Not really a Gothic afficionado but did play Gothic 3 (before patch) and enjoyed it. Got all the way through Gothic 4 in about 60 hours doing all the quests at the hardest (gothic) level. Thought the graphics were very good on my fairly high performance machine. Particularly liked the lighting at sunrise and sunset and the motion of the sea under a storm cloud clotted sky. The graphics reminded me of Risen but unlike Risen there were invisible walls. You could not jump to areas which you should have been able to. Climbing a mountain in Risen was like climbing a mountain in real life - you could plan a route based on visual clues and then actually climb the mountain. In Gothic 4 while you did have the feeling of exploring real topography most of the time there were to many invisible impediments to free movement. As far as gameplay a number of players have complained about the lack of "realism" e.g. you cannot attack NPC's, you get no help from NPC's in battle, you can steal anything, you don't have to eat or sleep, etc. Well what do you expect in a fantasy world where you can throw spells, teleport, etc? What really matters is the gameplay which is good but broken in many places. I played mainly as an archer and found the game difficult on the highest level. The best strategy I found was to take a few shots at the target, run away (the targets will only follow you so far) and then come back and take a few more shots. The best move for me was to find a "protected" spot where I could plunk away at the bad guys and not be attacked. Realistic? Definitely not. The fun comes in finding these areas and then destroying the enemy in comfort. I thought the towns were fun to explore and finding the connections (via underground tunnels) between areas was very satisfying. Unfortunately the story was totally incoherent as were some of the quests. I was not familiar with any of the characters. New characters and quests were introduced willy nilly and it was impossible to deduce motives or follow the story line. Voice acting was mediocre at best. Compared to what I consider really good games i.e. Fallout New Vegas and Dragonage this game was a severe disappointment. It is similar to Risen but Risen was a much better game.
Out of all the obscure and incredibly hard to get-into European CRPGs this hobby has played host to, none have a more devoted and fanatic fanbase than Germany's famed Gothic series. With its startlingly advanced NPC sche... Read Full Review
While Risen looked back to Gothic 2 and the golden era of the company, JoWood decided to go in a completely different, by removing as many features as they could. A major difference between Gothic 4 and it's prequels,... Read Full Review
