Truly above and beyond where RPGs have gone in the last 5 years, and tremendous fun as well.
Lows: Leaves off setting the stage for a third Gothic, numerous small bugs that will cause various degrees of irritation, the gameplay isn’t much better than Gothic so fighting more than one creature at a time can still be very painful and the inventory system is actually worse, and it took long enough getting here after the German release and the English translation was finished almost a year ago.
RPG Fans: This is your cup of tea, if you can expand your personal taste to the amount of action Gothic II provides. It’s not so purely action oriented that it’s a relative of “RPG” Diablo, but it doesn’t slack in the fighting department. There is a tons of character development, and a large number of ways to play through the game.
Action Fans: This could be your cup of tea; the action isn’t pure and you’ll find yourself having to avoid things that you know are too big for you, and picking a path to develop your character along. Only pick this up if you like RPGs too. Or if you feel like expanding your horizons go ahead and pick it up for 10 - 20 bucks when it gets there.
Everyone Else: This is a good game and you will more than likely enjoy the experience if you want to try something new and put forth some effort after picking it up for 10 – 20 dollars from a bargain bin.
Once you’ve played a game from the growing Gothic franchise you will be among a group of gamers who discovered a rare and enchanting gem back in mid 2000. You will find yourself immersed in what can only be described as a style that is unique and which gamers on the Gothic forums talk about as though it were trademarked Gothic Game-play. You might even find yourself agreeing. If you have the gaming rig to play it with all the setting up over the halfway point, then you will be treated to a visual meal that is more real than any other game on the market. The actual quality of the 3d engine though not weak certainly wasn’t revolutionary back in 2000 and still isn’t now. The bottom line is what they did with it. And that is create a world with an almost completely unbroken horizon that spans across an island that is filled with immensely detailed communities with problems (both mundane and realistic to fantastic) that your help will be needed to solve and which you wont always be able to solve by yourself.
Like it’s predecessor, Gothic II invests a great deal into making various communities believable in the environment. Unlike so very many games before it where each location is something of a cookie cutter community with superficial differences to differentiate between them, Gothic goes to great lengths to make a locations environment intoxicating. When you’re in a city that is dying out, in which eating is becoming a problem do to tense relationship with ever less cooperative farmers, and yet still has a moderately thriving marketplace and is in some ways improving due to the paladins who have come and given the local militia the support they need to help make the environment outside the city walls safe again you get the feeling that you’re not entirely needed and that while your help would be appreciated they feel they’d do fine without you. When you first go into the old world, which is an amazing recreation of the world of the original Gothic, you will be in a world too harsh for you to safely navigate as most everything will be too big for you to survive long without learning to run and dodge as you try to sneak into the besieged encampment of paladins who are in desperate need of help just finding out what’s happening outside of their walls. And all of that fails to say anything of the vast wilderness that is wide open for exploration, filled with animals and trees that blow in the wind and weather that is beautiful just makes it feel that much more like you have been put in this world for real.
The original Gothic took a little bit of pure luck to actually figure out the controls, and because of that they were well known. It is a sad day when a game fails to document how to play it, and with such a good game, something like that can even stop someone from playing it at all. Beyond that, the controls were simplistic and effective to the point where the mouse became unnecessary. Gothic II goes so far as to improve the gameplay, making animals easier to fight, properly documenting the controls for the game as well as simplifying them. But while simplified they feel less perfect. Also the system still needs refining from the original. For example, when you are fighting more than one or two creatures that are a level or two below your skill level you can still be reduced to only a few health points, if you survive at all without running away. Moreover, those used to Gothic’s very well separated inventory system will be disappointed to find out that, while objects are still sorted in your inventory by type, everything you pick up will be lumped into a single inventory that you will have to scroll through to get to what you are looking for. Overall a large improvement, and a decent system, but the feeling that the controls could have been better is palpable.
The story doesn’t have the attributes of a work of art or genius, but a lot of good can be said of it. There could be some very legitimate complaints that the story is like that of the two towers, which many felt to feel like a “middle” chapter with a beginning that, though it fills you in on everything you need to know, feels strongly like you missed something and an end that, like the last game, left a very clear message that the story of your character was not over. Interestingly enough though, it provides every bit as much closure as the first game, only with a very intriguing twist that I won’t spoil here. But while the final fight may disappoint, the end is still very rewarding.
A good RPG is best defined by how much of the world is affected by you yourself when you pick a path that the main character follows. Gothic II also exceeds by this definition as well as all others. There is a great variety of impact you can have on the world and often when you do something important there are valid rewards or reprimands as characters approve or disapprove of your actions and will provide you with an almost custom list of allies at the final stretch.
Among the already mentioned problems, there are a few others. There are some problems with the edge of the world being pretty accessible at some points without very much effort. Some quests don’t reward one way of solving them as much as another way and even feel entirely unfair when you choose the good path and are punished for it illogically. And it some areas there is a general feeling that there was meant to be more game but it got cut off. Though that feeling can be easily overshadowed by features like alchemy benches and a deeper use of blacksmithing than was available in the original, but had felt like the developers meant for them to be there. Also you should be prepared to play this on a high midrange system at least as the graphical beauty of the Gothic world is part of what makes this game worth it and the slowdown on lower machines or the tradeoff of very low graphics with an abysmally close clipping plane can detract from the experience and make navigating the world a less than enjoyable experience.
At the end of the day Gothic II does everything a sequel should. It stands alone on its own merits and makes advance independent of the original. The story builds without relying on the material laid out for it already. This game is for a lot of people, while it doesn’t rise above the average RPG excursion it doesn’t rise so high that it will appeal to every die hard gamer. There is just too much good here to go un-noticed though, RPG fans should consider this one of the heavy hitters of the year, and put it on their lists along side Neverwinter Nights and Deus Ex: Invisible War.