Gothic could have been an unforgettable game if it hadn't been so unpolished and frustrating at times.
The premise for this game is very unique. You are an anonymous prisoner, dropped into a prison colony which is surrounded by a magic barrier. Once you get in there, the game is almost totally open-ended. The game has a very realistic day and night cycle, where NPC’s can be seen doing their work during the day and then resting around a campfire or sleeping at night. There are three distinct camps in the game, and each of them are very well fleshed out. In the first chapter, you make a decision on which camp to join. It doesn’t make a huge difference in the game, but it does determine if some perks are open or shut to you.
Theoretically, you can walk off and explore anywhere at any given time, but you are so wimpy when you start off the game that you have to stay just on the roads at first. Venturing off next to a wolf or a lizard will get you killed fast. The controls for the game are simply awful, and that makes combat that much more frustrating. Enemies will surround you and run circles around you. Your character turns to face enemies extremely slow, like a piece of meat on a barbecue spit. There seems to be a one second delay between every keystroke in combat and the appropriate action. This causes you to get slaughtered constantly. Combat is badly unbalanced in favor of melee tank type characters and against mages. The way to defeat enemies as a mage is to cast one spell, run away for a minute until your enemies give up chasing you, and then returning to cast another spell.
The really cool setting and the feel of the game world are what kept me playing. The prison colony feels so realistic and immersive. There is a lot of spoken dialog in the game. Every line is voice acted and it most of the acting is really good. The only drawback might be that lots of the voices sound the same. Your actions actually seem like they have consequences and the game world actually changes a little bit in each chapter. Old friends become bitter enemies, and vice versa. The way that you hold and swing a sword changes depending upon what your skill level is with it. The three big factions in the game are crafted perfectly and they are a big part of the game’s story. So many games, like Morrowind and Deus Ex: Invisible War, fail to get this part right. In fact, I have never seen a game that nails it like this.
The game is hard at first, but that makes it more satisfying later on when you have gained 15 levels and you can defeat a lot of the enemies that you got beat up by earlier. This game truly gives you the feel of surviving in a hostile prison colony, and then getting your revenge later on all the thugs who roughed you up. This might actually be the best part of the game. No other RPG quite gives you this feeling.
Gothic suffers from a horrible lack of polish and that’s why it’s impossible to recommend to someone who is looking for a pick up and play game. This is a very unique game that is good for hardcore RPG fans who don’t mind putting up with some annoyances to get a nice payoff later on.