Gotic 4...so easy a caveman can do it!
...and now for the stuff I'm not so thrilled with...
Where to begin? I loved Gothic 2. It is one of my favorite games of all time. And to be frank, I think putting this game in the same series is a disgrace the 3 other games in the series. Here's why.
When I think of the word Gothic the first thing that comes to mind (or used to come to mind) is open world. This game is not a open world game. It is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very linear. There are virtually no side quests and there are invisible walls everywhere. Your character can't even swim.
The game is also too easy. The enemies you fight are too easy to beat and the AI is lackluster (for example, you can easily beat the golems by just going around the corner and then popping out every once in a while to hurl a fireball or an arrow or bolt at them while they throw rocks at the wall.)
And then there's the story and the characters. Basically there are about 5 characters and they have about 40 twin brothers each. And the dialog and the story itself are both very weak.
And finally I don't think I can finish this review without bringing up the character customization. If you watch the interview on this game's page the guy says 'there are TONS of skills you can improve'...and by 'tons' he means 8. Out of these 8, 3 are spells and choosing which one(s) to go with has a huge impact on the gameplay because it determines what color your fireballs are going to be.
So throw it all together and what do you have? Not much. And certainly not anything I feel deserves to have the name Gothic on it.
Would I recommend this game? Sure. But wait a while until the price drops. To one dollar. Once that has happened and you have already played every other PC RPG ever made then I would say go ahead and get this.
And so in 2010 I watched another great video game series bite the dust...because this offering clearly shows that the people making the Gothic games don't care about making the fans of the series happy.