Gothic Universe Edition: Worth the buy?

[Arcana]

I'm looking for good rpgs to play, preferably a little more open ended with depth to the gameplay and character progression. I've played numerous Elder Scrolls titles along with other rpgs in this vein, then I saw this game on sale so I read a little and it sounds like my kinda game I'm just wondering how good these games really are. I played a little of the Risen demo since I also thought about getting that when it was on sale and I sort of liked it though the combat was kinda clunky, fighting more than one enemy spelled trouble and enemies sometimes felt a bit cheap. Getting circled and killed by a pack of wolves wasn't fun. I heard that the Gothic games play similarly to Risen though I'd like to know if the Gothic games are any better.

Also, do all the Gothic games work fine on Windows 7?

[Revelator]

you can try.... every pc is different

[Carver]

The games work fine on Windows 7 in theory.
Gothic 1/2 have an issue with Steam's Community Overlay, which causes the game to crash when starting a new game. The most common fix for this is installing a patch and using a modloader to start the game.
Gothic 3 does not has this issue, though the use of the latest community patch (1.75) is advised for more graphical settings and overal better performance.

As for the controls, Gothic 3 plays almost the same as Risen.
G1/2 however are mainly played with the keyboard and may require some time to get used to, varying per person. There is a chance you may dislike these type of controls.

Regarding the 'clunky' combat you experienced in the demo of Risen, that's normal.
You are supposed to start out as someone who is inexperienced with weapons and has a hard time dealing with certain enemies until you improve your strength and skills at trainers.
Once you reach a certain strength and get some new gear, those pack of wolfs you had trouble with will turn into nothing more then easy XP.
This is exactly the same in the Gothic series.

Personally I love the games and I don't have any problems with G1/2's outdated control scheme. I'm currently working on my 6th playthrough of the series.
I'd say it's one of the games that you'll simply either like or not.

Before I forget, there is actually a demo for Gothic 1/2, in case you want to see if you can get used to the controls.
Do note that any interaction (talking with NPC's, attacking, opening chests etc. is done with Control+Arrow Key (G1), or just Control (G2))

G1: http://www.worldofgothic.com/dl/?go=dlfile&fileid=2
G2: http://www.worldofgothic.com/dl/?go=dlfile&fileid=41

[Arcana]

Thanks, I tried the Gothic 1 demo. The controls were pretty awkward though luckily it seems they can be changed. It's too bad I drowned in some water within 5 minutes of the demo... lol. I will try it again. I am kinda worried about Gothic 1 and 2 not working though since I'm seeing a lot of people complaining about that. Even if they do work, I wonder if it requires a lot of effort to get them to.

[Carver]

Most of the complaints you see are related to the games crashing when starting a new game. That is caused by Steam's ingame overlay and only affects G1/2.
Just to give you an idea what you would have to do in order to get around it;

The easiest solution for G1 is to install the 1.08k patch (http://www.worldofgothic.com/dl/?go=dlfile&fileid=10), disable the Steam Community Overlay found under Library>RMB on Gothic>Properties, and setting the gothic.exe (Steam/Steamapps/Common/Gothic/System) to run with Administrator rights.

For Gothic 2 you need to install a patch and install the modloader.
You then use the modloader to start the game instead of through Steam.
Patch: http://dl1.worldofplayers.ru/games/gothic/patches/G2/gothic2_fix-2.6.0.0-rev2.exe
Modloader: http://www.bendlins.de/nico/gothic2/gothic2_playerkit-2.6f.exe