Gothic Classic (Switch)

Setup:

As a 12-year-old, I have a memory of dragging my dad into a Gamestop because I needed to buy a copy of Baldur’s Gate 2. (Yes kiddos Gamestop once sold Boxed PC games, in a time before Steams total market domination) Unfortunately, there was no copy to be found on store shelves, there was however a copy of Gothic 2, and my adolescent brain would be damned if I was going to walk out of a video game store without a video game while I had money in my pocket. This was my introduction to the Gothic series: the dragon, the warrior man in heavy armor with a sword, striking an appropriately heroic pose was all I needed. Little did I know that my perception of what Role Playing games could be was about to be forever altered.

Gothic is a western RPG from a time before map markers, quest lines, and maps full of clutter to keep you doing busy work to make sure you hit a 100+ hour mark that marketing can slap on a highlights list. You’re quite literally dropped into its prison colony set piece which graduated from the Ocarina of Time school of open world, with a large castle, central to the world, and a myriad of environs to explore — while having your ass handed to you — as you organically poke and prod at the games boundaries. You learn the hard way where it is safe to go, and where you probably should come back later with more than a rusty sword and rags on your back.

Story/Gameplay:

The story, like many open world western RPGs, is mostly there to navigate you through its world. The king sends prisoners to a colony to perform slave labor, regardless of their crime. These prisoners spend their new life in the penal colony mining magical ore for the king’s war against the orcs. When the king sends his mages to put up a barrier over the colony, something goes terribly wrong and traps the mages within, leading to a prisoner revolt. However, even with the barrier, the king still needs his ore, and so sets up an agreement whereby the prisoners continue to send the kingdom its ore, so long as the king continues to send necessities and comforts to the colony. Upon arriving in the valley, you first come to the old camp to learn some basics of who’s who and what’s what. From there you have massive amounts of flexibility in how you negotiate your way through the world: from determining which faction to join, to what order you visit its various colonies and dungeons. The game is split up into chapters with a fairly linear narrative, but non linear gameplay from chapter to chapter. The faction that you choose to align yourself with informs your entire experience across the game. Someone who chooses to align themselves with the strict, ore mining Old camp who are content with life in the colony, mining and shipping ore to their king, is going to have a vastly different experience than someone who chooses the Mercenary faction, which is comprised of rogues and thieves collecting the magical ore in hopes to blow a hole in the barrier. These are not the only options to join; this is all just to say this game has an enormous replayability factor.

Immersion:

Gothic is staunchly dedicated to immersion, mostly for the better, but on rare occasions, worse. I remember playing this game for the first time, not long after being introduced to Ocarina of Time, which had encouraged me to walk into every building, open every chest and chat with every NPC. So the first time I walked into a hut in the old colony, and had one of the residents run in after me cussing and hollering, then walk out and have them give me some tough guy comment about learning my lesson, or even simply drawing my weapon in town and hearing the sound of 5 NPCs surrounding me, unsheathing their weapons and threatening to throw down,I knew I had stumbled upon a world that would react to my every action. If I pushed, this game was going to push back, and I would go so far as to say it still contends with RPGs of today in terms of worlds that react based on your actions. The game has no minimap, and any maps that you need to navigate the world will need to be purchased or stolen. From there, it will still be your responsibility to become familiar with your surroundings, and landmarks, cross referencing them with your journal to make your way through the world and complete the tasks that you are given. Your mileage on this will vary based on your preference when it comes to modern vs older quality-of-life tools. Combat is one area that is a little harder to defend. Fighting requires one button to draw your weapon, another to hold a combat stance, and flicking of various directions to perform combat moves. This can be very clunky at first, but it does give your every action a very heavy, tactile feel. Everyone is a criminal, which contributes to the feeling of distrust, and really informs how brutal the world is. All the old camp members talk like gangsters. Leveling up skills is done by training with actual people who give you thorough flavor dialogue that introduces that particular skill you are learning or improving. Gothic is a living world where NPC behavior will adjust based on night and day

Graphics:

Look, ultimately you are playing a game from 2001; this is not a remaster, or even an upscaling. It is a straight port, so I’m going to be judging it for exactly what it is. The game sports a pseudo-N64 polygonal style. I could not for the life of me find the resolution, but it’s clearly HD and looks very smooth on a 55 inch 4K TV setup. Let’s get it out of the way, the character models look like something from an early PS1 era game, with animations stiffer than my back when I hit my 30s. Draw distance is palatable as long as you are in an area where most of your surroundings are no more than a few hundred yards ahead. Get up onto a mountain top and try to look across the map and you’ll be seeing plenty of fog and pop in. The color palette ranges from dull greens, to dull browns, to dull grays; however, the world geography is varied, and extremely creative at times. Areas like the New camp have a surprising amount of verticality, with stone huts dug into the mountains side, or pubs floating in the middle of a lake. Or the Brotherhood sect, which is nestled in a convincing swamp, bathed in blue torchlight that permeates the environment at night. Where this game shines is its art direction. I never got tired of hearing the crackling of thunder, and looking up to see lightning streak across the sky as the barrier pulses, viewable from anywhere on the map. The environmental storytelling of this ever present barrier surrounding the oppressive colony is a masterclass in how to use art to make up for technical limitations. The team at piranha bites did an incredible job of taking what they had to create a world that is evocative and begging to be explored.

Technical Performance:

On PC it always felt like there was some trickery from fan patches, to the altering of game files to just get the game running. I had almost given up on playing this on any modern PC. It’s relieving to have it come to a system that I know will boot up and run immediately when I open the game — no crashes so far. While it is distinctly no remaster, there is a long list of improvements under the hood that make the game feel much more stable than its original release. However, there are also a slew of bugs that desperately need Ironed out. Every goblin in the game just doesn’t have AI. Every time I see a goblin, they are frozen in place and I’m able to run up and kill them, without any response. While this sounds like a convenient enough bug — as I was certainly able to farm EXP early this way — in a game that otherwise prides itself on its immersion, this definitely took me out of it. Many inventory bugs exist, such as having to close out of an inventory screen to pick up the last of a stack of items from a monster, or having the money counted incorrectly from a vendor if paying in more than one unit increments. Ladders would drop you to the bottom when reaching the top, and one broken quest so far would not allow me to turn in a quest, even though my journal told me it was ready to be turned in. These desperately need a patch, or I don’t not see a bright future for a Gothic 2 port.

Sound:

Very typical fantasy music score, however each area has its own distinct, excellently crafted ambient music. Sound design is excellent for its time, from walking across bridges, having their own unique creaking noise, to chirping and croaking that comes and goes as you pass by reeds and plant life by a river or swamp. The ambient sounds are very ahead of their time. Voice acting? They did their very best — all 4 voice actors. I exaggerate, but not by much, and the quality ranges from decent, to OG Resident Evil levels of quality.

Final thoughts:

As a returning fan, you have a lot to look forward to jumping back in. As a new player, you have an excellent look into a period of RPG design that would go on to influence modern masterpieces — most notably The Witcher series — and other hidden gems such as Risen or Elex. The fun in this game comes heavily from its immersion and dedication to keeping your experience grounded and tactile. However, I would wait for a patch before spending your money on this game at this point; the bugs and glitches just blemish an otherwise immersive fantasy romp.