Are you going to be playing Guild Whores Nightfall or what?? 

So I downloaded the demo after Shambler was raving like a madman about it all over the place (moron! :D)

It looks great, and has huge scope, BUT:

WHAT THE JESUS FISTING FUCKING CHRIST were they thinking when they made the combat system!??!!?

I really dont know where to start, its just SHIT, so so so utterly mindbendingly SHIT! So you stand there with an orc in your face, what do you do? I TELL YOU, press rmb as fast as you can!!! Oh look you have an "angry boar" in your face, what do you do? DIE OVER AND OVER BECAUSE THESE THINGS SEEM TO IGNORE THE PLAYERS SWORD.

All you need to do to defeat anything except boars is press rmb madly, and you win every time! Apart from this steaming pile of rancid fly infested shit the game is great.

I am actually really annoyed, because otherwise the game seems really really great, but with the current system it just hurts to play it.

Deeply saddened... 

Yessuh, we've been playing it a bit (up to level 10 or something, so not exactly blitzing it, but getting there). I only play it when both Amy and myself feel like it though, which hasn't been a lot since the first weekend we grabbed it (too many other good games to play as well!)

I do enjoy playing with my little guild whore FRUITY BIX though (she's a paragon) so maybe I should get back into it...

I assume you're playing on the European servers? I am too... you can guess my username I'm sure... I can probably guess yours as well! 

Well that sounds fabulous... mindbendingly shit, I'll have to remember that one. :D 

You are a total loser, I don't know whether to laugh or sympathise :).

Okay here is the deal about combat, pay attention to all of this:

1. Pressing the strafe keys along with the attack keys(s) produces different attacks i.e. sideways ones. There is also some attack where you spin behind yourself using the back button. These combos are supposed to be important in the game and might be worth practising out of combat.

2. I can never be bothered to try any of the above combos as they seem to have no additional effect (unlike, say, Blade Of Darkness) and are to tedious to try in combat. I tend to stick to tactical button mashing.

3. BUT there are subtleties to that it's worth picking up on. For a start, animals are harder than other enemies as they knock you down AND run away from your attacks. To deal with that, step back if they knock you down, and then attack after a brief delay, AND try to corner them to stop them running. Then button mash them.

4. Combat is not that important a part of the game it seems, compared to exploration, RPGing, taking quests etc. Equally, purely fighting is not that important part of combat. Build up your armour, your health, your fighting stats, buy a better sword, and it will help a lot. With a fire-sword, light armour, 120 strength etc, boars are PISS.

5. Sword fighting is only one of many options. Don't forget you have archery and magic too. In the early stages when you are weak, those are very useful to avoid getting pwnd. 

...you wearisome pussy. Just for you I've written up all the attack details I've found.

Things to remember:

1. Default position for the sword is ahead. There is also a left position which is functionally identical to ahead, and a right position which is different. During attacks the player alternates ahead/left and right positions, but if the player moves the sword defaults to ahead.

2. For blocking and blocking attacks, sword is always ahead.

3. All non-strafing attacks move the player forward.

4. Pressing strafe or backward along with an attack usually sweeps an attack in that direction AND changes the player's facing to that direction - this is the basis of different attacks. Pressing forward has no effect.

5. I don't know how useful these combos are, BUT I can make the following guesses:

Mashing attack with 180 - useful for focusing on one enemy but attacking others who are closing in.
Mashing block - useful to chase reluctant enemies (seems to have some reach)
Sweeping attacks - good with a few enemy at once.
Block groin jab - useful for awkward creatures who stun you (seems to be a powerful attack?)
Strafing attacks - useful when surrounding enemies are becoming more of a threat.

...

Boring list of attacks:

Sword ahead/left:
Press attack - quick diagonal attack L > R
Hold attack - big sweeping attack L > R
Press attack + press strafe right - sweeping attack to R + change direction to R
Press attack + press strafe left - sweeping attack to L + change direction to L

Sword right:
Press attack - quick diagonal attack R > L
Hold attack - big sweeping attack R > L
Press attack + press strafe right - short hack to R + change direction to R
Press attack + press strafe left - sweeping attack to L + change direction to L

General:
Hold attack + hold back - big 180' sweeping attack, direction depends on side sword started on.
Mash attack - continuous wide attacks
Mash attack + press back - wide attacks then big 180' sweeping attack, direction depends on side sword was last on during continuous attacks
Press block - short fencing jab
Hold block - block
Press block + press strafe - short jab to L or R as appropriate + change direction to L or R
Mash block - continous narrow fencing attacks
Mash block + press back - narrow attacks then smaller 180' sweeping attack, direction depends on side sword was last on during continuous attacks
Hold block + press attack - short L > R swing
Hold block + hold attack - low groin jab

That is all I've found. Combining various attacks does not seem to have any further effect. Some of these are difficult to time, e.g. a direction button may need to be pressed just after attack but when the attack is still being initiated. 

sounds like a shitty combat system 

You need 20 fingers to manage correctly all the combos :P 

It uses the following keys:

Primary Attack
Secondary Attack (block)
Strafe Left
Strafe Right
Backwards

If you can't cope with using those in an action game, then how the hell do you manage to play FPS at all, given that every FPS for the last 8 years has been using those functions...DUH. 

but that doesn't really fix the fact that the combat just feels so awful... Your character feels like a block of concrete most of the time.

Also, where the hell in the demo does it tell you about all these attacks? You get maybe 1 or 2 help screens at the start of the game saying what the attack buttons are, but it never really says anything about swings, sword directions, combos etc, so how the hell is anyone meant to know (ok there maybe a readme with it all in, but who ever reads that prior to playing?)

Still I will give it another chance, as like I said the rest of the game is great. 

Work it out, yo! You don't get stuff handed on a plate, you have to experiment a bit. 

it's like street fighter? lawl.

anyway, i couldn't even play the demo, because the screen flashes white, and looks like it could start giving me seizures. 

Work it out, yo! You don't get stuff handed on a plate, you have to experiment a bit.

Im sorry, but if you bought say a new car that worked differently from all other cars and there was no manual, and the guy selling it said "stfu and experiment a bit" would you really try and take it for a test drive? ;)

Saying that though, I did try with the game some more and decided to leave the stupid angry boars alone for a bit and explore elsewhere, I liberated a blacksmith from some orcs and quickly got him working for the rebel camp, then bought a cool fiery sword off him, shame I am scared to enter into swordfights because they are rubbish :)

I also found a pirate in a lighthouse, so I killed him. 

ROFL. Give me a few days, I'll knock you up a medal for the worst analogy ever.

> I also found a pirate in a lighthouse, so I killed him.

LOL.

I didn't find any pirates? 

if you go out the back entrance of Ardea there is lighthouse on the cliff with some pirate man in there. 

We know about you and back entrances.

BTW, isn't that Jack? You can leave him alive, talk to him, and get a couple of quests... 

thats the guy, but I felt it was time to test the open nature of the game so I decided that all pirates must die on site after talking to him and lo and behold it let me kill him!

Well I got about 6 hours logged in the demo and I have now uninstalled it. I gave the combat system a lot of time to see if I could adapt to it but in the end it just really pisses me off, and judging by ANY gothic 3 forum on the internet I am not alone by a long shot.

Sad really cos like I said the rest of the game is great 

...saw the full game second hand for �20 so snapped it up. Just got to upgrade to do it justice (will encourage me to do so).

BTW it tells you some stuff about attacks in the manual.

I still find it mostly mashing though - although that's no different to Rune or Enclave, for example.

Oh to have Blade's combat system in more games. 

make sure to apply the latest patch BEFORE starting a new game! otherwise the chests will only contain useless junk.

another patch is said to be released in a week or two. 

That posts reminds me, the game is also ridden with bugs which is unfortunate. 

holy fucking shit! this game ROCKS!

My bro got it the other day for his 360 and we played about 3 hours of coop single player, its the most fun I have had in a game in a long time :)

The weapons are really satisfying to use, particular mention MUST go to the chainsaw melee attack you can do on enemies, this is just amazing, sprays of blood and bits of bone and flesh spray all over the place as you cut though guys, sooooooo satisfying!

The coop mode is done really well. If one of you dies the other player can run over to you and revive you so you can keep on playing, and some levels feature split paths that you both take for some quick solo play, usually these areas have intersecting parts where you can help each other out such as player 1 being pinned by a locust MG while player 2 can get around behind it and take it down etc. I cant recommend this mode enough! Framerate is excellent too considering the graphical detail.

Ok some of my favourite bits so far (spoiler warning!)

1) The berserker enemy! This thing is blind but has a great sense of hearing and smell, you are in abandoned building with just this guy shuffling around, if you make a noise or get too close he goes crazy and just runs at you, breaking through walls/pillars and other things to get at you while screaming :) Amazing monster design, you need to "aim" his charges to break down doors and objects to progress.

2) The evil bat enemies that come out when it gets dark. They are afraid of the light so if you wander out of the street lit areas you get totally gibbed after a second or 2. There are various gas tanks lying around the level that you have to shoot to make light sources so its safe to progress, and some areas require a player to aim a giant spotlight at the other player while he progresses across a dark courtyard etc. Fantastic!

3) The cutscenes are in general, fucking cool, really well done with fantastic animations and effects, really enjoyed watching them.

Going to play some more when my bro gets back from work, cant wait :) 

XBlargh360Blargh.

Neg!ke, will do for sure. Any other tips to get it running as best as possible?

(BTW apart from slow loading and occasional but regular crashes (which seemed to be mostly related to the loading)) I didn't have many problems with the demo). 

do you or oyur brother have a home theatre ?

I've heard great stuff about GoW on a wdiescreen tv with surround sound. 

since you're going to get new ram anyway, I guess there shouldn't be much need to tweak.
i only have 1gb and somehow managed to minimize the preloading stutter by inceasing the windows swap file to 2gb and setting object cache to max (recommended for 2gb physical ram anyway). common ini tweaks only had negative effects for me.

i also recommend disabling post-processing as it seems to improve the lighting a bit (because i found the many fullbright spots to look spectacularly shit).

i rarely encountered crashes. some started to appear after installing patch 1.08 at certain events (only two actually), but patch 1.09 kind of fixed them - the game still froze for some time but instead of crashing to the desktop, i was able to continue playing eventually.
as for bugs, yeah, there are lots of them. but they are not that serious so i can live with them (apparently unlike the rest of the faggy emo community arose around this game). what bothers me more are certain gameplay decisions the creators made that i disagree with as they make the game feel more shallow and take away a good chunk of the immersion and atmosphere its predecessors had. also, it suffers a little from the oblivion syndrome: the world is too large. (but in its defence: it has three different environments, forests, ice land and desert, with a remarkably huge variety of creatures)

i don't know which version the demo is, but patch 1.08 fixes the hyperspeed attacks of some monsters, e.g. boars and bloodflies, as well as making the crossbow actually usable.
overall balance still sucks, especially when comparing monsters/npcs.. ah, what gives. my right index finger already looks like hulk hogan :D 

Sounds great. Using berserk to break doors for you - very clever design.
too bad its box-only :(((