Gothic

"If you like adventure games, you will like Gothic"

Let me say this straight, if you like adventure games you will like Gothic even after fighting with its awkward controls and more than often technical issues. If you are a newcomer to the genre I would suggest to look elsewhere so you won't be disappointed. Gothic is a mix between adventure, action and RPG elements played through a third person perspective although I would say that its much like a pure adventure game with some action and RPG elements and lots of conversation.

STORY - 8

The story is interesting, the king is fighting a war against the orcs so he needs ore to produce weapons, to gather this ore every convict (for any kind of crime) is thrown into the mine to collect the ore, but after a while, the convicts rebel and cut the ore supply to the king, who is forced to create a magic barrier with the aid of his mages to contain the rebellion, but now the convicts have the advantage, they can now ask the king for any kind of supply in exchange of the ore produced and also they are organized into different settlements or camps, three in total in fact, some are better supplied than others. Your character is thrown into the magic-sealed valley with a mission, and the game starts.

GAMEPLAY - 8

Its a bit like Crusaders of M&M only with awful controls at first, you control your character from a third person perspective, talk, trade and fight the same way. You can explore the camps, find hidden caves in the surroundings, enter dark forests full of wolves or even explore foul infested dungeons. I liked it because you can do lots of exploration. It has a great sense of adventure with some RPG touches (you raise levels through killing monsters or completing quests) so you can customize your character a bit spending skill points on different stats and abilities (not a lot of choices by the way) and also with the option to join one of three different camps or guilds. I found it pretty interesting, by the way that different characters react differently to your actions, but also found that the AI is a bit sluggish some times, for example, I got into the hut of a shaman and robbed his chest in front of him without a yell at me. One thing to consider is that you are enclosed in a valley, so if you get too close to the barrier you will be fried. There are plenty of quests to do, by the way.

CONTROLS - 6

Here comes the bad thing about this game, the controls are awkward maybe because it was originally supposed to be played through the keyboard only (which I find pretty odd for a computer-adventure game in these days) and the mouse support was added at the last minute so you are left with an ugly keyboard-mouse hybrid. You are supposed to press an action button AND the forward button to make things happen like swing your weapon or talk. I would have liked that Gothic had a Crusaders of M&M control scheme, which was as soft as butter. You get used to the controls though, but after a while. Good thing that the gameplay helps you overlook the bad controls.

GRAPHICS - 8

The graphics are good, not great but get the job done. The character models are a bit blocky but with good variety, the game shines with the environments which are huge and you can see a lot of things at the distance. I particularly like standing atop of a cliff and see a waterfall and the high towers of a camp in the horizon, you really think that the game is that huge. Also, the game has day-night cycles so expect to see nice transitions, with falling stars in the night sky and the sun glare when you look directly to the sun, very nice done. The rain effect is also nice although not excellent, I would have liked to see a heavy rain, not just a shy one. An effect that is worth mentioning is the magic-barrier effect, from time to time the sky will start thundering and you will see the magic-barrier in the sky, its a very good effect. I didn't like for example that you can run with a torch when it is raining, its odd so I hope that it is corrected in Gothic 2.
By the way, you can make the game more bloody or adult, just refer to one of the guides at Gamefaqs.

SOUND - 8

The sound effects are nice, with music changing depending of the time of the day or the situation (if a foul monster starts following you it changes) and nice ambiental sounds like frog noises in the river or thunder in the sky. The voice acting is very well done an surprising considering that Gothic is a german game (it has better voice acting than most american made games). The sound effects from the monsters and weapons are also very well done.

OVERALL - 8

FINAL COMMENTS

Gothic is a must-buy for fans of the genre, hungry for a good adventure game. One final note though, Gothic crashed a lot in my system until I figured out that I had to lower the texture detail, odd because I have a 32 meg GEforce MX and 512 ram. One note for the developers, its criminal to not debug the game correctly, how is that if you enter a locked door you may screw your game? then don't make locked doors unlockable by normal means.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/03/02, Updated 03/03/02