[EvilKoala]

Hi guys,

First of all, this is my first post. If it turns out this isn't the right forum for the question, I apologize. When I was somewhat younger, I had a copy of the first Gothic lying around, but because of the difficulty and somewhat awkward controls, I never really got into it, and my bix carboard box, my cd's and manual got lost somehow. Now I don't have a lot of time to game anymore, but due to the lack of good RPGs lately (I haven't played Risen yet. My PC is too weak and there has been a lot of negative feedback for the 360 version, so I'm not sure if I'll be buying it) I tried the Gothic I and Gothic II demos again, I'm now I'm eager to dive back into the series. But after looking pretty much everywhere, I was unable to find a decent copy of Gothic 1. So I'm pretty much down to buying the Gothic Universe box, but I have a few few questions about the box itself, since I'm scared to spend what little money I have on yet another crappy 'collection' box. I couldn't find any decent info on JoWood's site.

First question: as I understand it, there are two versions of the box.

[Bild: GothicUniverse2.jpg][Bild: GothicUniverse1.jpg]

Is there any difference between the versions?

Second question: I have heard that the box includes the Gold Edition of Gothic II. But I also heard that with Night Of The Raven expansion installed, the game becomes even more difficult than it already is. This doesn't seem very good for a beginner, and certainly not for someone who is generally generally bad at games such as me. So can I decide whether or not I want to install Night Of The Raven with the Gold Edition?

And third questions: is this a decent package overall? Is this a cardboard box or a DVD case? Are the games patched up, or are they even more bug-ridden than before? Are the manuals included or are they on the DVDs as PDFs? Are there any extras included? You know, the usual questions...

I know all these questions may sound a little strange, but as I said, I really don't have a lot of money to spend on games.

Thanks in advance,

EvilKoala

[Larisa]

Welcome here

I don't know much about the universe edition, but from what I've seen around:

The G2 included is indeed the gold edition, apparently you can't choose just G2 vanilla.

G1 and G2 should be patched to the latest version.
For G3 there are newer patches available for download.

You could also check GOG:
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/gothic
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/gothic_2_gold_edition

If you have problems running Risen, G3 might also be hard or impossible to run on your PC, try the demo for it first.

[Bones94]

Hmm normally people that don't have much to spend on video games are downloading pirate games so gratz Im proud with you ^_^
And don't worry NoTR with the latest patch is very easy... the monsters are harder yes but they still give lots of XP so don't worry you don't need the normal Gothic... btw I think you can play the normal one :]
And far as I remember there are no extras in the pack
oh and far as I know only the boxes are different

[KGS]

there was a G2 vanilla mod for Notr

[Maladiq]

Don't buy it!!! No dude, don't. I did that. And a lot of people. And we regret it. A lot of problems:

1. No music during setups.

2. Some people got 2 dvds with the same game instead of a dvd with each game.

3. G2 installs by default in c:\program files. You can't change that. If you don't have space on C:\ you are screwed.

4. So on...

[vivaxardas]

As I remember, the first one is english version, the second - german.
I have US version. I like it a lot. I have a lot of problems with G2 Gold on 4 CDs, very hard to install, and a lot of crashes (by some reason US gold edition hates Vista). Gothic Universe runs on Vista like a charm. And you won't need DVDs in the drive to play G1/G2.
I do not remeber whether there is music during installation or not (I do not really care), but as Maladiq said you won't be able to change a default installation directory. Also it is rather hard to install Gothic MDK, and to play mods with this edition. So for MDK and mods I had to buy russian gold edition.

[Maladiq]

Oh, and let's not forget about missing autoruns etc. Damn, I can't find the posts of that dude who got a copy of G3 instead of a G2 one and ended up with 1 G1 and 2 G3's, no G2.


And let's not forget that the DVDs act like friggin pirate copies: My g3 dvd is named maine_dateien, has no autorun and no copy protection... jesus christ i hate JW.

And also JW is responsible for Forsaken Gods so they do not deserve you buying anything from them.

But if you are really keen on buying something from JW, buy anything but Gothic Universe or Forsaken Gods.

[EvilKoala]

Thanks for the quick (and many) responses guys! Guess I'll look just a little harder for the Gothic games in a seperate package. I'm happy you like the box vivaxardas, but while I did some further research, I encountered some complaints that do resemble Maladiq's problems. I'll use this one only as a last resort.

On a side note, I have almost never seen a forum where the replies came so quickly and they all had something informative to say. I'm normally not that big of a 'forum-guy' but I'm certainly looking forward to using this one.

[RobinHood 13.]

Oh, and let's not forget about missing autoruns etc. Damn, I can't find the posts of that dude who got a copy of G3 instead of a G2 one and ended up with 1 G1 and 2 G3's, no G2.


And let's not forget that the DVDs act like friggin pirate copies: My g3 dvd is named maine_dateien, has no autorun and no copy protection... jesus christ i hate JW.

And also JW is responsible for Forsaken Gods so they do not deserve you buying anything from them.

But if you are really keen on buying something from JW, buy anything but Gothic Universe or Forsaken Gods.

Ehh... no copy protection is a very good thing, and if they have no autorun , well it's not that hard to go into the files on the cd, and click the setup/install icon.
If you wanna buy gothic, gothic universe is probably the best choice as you'll have good luck finding the other one on their own.

[Bastardo]

Since you seem to value the package it might be worth mentioning that original G3, G2 and NotR are findable and cheap, the problem with money and disponibility mostly rises with G1 which can be brough directly from Piranha Bytes on the web if you can't find a copy. Had to find mine on eBay.

[Maladiq]

Ehh... no copy protection is a very good thing, and if they have no autorun , well it's not that hard to go into the files on the cd, and click the setup/install icon.
If you wanna buy gothic, gothic universe is probably the best choice as you'll have good luck finding the other one on their own.

No, missing CP is not a good thing. If they say the game was patched to 1.12, and the CP is a very important software part of the game, who knows what else is missing from the content of the game. And having 2 G3 dvds isn't something you can fix by searching for the right files on the cd.

You saying that these are solvable problems is just like you buying a ripped, dirty t-shirt and me telling you that: oh, you can sew and wash it.

@EvilKoala: glad we could help you. Hope to see you a lot around here. Welcome

[vivaxardas]

Obviously not every package misses a DVD. And this shit happens with every game. I bought three Universe editions for my friends, and all of them were fine. Also if there is no CP does not mean that something else is missing. I finished G1/G2 games seweral times with no problems.
And they have autorun (US edition), I checked.
Both games run very well on Vista. After a torture with G2 Gold it was a relief. The only bad thing for me was that I couldn't install MDK and mods.

I am really surprised that you guys do not like this edition. If to ask me, to buy US Gothic 2 Gold for Vista is a waste of money. You may not be able to install NOTR CD, and will have to play only G2 original with a crash every 5 minutes. And old G1 cannot be uninstalled from the computer. It was a very unnoying bug, btw.

[RobinHood 13.]

No, missing CP is not a good thing. If they say the game was patched to 1.12, and the CP is a very important software part of the game, who knows what else is missing from the content of the game. And having 2 G3 dvds isn't something you can fix by searching for the right files on the cd.

You saying that these are solvable problems is just like you buying a ripped, dirty t-shirt and me telling you that: oh, you can sew and wash it.

Hehe, CP is something publishers force on the games because they don't trust you. Requirements of having the cd in when starting up a game is a disability they force upon the users, making them much worse than the pirated versions.
So in that regard it's more similar to the typical pirated version where you actually can play the game whenever you want (with portable pc's it would definitely be a problem). The important thing is that they work, and cp can lead to problems. Take G2 for instance (not Notr), suddenly for some reason the game wouldn't start, and then total randomly it would work again, found a fix for that, but this should never have been made. What fucked it up?
The copy protection.

If the game does not have fancy autoplay graphics, it doesn't mean it misses content, these are completely unrelated.
However, that there are some who don't understand how to open the dvd files, double click the setup, and then wait for the game to install. Well I guess some aren't as evolved as others.
Sadly the less evolved are the ones making children, as the other's are to occupied playing games. Humanity is decaying

[Maladiq]

Take G2 for instance (not Notr), suddenly for some reason the game wouldn't start, and then total randomly it would work again, found a fix for that, but this should never have been made. What fucked it up?
The copy protection.

I had that problem. The process started, but the application wouldn't launch. It was because I had the yahoo messenger started...

[megalex]

Sadly the less evolved are the ones making children, as the other's are to occupied playing games. Humanity is decaying

So the less evolved go out, meet girls, have sex, make children. The more evolved ignore their friends, stay in the house all day, play games, die virgines. Strange thing this evolution stuff

I was allso thinking of getting this "Gothic univers". So the general idea is that it's better to buy the games separatly as oposed to the "G univers" ?

[Tratos]

I have universe. All's fine. Only problem, indeed you can't choose G2 NotR install path and you can't install just G2 vanilla. Easily solvable using CTRL+C and CTRL+V. No copy protection. MDK and mods work fine with NotR, all DVD's are fine. All the content is there (I have separate versions of the games as well). Got even a nice G3 manual.

[EvilKoala]

Aw man, I got THIS close to getting the original boxed version of Gothic 1 on eBay for five bucks (well, euros), when suddenly the seller started breaking my balls and refused to sell the game to me without any explanation whatsoever . Oh well, Back to the drawing board!

[Fnord]

Oh, and let's not forget about missing autoruns etc. Damn, I can't find the posts of that dude who got a copy of G3 instead of a G2 one and ended up with 1 G1 and 2 G3's, no G2.

If you get the wrong content, then you can demand that they send a new box to you. Most countries have laws that protects the customers, and in case of a faulty product, the company that sold it to you is forced to either refund you, or replace the faulty copy. I can't remember any missing auto-run problems, but that is really a minor thing. Missing copy protection is a good thing in my book. It meant that I did not have to dig up my CD each time I wanted to start the game, and that has both the advantage that you get to be lazy, and that there is less of a chance that your CD gets scratched/damaged.

And don't worry about the Universe edition, it works very well. The only problem I had with it was that I could not chose the install location for Gothic 2, which was a bummer, but apart from that, the games run fine. I'm by the way rather new to the series, (I registered to this forum to ask for help with a bug in gothic 1 during my first playtrough (and that was not long after I first installed the game. The bug was caused by the fan patch, so it was not a problem with the original game (and now the developers of the patch are aware of the problem, so they can fix it *smiles*)), and I was able to finish gothic 2 with NoTR without any major problems. The game was challenging at parts, but never unfair.

While the box itself does not have a lot of goodies, it's still a very good value for your money. I got it for 99sek, which is about 10€. That is 10€ for 3 very lengthy games, not a purchase I regret.

[Bastardo]

Aw man, I got THIS close to getting the original boxed version of Gothic 1 on eBay for five bucks (well, euros), when suddenly the seller started breaking my balls and refused to sell the game to me without any explanation whatsoever . Oh well, Back to the drawing board!

Heh, I did get lucky and found a great seller and a perfect copy of the first English release - in mint conditions - but the price was more realistic, 30€ or so.

[Donkerman]

I recommend you get the Universe Edition, its an excellent bargain for three great games. I finished all three games with no problems. The minor gripes listed by some are insignificant to the value of the product.