same general sort of genre.
I also have to disagree heavily that the pirates are a stylistic determent. Gothic has no consistent style either. Gothic I is 80s Dark Fantasy. The only thing actually medieval is the keep, anything else is purely fantastical. Gothic II is modern times masqueraded as high medievals. It is a game about social position told through the various small stories of the citizen and farmers of Khorinis, but none of them is actually medieval - a story like Sekob and his wife could easily happen nowadays, too. One of the quests deals with weed trade for what its worth :D And Gothic 3's optics go back several centuries to something that is barely even medieval - we are in the age of the rise of Islam, so early european medievals and high oriental antiques. For that matter, Risen with its 90s Cloak and Dagger movies looks going over to Monkey Island inspired Pirates (again 90s) isn't that surprising. If anything, the first Risen had much more of the movies and much less of the cartoon looks. It is actually Risen 3 which lacks a unique spin on its own that makes it look like there is a stylistic break. Because with Elex they continues to alter styles, this time based on an early 00s look. "Social cold" was a political combat term coined by the then Social Democratic/Greens government against the conserative opposition leader Edmund Stoiber and his economic effiency centered politics that were...well they were socially cold. Not like the other guys did any better but that is were the term is coming from. Then you have stuff like straight up Battle-Shonen villain vibes with the Elexetors... Or in Elex II you have the human characters designed like early Barbie and Actionman animation movie or series...which might not have been a good idea but I can see where its coming from and kinda fits the constructive vs destructive idea of the game. From a Bruce Willis/Jason Statham kinda action movie look to Barbie and Actionman, they definitely had guts :D Had they continued to make games after Elex III, I'd figure they would have given it a '10s spin and considering they are from the Ruhrpott metropolitan area, we would possibly have seen a game with loads of swampweed :D
In my case, Night of the Raven just always ruined Gothic 2 for me. From the awful weapon requirements, higher difficulty (in an already clunky difficult game), the stupid ass stone plates that you need to keep until the late game to not screw yourself on learn points, to the weird NotR story they slammed weirdly into the middle of the plot. I always try my best to play Gothic II without Night of the Raven.
PB's best game was first Gothic. Gothic 2 maybe has better fighting system but rest of it was worse than in Gothic 1. Destroyed lore, brutal world dissapeared, pace of the game wasn't very good and much more. Later was worse so yeah. Their best game was original Gothic.
Small feedback: Please keep it down with the background music, it's extremely distracting and makes it very hard for me to listen and pay attention to what you're saying. Especially since you already speak very fast and seem to be editing out your breathing pauses too. It's just sensory overload. Best would be completely without for the most part tbh, so we can fully focus on you. EDIT: 18:15 onwards was just too painful, I had to turn off. Shame.
Thank you for the feedback. However, please bear in mind that I put A LOT of effort into manually riding the audio levels for everything and testing them on various devices, including playing it back on multiple speakers at both loud and quiet volume levels to find the best balance across all my sound systems. A sound level that feels "just right" on one speaker can wind up being too quiet to even hear on another setup, or a little too loud on another, so it's an endless compromise as far as I can tell. It's especially difficult when using so many diverse tracks with wildly different EQ levels and dynamic ranges; I've been averse to using compressors and other things like that because I've had bad experiences with them sacrificing audio quality or changing the sound of the music a little too much, and I also want to retain some of the dynamic intent of the original music; this means manually fading the audio to target decibel ranges throughout the entire track, and then making judgment calls to either raise or lower certain parts from there if one still sounds too loud or too quiet in parts based on the specific instrumentation and musical composition. My goal with the music is for it to serve an actual purpose by complementing the tone and specific subject matter that I'm covering -- it's not just literal background noise, it's part of the artistic process I put into my work. I specifically WANT the music to be audible, because I find it far more entertaining and enjoyable when there's accompaniment behind the spoken narration, and when I can actually clearly hear and focus on the music if I choose to. If it's so quiet that you can't notice it, then it may as well not even be there as far as I'm concerned, in which case i would seem like a complete waste of time and effort for me to test so many specific pieces to find the one that feels the best suited for every specific moment and then synchronize them to my speech and manually adjust the audio levels. And just personally speaking, I find videos with no background music whatsoever to be pretty boring. Obviously I want my voice to be the priority and I don't want the music to drown out my voice, but I feel like I achieved at least a "pretty good" balance on my various computer speakers/over-ear monitors/cellphone/bluetooth earbuds. Some areas I admit do get just a little too loud, but it was a conscious decision on my part to allow it to get a little loud in some of those moments to preserve at least some of the integrity of the crescendo while still allowing the quiet parts to be clearly audible, versus completely squashing out all dynamics. And at least in my opinion, and in my experience on my various sound setups, nothing ever felt egregiously distracting in a way that I felt interfered with my voice. Regardless, I will take your feedback into consideration and see if I can put even more effort into future videos to achieve an even better balance. I'm not an expert at any of this, and even though I do put A LOT of effort into these videos, I know there's always room for improvement so I'll see what I can do in the future.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I appreciate the detailed response, most probably just wouldn't care to. I can only imagine how much work you put into these videos.
Actually, it's Gothic 3 that needs a remake, not Gothic 1. This game is so broken that it needs to be reworked from scratch. I know that there are a lot of mods out for Gothic 3 that fix a lot of its problems, but not the main one. The main problem with Gothic 3 is that it is completely broken, in its essence, a piece of shit. Other than Kai's music, of course, it's great( other than the battle theme, it's too annoying)
I maintain my opinion that Elex 1 would be widely beloved if not for the truly repellent aesthetics. Can't really blame people since visuals and the general vibes of a game do matter a lot but I also can't help but feel like it's such a shame that a lot of Gothic 2 fans are missing out on a truly fantastic game just because it's kinda ugly.
@@matternicuss At the end, even the ugly character models wouldn't matter if the general design and writing would be good. Elex 1 at least you could play through to the end without being bored to death.
@@matternicuss The best PB-like experience I had since Elex 1 was Chronicles of Myrtana (not a hot take, I suppose). One of my favorite bands btw (your avatar).
If you enjoyed this video and want to help my channel continue to grow, then please consider doing me a favor and like, comment, subscribe, and share the video. Engagement like that helps a lot to promote it to a wider audience. If you want to support me more directly I also have Super Thanks set up for a one-time tip, but you can also become a channel Member or Patron where you'll also get access to exclusive bonus content every month (links are in the description). These videos take a lot of time and effort to put together, so I would appreciate any support you're willing to offer. Thank you.
Choosing between Gothic 1 or 2 is like when you're asked "who do you love more? Mommy or daddy?"
Two halfs of the same heart !!!
You got such an underrated channel. Wouldnt wonder if you hit next 100k and the years following a million Sub. Keep up the content, all of your Videos are really good
For anyone who's wondering about Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos, I still haven't actually played it yet; it's on my to-do list but I have no set time frame for it. It's been on the last two Patron/Member polls for "what game do you want me to cover next," and it's been in last or next-to-last place every time. So until it starts getting more votes, it's going to continue sitting on the back burner. I just put up a fresh poll, and once again Archolos is one of the options, so if you want to give it a push then be sure to sign up and cast your vote; all Patrons and Members get access to polls regardless of what level you pledge at. Or, of course, you could vote for either of the other two options, which are currently Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and Arcania: Gothic 4. As usual, the winner from the combined Member/Patron poll will get bumped to the top of my priority list. I'm also considering Drova: Forsaken Kin, which is actually due to release in full on October 14th, so if that's something that would interest you, then let me know in a comment and I can consider it for future polls and coverage.
You want more content for gothic 2? Its Archolos, it beats gothic 2 AT gothic 2.
I wouldn't wait for a vote to tell you to play it, as a fan of these games I cannot fathom why you haven't played it yet.
It is the PEAK content of Piranha Bytes games even if they themselves haven't made it.
I suppose you cant fully be blamed, you haven't played it yet so you don't know...
Still need to finish that one myself. Extremely curious about how it might compare to the games on this list given that what I have seen so far has been really good for the most part.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I would love it if you'd review Archolos. But I am fine with waiting for it too. Just don't expect v2.0 to be coming out anytime soon. Some people from the Archolos team are currently working on Gothic Remake btw
I tried playing G1 in 2006-7 - don't remember the re-release or original - it was uncontrollable unpolished POS. But then again I didn't even played turds like Morronwind or Oblivious- just got a wind of what they are - a mod fest of Bethesda's bugfest and the games looked ungodly ugly. I prefer to run Serious Sam 2 for the 100th time or Quake 4 , or Diablo 2 LOD than these games
@@Kevin5279 Are they really working on the Remake? That is good news.
Piranha Bytes WAS a German video game developer
That hit me in the feels 😢
it was a Polish video game developer
thank you for sweetening my saturday evening. For Innos!
Saturday just got so much better.
I did not expect you to be a gothic fan :O What are the odds of getting a gothic OST medley/improvisation?
@@ineedavacationbadly I'm a german millenial, of course I'm a Gothic fan ;)
A Gothic medley is as likely as Piranha Bytes hiring me as composer for the Gothic 5 OST.
Geil 😂, Respekt mein Guter! Bist du auf das Remake von Gothic 1 gespannt? Falls ja, was hältst du davon?
I know this is your ranking but thanks for putting elex so high up there xD i love the game so much
A really top notch video. Its such a shame I found about your channel so late as you introduced me to the Piranha Bytes games which I thoroughly enjoy. Keep up the great work, I look forward to your future vidoes.
Thanks Chap
For me it's :
1) Gothic 2 - improved upon on lots of things of Gothic 1
2) Gothic 1 - best game world / story out of all the games.
3) Risen 1 - managed to recapture a good amount of Gothic 1-2 feels. Best combat system (magic was pretty meh). Pretty poor story tho.
4) Gothic 3 - a potentially great game ruined by you all know what. Rep system and fantastic music was what saved it for me and made me replay it. I'd put it on third place , but the combat mechanics are really bad, just that last point would make Risen 1 go on top of it for me.
5) Elex 1 - huge world, ton of quests , and a complete mess of a story and 0 pacing. It suffered from everything an open world game could suffer. The classic faction progression and how unique those factions and the overall setting was made it a decent game for me , making me replay it a couple times picking new faction.
6) Risen 3 - tolerable combat, the skills you get from factions was a nice touch. Overall combat balance was a mess tho. Factions were alright but nothing special, generic story, lots of handholding. But it managed to keep you busy completing a good amount of quests , decent factions tasks.
7) Elex 2 - never improved on anything from Elex 1 , was really unimaginative with their story especially closer to the end , following it up with horrible "kill 50 enemies" quests. Never made me replay it even to try out any other factions.
8) Risen 2 - a mistake of a game.
Have not seen your rankings , would be interesting to compare them with my own now! Thank you for your video!
I can agree :D
I'm glad that I found someone who shared my view that Elex 1 was better than Risen 1. That being said, your ranking lined up exactly with my own personal ranking for the PB catalogue. The only exception being R2 because I never played it. So yes, for me G3 is still the absolute worst PB game
Thank you for this detailed analysis! I completely agree with your take on Gothic 1 and 2-absolute classics. I thought Risen was decent, but I bailed out after Risen 2 and stopped following Piranha Bytes. From what you described, though, I might just give ELEX a chance, as it seems to be the best game they've produced since Gothic.
I was expecting that in the first place so much. So glad you placed those games in the first place, they truly deserved such a mention. Praised be the Indian studios who worked on them 🙏
Well done on this video. I found you when looking for stuff about Piranha games a few years ago and have always been a fan. Good luck going forward!
I'm aware it's the basic pick, but my personal favorite simply gotta be Gothic II: Night of The Raven.
A missed opportunity for other games to take the concept of returning to a familiar world in an completely different condition like the Valley of Mines (really neat concept). Echo your sentiment on most points when it comes to Gothic II. Even if Gothic II had a more 'conventional' environment then GI, GII still has the upper hand due to the size of the world (three zones), more elaborate faction pathways, amount of quests & more impactful shifts in the environment during the chapter progression (plus a more vibrant color scheme for the environment). While some make the case that GI had the better story, the plot wasn't the strong suit of either Gothic titles to begin with. Hence the higher replay value for GII in comparison to GI in the long run (in my humble opinion).
Going back to Gothic I+II during the 'global pause' days & being fully immersed with the proper spiritual successor Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos was the first time that I've genuinely enjoyed playing games since 2015/16. Nostalgia (for simpler times).
Thank you for making this video, always enjoy articulate Gothic contect from thorough "fan". I'll keep watching :)
Excellent breakdown as usual! If I had to rank them, it would be:
1. Gothic 2
2. Gothic
3. Gothic 2 NotR
4. Risen
5. Elex
6. Gothic 3
7. Risen 3
8. Elex 2
9. Risen 2
Idk why, but I just love Gothic 3. It was my introduction to the Piranha Bytes games and I know it's bad and clunky. But I can't help myself, even after playing the other Gothic games, I still come back to the worst one with high nostalgia. Nowadays I'm playing with like 200 mods to make the game run and it just add's so much to the game experience. I think I just love how the community put in the effort to make that shitty game playable and I think they made a great job.
Also the kind off Skyrim-esque, sandboxy, especially when you play as a mage, gameplay just does something to my brain that makes me keep playing for hours, also the soundtrack just slaps hard.
Praised be the Rambler! XD
The whole internet disagrees with me, but I would rate NotR way below the base Gothic II game. The rebalanced difficulty made it way too videogamey, made mages unplayable. The side quest broke the urgency and general flow of the main quest. The pirate theme also feels out of place. Oh, and you asked Lares to take you to the farm instead of Saturas first? Your save is now bricked, but you will only notice hours later. Still happens in the Steam version in 2024.
Fair points all around. Those issues aside, did you like the actual content of NOTR? For me, I enjoyed all the new content so much that it made up for any shortcomings I might've experienced otherwise.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I enjoyed the new stuff happening around Khorinis, the missing persons quest was really good, it was mainly Jharkendar that I wasn't vibing with. It did not feel very Gothic to me, broke my immersion and the content there started to feel like a list of chores. Never felt that way with any part of the base game.
But I admit, thanks to your video I got the urge to replay Gothic 1&2 again, might give NotR another try.
Last time I replayed NotR I was a mage. Beginning was rough but hardly unplayable.
I agree - there are many reasons that make Gothic II a beter game without NotR. More coherence, less bloat, gameplay that makes sense. The addon adventure is great fun, but NotR was designed for people who already played through the base game and want more, so they go and buy the expansion. Unfortunately if you get gothic 2 today you get the addon installed automatically and think that is the way to play gothic II as a new player.
Also not official but an important mention to archolos that improves gothic 2 world a lot with a new story, a giant world and a lot of interesting quest, none of them felt generic, every one of them is an absolutely original quest and i love that
archolos is not official therefore it has no place in this list
I agree with your Ranking of elex. I think the developers did not understand why elex was successful. Because instead of keeping the strengths of elex and improve its weaknesses, they made a game that is just worse. Big disappointment.
NotR difficulty spikes are rough and in chapter 3 and 4 things can get very confusing with the main quest and the addon-main-quest to get access to the portal going on at the same time... but it is really an immersive world and the three factions system makes for replayability. In contrast to this all settlements in Gothic 3 are mostly meaningless... and in the end you have to mass-murder them anyway... which is such a bizarre game-design decision. What kind of stuff the devs smoked between Gothic 2 and Gothic 3?
For me, Elex 2 seems like the worst game on the list. Some points you had made about Gothic 3 can be easily placed upon Elex 2. Repetitive quests and the most shallow main story that I have ever seen. Having completed all of the previous Piranha's games, this one I couldn't finish due to lack of interest and constant frustration. Nevertheless, thank you for the video and hope to see more!
Gothic 2 was the 1st game that I bought. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 12. I saved up some money from my birthday, and finally bought that huge 2CD(or was it 3?) box with a sexy lady on the cover.
To be fair, my ass got wooped in the 1st act, and I haven't finished Gothic until some years later. But damn, it's 18 years later, and I still keep coming back to this magical world at least once a year.
Man, say what you want about ELEX 2 perhaps disappointing in terms of sales, but it hurts to hear Piranha Bytes was essentially collateral damage of Embracer's financial fumble.
I respect you a lot for putting G3 ar the bottom. Not only are there a lot of things about it that make or made ot a bad game (or mediocre maBe), but the weight of the disappointment it brought is what truly brings it down so, so far in my eyes. It could have been good. It could have been many great things, but it turned out to just be a disappointment and a crappy game.
Thanks for another great video!
9) Gothic 3
8) Risen 2
7) Elex 2
6) Gothic
5) Risen 3
4) Risen
3) Gothic 2
2) Elex
1) The Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos
Wrong list, right is
1) Gothic 1
2) Gothic 2
3) Gothic 3
4) Elex 1
5) Risen 1
6) Risen 2
7) Risen 3
8) Elex 2
While I would disagree with anyone's list being "wrong," I still want to thank you for sharing yours. Obviously you like Gothic 3 a lot more than I do, so I'm glad you enjoy it!
How to summon polish internet: mention gothic in any form
gothic 1 and 2 sadly also destroyed my gaming live because there are nearly no games outside that catch me the same way and let me feel so engaged with its world .....
Finally, was excited for this
Haven't played any of the risen games or gothic 3, yet every time I see elex mentioned I get this itch to replay it. same with new vegas. I've beaten new vegas 6 times, elex 1 4 times and elex 2 3 times, gothic 1 3 times and gothic 2 around 5 times. amazing games. I never played them when they came out and only got into gothic around 2020 after buying them all on gog.
Overall I agree with you, and my list is the same. Risen 2 should be just different - "Pirate" series, it would be better. And Gothic 3 is good simply to walk - because of nice graphics and great music, but its is a bad game
Nice. Was looking forward to this video
1. Gothic
2. Archolos
3. Gorhic 2 NOTR
4. Gothic 2
5. Risen
6. Elex
7. Risen 3
8. Elex 2
9. Risen 2
10. Gothic 3
4.
Piranha Bytes always seemed to me like a small group of ambitious and passionate people making the games they wanted to make, so sad they were friendly-fired by Embracer
@@MattMcMatt they should have simply fired Bjorn and Jenny. But given the fact that E2 hardly made the revenue they were looking for, it was the end for them
i agree with this ranking apart from risen 2 and 3. 2 in my opinion is filled with great quest which IMO is arguably the most imported quality of a piranha bites quest, while risen 3 feels more MMO like similar to gothic 3 in some instances.
I agree with you, Risen 2 was pretty unique, quests and characters were well written. Risen 3 was lazy, it recycled a lot from Risen 2, but it was poorly written and was clearly rushed.
Good list. I would place Elex higher though. The game has as much complexity as Gothic II but without any way of minmaxing. Gothic 1/2 you will only play the game one way once you found out which routes give maximum exp.
It is HEAVILY underexplored, most guides are halfway broken and halfway incomplete, missing out a lot of details, many quests are unregistered, including unlogged quests. For example meeting Thorald before you are supposed to causes different outcomes and possibly a relationship bonus with him depending on your companion, or Drog has an unlogged Quest after he's been banished. The companion reactions are barely covered and can drastically alter quests - for example taking Duras to Kral and Grimar forces a violent outcome onto the quest as Duras will interrupt Jax before he can explain himself. The Cold choices are barely covered, making planned replays like a pure cold, pure emotional or pure neutral play through (picking all +/- cold choices whenever possible regardless of consequences or avoiding them the entire game) impossible.
I think Elex is a much better game than Gothic I, which is on the other hand though probably the most artistically well crafted out of the bunch. It has a unique setting, people get what the plot twists with the Swamp Camp and the Old Camp are about (while Elex is arguably hard to access), it looks phenomenal even today due to being heavily stylized...soundtrack is amazing. But if I want the gameplay formula alone I would play G2 NOTR any day over G1.Especially the classes have actual meaning in Gothic II, while in Gothic I, if you know the game well and clear the map completely each chapter and do every quest, you can pretty much skill everything, or be angry that you cannot skill everything (Swamp Camp).
Elex also has three classes, but imho the lack of complete guides undermine its replayability. The more often you replay an RPG, the more you want to explore roles rather than play your own role and for that you then need to know all the little secrets so you can plan your idea through. I hope people eventually realize how much more is in this game.
My list:
1) Gothic II:NotR
2) Gothic 3 - with mods, the art, the music, taking in the sight... it is that good
3) Elex 2 - the unlimited jetpack you get after finishing the main quest was a great idea.
The controls and combat are pretty smooth. These thing make it the best game to explore secrets in the game world.
4) Gothic - the best narrative, of course. The OG
5) Elex - the lore is just interesting, e.g. finding out about C****n. The quests around the Domed city.
6) Risen 1 - a good game but plays it too safe
7) Risen 2 - Yeah it is different but it was the first PB game I bought myself, also had a new PC back then. Sentimental reasons.
8) Risen 3 - Not a bad game! Just last on this list.
BONUS) The Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos - were it a PB game, it would go to No.2 maybe even No.1
I love Gothic 3 more than any Risen game)
I liked the video, to me however, Gothic 1, 2 and 3 are the only playable games... Despite all the years, Elex feels beyond clunky and too rigid. I just hate playing it.
The 2 Gothic games, are old and nostalgia driven enough where their static movement plays into the charm, Risen, 2 especially might as well be on rails with combat being the biggest offender.
I think Risen 2 is better than Elex 2. Apart from that i kinda agree with this list. You didnt mention but all companion quests are fetch quests in Elex 2 too, not just the main quests (also lot of side quests too). If I want to play mmorpg I can play wow or something else, thats not what I expect from a single player rpg.
The industry lost a group of very creative and talented people with the closure of Piranha Bytes. The artists and visionaries have been replaced with share holders and board room execs and the medium is a shadow of what it once was.
I really enjoyed Gothic 3 back in the day and had a blast playing it. Since then i never replayed it and dont know if i want to.
Gothic 1 is amazing simply because of the first two chapters, in which you can explore everything and do anything you want. The later portion of the game is completely linear, but i dont think it is a big negative. It would be nice to have more things to do, but it makes sense that you in the first part of the game you explore and in the second you only do the main quest.
Gothic 2 is for me better than 1 because of how big imporovement gameplay wise it is. Yes, it not as good storywise as 1, but i am person who prefers gameplay over story. But if we are ranking PB games, the main reason G2 is #1 for me is Archolos. It is the best Gothic game in my opinion and G2 is the reason we got it.
I enjoyed Risen but played it only once, and tried Risen 2 but stopped playing it really quickly because i found the controls to be atrocious. I played Elex for like 20 hours but then stopped playing and never got back to it. I want to finish it but cant get myself to it for some reason.
So my ranking is:
Gothic 2
Gothic 1
Gothic 3
Risen 1
Elex 1
Sir, when will we hear your thoughts on the G1 Remake Nyras Demo?
As far as I'm aware it's not available to the public so I can't comment on it from any first hand experience. I did watch someone else's stream, but I don't really like speculating on things without having the chance to test things for myself, and I didn't want to make a reaction video based on other people's exclusive footage. I did, however, type up some initial impressions for all Patrons and Members, but I don't want to reveal too much of that since the article is meant to be an exclusive bonus for paying supporters. But to summarize simply, I thought it looked promising, however I had some minor concerns over some things, and I couldn't tell if those were just side-effects of being an unrelated demo scenario or if they were representative of what the full game direction will be.
@@TheNocturnalRambler New Patreon incoming :) Gotta read me that! Also yes, looking forward to playing the Demo myself!
The Nr 1 is corrrectly chosen. But it's one of those games that has to be played in german (if you understand german). such great voice actors.
I have the advantage of playing G3 after fixes made it playable. I played G1, G2, and G3 in order. Got hours of enjoyment from them.
The only one I've replayed is G3. I tried replaying G1 an G2, but didn't get far, as they are simply outdated by current game standards.
But I will play G3 again for maybe the sixth time. It holds up very well indeed.
Archolos is what gothic 3 should have been. Gothic 2 but better.
Great video, I agree with most of your choices. However, I think Gothic 3 should have been ranked higher. If you install the latest community patches, you can actually enjoy the game. The landscape and some of the cities look amazing and the music is wonderful. Still, it's far from perfect, but IMO better than Elex 2 or Risen 2 or 3.
Artistically, Gothic 3 got somethings going for it though: While Gothic is about camp ideology, and Gothic 2 is about social position, with NOTR being specifically about position mobility, Gothic 3 is about "liberation". You can either play the game out, but then there won't be liberation, regardless of wether you chose Innos or Beliar, or you can leave the game and then...
Well, there won't be liberation either. Gothic is not a fantasy game, it is a sci-fi game about the Matrix. The are no real humans in Gothic, everyone is an NPC, except for the Nameless, who is a PC. Xardas is the GameMaster, and has been screwing with us all this time: He created the barrier, his Ork contact Ur-Shak wasn't whom he is supposed to be, Xardas was only out for the essence of the Sleeper and when he finally got it with the Undead dragon (*insert evil laugh*) he destroys rune magic and is revealed as the leader of the Orks all along - who would have thought given he's hanging around in Sauron's tower.
The promise of the Unknown Land is false, he only lead the Nameless into the next Matrix, which is Risen - the sequel of Gothic according to Mike in the very same stream you are showing. "It is not important where we are, but rather what has happened!" (quote Risen intro) Yeah, Gothic has happened!
And if Risen is the sequel, then Elex is the prequel. Elex is Magic Ore, Magalan the Unknown Land, Albs (older word for Elf) are Orks ( remember Xardas sits in Sauron's tower and LotR Orks are corrupted Elves, there is also the quest with ORiK the opposite of Jax), Berserks are Nomads/Druids/Nordmars/Builders, Clerics are the Innoschurch (Calaan = Cologne, capital of the roman catholic church in Germany), Sky-Ants are Minecrawlers, Dawkins is Xardas and I think Jax is the "Beast" and Dex is the Sleeper...
A game about Evolution, Evolution of the world of Adanos (Adonai, God) starting in the Garden Edan. Adam...remember the name of the engine of these games: GENOME.
Dawkins fails to absorb Jax, because the Eternal Wanderer slays him but finally succeeds with his son, Dex in the halls of Irdorath.
Between Risen 2 and 3, the Nameless leaves the plot, possibly to find Xardas, because he realized he is actually someone else, trapped in a Matrix.
To leave the Matrix, he musst say his name, hence why he is always prevented from doing so. And the name is MARVIN. If you type that in Gothic you can break the Matrix.
It all makes perfect sense. Really sad what happened with PB :(
Maybe five minutes of disclaimers at the beginning wasn't necessary. People who get irrationally mad about game opinions aren't going to stop themselves and say "wait, he painstakingly explained that these are just personal opinions at the beginning" and change their minds about flaming you.
In fairness, there are only two minutes or less of disclaimers stating that there will be subjective bias in my rankings; that my explanations are only going to provide a brief overview of the main talking points and that people should check my reviews and other videos for more comprehensive thoughts on each game; and that there may be minor spoilers. The remaining four minutes of the six minute intro section is explaining who Piranha Bytes are and their history, my personal history with their games, the criteria I'm going to be using to determine my rankings, and musing about how the rankings might shape up and where I anticipate the most interesting discussions will be. So it's not like I spent five minutes saying "please don't flame me for having an opinion "
Regardless, I've found that disclaimers like that are somewhat necessary, because if I don't explicitly warn people that there may be spoilers, someone will be upset at me if I inadvertently spoil something that I don't consider to be a spoiler; and if I don't explicitly state "this is my opinion" someone will inevitably assume I'm claiming everything to be an objective fact. I feel it's also helpful to point out that I've already covered all of these games in detail, and that there are existing resources that explain everything in this video and more in greater detail, for anyone who might be new to my channel and thus unfamiliar with my previous work.
Additionally, I've found that for some reason some people do take it personal when someone online criticizes a video game they like. After being sent literal death threats and utterly vile hatemail and being relentlessly harassed to the point of borderline stalking by an entire community of irate fans because I had the nerve to write a mildly critical but ultimately balanced review of a game they like, I've found myself much more guarded about these sorts of things and would like to preempt toxic behavior and negative reactions in whatever way I can. I understand there are people who won't listen to or care about those disclaimers and still be toxic a-holes regardless, but I still feel like it helps to set a rational and polite tone at the start of the video so that perhaps more people will be inclined to have an open mind and hear me out when I immediately come in with what will inevitably be some people's beloved childhood favorite in the bottom spot of the rankings.
I also have clearly marked time stamps and chapters so people can easily skip sections to get right to each ranking if they so desire, so it's not like anyone is forced to sit through the entire intro if they don't want.
All of which is to say that I believe those disclaimers do more good than harm, but I still appreciate your feedback and will keep that in mind in the future, if there's perhaps a better way to express those considerations.
I haven't really played Risen 2 and Risen 3. Without those two games, my ranking would be: 1. Gothic 2, 2. Gothic 1, 3. Elex, 4. Risen, 5. Gothic 3, 5. Elex II.
Gothic 3 - a good idea, a good game, but its a RPG game and 80% of the time you fight and the combat was and is utterly hoooorrriiibbbllleeee!!! xD But I still love Gothic 3 for its beautiful world, music and my old NPC friends...
But yes, so many things sux so hard and many new ideas were interesting but implemented in a hoooorrriiibbbllleeee way. Not enought polish here...
Risen 2 - same problems as Gothic 3. After 12 hours of playing I give up and go play Risen 1.....that was yesterday... maybe I will try it again sometimes in the future but...meh...
Elex 2 - didnt play.
Risen 3 - bought it, didnt have the courage to play it xD
Risen 1 - its like Gothic one but better in some ways. I really like how it looks like Gothic but has it own feeling. A bit small but still it has a playce in my heart. I replay it once every 3 years. Some thing could be better but still its a great RPG game.
Elex - I have mixed feelings on this. Plus I played only half of the game. But its a solid good "Gothic style" game. I really enjoyed the "post-apo earth" world and the open world map.
Gothic 1 and 2 are two halfs of a single heart... most of us, The Gamers could name 50% of all the NPC in this game and yes even the Swamp people xD
Plus the NPCs make the world beliveble and alive. They would chat, go on walks, drink at night, sleep, cook, clean, etc. etc......
I agree that Gothic 2 NoTR is in fact a separate game...but I still think of it as part of Gothic 2...
Someone here likes "What we do in the Shadows" movie.
16:28 : well ,you say "unfinished" yet , ... ironically ,Gothic 3 is the only Piranha Bytes that i have actually "finished" to the end ... *twice* !! everyone was complaining about game's rushed release and its technical problems/bugs ,but when you love something you always find the way ,thus although i bought the game day-1 ,full of bugs(full of stutters actually) and with a mediocre PC( Athlon64 3000+ / GeForce 6600GT / and i believe 512MB RAM but i can't remember for sure) ,i learned to overcome all those stutters and as i said i finished a huge-broken game like that... 😜twice !!!
---Nevertheless my greatest love is by far *Gothic 1* , a masterpiece which made you feel like you are inside *a world in which every action there is a reaction* !!! *the atmosphere and immersion of Gothic 1 is something unmatched* !!! *my most PERFECT game i've ever played* !!
My own list is :
Gothic 1 : 100/100
Gothic 2 : 95/100
Gothic 3 : 80/100
Risen 2 : 80/100
(*obviously i haven't played the rest that's why i don't rank them )
lovely video ❤❤❤❤❤
Once I've heard a bit of Gothic 3 combat music it reminded me of the PTSD that I've got while playing it and tried my best to enjoy it (spoiler: It's one of the worst games I've ever played)
Gothic 2
Gothic 1
Risen 1
Elex 1
Gothic 3
Risen 3
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Risen 2....
When I first read that PB closed, I genuinely cried. I did not love every single one of their games, but seeing them go saddened me deeply.
I really hope that wherever they are, they made enough money from Gothic, Risen and Elex to live comfortably, and maybe even work on another game someday.
Thank you PB for all the hours you've filled with joy!
I think you give JoWood waaaay too much credit regarding Gothic 3. It was their job as a publisher to check the pitch of the project. It was their job to check if the studio is capable to make such game. It was their job to check the progress in regular intervals. It was their responsibility to step in if things go wrong. In the end, it was their decision to release the game in such state. And it was their decision to kick PB out of the project and take modders, because they would agree to work for free. There's a reason why they go bankrupt only few years later.
With beter oversight this game could be much better, because what we've got is excatly what you've said - just a tech demo with some quest and systems thrown in. Oficial artbook that came with collectors edition state clearly, that many of the assets in the game were just a placeholders. If something as basic as textures on Varrant buildings was not finished and we;ve got some random pictures from berlin museum thrown in, then I'm pretty sure that quests, reputation systems, etc. were also write down on the knee just before the release to have ANYTHING to show up
Those are fair points to bring up. JoWood certainly shares the blame for mismanaging Gothic 3's production. My point mainly was that PB shouldn't get off scot-free by blaming everything on JoWood, since PB failed to meet their own internal standards/agendas, and still could have delivered a better game without stricter management from the publisher if they'd just managed themselves better.
and nr 0: Chronicles of Myrtana
51:45 Morrowind and Gothic 1 & 2 aren't similar games at all. All of them are good for different reasons.
The key word there is "ostensibly." Meaning, both Morrowind and Gothic 1+2 are (1) fully three-dimensional (2) open-world (3) fantasy-themed (4) role-playing games with (5) real-time active combat systems (6) from around the exact same era of gaming. We can point to all kinds of specific things that they do differently which can lead to vastly different player experiences, and I agree that they are ultimately different sorts of games that will appeal to different people for different reasons; however, they are still ostensibly similar types of games based on those overarching characteristics and belonging to the same general sort of genre.
Risen 1> Gothic 2> Risen 3> Gothic 3> Gothic 1> Risen 2> Arcania
Without watching I know Gothic 3 will be #1 😆
I played gothic 3 for like hundreds of hours as a kid and in terms of how much fun and joy I had it’ll probably gonna be ranked #1
Gothic 2 = Gothic 2 > Gothic 3 = Risen 1 > ELEX > ELEX 2 > Risen 2 > Risen 3
Elex was never for me since I cannot stand playing a character with a name and backgroundstory.
I also have to disagree heavily that the pirates are a stylistic determent.
Gothic has no consistent style either. Gothic I is 80s Dark Fantasy. The only thing actually medieval is the keep, anything else is purely fantastical.
Gothic II is modern times masqueraded as high medievals. It is a game about social position told through the various small stories of the citizen and farmers of Khorinis, but none of them is actually medieval - a story like Sekob and his wife could easily happen nowadays, too. One of the quests deals with weed trade for what its worth :D
And Gothic 3's optics go back several centuries to something that is barely even medieval - we are in the age of the rise of Islam, so early european medievals and high oriental antiques.
For that matter, Risen with its 90s Cloak and Dagger movies looks going over to Monkey Island inspired Pirates (again 90s) isn't that surprising. If anything, the first Risen had much more of the movies and much less of the cartoon looks. It is actually Risen 3 which lacks a unique spin on its own that makes it look like there is a stylistic break.
Because with Elex they continues to alter styles, this time based on an early 00s look. "Social cold" was a political combat term coined by the then Social Democratic/Greens government against the conserative opposition leader Edmund Stoiber and his economic effiency centered politics that were...well they were socially cold. Not like the other guys did any better but that is were the term is coming from. Then you have stuff like straight up Battle-Shonen villain vibes with the Elexetors...
Or in Elex II you have the human characters designed like early Barbie and Actionman animation movie or series...which might not have been a good idea but I can see where its coming from and kinda fits the constructive vs destructive idea of the game.
From a Bruce Willis/Jason Statham kinda action movie look to Barbie and Actionman, they definitely had guts :D
Had they continued to make games after Elex III, I'd figure they would have given it a '10s spin and considering they are from the Ruhrpott metropolitan area, we would possibly have seen a game with loads of swampweed :D
16:59 I hate this argument, when someone says "well it's realistic!". Ok, cool. But if it's boring and tedious, then who cares?
Try chronicles of mhyrtana
fnished risen series.. elex, just not with gothic, dunno why
In my case, Night of the Raven just always ruined Gothic 2 for me. From the awful weapon requirements, higher difficulty (in an already clunky difficult game), the stupid ass stone plates that you need to keep until the late game to not screw yourself on learn points, to the weird NotR story they slammed weirdly into the middle of the plot. I always try my best to play Gothic II without Night of the Raven.
PB's best game was first Gothic. Gothic 2 maybe has better fighting system but rest of it was worse than in Gothic 1. Destroyed lore, brutal world dissapeared, pace of the game wasn't very good and much more. Later was worse so yeah. Their best game was original Gothic.
Archolos shows that the old formula is still fantastic if made by passionate and talented people. Piranha bytes lost it long time ago. Good riddance.
FIRST!
Risen 3 is in no way a better game than Gothic 3 xD
Each game got worse than the previous one so its easy. Oh wait forgot about gothic 3 😂
Small feedback: Please keep it down with the background music, it's extremely distracting and makes it very hard for me to listen and pay attention to what you're saying.
Especially since you already speak very fast and seem to be editing out your breathing pauses too. It's just sensory overload.
Best would be completely without for the most part tbh, so we can fully focus on you.
EDIT: 18:15 onwards was just too painful, I had to turn off. Shame.
Thank you for the feedback. However, please bear in mind that I put A LOT of effort into manually riding the audio levels for everything and testing them on various devices, including playing it back on multiple speakers at both loud and quiet volume levels to find the best balance across all my sound systems. A sound level that feels "just right" on one speaker can wind up being too quiet to even hear on another setup, or a little too loud on another, so it's an endless compromise as far as I can tell. It's especially difficult when using so many diverse tracks with wildly different EQ levels and dynamic ranges; I've been averse to using compressors and other things like that because I've had bad experiences with them sacrificing audio quality or changing the sound of the music a little too much, and I also want to retain some of the dynamic intent of the original music; this means manually fading the audio to target decibel ranges throughout the entire track, and then making judgment calls to either raise or lower certain parts from there if one still sounds too loud or too quiet in parts based on the specific instrumentation and musical composition.
My goal with the music is for it to serve an actual purpose by complementing the tone and specific subject matter that I'm covering -- it's not just literal background noise, it's part of the artistic process I put into my work. I specifically WANT the music to be audible, because I find it far more entertaining and enjoyable when there's accompaniment behind the spoken narration, and when I can actually clearly hear and focus on the music if I choose to. If it's so quiet that you can't notice it, then it may as well not even be there as far as I'm concerned, in which case i would seem like a complete waste of time and effort for me to test so many specific pieces to find the one that feels the best suited for every specific moment and then synchronize them to my speech and manually adjust the audio levels.
And just personally speaking, I find videos with no background music whatsoever to be pretty boring. Obviously I want my voice to be the priority and I don't want the music to drown out my voice, but I feel like I achieved at least a "pretty good" balance on my various computer speakers/over-ear monitors/cellphone/bluetooth earbuds. Some areas I admit do get just a little too loud, but it was a conscious decision on my part to allow it to get a little loud in some of those moments to preserve at least some of the integrity of the crescendo while still allowing the quiet parts to be clearly audible, versus completely squashing out all dynamics. And at least in my opinion, and in my experience on my various sound setups, nothing ever felt egregiously distracting in a way that I felt interfered with my voice.
Regardless, I will take your feedback into consideration and see if I can put even more effort into future videos to achieve an even better balance. I'm not an expert at any of this, and even though I do put A LOT of effort into these videos, I know there's always room for improvement so I'll see what I can do in the future.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I appreciate the detailed response, most probably just wouldn't care to. I can only imagine how much work you put into these videos.
Actually, it's Gothic 3 that needs a remake, not Gothic 1. This game is so broken that it needs to be reworked from scratch. I know that there are a lot of mods out for Gothic 3 that fix a lot of its problems, but not the main one. The main problem with Gothic 3 is that it is completely broken, in its essence, a piece of shit. Other than Kai's music, of course, it's great( other than the battle theme, it's too annoying)
I maintain my opinion that Elex 1 would be widely beloved if not for the truly repellent aesthetics. Can't really blame people since visuals and the general vibes of a game do matter a lot but I also can't help but feel like it's such a shame that a lot of Gothic 2 fans are missing out on a truly fantastic game just because it's kinda ugly.
The aethetic of Elex 1 is fine, I got the impression it's more the setting that is a matter of taste. Elex 2 though is unbelievably ugly.
@@frogmoth I'm currently playing Elex 2 and the environments are gorgeous, just like in Elex 1. Ugly character models though, as is tradition.
@@matternicuss At the end, even the ugly character models wouldn't matter if the general design and writing would be good. Elex 1 at least you could play through to the end without being bored to death.
@@frogmoth I've been enjoying Elex 2 so far. Then again I enjoy all of PB's games, including Gothic 3 and the Risen sequels.
@@matternicuss The best PB-like experience I had since Elex 1 was Chronicles of Myrtana (not a hot take, I suppose). One of my favorite bands btw (your avatar).