IMO this game had the potencial to be better than Gothic 1 and 2, but unfortunately due to bad pacing it cannot achieve this. The game total is 4 chapters, and the first two is full of sidequest, maybe a little too much in fact, while the second half of the game, chapter 3-4 has basically no new quest, just the main one, and that is exploring the same looking ruins and kill the same enemies over and over again. Still its one of the better Gothic games, also this is kind of an unofficial sequel to Gothic 3.
I remebered the story of this game was really good, and recently I rediscovered this game so gave another go. The story is still amaizing however the controls with the auto lock on, the camera, and the possibility to softlock yourself on certain sections holds this game back from being a classic.
I played and loved the base game when i was a kid, however never played the expansion, so i jumped in the game with excitement, and some of the initial excitement quickly turned to dread and frustration. I gave 4 stars because of the expansion. The original game was janky, and the expansion did not improved on this, but I dont think this is the main problem. Save often, there is no autosave, and even if you are in town or a safe place, the game crashed on me every 3-5 hours. Also it is called an expansion, but it feels like the added zone and quest were planned in the original game, but due to time limitaion or resources it did not make it in the original release. Every place, bandit camp, cave has a quest attached to it. The whole game is rebalanced, and made and already hard game (on the first playtrough) harder, and even with my experience with the base game, I was not sure multiple times if I can get enough experience and power to continue the game, I had to exploit the dumb AI multiple times, and if i dont find an infinite gold exploit, I probably wont be able to finish the game. If you never played this game and you are interested I strongly recommend to use a guide/walktrough if you can find one. Also sad there is no option to install/play the original.
