Gothic - An Entire Series Retrospective and Analysis

in the early 2000s German developer piranha bites would give the world two beloved role-playing games that offered a glimpse of the genre's future with detailed 3D open world's realistic NPC Behavior Dynamic action combat full voice acting and an emphasis on interactivity and player Freedom Gothic 1 and 2 were ahead of their time in many ways and yet it turns out the future wouldn't be kind to the gothic series and various sequels spiritual or otherwise would take Germany's Premier role-playing title into some rather Troubled Water and yet despite repeatedly failing to reach its past Heights Gothic never truly died for one reason and in some ways there is no better time to be a Gothic fan or to jump in and see what the hype was all about [Music] this video will look at the good the bad the worse and some of the more unexpected things that followed from 20 years of Gothic there will be some story spoilers for the mainline games although story was never really their main selling point as was Apparent from the very first title [Music] released in 2001 Gothic would not take the World by storm and it failed to achieve its desired International sales but if there was one place Gothic did conquer it was its country of origin as well as a select few other nearby central European countries the connection between this series and this specific geographical location shouldn't be underestimated there was a time where if you met a Gothic fan they were probably from this area and if you met a video game playing person from this area they were probably a fan of Gothic why this High popularity didn't expand further than this is a little unclear and probably more a result of localization and marketing details than anything else that or maybe something about a game where you're bullied and exploited everywhere you go as you struggle not to get eaten by various Wildlife just spoke to those in Central Europe in a way it didn't to people elsewhere regardless one thing that is easy to understand is why this game was so loved by those who did play it because even to this day there are two things Gothic does better than most other games released before or since and they are immersion and progression Gothic has its share of problems and some of them will soon be apparent but when it comes to these two things Gothic was the king and in some ways it still is still before you get far enough to uncover this there are a few hurdles new players will have to overcome the kingdom of murtana United by King robar II [Music] during the long years of years of rain he was able to defeat all foes of his realm all except one the opening cutscene establishes the setting humans are Waging War against the Orcs And it's a war they're not winning to combat this a penal colony is established on an island for the purpose of mining magical ore that can be used in the war efforts all criminals regardless of crime are then sent to this prison to act as labor and a magical barrier is created around the colony to prevent anyone from escaping this doesn't go as planned however as the barrier is accidentally created too large and in the resulting chaos the prisoners are able to rise up and overthrow the guards to take control for themselves but the prisoners are still trapped inside the barrier and the King still needs his ore and so an uneasy agreement is formed between the two the prisoners will continue to provide or and in exchange the king will provide all the goods and resources they might need to survive and this is the situation the player is quite literally dropped into [Music] The Colony once you wake up and receive a slightly warmer welcome from another Resident of the colony named Diego you can set about overcoming your first challenge which is getting used to the controls it's worth noting that the gothic of today isn't the same game as it was in 2001 or at least it shouldn't be over the years a number of fan made patches have been created and maintained to fix a variety of bugs improved performance and ensure compatibility with modern systems in the past the installation of bees could be a little confusing with a variety of different and potentially necessary options available such as the player kit the system pack the community patch and a mod management tool named spine now though updating Gothic is easier than ever you need one thing and one thing only called Union which is also available as an all-in-one patch that you simply have to download run the installer and select where Gothic is located and then the game is good to go if you don't install this or any of the aforementioned patches you might run into certain problems not least of which are the original controls these revolve around moving with the arrow keys and holding left control to perform actions this is basically an all keyboard setup where your right hand stays fixed on the arrow keys and like most two-handed keyboard control schemes it's pretty bad luckily the system pack allows actions to be performed by Mouse click and provides an alternative control scheme where you can move with wasd the one thing that might still feel a little strange for a more modern gamer is the combat which involves drawing your weapon and then holding left click and pressing the movement buttons to swing your weapon in a desired Direction this means that you can't move and attack at the same time as these actions share the same button and you need to get used to using a mouse click to control which of these two things your character will do this goes against the gaming Norm of having a single input for an attack but if players in 2001 could play this game with two hands glued to their keyboards while pressing left control anytime they wanted to do something maybe it's not too much to ask more modern players to learn a combat system but requires two inputs to perform an attack still combat is likely the hardest thing to get used to for the inexperienced now some people love the combat in Gothic one and two but some people hate it it stood out at the time by virtue of being a real-time Action System in a genre where this hadn't yet become the norm and it stands out today by being different to the norm in a time when real-time action combat is now firmly established at its core it revolves around balancing attacking and moving while timing attacks to string together Combos and dodging or avoiding enemy attacks by moving backwards sidestepping or blocking with left click and back the benefits of this system is that the player's attacks have a lot of weight to them and feel very deliberate and impactful while enemy attacks can often be physically avoided allowing for an element of skill the downside is that it feels clunky and stiff and multiple opponents often cause targeting problems as the lock-on system is bad and without it the game will switch between different enemies somewhat randomly this makes fighting multiple opponents much more deadly than they would be individually and in a way that's appropriately realistic fighting multiple enemies should be harder however it's a shame this is in large part caused by a bad targeting system as this aspect doesn't add to realism your character is meant to be you they should hit the enemy you're trying to hit and anytime you don't feel in control of who you are swinging your weapon at it's to the game's detriment enemies in Gothic can also feel a little overly exploitable for example you might notice some enemies can be repeatedly staggered or can be completely evaded by continuously moving backwards after each attack learning what works against which enemies is part of the strategy but some strategies are just too effective which can cheapen many encounters so combat is not without its problems and overall it does feel dated but that doesn't mean killing enemies isn't satisfying and it wasn't always dated in 2001 action RPGs were rare and many role-playing games were still operating on abstracted dice rolls or zoomed out perspectives by comparison Gothic put you right into the midst of the action and moved the focus away from Dice or numbers and towards actual tangible actions by you or your enemies there are of course still numbers somewhere in the background but this is easy to forget In the Heat of battle and unlike most RPGs of the time there aren't even any visible damage numbers in fact most of the time there are almost no UI elements on screen at all giving the gameplay a more immersive feeling and this isn't only seen in the UI gothic's World features almost no loading screens every NPC in the game is fully voice acted even if the English quality can be inconsistent the map is almost entirely open with later game locations gated through the placement of dangerous enemies rather than any kind of arbitrary restrictions like distinct leveled zones or invisible walls there's also a full day night cycle alongside Dynamic weather effects NPCs move about the world sleeping at night and often performing tasks in the day animals can also move around and will even sometimes attack each other the world itself is dense with things to uncover with a varied topography featuring a lot of verticality alongside a muted color scheme that matches the grounded ensomber setting it's not the biggest open world but Gothic takes the approach of trying to portray its limited setting realistically rather than portraying a huge world unrealistically and this immersive design also extends Beyond visuals I mean for starters this world is surprisingly reactive to the player's actions which is something open World Games still struggle with to this day as was exemplified quite clearly by cyberpunk 2077 a game with great visual design but quickly broke down once the player started to poke around and interact with it meanwhile gothic's over here in 2001 managing to simulate a relatively believable set of social rules which govern all NPC interactions for example if you draw your weapon people will get uneasy or warn you to put it away enter someone's house and they'll ask you what you're doing and tell you to get out start fights in settlements and people might call the guards win fights and you can help yourself to someone's items after they're knocked unconscious and lose fights and you'll find NPCs doing the same thing to you are you hero even animals do more than just wait around for you to step into their aggro range as if you come too close many will warn you to get away first While others might stalk or chase you all in all gothic's design is immersive even by today's standards and this really helps bring the setting to life and as for that setting it can also feel refreshingly realistic thanks in large part to how uncaring it is towards the player for many games it can be hard to escape the fact that you are the main character and that this world and game simply revolve around you they are designed for your needs your entertainment your convenience and this can harm the illusion they're trying to create Gothic on the other hand wastes no time showing you just how insignificant you are and then spends its opening hours repeatedly reminding you of this now in our nameless Heroes defense you are not just another prisoner dumped into the colony having to find his own way you are a prisoner who has been given an important Mission which is to deliver an important letter to the leader of the important fire Mages of course no one actually tells you what's on the letter as you yourself aren't themed important but hey at least you have some greater purpose and so once you get your bearings this is your first objective except after making your way to the old camp at the center of the colony and probably dying to the local Wildlife several times along the way you find that no one really cares about your mission and that everyone has their own problems and way of doing things and part of that involves not allowing any newcomers into the inner camp where the fire Mages happen to be not everyone's exactly welcoming either I mean not long after your arrival you'll start to get shaken down by the guards for protection money and I guess your new friend bloodwin here subscribes to the same annoying philosophy as many online companies do today because this isn't a one-time payment in fact bloodwin expects a by no means insignificant 10 or every day just for his services and if you decline or stop paying the inhabitants of the Old Camp are quick to try to persuade you to reconsider even going as far as to lure you into a fake side quest that ends with you being mugged by a group just outside the camp and as for money you'll quickly find how important it is here and that you never seem to have enough of it basically nothing comes for free and there are lots of things you'll need if you want to have any hope of survival namely training information about a weapon armor a map you get the idea basically all the things that usually get provided up front to a low-level RPG character you'll instead have to work for and so in this game you have a rather good reason to do side quests or explore the environment or turn to Crime where you try to beat the other inhabitants at their own game and all this feels realistic you aren't just strolling into a new town to pick up quests and solve everyone's problems as a result of your Giga Chad's main character status instead your interactions with other people feel logical you want something from them so they are going to ask something from you or they want something from you so you decide to ask them to make it worth your time the actual tasks or characters you interact with aren't that memorable on their own but the setting still always comes across as grounded and believable and as for that setting it's basically Lord of the Flies but instead of a tropical island it's a mining colony and instead of British school children it's a bunch of hardened criminals which is honestly probably slightly preferable regardless this is a place where the strong take advantage of the week and have created their own social structure of exploited labor at the bottom with guards and an inner circle above them and the self-styled all Barrens sitting at the top who wield control through hoarding valuable resources this is then further Complicated by the two other groups who have broken off from the old camp the first is the new camp who have a more relaxed set of rules and social hierarchy and have decided to hoard their ore instead of trading it with the outside world in an attempt to use its magical power to one day bring down the barrier the second group is the Brotherhood a cult who resides in the swamp where they grow potent swamp weed which they trade with the other two groups for goods while worshiping an unknown entity called the sleeper who they believe will lead them to Escaping The Colony it's up to the player which of these three groups they want to align themselves with although the impact on the main story isn't ultimately that significant still aligning with one of them is important as it's the only way you'll be able to attain more powerful armor and it's the only way to get anyone to take you seriously when it comes to achieving the main story's goals the decision of which to choose isn't an easy one either and each group has their advantages the new camp seems fairer than the old camp and they are actively making plans to escape the Brotherhood is shown to treat its members well while providing free swamp weeds and it also has its own higher aspirations and as for the Old Camp well they just come across as a bunch of [ __ ] but they also seem like the most powerful group and in a setting like this it is tempting to just want to stand with The Winning Side before you can be accepted into any of these groups however you will have to prove yourself which comes down to impressing a number of important people and so you'll be forced back out into the Hostile world to perform favors and try somehow to grow in power which leads to that second thing that makes Gothic stand out progress doesn't come easy in this game at the beginning you feel underpowered under equipped and under leveled you don't have any armor the only weapon you'll initially find is a pickaxe something not meant to be used as a weapon at all and your character swings or weapons slow and clumsily something you'll be stuck having to deal with until you've leveled up and spent some of your valuable learning points into raising your one or two-handed weapon skill basically it doesn't really feel like you've been given what you need to overcome the challenges in front of you and yet the game just asks you to overcome them anyway and this is a struggle assuming you're not a Gothic veteran and don't know how to exploit enemies move sets or quickly earn some money your path to success is going to involve a lot of trial and error particularly when it comes to exploration as there are many dangerous enemies out there and only some of them you'll be able to actually defeat this is how exploration works the world is completely open there are many enemies some of them you can kill some of them will kill you so therefore you'll need to discover where you can go and where you can't for a process of trial and error where error ends with your corpse being used as food still every enemy you do kill gives experience points and enemies don't respawn so every bit of experience is Meaningful as is every equipment upgrade you get and nothing will make you feel the progress you've made like coming across an enemy type you've never been able to defeat before and finally having enough levels gear and skill to take them down modern games love to communicate progress to the player they shower you with progress bars pop-ups skill trees colored loot incremental stat increases and more but none of that stuff compares to that sweet sweet revenge that comes from moving one place up in the food chain and so you explore you fight you die you complete side quests you find items by upgrades train skills and get accepted into your establishment of choice also you can be sent on slightly more important tasks for slightly more important people and this is gothic at its best getting to explore the world and immerse yourself in the setting all with a complete lack of hand-holding and that frustrating yet satisfying sense of accomplishment as you grow in strength and uncover more and more of the map the leveling mechanics are relatively simple for an RPG of this time the main decisions are whether to focus on strength or dexterity which alongside weapon stats provide the main damage modifier to attacks and whether to increase one-handed two-handed or ranged skills as well as what non-combat skills like lock picking or skinning animals you want to pick up and whether to use Magic if you don't focus on Magic you can still make use of various Scrolls which become one of your most useful tools in harder encounters still overall character building doesn't have much depth and it doesn't feel like it needs to as it facilitates for satisfying progression that the rest of the gameplay is built upon where Gothic does stumble is in its main story the setting is interesting and it is introduced in a believable way the conflict between the factions and the ability for this to create choice and facilitate player expression has plenty of potential but in the end the main quest lines evolves into a rather generic Endeavor to stop a big bad evil that everyone else is unaware of which basically forces the player into the role of the chosen one in a way that conflicts with much of what actually makes the setting stand out saving this world is a challenging task with many steps along the way including some long densely packed dungeons if you were trying to be generous you could describe this adventure as suitably epic and demanding but being less generous you could also describe it as drawn out and somewhat tedious the story has you traveling to and working with all three camps as well as helping at the mine and meeting the nearby orc population along the way you'll realize that all three of the main groups are rather flawed in their own way the mysterious sleeper who the Brotherhood worships is actually revealed to be the ancient evil the player needs to stop the new camps plan to use their magic ore to take down the barrier is actually revealed to be idiotic and the Old Camp that seems like it's just a bunch of [ __ ] is revealed to be exactly what it seems you also meet the enigmatic zadas a wizard who deserted the fire Mages and now lives alone in a sick Tower to the South is an important character in the series and of everyone trapped inside this barrier he seems to be by far the most knowledgeable of what's actually going on and what needs to be done about it it's on us who will help the player in much of the later stages of the game although he still requires you to do all the busy work because he's more of an inside kind of wizard I guess you'll also work alongside a number of other characters including Diego and some others who assist you on various quests these characters fail to stand out on the strength of their personality but there is a lot to be said for anyone who is willing to help you out in such an unhelpful world and so Bland personality or not their good nature still makes them easy to feel attached to the game ends with you infiltrating the orc Society to gain access to an ancient Temple that contains the sleeper who after some extensive dungeon crawling and a not great but at least they tried boss fight you finally kill this brings down the barrier or at least that's what the closing cutscene tells you when the sleeper was banished into his own Dimension I returned to Daylight the magic barrier had fallen but for me the adventure had only just begun now I would like the record to state that this isn't me being lazy with editing there really are no visuals to accompany these final lines which overall makes very slightly anti-climatic conclusion I mean after everything you've done to get here it would be nice to at least see the barrier go down and maybe hear a word or two on what happens next to all the colonies inhabitants luckily those wanting more answers wouldn't need to wait long as the sequel would pick up directly where the first game ended and as for Gothic 1 it deserves much praise for its immersive design and its strong sense of progression even if its story fails to do the setting Justice and ultimately feels a little forgettable by modern standards it's easy to view gothic's amount of qualities as being surpassed by later games after all Red Dead Redemption 2 has Dynamic horse testicles that change size depending on the weather whereas Gothic doesn't even have horse testicles it doesn't even have horses or testicles and so it's easy to look at the blocky character models or overly angular geography or inconsistent English voice acting or stiff controls and then write Gothic off as dated and janky and you wouldn't strictly be wrong to do so presentation is important and presentation has improved with time still immersion is more than how a game looks and the design of Gothic reveals a world that seems to exist independently of the player and operates on a consistent set of logic to many people this might be less impressive than simply looking good but in an age where many games look good now but might struggle to do more than this Gothic still has some lessons to teach when it comes to immersive game design and even if you want to claim this game has been surpassed in terms of immersion it's hard to say the same when it comes to its sense of progression which in 2022 is as strong as ever maybe even stronger modern games are all about helping the player to ensure no one gets stuck while providing a constant string of incremental upgrades to get your dopamine receptors firing as often as possible Gothic instead turns progression into a slow crawl where the world always feels like it's against you and every upgrade and level up feels needed and put simply they just don't make them like this anymore RPGs aren't all about progression but this is clearly an important part of them and yet what progression means has largely changed this games have evolved into seeming more and more theoretical basically you make progress because numbers go up even if a difficulty scales proportionally right alongside you in Gothic however you make progress because you can now kill that enemy that used to wipe the floor with you which allows you to get to new places on the map or complete previously uncompletable side quests and this feels like the way progress was always meant to be but if Gothic won somehow still doesn't convince you of this it's sequel just might [Music] Gothic 2 would release in late 2002 a mere 18 months after the first game and it took and if it ain't broke don't fix it approach to creating a bigger and Bolder follow-up built on the same engine and picking up exactly where the first game concluded like Gothic 1 years of community patches have improved the experience considerably and like Gothic 1 today Union is all you need and choosing to play the game without it is Highly Questionable a slightly more complicated choice is whether to play Gothic 2 classic vs Gothic 2 Knight of the Raven an enhanced Edition that contains the game's one and only expansion Knight of the Raven now this might seem obvious Knight of the Raven provides a solid 15 to 20 hours of extra content and it is high quality content but there is another change the enhanced Edition adds which is increased difficulty and this is particularly apparent in the early game apparently the loyal Gothic fan base of Central Europe was unhappy that the original Gothic 2 wasn't quite meeting their masochistic fantasies hard enough and so piranabites decided to buff every enemy and take away the player's safe word on the assumption that Gothic 2 fans would probably be kind of into that sort of thing and spoilers they were anyway what this basically means is that if Gothic 1 is normal difficulty Gothic 2 is easy and Gothic 2 Knight of the Raven is hard and so your choice really comes down to easy or hard therefore if you're coming at this from the position of just finishing Gothic 1 the enhanced Edition might be exactly what you want to turn the difficulty up to that next level and relive that brutal yet satisfying progression curve all over again meanwhile if you just finished playing Gothic 1 and thought it was too hard Gothic 2 classic might be the better option as the expansion content isn't strictly needed and you can always replay the game with the enhanced Edition when your body is more warmed up and ready for suffering but if you haven't played Gothic 1 and are skipping straight to the rightfully regarded as Superior sequel the choice becomes a little more difficult Gothic 2 is a better game than its predecessor and as story was never the main selling point of the series skipping the first game might make sense but the actual experience of jumping straight into the enhanced Edition with no prior knowledge of the series is brutal and maybe you'd be into that but don't say you haven't been warned players new to the series might also find the story rather jarring as it does quite literally begin exactly where the last game ended as in you re-watch our nameless protagonist to feed the sleeper but now the cutscene continues as it always should have to show the barrier coming down and then you get crushed by a load of rocks as the temple collapses welcome back to the Colony a few weeks later you're teleported to safety by zadas who takes a mere 21 seconds to tell you of the arrival of a new threat I had feared I might not be able to rescue you from the debris of the temple but enough of that you're here now there's a new threat that we have to deal with so defeating the big evil enemy from the last game has brought out an even worse evil and once more you're going to have to stop it through a process of repeatedly dying to the local Wildlife while completing quests and trying to get stronger so you can find a powerful magic artifact called the eye of inos that's only You The Chosen One can wear also you can save the day all over again this feels rather contrived and while the game does provide at least some explanation from why you've went from being the strongest guy around back to a level one Noob the explanation is just that being crushed by rocks when the temple collapsed made you weaker and made you forget much of your skill which feels a little lazy and doesn't create the most positive first impression for the story luckily once more the setting is more interesting than the storyline itself although Gothic 2's world isn't quite as unique as the Lord of the Flies s colony of the first game instead the game takes place on the island of karinis which is the same island that the mining colony was located it turns out that this island isn't that large with most of the population being contained in a small Port City of the same name or working in the surrounding farmland this means the collapse of the barrier and influx of a large number of convicts has rather destabilized the region and to make matters worse the local Orcs have become emboldened by the fool of the barrier and the cool of a new ancient evil and are amassing their forces in the valley of Minds where the first game took place the humans on coronis are in a poor position to combat this however as after the convicts escaped many took to mandatory and raiding of a local Farmland which was ignored by the city militia the most powerful Farm owner responded to this by hiring a group of mercenaries again mostly comprised of former convicts to defend his land from the bandits but also from the militia who previously collected taxes and food from the Farmland but who the farm owner has decided he shouldn't have to pay if they won't provide any protection and so with tensions between the city and the mercenaries building and the King still in desperate need of magic ore for his war against the Orcs on the mainland a contingent of paladins is sent to fortify the city and take back control of the island this task proves easier said than done however and so the player Wades once more into the middle of the conflict with the freedom to align themselves with one of the Island's main groups the city of militia The Mercenaries all the local fire Mages who reside in a nearby monastery this Choice isn't quite as interesting as in the first game but the group you align with does have a much greater impact on how the rest of the game plays out as there are now a large number of faction-specific quests and you will once more have to align with one of these groups as it's the only way to be able to meet with the leader of the paladins who has the eye of inos that the player is trying to acquire first though you have to gain access to the city of corinis which isn't letting anyone suspicious inside due to the sudden influx of recently released prisoners roaming about you can do this in multiple ways you can pay a fee in Gold work for the local farmers for some clothes to disguise yourself in except an official pass from another suspicious man hanging around outside pretend to be a herb gatherer if you've picked enough herbs or just physically sneak over the wall which all in all makes this one of the best examples of quests having multiple Solutions in the entire series most quests aren't nearly this well endowed but it is common for quests to have more than one solution or outcome and in true Gothic style these choices aren't laid out before you but instead must be uncovered by the player regardless once you make your way into corinis you'll find yourself in a similar situation to the start of Gothic 1 as you are once more at the bottom of the social hierarchy with few people around who care about any of your problems although that's not to say there are none there are some familiar faces who might be more welcoming to you which is something you'll experience throughout your adventure seeing characters you know makes sense as everyone is still on the same island and even if these returning characters may not have left the strongest impression in terms of Personality it's hard to deny that running into people you already know doesn't make the journey more enjoyable it makes the world feel more directly connected to the first game it can be interesting to see what old faces are up to now the barrier is down and those few people who did help you make for a welcome sight in a world where true friends are so rare still to get anywhere in corinis you'll need to prove yourself to the locals and the best way to do that is to get a job this can be done through becoming an apprentice to one of the town's Craftsmen and if you want to be granted citizenship you have to gain the favor of each one of these people likewise even if this is no longer a prison that doesn't mean there aren't still plenty of people trying to take advantage of you or just remind you of your place for example access to the upper District in corinis is restricted due to your lack of citizenship you're not allowed into the local pub without paying a fee mercenaries on the road to the landowner try to extort you and even Random Farm guards might try to shake you down at the start of the game when you don't look like you can put up much of a fight and so you must repeat the same process of completing quests earning favors finding gear gaining experience points and exploring a map full of enemies that are just waiting to tear any low-level poorly equipped Adventurer to pieces and man enemies are good at that now at least they are in the enhanced Edition in Gothic 1 the maps seemed to be fairly evenly divided between enemies you can defeat even fairly early on and enemies you can't in Gothic 2 it's more like there are enemies you can't defeat and places you can't travel to almost everywhere you go and it's your job to find the one or two exceptions this can make every single piece of experience gained feel rewarding while making every jump in power from new equipment feel exciting as it has the potential to open up New Paths to explore that you were previously stuck on having the odds so stacked against you so early on might also encourage you to think outside the box and search for ways to turn the odds back in your favor this might be by taking advantage of various NPCs of which there are some who can escort you as well as guards outside the city or protection on the farms which you can kite and lure enemies towards to get some assistance in combat you might also start to develop certain combat techniques based around enemies lack of artificial intelligence I found myself gravitating towards a few different tried and tested approaches and then anytime I came up against new challenging enemies I would cycle through my repertoire of cheese until I found something that worked I even started to think of different approaches by name you have The High Ground which is good against multiple foes the Left Right spam that's good with Long Reach weapons against individual opponents the constant back pedal good against fast aggressive foes and the constant Circle Strife bane of trolls or anything else that just moves slowly it's because of this that I'd always feel hesitant to refer to gothic's action gameplay as skillful because while it is hard and there is some skill involved it doesn't really come from careful timing or understanding an enemy's moveset or any of the places where one feels skill should come from but rather from understanding the limitations of the enemy's intelligence and then systematically exploiting this wherever possible and if you don't want to follow this approach you can always circumvent the worst of the difficulty by abusing quick saves during combat or just ruthlessly Min maxing your character to the highest degree possible which Gothic 2 makes even more effective thanks to new stat boosting potions tablets and shrines as well as its longer length and higher power ceiling enemies basically come with their own cheap trick to balance all this in the form of critical hits which have for some reason been changed to do 10 times normal damage now instead of double normal damage meaning even less deadly foes can still kill you in seconds if luck goes against you and overall it's a bit of a mess and yet I also can't shake the feeling but it's an inherently enjoyable mess this is a little hard to rationally justify which has made me consider if I and other Gothic fans are just dealing with a strange Stockholm syndrome-like relationship to Gothic combat where positive affection has been beaten into us after dying so many times the basic enemies that or maybe the human capacity to enjoy Revenge really does just run deep meaning it doesn't matter how Victory is achieved as long as it comes eventually regardless there is a lot of combat in Gothic too even more so even on its predecessor and the satisfaction of starting weak and growing strong is even more apparent this second time around there are also some other changes that help make this sequel feel like a more expanded and complete follow-up to the first game though for example increasing your character's skills has been given more depth thanks to a greater selection of non-combat skills as well as scaling costs that make you consider what to increase more carefully the world is also larger as well as being more dense with secrets and items seemingly hidden away behind every corner the locations you visit also feel more diverse particularly with the expansion included the default controls have been vastly improved although this isn't as important for modern players playing each game with the community patches included the inventory has also been revamped and while it still lacks the ability to toggle between different item types it's still a clear Improvement on the first game's single column approach still the most impressive change has to be how the world now evolves as you make progress in the story in the first game you're introduced to a world full of side content but it later devolves into a mostly linear main quest line but in Gothic 2 chapter progression always brings more things to do the first chapter ends with the player joining one of the three factions and then finally gaining an audience with the leader of the paladins Lord Hagen in typical Gothic fashion Hagen isn't willing to just give you the eye of inos and so before he will part with the amulet he wants you to travel east to be dangerous Valley of Minds to find proof of these dragons you claim are coming upon doing this you'll quickly realize the value of Minds is in fact the area that was contained within the barrier in the last game but things aren't quite how you remember them the Orcs have now arrived in force pushing the paladins and militia that had begun to oversee the mines into the fortifications of the former Old Camp the camp isn't doing so well however having been partly burnt To The Ground by a dragon attack and now being under constant Siege by the Orcs and so you arrive under the cover of night needing to sneak into this Camp which is a really interesting scenario you're not just completing side quests or exploring the Wilderness anymore instead you're forced to sneak around in the dark trying to identify a way into the fort while under the constant threat of orc attack once you get inside you meet the Paladin in charge who can provide you with written proof of a dragon attack but only if you check on the slatters of each of the all mines for him and so you are given an excuse to head back out into the world of the first game now forever changed by the removal of the barrier and the arrival of Orcs and explore this familiar yet different location things don't stop here however as when this is complete and you return to karinis you find a new threat has arrived by way of The Seekers shadowy Mages that roam the land intent on stopping the player and this isn't the only change as the world itself has moved forwards with areas like Farms being attacked or NPCs having new quests and dialogue and updates to the conflict between the militia and The Mercenaries this really gives the feeling of a living world and so mostly forgettable characters from earlier might return to have a further role to play while single quests you've previously completed turn out to be chains and old areas have a reason to be re-explored the main quest itself is once more less interesting however it revolves around the three gods of this world in us God of Light and order bellyar the god of death and darkness and adonos the god of balance the new evil threat mentioned by zardas at the start of the game are the forces of bellyar and so you must acquire and repair the eye of inos to allow you to fight the dragons while working with Mages from all three of these gods then with the amulet repaired you want more return to the valley of Minds to deal with the dragons where you'll find the Zone once more updated with a new Dragon Hunter faction having being formed that you can often work alongside to take on these new powerful foes the dragons themselves don't make for especially interesting boss fights and if you're unlucky you can get killed in a single breath attack or just struggle to do enough damage to outpace their health regeneration still if you do struggle here it does make fried Good's opportunity to use any powerful Scrolls or consumables you might have been hoarding and at the same time as all this the player can also travel to a new section of the island introduced by the Knight of the Raven expansion to befriend Pirates explore beaches jungles and ruins and complete the Side Story that once more focuses on the threat of bellyar and a returning character named Raven who was formerly an or Baron and now leads an expedition in search of a powerful artifact of the dark God the content added by this expansion is high quality although perhaps unsurprisingly its story proves its weakest section one thing the expansion does deserve praise for is how seamlessly it was integrated into the base game there are several new characters who start showing up right from the earliest hours of the game that go on to play a big part in the expansion and the questline that leads you to this new area is interwoven into the existing story in such a way that you probably wouldn't even realize this content has been added on top of the pre-existing storyline still with the expansion probably completed and the dragons of the valley of Mines eventually defeated the player can move into the final chapter of Gothic 2 where you're tasked with forming a crew and commandeering a ship so you can sail to a nearby Island and defeat the leader of dragons again the story itself does little to impress but the process of picking your crew out of the many people you have helped feels immensely satisfying it's a perfect reminder of how far you've come and how much you've achieved and setting sail with a ship full of friends and allies is a great way to bring your adventure to a close once you arrive at the final Island it plays out as one last dungeon that concludes with you defeating an undead dragon before the credits can roll however your old pal zardas shows up to absorb the soul of the dragon and become the chosen of bellyar as bellyar is kind of evil this makes for an interesting twist and casts all the help zadas has provided you with over both games in a much more manipulative light Gothic 2 then ends with zardas saying you will meet again and the player setting sail for the mainland of Matana leaving events nicely poised for a sequel and so Gothic 2 is gothic one but bigger and better the one area where it feels inferior is in the originality of its setting as Gothic 2's more traditional medieval fantasy locations don't stand out as much as the prisoner-run colony of the first game but otherwise Gothic 2 expands and improves much of what made the first game work so well while offering more content that feels better paced throughout the biggest problem with Gothic 2 as a standalone title is that it benefits greatly from having played Gothic 1 first without this experience the enhanced Edition makes for a brutally difficult introduction that doesn't always explain its mechanics well where you're thrown into a story you won't be familiar with and will miss out on the added benefit of seeing familiar faces and revisiting past locations and so even if two is a technically better game it's difficult to recommend as a starting point also the story once more feels like the weakest aspect although Gothic 2 does seem like it might be setting up a more narratively interesting sequel and the next Gothic game would at least be interesting it would be four more years until Gothic fans would get their hands on the next entry in the series and when they did not everything would be as they remembered still one trans Gothic 3 did continue was starting the story immediately where the last game left off and so our nameless hero returns still aboard the same ship as when we last saw him and on route to the mainland of murtana here we find that the human war against the Orcs has not developed favorably perhaps owing in part to the lack of A Certain Magical ore after the event of the first game but regardless the Orcs have begun to conquer and enslave the human population occupying all of the major towns and forcing the Mages in the capital city to create another barrier this time surrounding the city to prevent any more awk forces from getting in the human King robar II alongside his few remaining forces are then trapped inside this barrier within a castle still besieged by Orcs while other human resistance can be found by way of Rebel camps hidden amongst the wilderness just like with previous games the player wants more steps into the middle of this conflict and can shape its outcome through their actions but unlike previous games the way this actually happens is a bit different now if there is one thing which Gothic 3 deserves credit for it is ambition and at times the fruits of this are easy to enjoy such an ambitious sequel did come at a cost however which could be most clearly seen in the game's technical problems bugs are not a new thing for the series but Gothic 3 took this familiar downside even further and the problems didn't stop there this game was once notorious for requiring such a high-end PC to run but even today on a modern system with an RTX 3080 I still experienced frequent frame drops and stuttering and put simply it runs horribly maybe a 3080 is not a good enough GPU to run Gothic 3. maybe Gothic 3 was instead playing the long game and was more designed with a 4090 in mind it seems more likely however that someone just really [ __ ] up somewhere the general consensus behind this game is that it was severely rushed in development and ultimately forced the release before it was ready with series producer Joe Woods usually getting most of the blame what exactly happens remains unclear but regardless the impact can be seen in the game's review scores which were markedly lower than either of the previous titles luckily however modern players no longer have to suffer the constant frame drops or excessive bugs because once more the community stepped in to save the day first we've been now familiar Community patch which included numerous bug fixes as well as widescreen support and better Mouse controls and many years later with the parallel universe patch which has finally fixed the stuttering and load times to make Gothic 3 at long last run as smoothly as it always should have this parallel universe patch was released as recently as 2021 15 years after the game first came out that is how long Gothic fans had to wait to play this game with a smooth frame rate and that's how dedicated the gothic fan base still is to this series even to this day so with Gothic 3 finally fixed how is the actual game you may Wonder well the opening cutscene has the player stepping off his ship and into a local town to see humans being mistreated by the ruling Orcs the game then starts with battle raging around you between the Orcs And your companions while tutorial messages start popping up on screen get through these messages and you might find an even greater roadblock which is the insane mouse sensitivity put simply the default sensitivity is so high with so much added acceleration but even the smallest mouse movements will have the camera spinning wildly out of control head into the option menu and turn the sensitivity down to the lowest setting and it might still be too sensitive but to turn both sensitivity and smoothing right down and maybe you can get the camera under control still the problems don't end here I began my Gothic 3 experience by being repeatedly knocked down by Orcs the Orcs don't kill you for some reason even though you are trying to kill them instead they just try to take your gold of which you have none and then they wander off but being knocked to the ground does disarm you meaning when your character gets back up again not only will they have only a sliver of Health remaining but also you need to pick up and re-equip your weapon in the midst of battle before you can do anything this means you'll quite likely get locked in a cycle of repeatedly being knocked down without any hope of defeating your opponents keep in mind this is the tutorial and the only way I found out was restarting the game which I had to do more than once to finally get through this battle now it's worth pointing out that at this time I did have the community patch installed but I hadn't yet installed the parallel universe patch and part of the reason this tutorial was so difficult was because of a setting the community patch turns on by default called alternative AI this is an important setting because it greatly increases the aggression of enemies which makes fighting multiple enemies at a time frustratingly challenging without alternative AI turned on however enemies are so passive that you can stand in the middle of a 10 plus group while repeatedly spamming the attack button and defeat all of them one by one as they all stand back waiting for their turn to be on the receiving end of your blows so basically you'll have to pick your poison alternative AI works well for small enemy groups but can make larger groups feel near impossible and not selecting this option removes all sense of intelligence from enemies and makes the majority of combat overly easy another option added by the community patch is alternative balancing which limits the number of skill points given to the player to likewise increase the level of Challenge and force you to specialize your character this might be a good addition for repeat playthroughs but most new players should probably leave this off so you can have more flexibility in how you level up as for my Approach I left alternative balancing off and played the majority of the game suffering away with alternative AI turned on I mean dying to basic enemies does feel like the gothic way after all still towards the end of the game there are so many encounters with large numbers of opponents I eventually turned alternative AI off and never regretted that decision even once combat's problems don't end at inconsistent difficulty however and this is one of the first aspects you'll notice that has been changed for the worse in the first two games combat could be clunky but it was accompanied by good animations and every swing of your weapon had weight and felt impactful in Gothic 3 all sense of weight or impact has been lost and instead your character just repeats a simple animation over and over that visually seems more like it's attacking the air in front of you than any actual enemy this is accompanied with almost no sound effect for the weapons impact and there's even a significant delay between pressing the attack input and your character starting to swing their weapon just to make combat feel even less responsive there's hardly any skill to this either it is beneficial to sometimes block or just wait for the right opportunity to start attacking and with alternative AI you may need to find a way to deal with multiple enemies at once for which I tended to go with the classic stand on a rock or ledge and slowly shoot everyone to death one by one but generally once you start swinging away enemies can be chain stunned so you just need to keep attacking until they fall over there are both lights and heavy attacks as well as special moves which cost stamina but using them doesn't offer much of an advantage and combat quickly feels repetitive the one silver lining is that ranged combat is improved with a free aim system that works exactly as you'd expect and Magic returns and can be very effective still this isn't enough and combat feels like a vast downgrade over the previous games and combat isn't the only downgrade Gothic 1 and 2 both featured very minimal uis which fits perfectly with their immersive approach to World design but the third game has for some reason went three more MMO like Style with a very noticeable Hotbar now permanently glued to the bottom of the screen alongside other unneeded cutter like a compass which I never once actually made use of even Stranger Than This is the choice of font I've sometimes fought the hate for Comic Sans is a little over the top but that was before I played Gothic 3 which for some reason spits its text between a fairly respectable and normal times new roman-like fonts for all dialogue alongside the cheap and cheerful looking Comic Sans for names items and pop-up messages this looks more than a little out of place and so confused was I at the repeated intrusions of Comic Sans across my screen when playing this game that I went looking for some kind of explanation online the only reason I found was that apparently according to a guy on Reddit the original font caused the frame rate issues which is something I wasn't aware certain fonts even did but if a game was going to drop frames for a reason like font's choice I guess it would make sense that it's this one anyway apparently Varna knows more about this but I don't know who Varna is so this tragedy will have to remain Untold regardless the use of Comic Sans in this case is a tragedy and I don't think any font choice in any piece of media I have consumed has ever struck me as quite so intrinsically wrong another thing that can initially feel wrong is the returning characters Gothic 3's voice acting isn't bad by which I mean Gothic 1 and 2's English voice acting weren't good either but I already gave them a pass so it would be a bit unfair to only pick on Gothic 3. still thanks to new character models voice actors and the writing none of the returning characters with the one exception of zardas actually feel like the same people you knew in the last game their relationships in the player also feels off with the group who accompany you feeling overly close at the start of the game and yet they all immediately go off to do their own thing and become largely irrelevant as soon as the tutorial is over and on the topic of writing the quest design is also a lot more basic now with quests following a quantity over quality approach that once more often evokes the feeling of an MMO far too often the objective will be something akin to collect 10 healing routes or bring five weapon bundles and the context Behind These tasks can often feel contrived the lack of quest markers and continued Reliance on spoken or written descriptions to find your objectives is at least still intact which encourages you to listen to what you're told and search your surroundings carefully but that's about the only positive there is to say about most of these quests finally it's hard to claim that Gothic 3 has a similar feel to its predecessors the world design and atmosphere in the first two games felt very grounded and Bleak but just from color palette alone Gothic 3 establishes a more vibrant and Fantastical feeling to its world a good way to Simply illustrate this is through the visual design of the many herbs you can pick up which now come in a rainbow assortment of different colors and look nothing like what you might see in the last game or in our own reality the excessive use of Bloom which sometimes makes certain NPCs seem positively incandescent also feels overdone and doesn't help matters and while this rich and welcoming visual style of the world isn't bad in its own right it is inarguably different still if you can look past these differences there is a lot about Gothic 3's visuals that can be praised the abrupt draw distance can detract from the environmental Ensemble but otherwise this world looks fantastic for a game released in 2006. this is in part aided by patches and modern technology but even so many parts of this world really do look great with dense authentic looking forests full of ground foliage and Scenic Rolling Hills nestled between rivers and mountains and multiple distinct towns with different layouts and architecture progress further into the game and you'll travel to the vast deserts of varant as well as the snowy mountains and valleys of northmar both of which provide a complete change of scenery and a lot of visual diversity the map is also huge with no loading screens at all and yet despite this vast size the design still has a handcrafted feel to it where different locations each feel distinctive and detailed it is a seriously impressive achievement in a time when open world games were so rare and the large size and open-ended design for a game in 2006 was almost unrivaled almost there are problems created by this vast size however although not usually related to gameplay you can find teleport runes for each major location which provides a degree of limited fast travel that strikes a nice balance between convenience and immersion and the world is usually enjoyable to travel through and explore the problems instead come from the game trying to depict such a large area and the impact this has on the setting and law Matana is an entire country as our varent and nordma and the total land mass in this game seems to make up much of the known world this is in complete contrast to the last games which were content with portraying one small area of what seemed to be a much larger setting this meant you heard of kings and Wards and Nobles and were given the impression that this setting extended far beyond the confines of the in-game map but by choosing to depict almost the entire setting of this series in one single game it has become almost impossible to accurately portray everything to scale making the world and setting feel much smaller as a result and raising hard to answer questions about what specifically is and isn't depicted in game to see what I mean with this consider a few examples like where did the Orcs live before Conquering the human towns because there isn't a single orc settlement anywhere in the first games the Orcs seemed to live a more tribal existence but now the tribal quality seem to have been dropped and the Orcs exist entirely within human occupied settlements that have only just been occupied or what about the Navy of Matana that you heard of multiple times the only ship in game is the one you arrive on and there isn't a single port in Matana varent or nordma so how does that work and when questioning about where certain things are I do sometimes wonder where the women are in this universe not that there are no female NPCs in Gothic 3 but there aren't that many with it seeming to be about one female for every 30 or 40 males and wow if people think Tinder is Harsh it's a good thing you don't have to try dating in this world not that it would be preferable to be a woman because oh God that is a lot of child birthing per person that must be necessary to maintain current population levels Gothic 1 didn't have many female NPCs because it wasn't all male prison Gothic 2 did have female NPCs and may have had more in the city of corinis than in the entirety of Gothic 3 even if it still may not be a good game if you specifically want female representation Gothic 3 on the other hand just feels absurd and there are other generally more minor parts of this world but don't really hold up to scrutiny if this is in fact meant to be close to the entire known world and so the setting feels like it's been reduced in both realism and scale to be forcefully fit into a single game when there was no reason this was actually necessary the sense of progression the series was previously known for has also been harmed as the open design of the world has clearly prioritized player Freedom over player progress you can still find more difficult enemies fairly early but the roll B's play is very small and rather than unlocking more of the map as your character grows in strength you can now go anywhere and will experience only small changes in difficulty likewise Lutz has seen a downgrade with nearly all important items being relegated to chests and all chests having a random loot table that makes finding upgrades unpredictable and much less impactful the one area you will still experience a strong sense of progress is the new reputation system which brings us to the towns and the bulk of what counts for the game's actual story there are multiple factions within this world namely the Orcs Rebels and Rangers in Matana the hashishin and Nomads in barant and the people of northmar to the north you also gain reputation for individual settlements so in practice this means completing quests will gradually increase your reputation for each settlement and then when you have enough reputation you can progress its individual questline through meeting settlement leaders and usually attacking a rival faction settlement to help take it over or destroy it these later quests alongside a select few others will provide you with faction reputation and this will eventually allow you to speak to certain faction leaders as well as get better quality armor and find some of the main story related artifacts that might sound confusing in theory so to see how this works in practice the first orc Town you'll come across will probably be Cape done and near to Cape done is a secret Rebel Camp named Red Oak you are free to complete Quests for NPCs at both locations and then when your reputation is high enough with red oak the rebels will ask you to liberate Cape done and when high enough with cape done the orc leader asks you to find and destroy redoc some other quests May tie into this task like freeing a paladin in Cape done or arming slaves there with weapons but ultimately it will come down to the player making a choice and then attacking either the Orcs or the rebels the battle this leads to is actually rather exhilarating I mean there is something far more immersive to just killing all NPCs as they exist within the world instead of just following a scripted Quest as you might do in most games the resulting battle is also an absolute mess that by no means provides a good gameplay experience but these large organic set pieces are undoubtedly one of the most memorable things about Gothic 3. it is a bit of a shame then but the process of completing side quests meeting leaders and taking over settlements is basically the same for every town in Matana narratively the Orcs verse slaves and Rebels conflict is enjoyable but it only stands out the first time and in the end you basically get the same experience and story in every different town you go to varent and nordma provide something a little more distinct but they also feel a bit more disconnected from the events in Matana the capital city of Matana that was sectioned off due to the barrier also stands out and finding a teleportation room to finally get inside the city and see what's going on is really exciting even if what you find is just many many Orcs you need to kill that ultimately leads to the same old fetch quests as normal and as for the main story it barely exists which may not be such a bad thing much of the world's story is told through the factions and their various conflicts with the only main quest objective distinct from this for most of the game being to find that pesky zardas fellow in typical zardas fashion he is hanging out near the edge of the map in another sick tower that you likely won't even reach until quite late into the game when you do finally reunite with your former Mentor turned potential betrayer it's a little anti-climactic it turns out the whole Avatar of bellyar thing he had going after absorbing the undead dragon soul was just a way to gain power and the reason zardas has been helping the Orcs to defeat the humans on Matana was because he wanted to use the Orcs to find several powerful artifacts the artifacts themselves are dotted around the world and you may well have found several even before reaching zardas at the end of various other quest lines regardless the purpose of these artifacts is to end the war between the gods bellyar and inos and free humans from Godly control once and for all to do this zadas wants you to kill the leader of the hashishin who have a culture centered on worshiping bellyar and kill the matanyan king robar who alongside the paladins are worshipers of inos sawdust won't actually help you do this he is still more of an inside wizard after all so it's up to you to head off to both of the capitals and start hacking away at various NPCs until no one is left moving or you can ignore zardas's request and instead side with robar or the leader of the hashishin to instead become the champion of either Belia or inos and end the war by killing the leader of the Orcs And the remaining rival faction leader side with zadas however and the two of you wander off into the sunset which involves manually running from one side of the map to the other where you will open and journey for a portal to the unknown land that nothing really is known about which I guess at least explains the name the final thing you see is some Comic Sans scrolling across the screen for one last time which I guess is a fitting ending well then here we go we open the portal to the unknown land and left this world forever whatever awaits us there is another story some fallout-esque slides will inform you of the fate of the world as a result of your actions thus bringing to an end a very mixed experience one thing spending time with this game makes clear is that Gothic 3 had huge potential for its time its open world was one of the most impressive ever made being both huge in size and rich in detail and achieving this without loading screens and yet this came at the cost of numerous performance related problems that only recently have been reliably fixed other than this The World Is Still enjoyable to explore and the conflict between the various factions and the player's involvement within this feels unique and exciting unfortunately this is once again not supported by a memorable main storyline or a strong cast of characters and the previously excellent sense of progression has been greatly diluted by the larger and more open structure Gothic 3 also has the worst combat in the series and there are still many enemies you will need to kill before getting anywhere near the game's end that said it is still an immersive game in its own way but Gothic 3 would also have to compete with another Juggernaut of the open world role-playing genre and in this great 2006 Battle of the Titans Oblivion won easily and years later few people would even remember Gothic 3's name the Rivalry between the Elder Scrolls and Gothic arguably started years earlier between fans of the original games and the Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind but while these games were similar by virtue of being early 3D open world RPGs they were still very different in many other ways and it was easy to see how the world had room for both when it came to Gothic 3 however the two series had become much more similar and Oblivion released earlier in the year while setting a standard of Polish and quality that was difficult for the more inconsistent Gothic 3 to be compared to if you can look past this game's flaws it is worth playing to experience what is honestly one of the most unique and ambitious open world RPGs ever created but the flaws are big and frequent and in the end this would prove to be the final Gothic game but developer piranha bites would ever work on still the gothic series didn't end here even if perhaps it should have [Music] released in 2010 Arcania Gothic 4 is a game that most fans of the series reject this is largely because of a departure of the original developer but there were plenty of other changes that fans were unhappy with as well and so if you ask the average Gothic fan about this game they will likely try to avoid acknowledging it exists check the Wikipedia page and you will see it listed as a spin-off rather than a main entry and few today still even consider the events of its story Canon and there is some Merit to this rejection as shortly after its release the gothic IP was returned to piranha bites still there was once a time when Arcania seemed to be the future of the series and it was a future which didn't seem very promising set 10 years after the events of Gothic 3 this time you would not be playing as the same nameless hero of the first three games but instead would be fighting against him yes it turns out following the death of Roma II presumably at the nameless Hero's hand he then went on to Crown himself ruler of Matana and took up the name robar the Third the player instead now takes the role of a young Farmer on a remote island whose only concern seems to be getting laid or maybe the opening was about true love I couldn't really tell regardless your first and only objective is to convince Ivy's father to let you marry her and so you set about completing a number of simple tasks to win his favor as you explore tutorial Island along the way you're aided by returning character Diego who actually seems like a more fleshed out unlikable character than he was in the previous games unfortunately the only reward you get for completing your long list of basic fetch quests is to return to your village in time to see it burning to the ground as your childhood sweetheart Ivy is killed by an arrow the culprits bear the mark of the no longer nameless King robot the third who since the last game has defeated the remaining Orcs and is now leading an invasion against a southern island named Argan and so with the generic main quest premise in place you set Sao to argon with Diego in order to seek your revenge against the king being on the other side of the conflict to the previous game's protagonist is an interesting hook that leaves you wanting to uncover robot's motivations and there was a time when I thought Arcania might turn out to have the best story of any Gothic game my reasons for this optimism were due to the more in-depth side quests and character writing which makes your interactions with other NPCs more memorable as well as the potential shown in some of the earlier quest lines focused on local political disputes where these issues were portrayed with an impressive amount of complexity alas The Narrative gets worse as the game progresses and arcania's problems don't end there one positive you can say about this game is that it does at least avoid Comic Sans this doesn't mean the UI design has improved much however and the gaussian blur applied to all dialogue text boxes in particular looks very cheap the MMO style action bar also returns and now it's accompanied by a rather large mini-map I also found that after reading a recipe for the first time I was stuck with a crafting icon at the bottom of the screen for the rest of the game despite my repeated efforts to make it go away by any means possible as for the combat it also shows Improvement although after Gothic 3 the bar was not exactly High still there is a greater focus on movement and dodging enemy attacks this time around and weapon swings once more feel like your character is actually swinging a weapon the overall feel of combat is a bit too rkd however which does nothing to help immersion and also chain stunning enemies by repeatedly spamming attacks is again overly effective but at least combat encounters do now ask a little bit more from the player than the last game did the camera also seems a strange Choice as you're forced to play the entire game with the camera locked closely behind your shoulders except for when you draw your weapon which causes the camera to slowly pull back to a fixed zoomed out perspective this is slightly frustrating the camera feels too close outside of combat and too zoomed out during combat and for the first few hours I found myself constantly wishing I could just control the camera myself I mean this isn't my first rodeo in fact I have been successfully controlling cameras in video games for years not to brag or anything but I am pretty much a camera controlling master so it would be nice if I could just be trusted to zoom the camera in and out myself alas Arcania would not trust me to do this and the lack of faith in the player would end up being a bit of a repeated pattern for starters say goodbye to exploring an open world instead Arcania is split into a linear series of gated off zones you basically start in One Mini area where you do a couple of quests and a few side quests before gaining a key password or letter that you take to a gate of some kind to be let into the next mini area where you do the same thing all over again this means any sense of genuine exploration is pretty much lost and this restrictive structure feels boring and artificial you're never given any incentive to return to any of these homes and so you really do just progress linearly through this rigidly contained world it's not a big world either and this is certainly not a lumpy game with a single playthrough coming in at around 20 hours still despite this short length Arcania doesn't least manage to pack its worlds with a lot of very similar looking usually Goblin filled caves that you will be sent to on far too many quests to go alongside this there is an incredibly stripped down progression system where each level up gives the player three skill points that they can put in various stat increasing skills in total there are two skills which increase your melee damage by one percent one for ranged attacks one for defense a pointless one for sneaking and three types of spells fire spell and Ice spell and a lightning spell therefore it is important to decide whether you want to focus on Magic melee or range damage but that's about the only choice this skill tree presents as it makes sense to put all your points into one single skill until it's maxed and then move on to the next most useful skill and so on making level apps rather boring there's also no more out of combat skills and all the arm upgrades are given to you freely by following the main story so the only other progression comes by way of weapon upgrades another series staple that has been lost are factions a few quests do have some minor choices but there are no factions in this game and no major decisions that might provide an incentive to replay it by this point you may be starting to see the real problem with Arcania which is that this game barely even feels like it's trying what is here isn't that bad but this game doesn't have much content nor does it do anything particularly well and ultimately there's just very little about it that even stands out the only real piece of Praise I do think it deserves is for its visuals it isn't the most graphically impressive game for its time but there are at least a few specific locations that do look great and display a genuine sense of style and creativity namely the first town you arrive at stork and the giant tree where the Mages live in the swamp the environments in general don't look bad either but this is nowhere near enough to make this game feel worth actually playing as for the story the conflict between the invading King robot and the inhabitants of the island doesn't seem to be going anywhere and so you journey across the island doing fetch quests as you go along the way you will meet many returning characters but they never seem to have a good reason for actually being here I mean Diego could just have been a coincidence but you'll meet Gorn who is now a guard in Stuart Lester who is hanging out around the swamp Milton who is once more the head of a group of Mages and a few others when you met returning characters in Gothic 2 and 3 it made sense as you were either in the same location or had traveled together at the start of the game if the returning characters in Arcania had traveled with King robar then that would be one thing but having them each arrive independently to start a new life on this new island feels very implausible still the story has bigger problems than this along your journey you discover that King robot is actually possessed by a demon which turns out to be the sleeper from the first Gothic you also find out that the one who attacked your peaceful Island was not the king but his General drawer hang who acted on his own you arrive at the main city of the island to find it overrun by Undead and then you work with the king's forces to defeat draw hang who has now gone Rogue before trying to excise the sleeper from the King to do this you are once more aided by zadas who tells you about another demon goddess connected to the Island's history who is the one trying to summon the sleeper so you go and kill this demon before it can cause any more trouble while hoping to free the king in the process except the final cut scene suggests this doesn't go quite as planned as two men and an orc complete a ritual at the same time which seems to summon the sleeper instead of destroy him although it's hard to say exactly as the cutscene isn't that clear the three who perform this ritual are not seen in the game before this and two of them are completely unknown the last is thoros an unmemorable Guard from the old camping Gothic 1 and 2 who shows up again as an unmerable Town guard in Gothic 3. it's hard to know why thorus of all people would be involved in some ritual like this or why the writers would choose him of all characters for this role it also feels a bit strange because by this point I have killed Boris a couple times already but oh well with the demon now presumably in this world the credits roll making for a strange and confusing ending to an otherwise forgettable main story it's hard to say if the strange nature of the ending is the result of a poor attempt to set up a sequel or if the game was simply unfinished but I guess it doesn't really matter a sequel to Arcania never came and few today presumably still care about any part of its story Arcania Gothic 4 is not a terrible game but there is little about it that is genuinely good and not much of the gothic series DNA can still be found in its design for the most part this is a short generic action RPG set in a typical fantasy world where most of your time is spent proceeding through uninteresting dungeons at times Gothic 4 almost feels as if it was only made to retroactively make Gothic 3 look good as if it was one desperate developer's attempt to prove the Gothic 3 haters wrong and secure the third game's Legacy amidst the series obviously that's not actually true Arcania was a cheap formulaic attempt to cash in on a once beloved series that was made by a publisher who knew they would soon lose the rights to the IP anyway and so it was that Gothic died not with a bang but a whimper with one final title whose main Legacy is how much fans try to distance it from the other games in the series and with that the story is over also it seemed it's been 12 years since the last official Gothic game was released and yet this series is neither gone nor forgotten in fact several successes to the gothic games of old would appear over the years and sometimes in unexpected places the first of these was actually released one year before Arcania and saw the original developer piranha bites return with what seemed like an attempt to create the sequel to Gothic 2 that fans always wanted and never got risen released in 2009 and was a much more faithful sequel to the first two games in the series than Gothic 3 or 4 ever were the player takes the familiar role of a nameless hero who is Shipwrecked and washes ashore a mysterious island surrounded by storms so once more you start with nothing and are forced to explore a dangerous Island as you uncover the details of the setting and earn the favor of one of the three factions The Local Company of Bandits the Warriors of the Inquisition or an order of Mages as you might expect few people you meet will be initially friendly and the early hours of the game can involve working out how to sneak into the local Town being pushed around by Bandits or getting captured and forced into servitude by the Inquisition the story then proceeds to focus on the Island's temples the enigmatic leader of the Inquisition Mendoza and the powerful beings known as Titans but as you might expect the main story isn't really risen's strong point Instead This is a game but once more excels at those two things that first made Gothic so remarkable immersion and progression the island is designed with a similar approach to before where most of the world can be accessed right from the start and yet dangerous enemies are frequent and will limit your ability to travel to certain areas the equipment and skill system will be instantly familiar to any experienced Gothic player and there is a strong sense of needing to work for your progress as you explore the island kill enemies and complete various quests the combat system can feel a little stiff but it's much closer to what modern players would expect from an action RPG you can block parry and Dodge as well as use a number of special attacks and your timing will impact your ability to chain attacks together effectively and perform combos attacks do require a little bit of aiming and the automatic targeting is sometimes inconsistent but overall it's an effective combat system that is superior to later Gothic games and easier to get into than the early ones risen has other improvements to offer as well its Graphics are more modern and show off some strong environmental design the voice acting is solid and better than any actual Gothic game and the quests and character writing feel more fleshed out while fitting with the tone of the world where risen does seem to struggle a bit is reaching the same highs as the first two Gothic games I mean exploration and progression are good but they don't manage to be quite as exciting this time around the world features a lot of the same immersive Design Elements but a small 3D open world with weather effects a day night cycle and dynamic NPCs just isn't as impressive in 2009 as it was in say 2001 and the traditional structure of starting off at the bottom exploring a challenging Island meeting and joining various factions and seeing your character growing strength can all at times give off a bit of a been there done that feeling for any Gothic veterans which makes the familiar structure less effective than it once was in a sense risen can be seen as the anti-gothic 3. it is faithful but it's not that ambitious it does replicate a lot of the series strengths but it rarely expands or innovates with anything new and while the setting and characters are completely original they don't manage to be much more memorable risen also came with plenty of bugs some still intact today I'd recommend to quick save before any time you press jump it also had an infamously poor console Port that was outsourced to a separate Studio resin may also have suffered from being the wrong game for its era I say this because it was a more grounded and deliberately challenging game where players die frequently and have to progress with little hand-holding but this was still a couple years before dark souls had came along and made hard games cool again and so these potentially positive features were often criticized as being outdated and boring a 12 year old Angry Joe review where he calls risen the worst RPG on Xbox 360 captures this sentiment well so at first hardcore RPG so that it forces you to do things like put away your weapon if you want to pick something up or cook your own food or pick a berries unfortunately it commits the worst offense the cardinal sin it's boring boring weapons boring armor and boring Loot and without an interesting story and not a single unique memorable character there's not much point so maybe it was no surprise that piranha bites sequel Risen 2 would move the series further away from its roots when it released three years later this sequel made more of an attempt to modernize this formula but it was received poorly by longtime fans and it failed to gain much traction with modern audiences either the next sequel Risen 3 was viewed as a bit more of a return to form but it was still plagued with technical problems and seen as inferior to both risen 1 and its earlier inspirations piranha byte's next attempt was elix which released in 2017 and would see the developer return to a much larger game world with a completely new science fantasy themed setting elix offered more of a mix of old and new with novel new features like the jetpack as well as improved combat and a familiar focus on exploration and factions it's also sometimes regarded as piranavite's best post-gothic game but enough time has passed and enough things have changed by this point that it's a bit harder to say that elix feels like a true spiritual successor to the early Gothic games rather than just a game with certain design similarities elix Woods get a sequel which released earlier this year but before that something else happened to stir the gothic fandom from Ben now long Slumber which very few people saw coming in late 2019 a playable demo appeared on Steam one night for a Gothic remake this project was headed by THQ Nordic after their acquisition of piranha games and the demo was basically a proof of concept made using Unreal Engine 4 to test the viability of creating a full game however following significant fan interest the project was fully greenlit and while news on the Remake has since been relatively sparse and a release date has yet to be announced it has been confirmed but development is still ongoing and new footage was shown last August at Gamescom and so the gothic Series has been given a new chance at life through a faithful yet modern take on the classic game which started it all thus bringing Gothic to a new generation of fans while allowing old ones to revisit the colony in true HD Glory at least that's how marketing will surely frame it ultimately time will tell the real story but there are some reasons to feel cautious of course there is only so much you can tell from a proof of concept demo that was designed in part to generate feedback but it has to be said the demo itself is a little strange graphically it does look great but it's hard to claim that this really feels like the same setting partly that's because of the rich colors and maxed Outpost processing and particle effects everywhere but there's more to it than just looks for starters where once the opening involved the player being pushed into the colony and then knocked out by some of the locals now it's a full-blown cinematic set piece complete with explosions and constant narration from a main character whose personality shows no similarities to the understated nameless hero of old this scripted cinematic intro continues for quite a while as you're saved by and introduced to Diego and nothing about this really feels like Gothic it's as if the demo is trying too hard to impress people which conflicts with the way gothic's World stood out by seeming like it didn't care about the player again this is just the intro and it is still only a demo but to me it doesn't give the impression of a game made by fans of Gothic 1 so much as an approximation of gothic's details made by fans of popular video game Blockbusters like God of War or The Last of Us get through this sequence and you'll find an admirable commitment to making the player find things for themselves and Quest design with multiple approaches alongside NPCs trying to take advantage of you or treating you with a lack of respect which is all admittedly very Gothic but it's still hard to shake the feeling that the Remake gets more wrong than it gets right and that this isn't going to be the game Gothic fans might want it to be I could go into more detail about various problems I found with the demo but that seems a little harsh and one day the finished product will be able to speak for itself still my hopes for this project are quite Slim and so this is where the story of Gothic ends with hope still for the future and a colorful past rich in both success and failure or at least it would be where the story ends if not for one last surprise it is now 20 years since Gothic 2 first released for most this was the Pinnacle of the series and for years many fans dreamed of a sequel that never came until in December 2021 it finally arrived not at the hands of the original developer or publisher and not through an official sequel or a remake but instead from the community developed Over a four-year period by a team of 30 to 40 people in Poland Chronicles of Matana archilos is a standalone total conversion mod for Gothic 2 that set on arklos a new island to the east of Matana and takes place immediately before the events of the first game you play as a refugee heading to arklos to flee the human orc War although the journey doesn't proceed quite as planned making your situation even more dire the beginning of the game has you trying to establish a new life in a small village on arcolos alongside the other refugees you traveled with this premise feels both familiar and different you are once more at the bottom of society with nothing to your name where you are heavily incentivized to find whatever work people will offer you as you try to get by yet this time you aren't alone having both family and a shared set of circumstances with the other refugees The Story Goes to Great lamps to seem grounded and realistic as you explore the dynamic between the refugees and the often distrusting locals while living out your daily life in the village there's also a strong sense of role-playing as choices within quests and dialogue are frequent and you're forced to consider how best to handle your current situation for example will you let yourself be pushed around to avoid causing trouble in the village and hurting the reputation of the refugees is prime beneath you or is it worth it how do you handle disagreements between people or your fellow refugees not being willing to pull their weight it's a compelling setting that while admittedly slow paced feels accurate to the tone established in the first two games while also coming across as very immersive continuing to later chapters and you'll find the story evolves as someone goes missing and you're forced to Journey to the absolutely massive main city of arcolos where you find yourself drawn into a complicated web of schemes and politics between the Island's important figures and factions it's a story that's more personal more human and more believable than anything seen in a Gothic game before with no focus on chosen ones or greater demons or Wars between gods and honestly this approach feels perfect and I think this is the best story in any Gothic game or gothic successor and in some ways it's not even close story has frequently seemed like the weakest part of this series and so it is quite nice to finally have a Gothic game where that is no longer true and in other ways this is exactly what you'd expect from a follow-up to Gothic 2. exploration progression the skill system there are many things players will find familiar about Chronicles of Matana and this is still a Gothic 2 conversion mod after all meaning under the surface everything is running on that same Gothic engine that doesn't mean nothing is new however and there are numerous ways the gameplay and content have been expanded on in much the same way you might find when going from Gothic 1 to 2. for example there is an expanded recipe system new types of crafting like Woodworking and scroll writing armor upgrades damage types for different weapons a system for extracting natural resources random Dynamic events that occur within the world more choices present in dialogue and quests greater complexity to enemy move sets that make them harder to exploit and all this comes alongside some other clever quality of life improvements or tweaks like the separation of permanence that increases from the scaling cost of the skill system so it's basically Gothic 2 plus and if you liked Gothic 2 it's hard to see how this game wouldn't appeal to you this is a game that might struggle to reach new audiences seeing as it's built on a noticeably dated engine and it's also worth keeping in mind that the voice acting is all in Polish although it is professional quality I also think Gothic 2 still wins when it comes to exploration and a sense of gameplay progression but in many ways Chronicles of Matana matches the standards set by the first two games and there are plenty of ways it goes even further still what might be the single most surprising quality of this game is how much restraint it shows it must be tempting when making a follow-up to a beloved series to pack it full of fan service and callbacks or to try too hard to outdo the original games and end up changing things that didn't need to be changed but Chronicles of Matana does neither of these there are connections to the other games but they are subtle clever and often come unexpectedly and the changes that are made are done carefully so that the authentic Gothic feeling remains entirely intact and so Chronicles of Matana archilis truly is the classic Gothic sequel That Never Was and it is an incredible achievement that for many came out of nowhere it is hard to know what the future has in store for Gothic there have been times in the past where it looked like the series has come to an end yet despite this its Legacy has always managed to endure in the art world there's an idea that an artist can live on past death through their work but they put a piece of themselves in their creation and that this piece of themselves will therefore continue to reach people even many years later when it comes to video games however life after death isn't guaranteed in just a few years changes to technology can leave old games behind and even inoperable on Modern systems for some games there's even a risk of important online features being discontinued or servers being shut down so for a game or series to live on past death it can't just be great it needs more it needs help and the gothic games have had that Community patches have ensured the first and second game are not only still playable but are better than ever and Community patches have a long last allowed Gothic 3 to be the game it never was originally and now a fan created mod Made For Love rather than profit has provided a new 80-hour plus classic Gothic experience that is fantastic and more than meets the high standards sent by The Originals not every old game gets for love it deserves but Gothic did and even if that wasn't reflected in international sales it has still been shown clearly in the community that has continued to love and support these games even years after their original release it is a shame that Gothic was not able to find the success it may once have hoped for but it's fan base and their continued support are a testament to what these games did get right and the enduring Legacy of this series shows no signs of fading anytime soon I hope you enjoyed this video it did take quite a long time to make the topic was originally decided by a poll on patreon back in November 2020 so it's been a while coming but I'm glad I got there in the end and I am even more glad I made this after Chronicles of Matana had already been released anyway if you haven't heard this might be the last video I make here for a while as I've decided to take a break and work on some other things if you want to know my reasoning for this in detail it is fully explained in a lumpy update video that I will include a link to at the bottom of the description still the short reason is that I'm sick of trying to appeal to the algorithm the channel isn't growing that fast anymore and I don't have a lot of good ideas for topics that make it easy to just keep making these kinds of time consuming videos back to back so I've decided to take some time off to just make videos for myself for a bit which I will do on a second channel that already exists where I can just do what I want and make things that are a little different still I'm sure I'll be back at some point I'm just not too sure when and if not if this is the last video I ever make on this channel if this is the last thing I ever say here then it's been four and a half years 53 videos and just over 59 hours of content and all things considered I'd say that's a pretty good run so thank you for watching I have said those four words at the end of almost every video I have ever made and I have met them every single time thank you

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 763,303

Keywords: gothic, gothic games, gothic review, gothic 2 review, gothic 3 review, gothic retrospective, gothic analysis, gothic series review, gothic series retrospective, gothic series analysis

Id: 1CpNPLCohUg

Length: 104min 56sec (6296 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022