Gothic

"Cult game. Simply PERFECT!"

Gothic for me is a cult game. It might not be the newest game out but it's simply great. Let me break down this review into subcategories:

Graphics

May not be the best. But what…that game is several years old so what can we expect from game with old engine. But other parts of the game make up for it. But if you look on the other side the graphics aren't bad at all if you max them out. I maxed mine out and the game runs as smooth as it can get (p4 1.7, gforce 2 64mb, 512mb sdram) not a great computer and the game works perfectly. When I play this game, sometimes I simply stop and look at the mountains or lakes and stuff like that because it looks gorgeous.

Audio

Many people complaint about the sounds and music but I think they are great. You actually feel like you are the hero. The background music fits perfectly. The different sounds let you distinguish different enemies. If you walk on grass you make different noise than when walking on different type of terrain. If u go out at night into the forest you can hear owls, wolves and all that scary night sounds. The character voiceover is great. Every named NPC has different voice and different things to say. The only downside is that the “angry voice” is similar for everyone.

Gameplay

No one can beat the gameplay of Gothic except for its sequel. Simply amazing. So many things to do, different paths to take, different environments and also several classes to chose from with different pros and cons. A lot of different weapons and armor. Different healing methods and small things like that really add up to gameplay value. The interesting thing is the different times of the day and different weather. Also the NPCs have schedules and they do different things at different time of the day. The world is big enough for everyone to like. You can go anywhere in the beginning of the game. You can get powerful without doing simple quest. You can talk to literally anyone in the game, you can picklock every chest, enter every house. It is simply great.

I give this game 10/10 although there is a number of bugs. But they don't bother players much. Great game. Definitely worth buying. I play it second time through and I can easily say that Piranha Bytes did a terrific job.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/19/04