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.
I've always wanted to play Gothic - because my older brother played it on CD back in the day. No idea where those Gothic CDs went, but now for review - note that I haven't finished this game yet. First - graphics - for year 2001, I'm very surprised how this game holds up even to this game - for instance, when you compare this to Might and Magic 9 (MM9 was released year after Gothic), graphics look quite fine. Gameplay - if you're not a stupid mouse+keyboard only person, you will get used to the controlls really quick - I actually like idea of interacting with items through various key combinations. Flaws: game sometimes crashes and camera can be sometimes really clunky. Final rant: Play this game and don't let weird controls intimidate you from this gem!
Game is overall quite enjoyable, however quite buggy. Story is quite ok so far - but ending of story is quite awful. Gameplay differs a little bit from other MM games - you move with WASD instead of arrows - that leads me to another different thing in gameplay - you won't propably use turn-based mode. I tried it once in this game, and never used it again - that means game is definitely more fast paced than others. AI also got less artificial - enemies dodge, and move around, while fighting. Do I recomend this game? Definitely, but play MM6, MM7 and MM8 first. You must be also quite patient with troubleshooting.
