I played the game when it was brand new, together with its expansion pack. Very different from any other FPS of the time. One thing, you get to see no hands/gun when you are aiming etc. Just a clear screen with the basic, but good, HUD. What type of shooter this is? Well the closer game to it, in terms of feel, was Operation Flashpoint, which later became the Arma series. GR though is a much tighter game, without the huge open areas you need vehicles at times to traverse. The difficulty though is there. You will die a lot when you first start playing the game. It's not full on simulation, but it is more "serious" than other FPS of the time, by far. Again, other than Operation Flashpoint. Plenty of missions to complete with your team and while you will find it annoying you can't see your gun, you will get used to it. Think of what happened a few years before this with Wing Commander 5. I played the game to completion, together with the expansion pack, but not alone. You see the game has (and I assume still works?) co-op gameplay. With basic broadband connection of the time, we managed to play and enjoy completing this game. It was a very fun, though hard at times, experience. Also, IIRC still the only game I completed in co-op which isn't Double Dragon. And here you don't even have to fight your brother. Very good game, just know what you are getting into. This is not Doom, or Duke Nukem 3D. This is not Quake or UT. I haven't played the game in many years, including this GOG version which yes I own, so I can't speak about any technical issues, but I assume it is fine. Buy the game, play it, but remember this is not going to be easy.
I was streaming this game no in June 2025. First time playing it. I love turn based strategy game. Felt like a mix of Beyond Earth, SMAC, Civilization series. Really enjoying the setting, the lore, even the graphics. Then we came under attack from the native aliens. That's not the problem. The problem is there is no camera focus, no zooming in, no combat animation while the enemy attacks you. If there is any battle after you click on end turn, then all you get is small text info about the result on the right side of the screen where you get the rest of the game notifications. That's it. No animation. No idea battles are taking place and where. You have to click on each result to see where the battle took place, not that you can see anything other than the now surviving units. WHERE IS THE FUN IN THAT? For me it ruins all fun in the game. RUINS IT. I am not giving it 1 star because I am sure many people don't care about this issue, but I do. Two stars, If the game had the option to see the battles, I would give it at least 4 stars out of 5, based on what I have seen so far. As is, I refuse to continue playing like this. Pissed off. I wish I could ask for my money back, but it's been years since I bought it. Not GOG's fault I just played it.
For anyone interested to know if this will run on an old laptop. On my 11 year (as in 2025) old i7-4710HQ laptop with 16GB of RAM, SATA SSD, GTX 860M with 4GB of VRAM. The game runs and has at 900p and a mix of mid to high settings, framerate between high 30s to 60. For me it's perfectly playable. Not that I wouldn't like better, but it is perfectly doable. If you are one of those who has an allergic shock if it is under 120fps, then obviously not for you. Though if you lower the resolution and settings more, if might get much higher. This is not a review as I haven't played more than a couple of levels. Just thought to help anyone with a similar old device wondering if it would run.
Just yesterday I finished my twitch stream of my playthrough of this game for the first time. My experience with previous Gothic games was only a tiny bit of the first game when it was brand new. I stopped playing that game due to the awful controls. Many years later I played this now and I have to say it was a fun ride. I will start with the negatives. The mini radar/map rotates and I hate it when it happens in games. I have to constantly open the large map to try to get some directions. There were some graphical glitches, but they never affected the gameplay. Some faces appeared weird colors (green or red) and there were some see through textures in faces when in closeup for the dialogue. Annoying perhaps, but really did not change the game at all for me. The game doesn't have a "GPS" showing you the quest you have activated, which while normal for older titles, it can be annoying a handful of times. One in particular near the end of the game I couldn't find a way into the area I needed to be and I spent like 20 min or more. If it was something that happened several times I would have taken a star out of the game, but as is...it's acceptable. I wish the inventory had sorting and way to check your equipped items when trading. Positives, music, sound effects are awesome. The graphics are above average to very good. The speech is from average to good. The combat mechanics are solid. Not difficult to learn and not too complicated where you feel like you are fighting with the controls. More complicated than say Diablo, but not by much. I liked that. The story should make sense to anyway who knows the world of Gothic. It didn't do much to me. I still found it an easy ride story wise. Apart from the ending cutscene. Confused the heck out of me. I played the game as a melee fighter who rarely used a bow/crossbow for some weak attacks. I enjoyed it. Other than the first hour or so, I never used magic. Nothing wrong with it. I enjoyed it. 3.8/5
In short, I really liked the first and I consider the second hot garbage. Since I have to score both in one, I give it a 4/5 to be fair to the first game. Otherwise I would give WC1 a score of 4-5 stars (based on when it was released) and WC2 a 2 stars. WC1. The game is of course the known semi branching campaign of you playing as a pilot of the confederation against the Kilrathi cat like aliens. Most of the game is the actual flying and battles, while a small part is talking to your colleagues and attending the mission briefings. The actual fighting part is well done. One thing to remember, afterburner is your friend. It's totally worth playing for both the story and the actual gameplay. If you have a soft spot for the era's graphics and sound, even better. I used a joystick to play (Logitech Extreme 3D Pro), but you can play it completely with keyboard or keyboard and mouse too. The game is obviously not perfect, but it is really good for what it is and when it was released. The framerate can drop at times during intense actions, but that was always the case even back in the day. Completed it recently for my Twitch stream and I am glad I did. I played, and lost, the first expansion pack of WC1. Good fun, but fake branching. WC2. Different vibes from the first game. Slightly different setting at first, but soon you change to more familiar ground. The framerate is much improved with the game being much smoother, but also feeling like much faster. You can, as I did, reduce the dosbox cycles to say 6000, which will improve things. Main issues which made me rage quit around the 9th or so mission. Both friendly and enemy crafts keep ramming you. Friendly also keep getting in front of you when you are shooting the enemy. RUIN the game. Enemy crafts obey different laws of physic as they can fly away and shoot at you and zip around at impossible speeds. Horrible. HORRIBLE. I tolerated for ~9 missions, but no more.
I remove one star for not having much of replayability. Technically there are a couple of different paths you can follow, but the difference is minimal. I completed this second game in the trilogy (and last game of the trilogy I played) just yesterday for my Twitch channel. It was a fun ride, as were the other two games. Perhaps the easiest of the three, or perhaps I have just become better by now. Either way, it was worth it. It took me a bit less than 7 hours total to finish it. The game is a linear strategy game, think of the battles in the HOMM series or King's Bounty, with smaller amount of battles and only one expansive map, of various different zones. The world map has you following paths to events or stores or battles, similar to a board game. You can go back to any previously point, but to proceed forward you need to explore/fight your way through. The battles have you choose your army of 5 different types of units, for the battles. Each type has certain leadership/star requirement, so very powerful unit has 5 stars, least powerful has 1 star, and you can only have up to 15 stars or so. This makes it so that you don't end up with an unbeatable army. Each unit has health and number of individuals in it. Different attacks, stats, etc. There is also a magic tree you can expand each time you level up, to a maximum of 10 levels. You unlock magic/abilities that you can use during a battle. The game is 99% about battles, and that is fine. The battles can be anything from very easy to hard, depending on how you deal with them. Also there are 2-3 events you can revisit for more random battles to gain experience and power, to make other battles easier. The game is really well made, with only a couple of music pieces, but very good ones at that. The gfx style is similar to the other 2 games, with a cute but not baby like style. I like it. If you like turn based strategy games and want something easier, go for it! The other 2 too.
I just rage quit playing the final campaign mission on my twitch stream. I won't spoil it here. My score for the game is a 3, but if you don't have a problem with BS, then it is a 4 out of 5. There are two main ways of playing the game, one is the campaign in a series of missions and another mode which I didn't touch. Is it fair to review the game having played only one of the modes? That's up to you. The game is a birds eye view of you controlling a single vehicle which changes depending on the mission. For each mission after the first few, you have a choice of 4 different vehicles with different types, hovercraft, small agile, fast wheeled, huge wheeled, huge mech, etc. Each of them comes with a set pair of weapons and special ability. For each campaign mission you have to pick only from the 4 given to you for it, even if another vehicle you have already played with would be a far better vehicle. Artificial difficulty? Maybe. There are several ways to control your vehicle and in the settings you can pick your favorite. None of them felt perfect for me, but apparently I am alone in this. If you find one to suit you, great. If not, you are going to fight the enemies and the controls for the duration of the game. Each mission has destroy X targets (specific or not) and exit the map. The destruction and shooting is great fun, though the handling of the aiming is tiresome, especially for small targets. Also the long range weapons like mortar and howitzer are about half the screen, shorter than direct fire weapons...yeah. The gfx & sfx & music are fantastic. The whole atmosphere is very good even though there are no cutscenes. When everything (controls and missions) align, this is one of the best action games ever made with almost full environmental destruction. When. Changes I would make, better aiming system/reticule. No BS spawning enemies at certain missions. Better controls. Freedom to choose any vehicle for campaign missions.
I was not expecting much when I decided to stream this game for my Twitch channel. I really didn't. I just wanted to play an action RPG, relatively modern which wasn't too demanding on the hardware as I have 10+ year old laptops. I got more than I asked for. The game is basically an action RPG, reminds me of the games from Spiders, though with far far less pointless walking and visually at times similar and at times worse than their games. Of course one needs to remember this is an old game by now. There are plenty of things to spend your skill points and your magic points on, giving you the option to develop your character in multiple ways in how you deal with the threats and the exploring. You can't unlock everything. I just finished the game, yes for my same name stream channel, and I unlocked about 1/4 of the special fighting skills, 1/4 of the magic skills. They are "trees" and you don't have enough points to unlock everything. So you better specialize in weapon type and in magic type. This on its own gives you enough reason to replay the game. But wait, there is more. The story is about your character, a man or a woman who gets into a long mysterious and potentially sick story. Yet, things are both better and worse. The dialogue system reminds of 3D Fallouts, with more options available depending on skills. Also the story can develop at some points depending on your choices. The story is good, though it does forces you a couple of times with nonsensical decisions for you. The combat is competent and fun. I don't know what people complain about. Sound is very good, graphics are average to very good. Voice acting is mostly great. There is a lot of reading if you want to read all the notes/entries in your journal. Which alter depending on new info you acquire. I liked this game. It's a shame the developer did not make more of them. 100% worth playing if you are into dark (story) action RPGs. 3.5 out of 5.
I played for my twitch stream (same name as here) up to mission 9. I think that is about half way through. I quit at mission 9 for one issue that bothered me since the very beginning. The controls. Mind you, I never liked the Commandos series, but that was mostly due to the stealth mechanics and bored me to death. Gameplay wise you do a series of story missions with main objectives and secondary objectives. Objectives which can be altered during a mission. No problem with that. The game is in real time and NOT turn based as the tag in the store says. You can pause the game (Enter key) and issue commands, but that is clearly not making the game turn based. There is a nice variety of missions on objectives and locations from the TNG universe. The graphics are good though a bit tiny for my taste. You can zoom in, but the game pixelates too much for my taste to make it run like this all the time. The sounds are fine and the voice is mostly good with a couple of bad ones, but thankfully very rare. The problem with the controls is difficult to explain. Before each mission (apart from the first IIRC) you get to choose your members. Each member can use a phase and some other tools, with some members having access to special tools you might need in a mission. The mission tells you what you 100% will need and what would be nice to have. The 100% you need to do, the others not. The way the GUI is, there is a list of icons on the bottom of the screen which lets you select tool depending on the character selected. So if one doesn't have a hypospray (partially recover health), then if you pick that member alone the icon for it won't appear. Easy enough. The problem is mostly in combat. There are times when you need to have all your members together to use their weapons at the same time as some enemies take more than one hit to neutralize. But if 1 or more have different weapon, only those with it can shoot when selected all!!!! Word limit. :( 2/5
A very light on story game, but still has some. I won't say much about that as I don't want to spoil anything. I had an idea what I was getting into (story) and that wasn't letting me to fully relax and enjoy the very relaxing gameplay. You are more or less in control of your huge park and you actively go out and explore this park/island, find resources and then repair items (bridges, lampposts etc. ) while also finding campsites (only way to unhide the overall map) and upgrading them with campfires (make sure to light them), benches etc etc. There are some tourists you can have short interaction with and there are even a couple of mini stories/quests to do. I know people say you can finish it in a couple of hours and perhaps you can if you have played the game before and you know what you are into, but it took me about five hours to complete it and I didn't do many of the tiny little quests available. Not the first time it is taking me far more time to finish a game than what people in reviews or how long to beat claim, but I have long decided they are full of it so take that as you wish. Is the game worth playing? Gameplay is simple and a small child or someone who is new to games should be able to play it after a while. If you are a heavy gamer, like I am who plays games since the early 80s, there isn't much to see here, but still is worth playing if you want something simple and non violent. Presentation wise, it has some cool music pieces here and there, good sound effects and background noise, and the graphics are quite gorgeous as long as you are fine with the art style. I experienced only one puzzle in the game which as soon as you figure out what you are supposed to do to get hints, isn't really difficult. There is one more thing I want to say and I usually don't say these things as I hate spoilers. So if you don't want a major spoiler, stop reading here. = = = = = = = = The ending has something to do with loss/death. Well done, yes.
