NOTE - there are two versions of Gothic that come with the Gold Edition -- the vanilla release as well as Night of the Raven, the latter being a lite-remaster that adds a new chapter/area called Jharenkar whilst concurrently upping the difficulty. If you get the Gold Edition, please understand that you can only play one version of the game over the other as they are treated as separate titles without carryover files. Obviously, based on my rating, you can tell I don’t recommend either, but NOTR even less due to it making an already challenging game pointlessly difficult


Gothic 2 is the kind of game I feared the original Gothic would wind-up being: an outdated CRPG ripe with fetch quests and pointless loot galore. Granted, I obviously had enough problems with the first to abstain from a full-on endorsement; however, I can’t deny its end product was vastly different from those initial worries: occupying a revolutionary Eurojank format chock-ful of unique systems.

Unfortunately, the sequel forgoes all those interesting tidbits in favor of a relatively-standard release that would’ve been fine had it not been for the presence of defects in almost all its major facets, beginning with the overworld. Gothic 2 is arguably twice as big as its predecessor, yet makes the genius decision to not only undercut your speed, but deny you access to quick travel options well until the third chapter. True, the first game did this as well, but because its realms were much smaller, it never felt excessively impeding - you could dart between the three major camps without ever worrying about the 24-hour cycle looming past you. Gothic II, au contraire, is far more triple-spaced, meaning you’re liable to getting lost in places you most definitely don’t want to be in when night rolls over. And look, that by itself isn’t a bad thing (the hallmark of most open world games is the freedom to wander about aimlessly after all), but when you’re forced to backtrack for tens of minutes on end just to reach the safety of a town or find the next big civilization, it gets frustrating very quickly, and I consequently have no regrets about exploiting waypoint commands.

I mentioned earlier that your velocity has been undercut this time around, and while slower walking does exacerbate those distance qualms, the real issue with it is it forces you into combat scenarios. In the first Gothic, you couldn’t harm a Blood Fly without getting one-hit-KOed, but that was at least mitigated by the ability to outrun 99% of foes until you got stronger.

In developing Gothic II, though, Piranha Bytes have swapped to a combat-focused schema that fails to make the necessary adjustments for such a genre, opting for this weird in-between wherein your weaknesses are contrasted with the ability to dodge, parry, and critical hit. There’s a bit of a FromSoftware motif here in the form of enemies, both human and nonhuman, having unique attack patterns; however, it’s not been ironed out, leading to a lot of good and bad. On the plus side, you get armor early-on and can pretty easily block-spam most humans, but on the negative side, critical hits are haphazard and monsters so erratic, the bulk are impossible to “figure out”. This is a game where you constantly have to save scum because you just never know when someone or something will gain the RNG upper hand and knock your health bar down with a single blow (and when those moments occur, it’s beyond frustrating). Be prepared to hoard a bunch of food for post-battle recovery as every 1v1 skirmish turns into a pyrrhic victory.

Speaking of 1v1, Gothic II once again thrives on this approach to fighting, and once again is deliberately obtuse about it. You’re rarely going to encounter a single enemy by itself: whether it’s bandits, goblins, scavengers, or orcs, they’re always going to be in groups of 3 or more, and I don’t understand why the devs thought this would be a good idea when they blatantly geared their combat system towards personalized duels. Even when you get sufficiently strong, you’re literally forced to cheese the game because your character is simply incapable of fighting multiple foes at once - your stepbacks are too short for evading, you autolock onto singular enemies, and sword strikes only slice one entity/each. So yeah, be prepared to engage in such annoying tactics as inching closer-and-closer to trigger a lone monster’s vision cone, or humping boulders & tree trunks in the hopes of exploiting enemy pathing issues (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, the game deliberately undercuts your damage output when facing parties compared to isolated foes).

Now you may be thinking, well Red, you’re just speaking about the melee - surely players are meant to combine this skill with archery and magic for success? Well no. While archery is more useful this time around (if only because there’re less-ranged foes), it’s hampered by three factors: one, limited skill point acquisition that prevents sufficient investment in both paths; two, the necessity of a secondary skill called dexterity for arrow damage increase; and three, swapping between tools being a decidedly-elongated process hostile to dual-tactics.

Magic, on the other hand, has been completely upended this time around via Piranha Bytes opting for outdated class specialization. See, if you don’t join the Fire Mage Guild in the first chapter (more on that later), you lose access to most offensive spells: like literally, you’re unable to use them, even if you have sufficient mana and the requisite scroll. Sure, you can still do summons, but, outside of demons (which are hard to come by), they aren't a huge help against those aforementioned hordes.

On the topic of guilds, Gothic II further peeved me by not properly outlining the presence of the other factions. In the first Gothic, you were explicitly told by Diego about the different camps and how you were meant to choose one. Here, though, you’re made highly-privy to the Paladin Way via Xardas mandating you deliver a message to their head regent - when you arrive there, you’re informed that the only to pass on this missive is to join the City Guard and become a citizen of Khorinis. The Mages are briefly mentioned if you talk to one of the adjacent representatives, but considering the dangerous distance to the location (as well as the nonsensical entrance fee of 1000 gold + a sheep), it’s not exactly an open path compared to being a Guardsman.

The Mercenaries are a bit easier to join given Lares’s offer to escort you to their leader; however, unlike Gothic 1, where Mordrag took you directly to the New Camp, Lares leaves you behind a good ways away from the mercenary headquarters, and I consequently was unable to find the man until well-after I had joined the Khorinis Militia. But even if I hadn’t, I don’t see why I, as a player, would’ve considered joining them when the militia being at odds with the mercs implied that doing-so would’ve made it impossible to dispatch the letter for story progressment. Yes, I know now that there would’ve been some avenue for success, but the point I’m trying to make is that Gothic II just isn’t as framed as well as its predecessor, with these obscurity methods coming across like goaded attempts at encouraging multiple playthroughs.

As a result, I can’t give an accurate assessment about the narrative in terms of how it differs in that initial act. With regards to the consequent chapters (assuming the story beats remain the same), though, I can tell you that Gothic II is an utterly boring, fetch quest extravaganza. I hate making constant comparisons to its predecessor, but to see such a noticeable drop can’t help begetting these mandates- before your Nameless Hero felt like he was forging his own arc amidst the brave new world he was trapped in. Gothic II, on the other hand, is content with having you play errand boy for almost every single figure you come across: you’re first doing the bidding of Xardas by delivering his memo to the Paladin Commander, then are forced to do arduous tasks for the merchants within Khorinis in order to obtain citizenship, then are tasked with doing MORE bidding for the Commander by conducting a scouting mission to the previous game’s area , then have to do, you guessed it, another set of chores for the Paladins and mages, then rinse-and-repeat until the last saga wherein your protagonist finally grows a pair and takes initiative into his own hands (though by then it’s obviously too little too late).

It’s a shame because there was so much potential here with regards to what could’ve happened following the fall of the barrier and all these criminals and gangs running free, but no, the writers evidently thought it better to forgo that in favor of a generic fantasy yarn (which, on its own, might’ve been fine were it not for the whole indentured servitude schematic). Some of the NPCs you meet are kind of interesting, you finally get a decent reason for why your Hero isn’t named, and it was admittedly cool seeing what happened to your allies/nemeses from the first game. But overall the endeavor was just very forgettable (and yes, this applies to the sidequests too).

Gameplay, despite the flaws I touched on earlier, has seen some improvements from Gothic 1. For starters, the useless skills of sneaking, lock bumping, and pickpocketing have been converted into singularly-learned talents that actually serve a purpose in certain quests. Secondly, 1h and 2h weaponry are equally-useful methods for dispatching foes, with upgrades to one partially carrying over to the other (at a ratio of I believe 5:1 skillpoints). Thirdly, as I alluded to in my rant above, you can actually take more than one-strike now without dying, which SIGNIFICANTLY helps in leveling-up quicker compared to before. Finally, the revamped combat is quite fun, occupying a fencing-style of play that risks/rewards lunges-and-retreats. As you upgrade your swordwielding, the game also provides visible feedback via faster drawing, swiping, and new combos.

Unfortunately, that’s about all the praise I got as everything else is either mediocre or an infringement upon the game’s fun factor. To run down the list: there’s no quick save/load option, you can only cook & brew one item at a time, leaves & foliage outright block your vision during combat, executions have been removed(+), you can’t dual-wield swords with torches for night fights, and you’re unable to sync the attack and action buttons to the same prompt (something that genuinely makes no sense given that you can’t even do actions when you have your blade out).

Worst of all, there’s no sense of difficulty scaling in the narrative - in G1, yeah every enemy was annoying on some level, but they were at least restricted to their respective areas of influence, and the story appropriately structured your mandatory encounters with them.

In the sequel, though, you can happen upon a troll or skeleton medley, or find a swarm of blood flies right next to a pack of snappers, all in the most random of places. One of the worst decisions has you in the second chapter, let me repeat, in the second chapter, sent off to maneuver around the Orc Army, and it honestly stands as one of the most vexing experiences I have ever had in a video game - to be forced to run around these behemoths spammed everywhere with no method of fighting back(++). There had to have been some cut survival horror elements as I just don’t see why anyone at Piranha Bytes believed this would be a good idea in the slightest - imagine encountering the Trigen within the first third of Far Cry and you’ll get an idea of my frustration.

If all that weren’t enough, exploration is rendered worthless as, just like in the first Gothic, the only things you’re privy to finding in the open world are lone caves ripe with repetitive loot. On that note, expect a cluttered inventory due to the sheer amount of pointless garbage you're liable to discovering on corpses and chests alike, from gems to various meats. True, G1 also had similar problems, but there was at least a unique bartering schematic wherein you could trade this stuff for an item you wanted - Gothic 2 reverts to a standard monetary system that ultimately requires you to sell this stuff for cash to then use for purchasing, turning a simple back-and-forth enterprise into a padded-out middle man approach.

Graphically, Gothic II continues to stumble as it’s just not at the level of its contemporaries, let alone something that’s aged well. Now look, part of me actually appreciated the aesthetics due to them blatantly resembling RuneScape right down to the font-type (I wouldn’t be surprised if Jagex and Piranha Bytes’ artists came from the same school of design), but objectively the modeling is pudgy, animations stilted, shadows circular blobs, and the vast majority of monster designs either rehashed or uninspired. Most of the texture work is admittedly pristine, with castles, villages, mountains, and ponds rendered quite well; however, there’s nothing about their surrounding biomes that makes them stand apart from your usual fictional settings, and a fair amount are unfortunately adorned with blatantly painted-on simulacra versus individually-composited objects (stone veins, floor bones, door locks). You also have a ton of repetitive knickknacks and buildings plastered in the majority of locations: expect to see the same farmhouses, Shadowbeast mounts, treasure chests, flowery lion busts, and Angel/Demon paintings despite their presence in varied locations.

Gothic II also suffers from a few minor, yet noticeable, technical issues you’ll have to contend with, namely the poor draw distance, animation lags (for candle flames, large oceans and at-distance NPCs), as well as incessant clipping. They won’t bring down the experience by any means, but are worth noting for the sake of knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing feats like the phenomenal textiles, moving clouds, dynamic lighting, presence of raindrop/snowflake impacts, and how looking up at the sun turns the screen yellow. And for all my complaints about the repetitive interior layouts, the artisans went all out for that final dungeon wherein you’re privy to some gorgeously-grisly details ala torture chambers with displaced skeletons, walls laden with chiseled runes, and giant knight statutes with glaring red eyes. I just wish that same effort had been put into the preceding locales.

SFX is a bigger letdown, containing some of the worst noises for monsters I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear in gaming. Orcs and dragons are decent, but every other enemy resounds like a conventional noise bumped up several decibels: expect to cover your ears when facing scavengers (roosters), lurkers (snorting pigs), blood flies (bass drums), and goblins (literally like someone farting through a french horn). In addition, footsteps are heavily muffled and grass rustling clearly recreated via a candy wrapper being rubbed against the boom mic.

When you’re in towns, the soundscape fares better despite its volatility - I loved hearing the workings of a smithery, mixturing of alchemists, and liveliness of taverns. Outside the walls, things like the flow of water, crashing of waterfalls, wavering of rope bridges, diverse footstep dins, and even varied food eating crunches were also great. However, as an overall enterprise, the game is too crowded with those aforementioned beastly wails that get very grating very fast.

Voice acting, at the least the English dub I played, wasn’t very good either, with Piranha Bytes (or whoever handled the localization) not only recasting some of their previous characters with worse VAs (Lares, Diego), but also going TES route via having a select few actors do every single voice. This would’ve been fine had there been proper ADR direction, but the lip syncing is terrible and performances fluctuating - the more talented people are obviously solid; however, because the parts were clearly handed-out haphazardly, you get a scattershot inconstancy similar to Horizon Zero Dawn wherein some random joe will sound more immaculate than a major character.

Prince Charming returns as the Nameless Hero, and he’s one of those thespians I imagine could have been great with proper direction as he actually has the right chording for the script, yet flounders around way too much to render the guy a memorable protagonist of early-2000s gaming. What I mean is he does a fair job granting the Hero an everyman cadence, but the second he tries acting tough (particularly against the dragons), oh man, cringe doesn’t even begin to describe things.

Lastly, there’s the music by Kai Rosenkranz, and it’s satisfactory to a fault. A large chunk of it comes across like elongated overworld themes (your typical hodgepodge of horned melodies interrupted by guitar chords or vice-versa), but because of all the backtracking, you’ll be hearing the same tunes on-repeat, and while they never get grating, it serves to hammer in the point that the music is inherently lacking any kind of grandiosity. It doesn’t sound like you’re on a big adventure, but instead a small-scale journey with occasional strife (and yeah, I guess that makes the OST technically accurate to the game, but my point is it could have elevated things).

So in the end, Gothic II is not worth playing. It’s a step-down from its predecessor in almost every major venue, a title that, itself, was too flawed to be worth recommending. There are things I admire, and I can definitely see where the influence on later RPGs came from - there’s just a good chance that those games are better worth your time than this one.

Take this as a forewarning - when a non-Metroid game opens up with your character literally being stripped of their abilities for no other reason than a lazy respec, it’s a harbinger of bad things to come.



NOTES
+You’re able to execute certain NPCs, but not everyone like in G1. You have the option to flip to Gothic 1’s combat system, but I doubt this would’ve granted the ability.

++The worst part is the average player would have no way of knowing that you require speed potions to outrun the orcs as the game gives no indication of such (worse still, I don’t even know how you’d obtain the chemicals due to both higher-level alchemy apprenticeships being locked off and there being very few vendors on site [thank the Lord for console commands!]). The slew of apologists out there will claim you’re meant to use specially-marked pathways to avoid the orcs, but I can tell you there are no such things minus the initial entryway into the Valley of Mines. And even if there were, the fact that you’re granted no freedom to traverse the place willy-nilly whilst having to continuously look over your shoulder is just not fun in the slightest (at least in an action video game). I’ve also heard claims that you’re meant to employ sleeping spells, but as far as I could tell, these don’t have a huge range and would be futile against a clan of brutes + shamen.

-One of my favorite Eurojank moments occurs whenever you try to long-jump at a wall corner as it results in your character flying over it (and then some!).

-You’ll encounter a number of crates sparkling with that shimmer effect Disney used to employ in their cartoons back-in-the-day.

-Speaking of Disney, tell me the JoWooD Productions animation logo wasn’t inspired by the classic Disney World castle one?

-Gothic II boasts a few solid CG cutscenes.

-NPC patterns are pretty varied: you’ll see them chat, go about their workday, eat food, enjoy the nightlife, relieve themselves, and of course sleep. It’s a shame their convos with each other are so dang repetitious.

-If you reload a save file, any spell you’ve cast or torch you were wielding doesn’t return. The reloads themselves are very quick, though in some ways too quick - you can literally see the NPCs easing back into their walk/sit pattern upon booting.

-There are times where the script doesn’t match what is being said by the characters.

My favorite RPG of all time, this game perfected building your character, there is zero quest markers! You have to figure everything out by yourself, looking at quest journal that your character writes, each quest probably has at least 2 ways to complete it, with diffrent results, rewards and making new enemies or friends along the way. For example there is a quest to find an orc weapon, however orc is kind of an end game enemy, so you go exploring after you hear from a wall guard in the city that an orc was sighted along the wall not so long ago and so you go to check it out and there it is, a cave filled with skeletons and missed arrows, in the middle there it is, the weapon. Second thing that i think this game does perfectly is open world - It is quite small in today's standards, BUT it is not accesible for you at the beginning, there are reasons why you cannot go and explore dangerous areas, well these are really dangerous, you need to train, level up, find equipment and the map opens up and oh boy is the map good. A LOT of things to find, secrets, enemies, items, weapons, artefacts, quests, NPC's going about their life. Such an experience, if you don't mind a bit clunky (but extremely fun if you learn it) fighting, a bit outdated graphics YOU HAVE TO GIVE THE GAME A TRY!