Gothic

I played all 3 of the Gothic games, many times. I got them not here on GoG, but on original installation discs, so my review comes from experience of all games mentioned here. I feel Gothic accomplshed what Ultima IX failed to, 2 years before it. True, Ultima 9 was the actual first true 3D role-playing game to try claim that title, but came out very buggy, unfinished and animations of enemies and NPCs were weird, wooden and lacking actual 3D feeling. Where Gothic managed to create a believable 3D world not only through it's landscape design, but also with the well-designed - for that time - animations of every non-static entity. What more, it actually made every NPC performing some kind of daily activity - imagine that kind of complexity in Ultima IX! Even the occasional NPC following or leading you, to fight together work well here - they have the working artificial intelligence to climb the cliffs or jump down to stay close to you, and only very rarely get stuck in uneven landscape. Ultima IX had none of that. While it can be argued that in 2 years much had happened in the gaming world, I feel it was Gothic, and not Ultima IX, which deserves to be called the first true 3D role-playing game on the market, from historic point of view. Even now it can still hold it's own while playing, even if landscape and NPCs / enemies are very low-polygon by today's standards, and controls are only really working on keyboard, there is no mouse view like in newer games, all fighting is done by pressing SPACE + direction keys. It feels awkward at first, and very old-school, but once you get into it and developing the feeling of how to engage individual enemies, fighting can be done. Just never - never - try to fight more than 1 opponent, the fight controls are not able to handle it. Even fighting 1 NPC can be a frustrating experience, until you master the controls and the know-how how NPCs move and fight. But when Gothic came out, it can hardly be argued that it was amazing.

Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 are still the best Open World RPGs, No other game have come even close to giving this kind of experience. The worlds feel alive and authentic. You feel like you are taking a part in a society, where each camp has its own goals and their way of interacting with the other camps. The game play is a lot of fun, though the controls can be hard to get used at first, but once you do the whole game is a very rewarding experience.

I gave a chance to Gothic two times. First one I was looking for a good RPG to entertain me during a summer, and after trying it I remember I thought "What's this shit?", and I quit. A year passed and I was on summer holidays again, and I took Gothic thinking "Do I played this?"... and I installed Gothic again and I remember I thought "Oh hell, I already played this crap last summer...", but I stayed playing for a couple of hours. I started walking through The Camp, talking with some NPCs, looking for a sword, and... Since then I'm a huge fan of the Gothic and Risen series... I didn't change my Gothics for any other game.

Gameplay didn't age well and graphics were already too old when it came out. But my god this game is great! It was my first playthrough this year. And even with beeing that old, I became one of my absolute favorite. What an underrated game!

I do enjoy this game a lot, aside from some of the problems it faces manly the combat system and the voice acting. However the game itself has a lot of realism even for 2001 like cooking meat with an animation to it, robbery (which can happen to you). It breaths a lot of life into its world and it doesn't make you feel like your some kind of one many army kind deal, when you start out you are just like everyone else poor,weak and helpless. The story is kinda boring but if you can get past that you will find an experience you won't find anywhere else.