Gothic 3 Collector’s Edition contains the most up-to-date version of Gothic 3, the complete version of the Forsaken Gods add-on, a “Making of Gothic” DVD, the Official Soundtrack CD written by Kai Rosenkranz and performed by the Bochumer Philharmoniker. and a full-colour map! Gothic 3: You have saved the island Khorinis from the forces of evil in Gothic I and Gothic II. Now it is time to travel to the realms of the mainland. Invading Orcs have enslaved the human kingdom. There are but a few free humans in the icy north and the southern desert and a handful of rebels hiding in the forests and mountains of Midland. You may either join the rebellion or serve the Orcish Usurpers but you will ultimately tip the scales and decide the outcome of the last war to save humanity. There is no simple linear story in Gothic III – every game will be different and unique – but all will ultimately lead to you deciding the fate of Myrtana. Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods: Once again journey to the world of Myrtana for an all new experience set in this amazingly rendered universe. Forsaken Gods includes more than 125 all new quests to explore, dozens of new monsters to slay, 20 new weapons and armour sets and many old friends to revisit. Over 20+ all new hours, Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods will answer all the questions which have risen in the past, while introducing you to an exciting new chapter...

This is a great game! If you liked Gothic II, you will LOVE this game! They really updated the graphics and the game looks terrific!

I saw several other reviews that say the game tends to crash a lot, but it has not been crashing on my computer. I did have a memory issue but it turned out that I had just saved it too many times - about 250 saves. If you are having crash issues, try deleting some of your saves and that should correct the problem.

Anybody who liked Gothic II and does not purchase this game will really be missing out....

HAVE FUN!!!!

If you call yourself a Gothic 1/2 fan, you MUST play Gothic 3. It is one of the best RPGs ever made, right up there with the previous Gothics. I know there were issues at launch, including game stopping bugs, stuttering, and horrible performance.

But fast forward 3 years and the game is now very playable. The community has done an amazing job. The latest community patch is 1.73 (as of Oct 2009), and all bugs have been fixed. While performance hasn't really been optimized, hardware power has increased since 2006. So if you have a cheap Radeon 4850 or better (+ plenty of RAM) performance will be smooth. There is some stuttering for the first few minutes after you load a save, but it completely disappears after a while. The latest patch (also called Enhanced Edition) adds Alternative AI and Alternative Balancing. These features are extremely welcome and considerably improve the gaming experience (for example, there is no more "stunlock").

The game itself is engrossing. This is a pure Gothic game and plays in the same manner as the previous titles. There is a lot of focus on the dialogue, and quests are interesting. The game makes you feel like you're really there, eating and sleeping in Myrtana. Like in the previous games, skills are increased by using in-game items/people (trainers, praying, reading books, doing quests) and not by assigning skill points in a chart (as is the case with D&D cRPGs). The story is detailed and interesting, and there is a lot of spoken dialogue with the townsfolk.

If there was one word to describe this game, it would be EPIC. It's very long, and you can easily waste over a hundred hours just by completing the main quests. And if you are willing to explore the huge world on your own, you can easily add more to that number. Graphics are also beautiful, though I don't usually care about graphics as long as the gameplay is good. Still, it's the cherry on top.

(One gameplay tip: do NOT liberate towns in Myrtana and Varant until you are finished doing quests on all of them. Liberating them will cause all other towns to become hostile and you will lose all the awesome quests that would have otherwise been offered. So don't liberate until the very end of the game.)

If you ignored this game due to launch issues, now is time to play it. Thanks to all the community patches (the latest one is about 1Gb in size, and even removes copy protection), this game is now one of the best ever made. Now do yourself a favor and get gaming. :)

Pros:
1. Very affordable
2. Comes with Full game, Expansion, Soundtrack, and map
3. Continues where gothic 2 leaves off
4. Fun game play with numerous choices
5. You can choose to join different factions
6. Multiple endings
7. Your choices have a direct effect on the game world
8. Easily 40+ hours of game play on a single play through, if you do most of the side quests.

Cons:
1. This game comes with all of the developers patches, but some may need to download community patches to make it playable.
2. The expansion is produced by a third party and doesn't follow the story
3. Manual is on disc in PDF format, and cannot be accessed during game play on most machines.
4. The expansion is quite terrible for too many reasons to list.

Years back, I bought the original gothic and after taking forever to get that one to work, I hated how limited it was and it wasn't a well made game. I started reading good reviews of gothic 3 and decided to buy it. It won't even install. The autorun crashes, I tried exploring the dvd and using the setup exe and it crashes immediately with another "fail" warning. When windows tries to fix it, nothing happens.
I want my $40 back. The website is not helpful either.
I have a pretty advanced computer and upgrade hardware frequently. It's not my system. It's shody workmanship from a company with a bad track record.

Been playing the game for about a month now. It's certainly not bad, if anything, it's great. Just a step down from what I'd expect from a Gothic game. This one has a few bugs and some major combat issues. Frustrating is about the best I can describe the combat in this game, and the load times can get a bit horrendous. Even with that, though, there is still an enormous world to explore at your own leisure. This game is a lot more open compared to the other two, and I thoroughly enjoy that part about it. Overall, it's a great game for freedom of exploring as long as the combat doesn't bother you too much.