Gothic

The tale of Gothic is one of my most enjoyable CRPG experiences, ranking up there with the likes of Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Planescape: Torment. The replayability, character development, sense of adventure and story are the strong points. The weak points are minor bugs, slightly confussing controls, frustrating but rewarding combat and game mechanics. Many can either love or hate the very difficult learning curve that this game represents when compared to more modern and yet tamed, linearised and homogenised experiences that can be found in games like Oblivion and Mass Effect. If you're yet to experience Gothic, this is a definite bargain, well worth a look by any RPG addict, or a newcomer to the genre looking for some of the earlier yet still recently modern classics.

Gothic 1 is not a generic fantasy game with medieval knights and dragons. The atmosphere seems more exotic, ancient, mystic and earthbound alike, mixes the feelings of post apocalypse, Conan the Barbarian and an alien world of the "Unreal" game. You can align with one of three unique and interesting camps, with their own culture, hierarchy, weapon preference and magic lore. Combat mechanics is very satisfying and revolutionary for its times. Fighting animations change along with fencing skill level which also means more combinations are unblocked and your moves are quicker and less crude. World is interesting and you really feel you participate in it. You will subconsciously evade woods at night, mysterious ruins or dungeons when your character is still on lower levels and weak. You just treat your character serious. Life in the game feels like a real when you run across the communities and witness as a NPCs do their daily activities and talk with each other. You yourself can talk with everyone. Animals and monsters have their unique behaviors and combat tactics. Some initiate aggression from afar and track you, some charge on you and jump toward your throat while some tries to scare you away, and many more. Good trade system based on a barter exchange instead of gold, although there's still a universal currency in the game. The best thing about Gothic 1 is the fact that this game's full potential was utilised in just a small extent and still it came out to be the masterpiece. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THIS GAME.

Getting past the oddball control scheme and laughable voice acting is a major challenge. Once you do, however, you will find an absolutely amazing game, with unparalleled interaction for its time, an impressive story line, and an immersive world. If you're one of the people that missed it like I did the first time around, it's worth your attention.

This is one of those games, that your average, everyday gamer picks up because he/she likes RPGs, but after they start playing it, they immediately question their decision and shortly thereafter, they rage quit the game and never touch it again. Why? it's simple, Gothic is NOT an easy game. You, my dear reader, are probably asking yourself "I don't get the point, it's not like most RPGs are cakewalks...". Yes, you are absolutely correct, The Elder Scrolls games are challanging, so is Dragon Age and <insert favorite RPG's name here> but Gothic is a whole different story, in Gothic, you have to immediately learn how to survive, you can't simply up and enter a random NPC's home and loot it, you'll get your back side handed to you and your Ore (game currency) stolen, you can't pick a fight with whatever monster you encounter along the way until you some decent equipment and a few levels in your belt. If you can get past that and learn how the game works and how to best go about surviving and getting better at advancing your character, you'll find a highly enjoyable RPG that doesn't necessarily make your character feel "god-like" after only playing two or three hours. You'll find a living, breathing world full of interesting places to explore, individual characters and highly distinct enemies. Character development is one of my favorite aspects of the game, your character doesn't automatically become better at wielding a sword or bow just because he leveled up, he needs to go to a trainer to improve say...his One-Handed Weapon skill and it actually physically alters what you are able to do (i.e without any training whatsoever, your character will only execute a sluggish slash with a sword, with some training hell be able to execute combos and mastering the skill will let you execute a better, less interuption prone combo). The soundtrack didn't particularly impress me, but it did a nice enough job and the graphics are actually good. My only complaints are that the game isn't easy to get into, like i already mentioned, sometimes it's not easy to figure out what to do to advance a quest or you miss a quest item and get stuck unless you use the console command to generate the item, combat can be a little...wonky sometimes (i noticed many times that depending on my positioning and the enemy's, i could hit him/it as many times as i wanted and while the attack registered, i didn't actually damage him/it at all) and that it doesn't run 100% perfectly only Windows 7, don't get me wrong, it's playable from start to finish without much, if any trouble at all, but i ran into problems trying to view the ending FMV and sometimes my HUD simply up and banished leaving me, for some reason, unable to see my character's health bar or able to access the pause menu. If you can get passed those nitpicks, you'll find a great RPG, just be sure to bring a walkthrough or two along as you might need them and don't be afraid to use the game forums to ask for specific help.

To come back to this in the present day may take some getting used to. the game is played entirely with the keyboard. Yet, i still have not played any open world RPG as masterfully engaging and well composed as this. this is even farther ahead than Morrowind which was released a year later! you even have NPCs that follow a daily schedule, play guitar and eat and smoke, walk around and hunt and fight. it foreshadows games like STALKER and feels far more alive than even Witcher 3! you have to cook your food over fires, physically take metal to forges and cool it off in a bucket to craft items. touches like this really add immersion rather than just picking though a menu like most modern games. this is a dark fantasy world with a great setup where everyone wants to fuck you over and trust has to be earned, there's a real sense of danger everywhere, and the world has memorable locations and decisions and is rewarding to explore. There is also no level scaling, this is genuine Dark Souls esque combat where you have to learn combat and stay away from tougher enemies at first or you will be slaughtered. But your character visibly gets better at swinging a sword as you level up/learn skills, there's a lot more feedback than just stat increases, and eventually it becomes quite easy by end game. There are 3 major factions in the game to take questlines from and this adds to replay value. One of the camps is a religious cult that literally makes you sell weed to the others! how many RPGs have that lmao Overall i highly recommend giving this a chance, i got completely sucked in despite the learning curve and it became my favorite western/PC RPG of all time.