I'm not giving them a free pass for it, nothing like that. I just would have expected a LOT more bugs than there were. Moreso in F3, because that had much of the same framework, but they also threw in VATS, a morality system, followers, and a bunch of other stuff.
Come to think of it, I did play Gothic 3 like a year after release, and that was way worse even after the patching.