I wanna get a feeling how much these games can be compared to Gothic 1 to 3 and Risen. Professional reviewers didn´t help at all, it seems like they hadn´t had Gothic-Fans in mind when they wrote their reviews at all.

Well, lets specify via subquestions what elements of "gothic" I´m talking about...
1st: Is the wildlife reactive to itself? If two different animals that are hostile to each other by lore stand next to each other and the PlayerCharacter is not in sight, do they battle each other?
2nd: Is the wildlife reactive to NPCs? E.g.: If a farmer stands next to a raging bear, do they battle each other?
3rd: Crime System: Do NPCs simply know it was you when you´ve commited a crime? Or do they have to spot you?
4th: Knockdown System: Can you knockdown, but not kill NPCs? If yes, what is the result when they recover? Do they hate you and don´t interact anymore? Oh, and can you rob them while they are knocked down? Do you see just a little part of the inventory or the huge picture?
5th: Do invisible walls (without lore background) exist and do they have impact on the games?
6th: Equipment: Does your equipment really matter? So, if you are over-trained, does best suiting weapon and worst suiting weapon still have an impact (like in Gothic I-III and Risen) or near to nothing (like in Witcher III)?
7th: Is money a central limiting factor? Or is money quite meaningless?
8th: How free are you to explore the world? And are there tons of outstanding places with lore-suiting loot and riddles to discover (like in Gothic I-III and Risen as well as in Witcher III) or is it just a mixture of unimportantance like in Oblivion?
9th: Does collecting herbs or ore for crafting matter?

There are probably seeveral other relevant questions I´ve just not found, others interested in the same topic are free to add theirs.

Risen 1 is basically Gothic remade. You have almost identical factions and similar story lines. The game is pretty good. The combat is worlds better than the original Gothic. It is still fairly static and boring. Risen 2 is like Risen 1 with pirates!! Never played Risen 3, and only put 20 min or so into Elex at this time.

When I played Risen II beta, NPC couldn´t be robbed after being punched down at all. Still the case?

I believe the OP has played Risen and was asking about the sequels only. I've started playing Risen 2 after Risen, aware that it was reviewed less favorably, but ready to give it a chance, without prejudice. I soon got bored and abandoned it. It's possible that I was just tired of the same old formula, so soon after playing Risen, but I seem to remember that it also felt different somehow. Can't quite pinpoint what it was, maybe it was less open or the combat felt less satisfying? Unfortunately I haven't played enough of it and my memories are too vague to answer the detailed questions above ...

risen 2 has boring combat, and lacks soul... I like Risen 1, but 2 I don't like at all, and I have tried several times getting into it.

I enjoyed risen 2, good fun. 3 got quite boring though. Neither are similar to risen, and hence not gothic, although if you remapped the keys so that you need to be an ambidextrous octopus to control anything, then that would go some way to making it more gothic like. Not played elex but can't see how that would be gothic-like.

Elex is similar to Gothic in that it's buggy (or at least it was as of a month ago) and you can go quite near the starting area and get clownstomped in one hit.

Also progression of your character is extremely slow in the beginning. I never even got to the point where I could afford to upgrade any of my skills before I gave up.

I might go back to it at some point, but right now I have better games to play. It's promising, but punishing.

Exactly. Well, lets hope somebody will turn up with present memory of one of the games in question...

Hmm... I haven't played yet much of the original Gothics, but went through Risen 1, and watched quite a bit of streaming of Elex. Did play a dozen hours or so of Risen 2.
Looking from the point of view of sheer complexity, Elex certainly has lots of item types, lots of lore, lots of inconsequential items that just describe minor details of the world, lots of skills and lots of grinding to do. For me Elex seems quite a bit like the first Risen and in all the best ways. There are factions, and an epic plot. And then there are the sci-fi elements on top of it.
There are still some bugs. There will be a long way to go before the game opens up so you'll be free to really roam. Though this is all my deductions from having watched a stream and having asked some questions from the streamer.
But if the downside isn't too annoying, Elex might be a lot of fun.

Risen 2 on the other hand... Didn't like it too much. It has cool unique vibe to it, there are fun skills to make the game feel fresh. And the pirate theme is pretty cool. But you'll still be running around doing fetch quests and grinding in an environment that really isn't far enough from Risen 1. In fact it seems to have more boring characters mostly. I dunno, maybe it would've gotten better later.

Elex is fun for the whole 60 hours, a real good slow burner, but back-loaded as hell, meaning in the last 20% you get access to 80% of the cool weapons and skills.
But all in all felt immersive like playing Gothic, really.

Risen is pretty solid as others say. Lacks some of the scope of Gothic 2 and 3 but is much more polished.

I liked Risen 2 more than most. I loved the pirate and colonial themes and focused on musket combat, which was very unique for an RPG. Some of the islands are very small or made of corridors, it's true, but there's some nice open spaces as well. Plus the good ol' Piranha Bytes wit is there. You can't go in expecting a Gothic 3 style experience though.

Haven't played Risen 3 or Elex yet, despite owning them. Took a few years off gaming and trying to finish Witcher 3 first.

Well, I did hop a little in Risen II and KingdomeComeDeliverance. Maybe the results will help others with similar questions or maybe even somebody pops up now who knows way more about these games:

Results regarding Risen II so far:
1st: Nothing yet.
2nd: Yes.
3rd: Spot.
4th: Yes, they are angry for a short time. No real robbing option
5th: It´s hard to spot as jumping is cut down a lot, but probably no.
6th-9th: Nothing yet.



Results regarding KC:D:
3rd & 4th: Seems to be deeple flawed. Stolen objects are automatically marked even if undistinguishable from non-stolen ones. If you single-strike somebody down they still know it´s you. Not sure if these are buggy right now or suiting the planned way of gameplay.

Gothic all times rock. we wanna real gothic 4

KC:D

1st: I think there are only non-hostile animals in the game, and those doesnt really react to each other.

2nd: No idea. I think the wildlife doesnt really meet with people.

3rd: They need to spot you. But items marked as "stolen" in your inventory when you steal something, and when guards search you they will find the marked items. But the mark disappears after time, depends on the value of the item, items with higher value need more days.
Even if you commit a crime without being spotted, guards really like to search you in that area. They run towards you from miles away and stop you for search.

Bug: Sometimes when you crouching and picking up just a standard item, it will be marked as stolen.

4th: You can knockdown and you can rob them. Most of the time they won't remember it was you.
Sometimes they do.

But if you kill them and they respawn, they will remember you killed them. They will automatically attack you when you meet them again, and guards will chase you if they notice the fight. It doesnt matter if you let the guy just hit you and you don't hit back guard will arrest you.

Plus sometimes, if you kill somebody without being spotted.... in that area nobody wants to talk with you unless you pay for them. But the reputation doesnt change, so you can do anything to fix it.

5th:
You can go to mission areas before the mission. You won't find the quest people there or items but you are free to walk there.
I guess there are real invisible walls at the end of the map, but I'm not correctly sure.

And there are bushes you stock in and you can't climb most of the hills only if you use the right path.
So bushes and dense woods force you to use the paths sometimes.
Sometimes there bushes without any reason, just to make you angry. You stuck in and you can do anything just reload the game.

6th: Equipment matter, you will be a beast with a great gear and it is very easy to get to that point with stealing and killing knights. You can kill people with one good hit, and you can beat a little army alone.
But only if you don't let them go behind you, if there are more people and they get your back you are usually dead.
So you need to kite and use narrow places, which is pretty hard because the fight system uses a weird lock on target.

7th: Depends on how you play. If poaching and stealing money became more and more meaningless.
Usually you find better gear from loot and fights, merchants are only good to repair stuff (until you get better in repair skill) and buy a horse from them because you can't keep stolen or enemy horses it is the only way to get better horse. But better horse doesnt really matter, the standard horse if fine.

8th: You are free to explore the world. Same places looks good but I wouldn't say there are outstanding places. Mostly because it tries to be realistic so there are only castles, villages and woods.
World looks good in the first hours, but later you dont really care.

9th: Collecting herbs matters, because easy to get powerful skill at the beginning.
Some potions are useful because you can boost your skills temporarily, but you can easily ignore this side of the game. And making potions is very slow and the minigame become very boring after time.

Plus collecting herbs system is the worst I've ever seen.
You need to watch the same cutscene from over and over again when you pick up a flower. Fortunately there is a mod to get rid of it.

Edit: I tired the game on the first week, and I didnt finish it. There are lot of bugs in the game, so what I mentioned here maybe happens only because of bugs. And there is chance they already patched it or they will...