If I fully describe the first thirty minutes of my adventures in Gothic, I feel most gamers will simply give up. Let me summarise it for you – I start out in a mining colony, gets belted up by some thugs only to be saved by some local (Diego). He tells me that I’m a total pansy and I'm lucky to defeat an oversize chicken. He then tells me to pick up a weapon ‘somewhere’ then leaves. It took me about five minutes to work out how to pick up a weapon then another ten minutes reloading as I cannot defeat a mole rat. Another ten minutes of locating the Old Camp (your first civilisation) only to get belted up by some diggers because I entered their living quarters. And if I tell you that once I finished this game, it was nothing short of rewarding as the old saying goes, good things happen to those who wait.
So here you are trapped in a mining colony surrounded by a magical barrier that only you can enter. Try to leave you'll get a nice blue electrical shock and eventually die if you don't back away. The story behind the magical barrier was to trap prisoners so they will mine the delicious ore to fuel the king's army against the orcs. Something happened to the barrier when erected therefore swallowed up the mages who created the barrier and grew so large it covered the entire valley. Of course the prisoners took advantage of this therefore placed a ransom to the king – i.e. give us stocks and chicks for ore. And if that wasn't enough chaos, the penal colony created three factions for you to join and there's absolutely no disadvantage which one you join (other than the other factions hating you).
And thus Gothic requires absolute patience and perseverance as the game throws away those ‘traditional’ here’s-my-first-creature-to-kill as it's truly an open world adventure – meaning you are free to roam the countryside admiring the scenery and there's nothing to stop you other than death. And that will come over and over again as every damn creature are pretty tough when you start out. Heck even the orcs and skeletons are terminators from the future and your only hope of survival is to find a beer for someone to drink so you can earn experience points.
So the game plays out as a role playing game – not in its truest sense though as there's not much stats driven and the skills are almost non-existence as each skill only has two skill levels. And if that's not bad enough, you need to find skill trainers who's willing to teach you and also requires ore as payment. You probably think it’s all too damn hard however this game makes you, the player role play the character to its fullest extend – and that was missing for many games prior to this.
And when I say role playing I really mean it as the nameless hero can fry meat (as raw meat gives you less health benefits), learn to skin animals for their teeth, claws, furs and so on however you need to learn these skills beforehand. You can also smoke weed or suck through a water pipe, drink beer and pick locks (but don't get caught in the act). So in effect, the game is making you role play less the stats management, which is a total shame though.
The penal colony also has many places to go, wonders to see and even has a day / night cycle. It's so impressive that people do their daily tasks during the day and at night, they all go to sleep. And during the night, the flames will flicker and the moon will cast some light so even though it's not total darkness, it's advisable to bring a torch – yes the game is that impressive. However because there are practically no loading times, your PC needs to have bucket loads of RAM. Of course modern day computers have no issues yet back then, it was an issue.
And because of all its vastness, there are bugs however and thankfully so, no quest breaking ones. However because it's a true open world game, if you decided to kill everyone you meet (good luck as the only way to do this is by cheating) don't kill off any NPCs with a name unless being told too. Also the game is prone to crash to the desktop now and again however I'm not sure what triggers this so it's wise to save the game once every thirty minutes or so.
Another surprising element in Gothic is everyone speaks to you. Yes all the NPCs have voices and granted, some voices tend to appear more often than others however that's quite impressive though. And all the sound effects like crickets chirping, hearing the flames crackle, creaky floor boards and the waves lashing on the shore are nothing short than marvelous. This certainly adds the already brilliant immersion this game delivers.
At the start, the game is brutally difficult and make no mistake about it. Also it doesn't have creatures bursting with loot once perished. This game will make you work for your next weapon / armour however if you are an astute explorer, you can find a pretty decent weapon early on. Also no one has a quest marker on top of their heads so it pays to talk to everyone you meet and remember their location when you try to cash it in. However about the final quarter, the game gets pretty easy ironically so. And it doesn't help that you get to locate all those cool weapons in a space of five minutes as I feel it's not exactly evenly distributed throughout your adventure. The way I think of the difficulty level is to think exponentially – that is it starts off really slow then about the last quarter, you will become the terminator of the future. It would be better if the difficulty ‘graph’ flattens out a bit as I located an uber weapon way later on only to play another ten minutes to find an even more uber weapon and so on.
Gothic has its strengths and weaknesses like most games however its strengths are also its weaknesses – vast open world free for you to explore at your whim however you need an uber PC to run it / role playing the character at its finest (i.e. frying meat, skinning animals for cash etc) however there's not much of stats management / very little loading times however prone to crash. Yet it may sound like this game is too difficult to muster however, besides all its flaws, this game is a total gem to play due to its immersion – that is you are part of the world instead of looking from outside in.