Sometime during the fall of 2001, I gave a fairly unknown game called 'Gothic’ a try. My expectations weren’t high at all, but it was an RPG - so it could be fun. The game turned out to be one of my all-time favorite games, regardless of genre. The graphics weren’t great, the music was okay, the controls were weird at best - but the story was very involving, and kept you going for between 30 and 40 hours (depending on how many quests you did that weren’t related to the main quest). The game took place in some magical world, and takes place in the middle ages. A rather large prison colony had been established where the prisoners were set to mine magical ore, which could be used to fend off the nasty orcs and their kind, and of course make the king even more powerful. The colony was covered with a powerful magical shield, which you couldn’t turn off just like that. Our hero was wrongly sent here. The prison colony had several factions you could join, such as the imperial guards, magicians, rebellions, some weed smoking naturalist people and more. The story unfolded differently depending on whom you joined, but the ultimate outcome would be the same. At the end of the game you had to battle a seriously nasty monster by the name of The Sleeper, who would (like most other super-villains) bring death and despair to everything good.

Gothic 2 takes place right after Gothic 1, so at the beginning you’re briefly introduced to the ending of the first game where The Sleeper was killed and the magical barrier removed. Most of the convicts tried to escape but they would quickly find the neighbor city of Khorinis to not be very welcoming. Evil was undoubtedly still present even though The Sleeper was killed - to wit; the nasty orcs are planning to launch a big assault, backed up by dragons and more. At the end of Gothic 1 our hero was pretty much covered in rocks, but his mysterious wizard pal Xardos managed to teleport him to safety. Khorinis needs your help, so you set out from the mountain hideout to save the world. There’s one small problem though, when you were teleported out you lost nearly all your strength and abilities, so you’ll have to start entirely from the beginning.



A lot of things have happened in Khorinis and its surroundings, not including the enemy threat. Khorinis needs food to keep its inhabitants alive, and magical ore from the valley of mines (the colony) to have an edge against evil, but not everyone wants to keep supplying the king and his men. Not all the farmers like the way they’re being treated, so the biggest farm owner, Onar, hired a gang of ex-convicts as mercenaries to protect his employees from the paladins who have recently entered Khorinis. Paladins are rarely dispatched if there isn’t grave danger, so naturally the God fearing people of Khorinis wonder what’s going on, whether there’ll be a war between the farmers and the city-folks, and whether they’ll all be slaughtered by orcs and dragons in the meantime. The mercenaries also have internal conflicts because some seem to like the bandit profession. At the beginning of the game you’ll again be able to choose what faction you’d like to join – whether it’ll be the imperial squad, the mercenaries, or maybe the seemingly peaceful magicians in the monastery.

Throughout the game you hunt monsters to gain experience, increase in level, get stronger, more dexterous, get more mana – just like in any other RPG. There are tons of weapons, scrolls, magical runes and such to be bought but unlike most other RPGs you won’t spend much time managing the items. When joining a faction you’re given an armor set, which consists of everything you need, and putting it on is just a matter of pressing TAB to bring up the inventory, move to the armor, and press CTRL. It’s obvious when playing the game that the developers wanted you to enjoy the quests rather than micro-managing skills and items, which is a good thing because the storyline is terrific.

A lot of people were upset with the initial difficulty, and the controls in Gothic 1. This time it’s not quite as hard, and you’ll have more options regarding the controls. By default you use Gothic 1 controls, but these can be configured to your liking, but in my opinion it’s not at all a problem to play the game once you’ve learned how things work. Secondly, in Gothic 1 you had to use CTRL + Up Arrow to for instance pick up things, but this time the CTRL key alone is used to replace the more complex combinations of the first game, which results in tighter, better working controls. Controlling our hero is by default done by using the up and down arrow to move back and forth, and the left and right arrow to turn around, but the a and d button can also be used to strafe, which can be useful during combat. Drawing a weapon is done by pressing space, and actually pulling off a melee attack is done by using CTRL + the up, left, right, or back arrow. The arrow keys can be used to pull off combo-attacks, but when you go up in level and choose to improve for instance one-hand combat you’ll also learn more efficient attack styles. Admittedly, at the first half of the game your character won’t be able to do especially impressive attacks, but in the second half you’ll hopefully be so powerful that you get a 'Blade-like’ feeling when doing attacks that leave groups of orcs dead.

In my opinion the melee aspect of the game is the most fun, but ranged combat and magic are also good alternatives. In addition you’ll be able to learn lock picking, alchemy and various miscellaneous skills but acrobatics has been removed which is unfortunate since it let you move faster.



Since this is a full-blown sequel you will have to encounter some nasty new monsters but you’ll still have the good old meatbugs, the wolves, the shadowbeasts, and of course the beloved orcs. New monsters like the Elite Orcs (and a few other orc types) have been introduced, and I don’t want to spoil too much but you should also expect even bigger, even badder fiends, when you least expect it.

Gothic 1 didn’t win any awards for best graphics but this time around it at least has a better chance. The environments are much more varied this time around, more detailed, filled with more very nicely made objects, painted with extremely crisp textures. The use of colors has also been improved, so Gothic 2 is far from as bland to look at. The characters also look nicer, but even though the paladin outfit looks nice it can’t really compare with for instance Neverwinter Nights’ shiny and reflective surfaces. I also wish more effects had been used on the melee weapons, and that the characters had stencil buffered or volumetric shadows, so it could compete more with the most famous titles when it comes to graphics. Gothic 1 had a fairly big game world, which took a good while to fully explore, but in the sequel you’ll not only have an area that’s even bigger, you’ll also have an altered version of the valley of mines, and a tiny island which I don’t want to spoil any details about. The amount of work put into these huge game worlds is nothing less than amazing, and to make matters even better, the engine is capable of quickly loading for instance the entire main area, or the entire valley of mines, so you can play for hours and hours without loading more than once! Not having to load at regular intervals is great, which anyone who has played Dungeon Siege can attest to.

How NPCs “live” is usually not something you notice in games, because they tend to just stand around all day in their store, or pub, or wherever the developers placed them. In Gothic 1 miners would go work during the day, head over to the bonfire and grab some food in the evening and head to their cabin and the bed at night. This feature works even better in the sequel because people now have even more detailed “lives”. Every single character in the game has a voice which is great but I do wish the developers had hired more people because when you can tell that one man has voiced five or six relatively important people in the game it feels a bit less great than it could. The voices are also fairly appropriate to the characters but I also wish they had left out some of the more modern words that I’m convinced people in such a world wouldn’t use. Keep in mind that I’m nitpicking now, and that it doesn’t exactly ruin the experience only lower it half a grain. The musical score consists of a reasonably good selection of orchestra tunes that aren’t as emotional as the theme from Morrowind but does a great job of staying in the background without getting repetitive. I wouldn’t object to a greater selection when running around in Khorinis and the surroundings, but what’s sure is that the musicians could’ve done a whole lot worse.



There is no multiplayer feature in this game which is a bit unfortunate because a deathmatch mode could be fun but it’s no doubt understandable considering the strong focus on single player quests in this game.

Conclusion:
Those who read my Morrowind: Bloodmoon review may have understood that I didn’t like the game much. Playing the game didn’t give me a good feeling but all this changed when I began the journey of Gothic 2. This really is a game you can lose yourself in because it really is enjoyable to just run around the countryside being chased by dangerous monsters, stumbling across hidden pirate treasures, battling it out with trolls, and basically seeking fame and fortune. This game is challenging, long (it took me 33 hours to finish the main quest, along with a number of side-quests, and of course random adventuring), has plenty of cool features, humor, and entertainment. In my opinion this game is a must have for RPG fans but if you’ve played and liked Gothic 1 then you’ll have no option but to run for the store and buy it as soon as possible. This game demands you to play for a long time to really enjoy the cooler aspects of the game but if you can get past the initial stage then you should find this game to be a truly fine title.