Gothic

I haven't played many RPGs, and Gothic IS buggy. But when you compare it with skyrim, there's much more soul and atmosphere. I really liked the story, too, and the graphics are old but OK. It's just great when the story isn't just "kill the bad guy and his followers", and I hope that i will like the next Gothics (and Risens) as much as this game. Buy it!

Gothic is a fun game with a good story, some neat mechanics, and good concepts in its combat system that is brought down a bit by unwieldy controls and small number of level design flaws. VISUALS and AUDIO: With everything at max, Gothic looks decent but far from stellar. Textures are acceptable, although the world textures are very low-res (check out the forums for texture and world patches that help a lot, and make colors much less drab), and polycounts are low to medium. Terrain is clearly polygonized, especially rock faces. Many objects are non-solid (some, like ladders, are one-sided [on the wrong side!]), which avoids some navigational difficulties but is irritating. Tree branches are on solid, mostly transparent planes that look pretty crappy up close and can mysteriously block shots or irritatingly block movement. Still, the view from the highest point on the island is pretty nice (if only draw distance could go about 2x further, it'd be great!) - once you're far enough away the architecture looks pretty nice (although forests look silly). Draw distance for characters is too short at maximum - in the final temple, there's a big cavern where the major enemy isn't visible until you're halfway across the bridge in the middle, and the gigantic final boss enemy is invisible from the balcony of his chamber where you'll be doing a fair bit of fighting (as he fires at you from his seemingly empty dais). They do fade in from transparency rather than popping in, which is nice, and the environment does not pop at all (less some texture jiggling, particularly in forests). And Barrier-storms do look very dramatic. The game is fully voiced, but there aren't many voice actors, as you'll rapidly notice. Idle chit-chat between NPCs in towns is a nice touch but serves to emphasize the repetition of actors, since some of the common folk use the voices of major story NPCs. The voice acting is fine - not inspired but rarely off-tone (that said, there's not a lot of emotion in the game). Ambient sounds are decent, although the fact that they are strongly localized can be a bit confusing when you look and see nothing making the bird call or scratching. Swords woosh and clang satisfyingly, spells have some real audio oomph, and sound effects are generally synched correctly as well. Overall, a good aural experience. CONTROLS and GAMEPLAY: The controls are unwieldy and in some combat situations can be downright awful. This is difficult to excuse for a 2001 game, although it does predate the far far better Arx Fatalis by one year. Some sources report that mouse support was a late addition to the game, intended for keyboard-only control - this explains the vertical-targeting weakness and lack of actual aiming. Most commands are issued by combining an "action" key with a direction key, which is really unnecessary and can be confusing. It works in combat, because it allows you to make different sorts of attacks in melee, and to switch targets at range. Melee combat is nicely executed, with the ability to chain attacks by timing opposing swings correctly, and a block that requires both good timing and proper aim. However, the fact that you are lock on to your target prevents you from manually leading moving targets at range, and can swing you about undesirably when swarmed in melee. The tracking is also too slow to fully aim a block for you, although I mostly like the challenge that added. The overall fairly good combat is brought down by the armor/to-hit system, which renders enemies completely invulnerable to characters with insufficient skill or weak weapons/magic. Having such thresholds takes me out of the game a bit, and limits the challenge with which I can present myself - rather than being tremendously hard, sufficiently strong enemies are literally impossible to harm until I level up some more, no matter how good my tactics. The inconvenient controls couple with slow actions and a somewhat unwieldy inventory system to make emergency actions in combat (drinking a potion, changing weapons, etc.) more difficult than they should be - taking a hit interrupts any action, including opening the inventory or switching weapons. This is an interesting feature for spellcasters, since it prevents longer spells from being used in melee, but most enemies from the midgame onward can only be harmed by charged spells, meaning that a mage must either spend significant points in melee skills or spend a lot of time running away. A few enemies have fast-casting, nearly-continuous spells that can only be defeated via strong armor, a step-by-step charge, and then continuous melee attacks. Mages will find that only a small number of spells are at all useful, thanks to damage thresholds and casting time issues. Furthermore, several critical area-of-effect spells are very finicky about height and will fail to hit any enemy standing on even slightly lower ground (or simply inexplicably miss), which often completely ruins a fight and requires a retreat or reload. STORY/ACTING: The game's world certainly has an interesting setup, one that makes the standard RPG behavior of both PCs and NPCs a lot more reasonable than it often is. The conflict between the three main factions is critical to the plot and makes the player's career choice meaningful, although it is used less than it could be. The main quest line is quite similar between the careers, so a replay isn't truly necessary to see nearly all the world has to offer - but the training available makes the game experience of at least two factions markedly different. As noted above, the game is fully voiced, albeit by a small cast. Sadly, the main character is the worst voice actor of the bunch. The rest are too few, but at least they emote and frequently get it right - the main character is flat, lifeless and sometimes gives wrong tone. Still, the acting is decent overall and there's a lot of dialog, which is a plus. After a while, the repetition in bystander chit-chat may become annoying, but in concept it's a nice touch. DIFFICULTY: The difficulty presented is rather mixed and dependent on class. The controls, monster resistances, and the inability of mages to boost spell power mean that you will be forced into melee sometimes no matter what class you are. This will present a challenge for mages (who must waste many points to be able to even hit some late-game monsters), while being practically unnoticeable to warriors. Bows are very powerful, but a focused archer will be brought down by monsters immune to arrows (more common than magic immunity). Mages truly shine against most single monsters and some of the more irritating mobs, so there is some balance there. Unfortunately, many of the more difficult combats are hard in part because of the lacking controls, in particular the sometimes inexplicable inability to target monsters that are in range. Monsters on lower ground are immune to many attacks, and some monsters are just plain difficult to target (particularly skeleton mages). This is particularly frustrating when a well-planned, well-executed sneak attack tactic must be abandoned despite a visibly clear shot, or when the multi-button attack system decides to drop a key, sending you charging into a mob rather than launching that perfect fire storm. Despite all this, the game is not tremendously hard - some particular fights can be, but many of the harder ones are optional, and you won't need to grind for XP if you do most of the missions. Money is an issue in the early game, but theft is your friend, and you can pick most locks without spending any skill points on the ability. LEVELS, STRATEGY, and OTHER ELEMENTS: Be careful around named NPCs! You can safely knock out (reduce to 0 health with melee weapons) anyone, but you can make quests including storyline missions uncompletable if you kill several important characters (or get them killed by monsters). That empty stage in Old Camp is for a band concert (by In Extremo) cut from the non-German versions, complete with a dancer and firebreather, and there is a patch to restore it, complete with English voice for the announcer. Or you can check it out on YouTube if you're curious. There is one minor exploit that will speed up navigation without giving a real unfair advantage - if you strafe while falling, you will take no damage when you land. This is very helpful in the mine, but can also save you from death-by-stupid-ladder. Ladders can be a real issue - if the last rung is just a bit too low, you will bounce off the top and fall rather than mounting the platform . . . and there is one mine area with a main-quest-required item for which both of the ladders out will almost always do this to you. The solution is to try to leap forward at the exact right moment in the exiting-ladder animation. It can take 10-20 tries (the final ladder in the harpy tower took me about 30), but you'll eventually get out. ALWAYS save before using a tall ladder, and remember the strafe trick. Finally, despite the implication to the contrary in the manual, Dexterity appears to be critical to making hits with melee weapons against higher-level monsters. With 70 dex and 203 str, my mage could not hit the apocalyptic templar at all, even at point-blank range with no dodges or blocks - the sword just whiffed through him. With 126 dex and 86 str, I hit him fairly frequently. In both cases, he was untrained in the weapon used, which could have made up for the weak dexterity. This example does illustrate the mild ridiculousness of the combat system though, since the training maximum for those stats is 100. THE VERDICT: My original plan was to do a playthrough as a mage and then re-play from the faction-choice point as a templar warrior, but when I finished I didn't really feel like giving it another go. I had saved most of my skill points (as I often do, for challenge and flexible testing), so I cross-trained my mage and found other forms of combat somewhat boring and at times frustrating. I had already done a fair bit of melee by necessity - as a warrior, that would merely have been simpler. I had used archery slowly and painfully in the early game, and quick tests showed that it would be tactically similar to but much more powerful than the very repetitive firestorm-sniping I did as a mage, except against arrow-immune monsters. I did enjoy my playthrough, and although there were numerous irritations, I don't recall being very frustrated. The lack of replay enthusiasm isn't a strong negative, merely a lack of a bonus, so overall, I think the good and poor aspects of the game balance out to a 3-star experience. I may come back and play one of the fairly numerous mods though, particularly since Gothic 2 is rather unstable on my system.

I simply don't understand the love this game gets. It's not even dated, it's just bad. A combination of unconventional controls, a very unresponsive and clunky combat system, mediocre voice acting, ugly visuals (even for its time; DX looked better in 2000 and it certainly was not renowned for its graphical fidelity), and an incredibly bland plot that squanders the game's otherwise unique setting make the game a downright chore to play through. It does some things right - the NPC scripting is phenomenal and there are a bunch of little ways to interact with the world. There's a lot to do at first and the setting, a rogue penal colony still trapped beneath an impenetrable magic barrier, is full of potential. But you quickly find that the developers simply couldn't follow through with the vision they presented in Chapter 1. Your choice of camp proves absolutely meaningless beyond who you talk to and what color armor you wear, as you wind up completing the same quests regardless of who you sided with. As you progress further in the game, the events that transpire make you wonder why they even bothered with the choice to begin with. The interesting details quickly fade into the background as a cliche ancient evil awakens, and much of the rest of the game is padded out with banal fetch quests. Character building is practically nonexistent, both from a mechanical and narrative perspective. You get a whopping three attributes that only determine whether you hit things, shoot things, or magic things. There are very few alternative solutions to questlines and very few sidequests in general after the first chapter. The combat itself is plainly awful, at least for melee. Enemies can dodge attacks for zero damage regardless if the attack connects; you do not receive that luxury. When fighting multiple foes, you can only damage the one you're targeting even if your attack connects with another enemy. I'd say more, but the character limit's coming up. Watch an LP for Gothic 2.

if you have isseus to start the game in Win 10 open the task manager with control alt delete. go to details, rigt click on gotich and select analyze wait chain, from here select search UI.exe and end proces. Have fun!

This game has a really fun open world that is satisfying to explore. The map is relatively small, it feels grand at the start when you don't know shortcuts and hidden trails, it has empty caves and crypts with great treasures. Eventually, you get familiar, bit by bit you clear out the forests and find various approaches to important locations. The combat is a bit clunky, and not for the odd controls that take time to get used to (tip: set up "Alternative controls" in the settings). Once you've learned the controls, the combat is still a bit odd. The blade swinging and parrying falls apart when there's more than one foe, and then it's just trading health bars against each other. The shooting mechanics feel weird, the arrows miss for odd reasons. Still, the way the damage calculates (Weapon stat + STR - Defense) makes the game feel challenging no matter what level you are on. This mechanic creates zones appropriate for your weapon, armor and level, and the armor is limited by the story chapters. Magic is also very creative, and there are some scrolls that will work even for "pure melee" builds - some of the quests require to use them. It has many characters that are memorable and go beyond "quest giver, exposition dump NPC". A rare achievement. Over the game, you'll remember Diego, Milton, Gorn, Lester, as well as others. They also made simple side quests feel fun and go beyond fetch quests. Unfortunately, much of this non-linear storytelling falls apart past Act 1. It becomes a linear story with one main quest to do and a lot of walking back and forth. I recommend getting Spine mod manager and installing Union, Gothic 1 Community Patch, Ninja, Advanced Inventory, D3D11 Renderer, Union Gothic Screen info. There is a lot of odd inventory management in this game, and it will work slightly better this way.