It is truelly great to see Albion make an appearence here, I just love this game, I think I played it 3 or 4 times and it still is fun. The graphics still hold up and are beautifull, the music and sounds create a great atmosphere, the world is interresting to explore with many small and bigger hidden places. The party system is well done, dungeons are fun to explore, traps to be avoided, enemys to be slain in a real cool turn based battles, several different magic users that have different spellcategorys wach once more with strengths and weaknesses, a nice storyline to go along with. even if you are sadly missing some kind of journal or log to keep track of it, a huge world to explore, many people to talk to and a ton of lore. This game has something for everyone, an rpg that makes you think before you do something, allowing you to progress if you are smart, giving you goodies for that aswell, listening to people around the world aswell as searching old mines, abandonned buildings or cursed places, aswell as traveling on the world map that allows for dynamic monster spawning, but you aren't forced to fight, clever manauvering can allow for an escape.
Let me say this first, this is my first Lands of Lore game I played, I never really had any chance to get the game, when Iw as younger, but I still watched the teaser for LoL 2 and it was amazing, it was cut quickly, showed a ton of different locations, demons, mystical creatures, interresting magical places. Thus after I had some real craving for a first person dungeon crawler I got the entire Lol package and it was just..awful. I can see over blocky graphics, I don't really care, I can ignore the at times very strange humor, but I simply can't ignore that the game offers zero challenge, its so incredibly easy that I once mistakingly attacked a shopkeeper and killed him with a freaking dagger, that guy had gear worth atleast 3000 coins around and I could just take it, wanting to see if this was jsut a bug I attacked another shopkeeper inn the thief hideout and yes, she is a frail old lady, but she did zero damage to me, her store filled with artifacts to the brim just stood wide open for me. Now I don't know what the problems will be down the line for killing those guys, so I started a new game and to my suprise nothing seems to be able to kill me, I even avoided the very easy boost you can just buy for a mere 10 coins to permanantly increse your mana or health bar and still I found so many healing items on the way, not to mention the free healing spell you get for joining a certain guild, that I never even was near death in 5 hours of gameplay. The game is doomed for having a rather uninterresting story, bland characters and next to no challenge combat wise, which is even worse, when you realize that the combat flows extremly well, different creatures have different defences against weapons and magic, there are ranged weapons or throwing weapons, a lot of melee weapons even, but its just so easy to slaugther your way trougth the enemy that the whole combatsystem is a waste.
I hate Gothic with a passion, because its an overhyped piece of crap. Gothic 1, 2 and 3 are just useless games, no fun, huge plot holes, a boring fighting system, forcing you down one lane, because otherwise big monsters kill you off in a swing. if you really like a good rpg go with the elder Scrolls series, especially with the new one, Skyrim, that game is ten times better than this Gothic crap combined or just get the witcher 2, those games are worth your money. You should not support a game company that spits on their fans, releasing a boring and just craptastic game. I know that sounds strange, as bethesta is known for bugs, but placing a gothic game next to it and you will never complain about any bugs.
I have no idea how this game can have such good reviews, its simply a bad game. The combat sucks, the interface is bad, sounds..music..dialog..man that makes you want to mute the entire thing. Quests are stupid, the story is just plain boring and the fighting system..oh well it just sucks. Several times I had to run back to a questgiver simply because he didn't gave you the quest he talks about. Its not like in Fallout where one quest can overwrite another or a main quest creates something special or teleports you somewhere or sets a script in action. No that would be a good game, instead we got Npc's talking about a quest..maybe you will even have the pleasure of seeing a horrible cutscene and than you are told to "come back when you are ready" I did ..and nothing freaking happens, except that I now have the quest in my questregister. Well on the other hand, its nice that they give me a few seconds in silence, so I can process the horrible dialog and the underwhelming cut scenes. Bottom line: Spend nothing on this game and nothing on the follow up either, do not even spend Money on this, if you are curious on how bad it is..just.. don't even look at it, its not worth your time.
