I have heard from several sources that Gothic 2 is a classic must play rpg so I decided to try it out. For the first third or so of the game, I enjoyed myself, sadly that didn't last. First of all, this is one of the buggiest games I have ever played. Getting stuck in the enviroment, AI failing to pathfind, sound and music hitching, freezes, crashes etc. These got worse as the game progressed and I am amazed that these problems are seldom mentioned when talking about the game. But even besides the bugs, there were huge issues. The climbing in the game is unpredictable and clunky. In one part of the game, the jumping was so bad that most forums adviced to use a glitch to get up instead. Getting stuck in the enviroment and/or enemies getting stuck in the enviroment, happened more often than not. There was not a single session that I played without getting stuck atleast a couple of times. Concerning the combat, I actually like the mechanics of how you attack, dodge etc but the calculation of damage and the leveling of skills baffles me in its obserdity. The game also requires you to grind which I seldom see or appreciate in singleplayer rpg:s. The main "bosses" are extremely frustrating and for many builds, requires huge amounts of cheesing to beat. Even by reading several forums and guides, the bosses were unnecessarily frustrating. They only have two attacks so there is no complexity in learning them and the same goes for all enemies in the game. The only real redeeming factor is that the quests, story and diversity in how to tackle problems is pretty awesome and is very unique to this game. I would have wanted to recommend that you play without the expansion so the frustration of the bosses can be avoided but by doing that you also miss out on the added quests and story. By the 40 hours or so that I played the game, too much of my time went into dealing with bugs, frustrating fights and backtracking so I do honestly recommend to not buy this game.
