It's funny, actually. For most Gothic fans, it was the release of the fourth that made them break the "3 never happened" battlecry. The fan patches helped immensely, of course.

I've played all Gothics except FG, and Gothic 4 was REALLY bad. It's not a same kind of game as the rest of the gothics at all. The mechanics are very different, it isn't true open world and it seems for me as there are in many cases only one way to solve most quests.

Also Gothic 4 is extremely unoptimized and needs a very good machine to run. I have a Core i5 with 8GB Ram and GeForce GT330 (not the best I know) and it's hardly playable at lowest settings.

Must have been the card. I had a Phenom II and 8 gb ram, so very comparable with yours, but with a GTX 460 and it played perfectly at maxed settings (with V-sync enabled through the driver settings, to boot).

It might very well be my graphics card, but still comparable games like Dragon Age (1&2), Mass Effect Two Worlds 2, WoW, BioShock, Assassin's Creed 2 runs very well on my machine. Doesn't change the fact that is it perhaps one of the hugest gaming disappointments I've had :) I played G4 for a few nights and I've never pick it up again.

Btw, noticed how just about any humanoid in the game looks the same? It's like 5-6 different male faces and most of them are just too similar. It was a bit awkward, "hey didn't I see you just down the street?, or was that your twin brother?"

to put it nicely ... it is a huge pile of cr4p!

It's a 20ish hour generic and shallow ARPG. WoW has more depth.

Im sure Gothic 4 would be great if it were ever made. They really should have just called this game Arcania and left off the Gic title alltogether since it's not any any way a Gothic game.

Risen is Gothic 4, and not just in the spiritual sense. The intro concept storyboard depicts the Xardas ending of Gothic 3 directly causing the events of Risen, making it chronologically a direct sequel (at least at that point in development). This scene didn't make it into the final version but the story still opens with the consequences of this ending's events. It's not clear whether Piranha Bytes still consider Risen to be set in the Gothic universe but the upcoming Risen 2: Dark Waters includes some [url=http://www.worldofrisen.de/english/gallery_pic2502.htm]familiar enemies... ;)

Jowood's goal with Arcania seems to have been to exploit brand recognition to help launch Arcania as its own IP. The standalone expansion Arcania: Fall of Setarrif dropped Gothic from the title altogether but it was never released because of Jowood's bankruptcy.

Piranha Bytes will reportedly be reclaiming the Gothic rights licensed to Jowood in the future so we might see some more games from them with the Gothic name at some point; alternately they might leave it in retirement and make Risen's connections increasingly blatant since all legal limitations on doing so will be a thing of the past. :)

haha.. I am such a cheap bastard... I knew I should have held out for Risen.... :-p SOLD!!!