Gothic 2 Gold Edition

While gothic 1 was ok to play, gothic 2 was a nice step up. Of course, still an old basic game with outdated graphics, but was functional, responsive, and a nice story to go through with different factions you could join, and different builds. The DLC add-on took a simple and a tad overpowering vanilla game and made it more challenging, what it really should have been in the first place. Without any major bugs or problems, i found it a very fun pasttime. Now, the difficulty does drop half way through the game, at a point there just aren't any stronger enemies and once you can handle the "tough" enemies in the early game, like wargs, orcs, lizardmen, you won't run into anything more challenging, so the 2nd half of the game is pretty weak in its difficulty. It has 6 chapters, plus the DLC, and i found i could handle anything when i reached chapter 3. That made the rest of the game filled with bla challenging enemies that i've already beaten 100's of them already. Still, the first half of the game is a gem and very fun.

Released 16 years ago in 2003, then as the Gold version with the Night of the Raven content, 14 years ago in 2005, this game was waaaay ahead of its time and still keeps pace with games being released today! Amazing graphics, even by today's standards, a thoroughly engrossing story, not even Witcher 3 can compete with the way this story branches in different directions, yet as you explore, and sort of stumble upon quests, that you solve, AND THEN discover that you have just uncovered a part of the overall story, with very little if any guidance, is a remarkable achievement in itself! This game makes you WANT to explore that cave that just so happens to come into view off in the distance that caught your eye when you just so happened to look through the tree branches. True, the signature beginning quests are there, convince so and so to help you by helping them; sort of teaching anyone who plays the game a sense of community, helping one another. Add Night of the Raven content and you've got pure gold! Grab this one! You will not be disappointed, but be prepared to spend at least 5-6 days in playing time on this one! https://youtu.be/mSm_M9zZjUQ

This is one of those special games I like coming back to on regular basis. Not because it's perfect. It has its flawes. But because it has more good things than those bad. Like the great atmosphere, the perfect soundtrack or NPCs and creatures that react to what's going on around them. You draw your weapon around NPCs in a town, they tell to put it away or you will face the consequences. You walk into a house, the owner runs inside and tells you to get away (I can't recall many RPGs where you're not allowed to walk into a house and and take everything without any protest). You are attacked by a wild beast, nearby villagers will come to your aid. You can see wolves hunting other animals. Those are details that help you immerse yourself into this hostile world. The world isn't huge, but large enough to keep you busy and fun to explore. With addition of Jharkendar it's three times bigger than the world in the first game. Also it has less clunky controls and no ladders :) Overall, it's an improvement over the first game (but I still like that one too). Don't get me wrong, Gothic 2 isn't perfect, it has its problems. But for me personally it has enough good things to be worth coming back to.

None of the original bugs (thanks to the Piranha Bytes guys) were fixed - on the plus side this means that you can still exploit bugs like the fire dragon godmode flag, the black ore permanent speed boost bug or the destroy undead spell exploit (not going to explain how exactly these bugs can be taken advantage of. At least not in this post). New issues: NO base game only installation anymore: the current installer won't allow you to install Gothic 2 only without NOTR. So you either play the game in hard mode (more expensive learning, tougher enemies, etc) or don't play at all. Also, window border remains visible throughout the game (covering the targeted creature's health bar, so good luck guessing how many attacks you need to kill/KO your enemy). Ok, this sounds terrible, so why 3 stars? Well, Gothic games are known for their immersiveness and the number of possibilities offered by their open words. Even despite the bugs, it's still worth playing. Just don't forget to save often. And save your game into 2 different slots at a time because the game may crash during saving (corrupting your save file).

Well. Where to begin? I'd say let's start with telling you how to patch the game - I personally just install all my stuff manually. You'll need SystemPack, PlayerKit and Gothic2Fix. (you can also use stuff like Spine and Union) If you wanna also have fancy lighting (and in my case also gain the ability to alt+tab), get Dx11 renderer - however, don't try to run it on something like Intel iGPU in case you wanna play with Dx11, as it will result into the game looking like a slideshow. Now that we have this aside, let's get to the game itself. I liked Gothic 1. The story was amazing, the atmosphere was as well, the music... everything was simply very good. Gothic 2 has all that - and more - it added alchemy, the faction you're in matters far more as you progress in the story than in previous title and it overall feels far more polished. Whether some of the stuff is better in G2 or G1 is a personal opinion, however. When it comes to atmosphere, Gothic 2 is a bit worse in that regard, at least in my opinion. Yet, the atmosphere is still very good, even when you're just walking around in a forest. The audio design there is simply top notch and gets complimented by the fantastic soundtrack by Kai Rosenkranz. Another thing I noticed is the fact that artstyle is very good, thus I didn't really pay any attention to the dated graphics. From armor to just a fern in the forest, everything looks pretty. The story also connects to the previous game very well and even though it might feel generic, I still like it. The worldbuilding in this game is also interesting - the world changes quite a bit with each chapter - you can get new side quests and there are new enemies. While in G1, what happened is only the main story progressed but nothing really changed in the world. The game isn't without flaws, though. It can be buggy at times and voice acting in the English version is terrible for the most part - best played with German or Polish voiceover. Conclusion - go and play it.