Gothic - Retrospective Review (2022) 

i'm playing gothic 2 till this day, every year, different mods , masterpiece.

Not only in Poland. In fact, in Russia it have a big fan base as well.

Don't forget the popularity of gothic machinima community. Brilliant people

imagine how we germans feel about it

Same here in Czechia, enormous fan base! 🙂

Same here for Romania..this game is my childhood:)

After playing Gothic this killed Morrowind for me , and the absolute lack of voice acting.....the music is good tho

Gothic has more than 3 but your point stays valid^^

@@rudolfgernd8760 one for each mine, one for the ork graveyard, one for the temple, did I miss any? Doing it from the top of my head haven't played gothic in a long while.

@@The_Yukki So 5 distinct, (relatively) big zones. Still pretty damn good.

@@TheHalogen131 oh I'm not complaining, it is impressive

Same here in Czechia :D my childhood...

Kinda agree :) For me Gothic, Baldurs Gate and Morrowind build the base of in which directions you can develop a rpg

@@lukasrac861 Exactly! Same here in CZ 😀

And Worms Armageddon apparently!

Not gonna lie, but original Call of Duty or Medal of Honor were probably played more than Baldur's Gate. Probably even Diablo 2 in terms of RPGs.

Yeah, the dialogue was sooo well done. As you said it just felt real and it made me laugh out loud more times than any other game, but in a good way.

aufs maul?

Same for me. Feels like coming home.

It’s the simple “for Gomez!” or “May the sleeper be with you” that made immersion in those games, whichever camp you joined

​​@@DMartinovNot just that. How NPC's act with you. For example when you first arrive to the old camp NPC's just acts like you are not even a human being. Even the new camp with lefty. You bring water to the rice field workers or get beaten up. And as you progress they just start respecting you. Gate guard to the inner yard,bloodwynd,Jackal even congratulates to you when you reach the Guard rank. This game achieved that a lot of modern games lack. Making its world just like its alive and actually making sense. Not even a single question like "How these people survive without any food source",but "Ohh sect camp sells swampweed and buys resources with that money"

Kai Rosenkranz is so good, they got him back for the remake too

Maybe Gothic 3 has terrible game performance (even on modern PC), but at least doesn't punish you for leveling up, unlike Oblivion

What? Oblivion is bad?

@@morkgin2459 Without mods of course Edit: We're talking about game mechanics. Story and dialogues are good

It's also the case with the Polish version. It's very well translated, and the dialogue is well acted.

STECK DIE SCHEISS WAFFE WEG

The whole Ruhrpott slang is so perfect for this game.

"Wie oft hab ich euch Pennern gesagt: Rennt nicht durch meine Hütte!?"

The English version grows on you if you appreciate hammy acting. Bromor in Gothic 2 is legendarily bad in the English dub, iconic even.

I want to add, that even though I had an illegal copy of Gothic, I bought this game 4 times in my life. I own it both on GOG and Steam, I own a box with G1+G2+G3+Addons, and I own another copy of G1 because the CD that came with the box stopped working at some point. (not to mention all the other PB games I bought, even though nothing came close to G1 and G2)

The reason companies don't make such games anymore is because gaming isn't a niche hobby anymore, and with that the lowest common denominator is what's the target audience. Simply look at difference in design between Morrowind and Oblivion... And since Oblivion sold better than Morrowind... We got Skyrim, an even more dumbed down experience.

@@The_Yukki I really don't accept that as an answer. I don't expect companies like EA or Bethesda to put 100 Million $ into such a game. That would be unreasonable. But look at isometric RPGs (I know they aren't really isometric). For years people said that there isn't a market for such games. But then Obsidian made Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny. Granted, those games were likely not succesful enough to make them a lot of money and it's not unlikely that they won't make games like that again (after the MS aquisition). But there are games like Divinity Original Sin (a HUGE success), ATOM RPG, Underrail, Wasteland, Pathfinder,... by smaller studios (or in the case of Larian smaller at the time of release, now they are quite big). If you had asked anybody within the industry ten years ago, they would've given you the exact answer you've given me. I personally didn't like either Morrowind or Oblivion very much. While I find the former to be better, there are huge barriers, that make the game hard to get into. (Just understanding all the systems they built is hard enough. Having to deal with the weird dialogue system was just painful for me.) I don't think the same can be said about an experience like Gothic at all. I see no reason why smaller studios couldn't make a game like that and make a reasonable profit. I think the problem is, that there aren't any examples of games like that being successful or even made at all. Some people would point to Elex, to show that there are games like that and that they don't sell that well. But I don't really think Elex is very much like Gothic at all. So many small changes in their design that add up to a game that is fundamentally different. For me the first few hours felt at least somewhat like Gothic, but at some point it just frustrated me. In Elex there are too little worthwhile items to find in the world, making exploring just boring. Quests you're given early on can't reasonbly be completed until you're at least mid game (I tried to complete one quest at least 5 times only to be shot). Gothic had quite hard Quests at the beginning of the game too, but there were extremely powerful scolls you could find, and leveling up had a much greater impact (again making exploration rewarding). So when you got stuck, you could just explore and kill some creatures, maybe you even find something useful that helps you in completing the quest. When I got stuck in Elex I tried multiple quests until I found the right ones to get XP, only to find out, that I was barely any stronger. Enemies don't really give you much XP in Elex. 5 XP for an enemy that can kill you early on. I'm not quite sure, but I seem to remember, that the "weaker" ones (even they can kill you early on, if you run into two or if you are distracted) didn't give any XP. Is that a joke? That's just a design that destroys imersion, given that the world is much bigger, there is a lot more walking involved. And the teleporters are often very hard to find especially if you are like me and don't like to look up their location. Which I begrudgingly had to do at some point because I was tired of walking. Sometimes, I was quite near the teleporters before, but they were behind some building or otherwise off the path. It seems to me that even the company that made those games doesn't understand what made them good. But I'm sure if someone made a game that played and felt like Gothic, it would be a success. Not so much that the big studios would take notice. But enough for other smaller studios to give it a try. Just like it was with isometric RPGs.

@@dagerry I bought Kingdom Come a while back but I still haven't played it. I know it's rather stupid to buy a game and then not play it for years, because prices are much lower now. I think the reason I haven't played it, is that I know that this game asks for comitment and time. It sounded very intriguing, but with so many releases and so little time I prioritised different games. Maybe I should give it a try. I'm surprised it sold so well.

Man the in extremo concert, or rather lack there of is only bad thing about Polish Version of the game, but afaik it was down to either some copyright, or the fact that it'd be weird to have all dialogues in Polish but then outta nowhere a song in german playing.

@@The_Yukki hi, I believe it was a copyright issue. The lyrics of the song are not in German, it is in Nysvenska some sort of swedish

I'm playing Archolos with a gamepad right now and it's crazy how good this game holds up.

It was designed for Xbox controller first and foremost, then the Xbox version got canned.

Well a remaster can easily fix this shit.

I highly recommend you play some mods for gothic 2. there are some pieces that feel like playing gothic 2 for the first time again, e.g. Archolos, Dirty Swamp, Legend of Ahssun...

@@tnx9240 Thx 🙏 I will definitely try some of those out!

@@kbityy It's not misunderstood, it's simply unfinished. Its world is filled with copypasted MMO side quests that no fan patch can fix. It is still a pretty good game though, with an impressive for its time, no loading screens open world and beautiful music. But it's a very disappointing Gothic follow up.

Yeah the demo comes free with any piranha bytes game you buy

..and their reactions to you can change depending on your progression.

Figured it was a good compromise and an opportunity to collect some data lol

I hear a lot of people saying the DX11 mod is very buggy. It works on some pc configs and others, not. Just depends on your setup. If it works for you, then install some texture mods and your all set.

I've heard that too, but the performance boost and the lighting changes makes the game so much better@@Robert-yt9pq

hi

Asleep probably

In the Metaverse gettin’ the ZUCC

Wow, thanks for the heads up on that. I played through Gothic 2 4 times(4th for night of the raven) and I have to check this out soon(after I finish a couple games cause it will consume me). I just hope I can figure out how to add the mod on steam.

@@jayhouston7054 you are gonna absolutely love it then, feels like what Gothic 3 should have been.

@@maz0t Oh Gothic 3, I put so much time into that when it first came out, killed every npc leveled up to godlike power, did every quest..got to the end and a bug prevented me from doing the ending I wanted. I did finish it doing a different ending(sorry memory is bad on how and what) and never went back. And that craptastic god forsaken ended up having a game breaking bug. Never went back to either.

@@jayhouston7054 It had some great ideas i think. The world itsself was great and the faction + magic systems were good. But the narrative and scaffolding the game was set upon just didnt hold it together. It helps a tiny bit with mods now but games like Elex has taken everything good from that game and made it better. Shame they had to rush it out like that, 1 or 2 more years could have been all it needed.

The people in the outer ring of the Old Camp give you a lot of sh*t in the beginning. Near the end of the game I summoned an army of skeletons there to see what would happen. Fun times. Well, for me and maybe the skeletons.

@@kaltaron1284 I remember one time right before entering the final dungeon, I decided to try to kill everyone in the Old Camp. It wasn't even a challenge and I loved it. I remember I was wearing the best old camp armor and some kind of two handed sword at the time.

@@Throrface Yeah, in one of my playthroughs I pretty much killed everyone just to see how much stuff I would end up in my inventory with. Answer: A lot. Also in the second one (or was it the third one?) there was a cool chain of events where you could first join the Templars (? ). Then attack their leader and all his subordinates would attack him. But he's immortal because important quest NPC and killes them all in self defense. Then you run to the next guard, pay the fine for hitting someone and loot all the corpses. Next I went to the castle that was besieged by orcs. Betrayed them so I could kill everyone inside then slaughtered the orcs as well by luring them to an unreachable spot. Later in the story line the commander holds a speech that he will now take his troops to relieve that castle and I was just like "Dude, your perception of the situation is a bit off. What troops? Who in the castle? And against what orcs?" I think I later put him out of his sole misery in the castle.

A few days ago was the 20th anniversary of Gothic 2 and with that they added on steam the possibility to install the vanilla version. But apparently it's not really the vanilla, it's a mod that tries to replicate the experience but taking a bit too liberties. I don't know it personally but if you manage to find a way to play the real original version it would be better.

In Arx Fatalis, you had to "draw" glyph/spell in the air, in front of you to cast. Mouse gestures to cast spells. Jowood published it. Very good game. I hated the controls, so I quit.

It really is astonishing that this mod exists. If I was Mort, I'd skip 3 and just play Archolos.

Chronologically, it's a prequel to Gothic 1. And yes! That free mod feels like a standalone Gothic game with more polish and detail than the first two.

I was pretty glad to see Mort mention he intends to play it in his recent video. Now he just needs to find the 500 hours he'll need for G2 and Archolos, plus edits.

@@OmerSaidtr Yes, I mean, true sequel since gothic 3 came out with lots of problems

@@egamruf I can't say enough, how gothic 2 and archollos change my life, it makes every other open world rpg bad because no one match the immersion, exploration, world building and progression, and btw, I just LOVE the graphics, with the dx11 mod it gets so beautiful, the best rain ever made also kkk

I don't agree with that statement. While it is true, that you start out really weak in elex, there are key differences that alter the experience fundamentally. In Gothic you could level up by quite a bit just through killing creatures. You had to be extremely careful, but it made a big difference. In Elex, a level feels less substantial, so if you are too weak to finish a quest, killing a few monsters and leveling up likely won't make a difference. You also gain much less XP from combat (enemies that can kill you very early on give you 5 XP and I have the feeling that you also need more XP to level up, but the game doesn't tell you actual numbers... WHY!). There are also a lot more ranged enemies, so hitting and running is made even harder. This is compounded by the their decission of making your attacks progressively more damaging when you hit multiple times in a row, so fighting multiple enemies is even harder than in G1 where it's already quite difficult (you can't hit once try to evade, reposition and hit again as it does very little damage). I tried to complete certain quests mulitple times, leading to frustration (having to walk longer distances to get there is also an issue). This killed my immersion. When you explored in G1 and G2 you could find very powerful items, like a scroll that gives you the opportunity to finish off enemies that are much stronger than you and allow you to complete a quest. While in Elex most items you find don't really change anything. So exploring is much less rewarding. I personally did like the first few hours with Elex, but I got frustrated quickly and stopped playing after 30 or 35 hours. I don't want to convince you that your appreciation of that game is wrong or anything like that. I'm happy you had a good time with it. Just saying that its design is substantially different and in my opinion those changes aren't to its benefit.