EPTI picked up Gothic yesterday, and, after being amused by the subtly hilarious desktop icon and a few hours of play, I decided to write a review of sorts of the game. I don't usually do this, but a combination of factors came together that somehow inclined me give my opinion, and really review the whole RPG genre nowadays. I apologize in advance for my foul language and rambling...
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/xmm9e.jpg)
STORY
Lets get this one out of the way first, as its one of the more straightforward aspects of the game.
IT BLOWS.
I have rarely seen such a slavishly unoriginal or dull portrayal of the classic hero's journey. You start the game out as a unnamed and characterless dude, and within 30 minutes -SPOILER ALERT LOL- your idyllic hometown is burned to the ground, your love interest is killed, and it is revealed that you are of unknown and mysterious parentage. For gods sake, writers, PLEASE come up with a SLIGHT variation of this story. I mean, I literally started laughing when my character returned to find the village sacked... how many times have I played this before? By the time I was being told by a wicked witch that I had powers that must be awakened, I had already lost all investment in the storyline or characters.
The cinematics. Hahaha, I guess I'll lump them in here with the story as they aren't in-engine. Suffice to say I haven't seen prerendered scenes of this quality since...hmmm...when was that? Oh:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/U0qBZ.jpg)
I'm not even fucking kidding. These cinematics are bad. I actually think they would look significantly better if they had just had them ingame. At least then the characters wouldn't look like they've been carved out of silly-putty and move like balloon animals.
Anyway, as far as later game story goes, there really isn't much. There's some sort of greater arc about some kings and a war or something, but its so boring and unnoteworthy that I basically ignore it. Your "hero" has all the personality of a cardboard cutout of Keanu Reeves, plus he even looks like a dick.
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/34tLO.jpg)
Look at this douchenozzle.
This isn't one of those fancy-shmancy modern RPGs with choices and shit either. I've gotten maybe 3 instances of multiple dialog option in 9 hours of playtime, and for all I can tell, they both lead to the same outcome. So at least you don't have to worry about defining your character or scary moral grey areas...whew. The voice acting is nothing to write home about, but its not rip-your-ears out awful, so whatever. Plus, other than yourself, there really aren't any reoccurring serious characters, a few get seen once or twice, but thats only to request the collection of pond-scum or the slaying of 13 boars, so good luck forming any sort of interest in them. Thats pretty much it in the story department, it sucks.
GAMEPLAY
First, the basics. As a third person game, the camera is fine. The controls are responsive. So far so good.
FIGHTING
This game is easier that taking candy from a baby. In fact, on normal difficulty it's more like taking candy from an extremely generous sloth baby. I decided to go with the ranged-bow-dude as my character build for this play, as I usually find their ability to pick mobs off at a distance makes them overpowered in 3D RPG's. This is definitely the case in this game. Enemies are extremely slow, and whats more, they rarely even bother attacking, mostly just running up to you and then standing around in a little group like Ralph Nader supporters at a political rally. When they do decide to attack, it takes about a 5 second windup and copious clouds of green "power-up smoke" to let they player know that 7 damage is coming their way....any time now.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/IDyUW.jpg)
Imma chargin mah lazor. Really, really slowly.
As a melee player, you just roll easily out of the way. As a ranged character, practice firing while slowly strafing or walking backwards...thats it. You can actually just back away from a group of melee enemies AND THEY WILL NEVER HIT YOU, even in bow-zoom mode...I probably took damage of any kind about twice an hour, not counting after I got bored and just started charging everything. Its hard to understate just how pitifully easy the combat is. I would definitely recommend playing this on "Gothic" difficulty right from the start unless you have some sort of glaring physical or mental deformity. The hitboxes are a bit wonky sometimes for the bow, but generally the weapons control fine, its just the enemies who need some help.
MENUS and GUI
Generally ok, with some glaring problems. Thank god, this game does not make you sit through long animations to loot chests or pick stuff up, a simple double tap of "E" is enough to collect everything on or in an object. Equipping and moving inventory is generally fine, and there are virtually no nested menus, which is real nice. HOWEVER, there are some really annoying aspects as well. One of my number one pissoffs with the menus is the fact that you cannot see your equipped items and the shop at the same time, yeah, really. For example, I stop over at the blacksmith and see a cool looking amulet. Is it better than the one I'm wearing? I can't fucking remember, so I have to quit out of the shop, check my equipped amulet, remove it, reopen the shop, sell it and buy the new amulet, then close the shop and reopen my inventory AGAIN to equip the new ammy. That, my friends, is retarded.
The crafting system also has some really obnoxious issues. Usually it works fine and is easy: You get the recipe, right click to learn it, then you can craft as many of whatever as you have ingredients for. However, these recipes are really fucking annoying. There are ALOT of them, and you get multiples of each kind. In your inventory, if you hover over a recipe you already know, it will say "you already know this" or whatever, so you can just sell the useless shit. HOWEVER, recipes being sold by the SHOP have no such feature. If you see a cool recipe for sale at the shop and want to know if you already know it, you have to exit the shop, open the crafting menu, check the list of learned recipes, then reopen the shop to buy it if you don't know it. This is very irritating after a few hundred times. The other shit thing about recipes sold by the shop is they don't tell you the stats of the item they make until you buy them, and they are bloody expensive. If I see a recipe for "Lurker Bolts" for sale, should I spend half my money on it? What the living fuck are "Lurker Bolts"? Is it a weapon? Is it like a bolt of cloth? Is it some kind of bow ammo? Is it some mage only thing thats gonna be a total waste for my character? Well, I'll never know until I buy it.
Another really annoying thing about G4 is the shitty minimap. You only get a tiny one up in the corner while moving, and objectives don't get a waypoint until they actually appear on this little quarter sized turd, there is no directional indicator. If I get a quest to find the golden pigeon to the north, I actually just have to blindly wander north until I get within about 100feet of it and the dot appears on my screen. Its a bit like searching for junk with a metal detector on a beach, except the graphics are shittier and you are actually searching for menial labor. Oh, and objectives don't appear at all on your large map...thanks guys.
If this sounds confusing and obnoxious, thats because it is. Luckily for us, there are signs sprinkled around pointing to major landmarks. Let's take a look:
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/sBtud.jpg)
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/aWSuY.jpg)
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![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/PO5HS.jpg)
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![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/pH0sx.jpg)
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![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/yEiF1.jpg)
Oh wait, THERES NOTHING FUCKING WRITTEN ON THEM!
It actually took me SEVEN FUCKING HOURS to figure out that you are supposed to walk up and TOUCH these signs, which will then reveal their information in tiny text over your health bar, note, this is NEVER told to the player. You know what? Thats some fucking bullshit right there, what are these signs written in braille or something?Is the actual words-written-on-the-sign technology too advanced for this game? Fucking MINECRAFT has words written on its goddamn signs, MINECRAFT!
ITEMS
There are a good number of items in the game. An acceptable number. You find weapon upgrades about every hour or so, and not hundreds of the same thing, so I'm ok with this. It's not Diablo 2 awesome, but at least there is enough to keep a huge item whore like myself engaged. This brings up an interesting point that always pisses me off. Why doesn't every RPG have at least some randomly generated item stats? Instead of Poky Spears just doing 10 damage, make them drop with 6-11 damage and a chance for +3-6% critical or 1 random elemental damage. Its not fucking hard to program this kind of stuff in... This way, even if you only find Poky Spears for the next 6 hours, you get to compare and upgrade and feel like you are getting somewhere. It is a complete and utter mystery to me why any game wouldn't do this. Gothic 4 does not do this. I will say that as far as the appearance of the weapons, they look pretty fucking sexy. I got weapons even in the first couple hours that looked like serious shit ogre reaming gear, kudos to whoever modeled the battle axes, they are like elven can-openers.
SKILLS
This is the Gothic 4 Skill tree:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/NxbdN.jpg)
Thats it. For every class in the game. Thats pitiful. The lumps are supposed to be actual skills, the graduations are just passive boosts. I say supposed because MANY of the lumps are actually passive boosts that don't change gameplay too! The first three bars are melee, next 2 are ranged, last three are fire, ice, and lightning. I know, many other games have more active skills for each class than are on this entire tree, but hold onto your hats because this gets more disappointing. There are actually far LESS skills than it looks at first glance. There are actually more like 8 TOTAL skills in the game, and I'm being generous by considering stuff like bow zoom and a heavy melee attack as active skills for this. Most of these trees simply grant you ONE active skill and then add crappy passivle buffs to it for the rest of the tree. There are actually ZERO ranged active skills. ZERO. You get bow zoom at level one for the precision tree, and crouch at level one of the Stealth tree. Thats it for the entire trees. All the rest are percentage buffs. For the magic trees you get ONE spell each at level one, then the later skills add shit like burn damage and AOE to that ONE skill. ONE GODDAMN SKILL.
This is probably my most serious problem with the game. Just looking at this I can tell you that this will have absolutely no replay value whatsoever. What, you think I'm gonna start up a new char just so I can experience the glory of nine consecutive melee attacks before recovery? No fucking way. This skill tree is a complete joke. If you make an RPG where the only possible character builds are melee, ranged, and...wait, really just melee and ranged, then you deserve to be forced to play the whole goddamn boring thing. Fuck you. People paying SIXTY-DOLLARS for this? Never in a million years.
VERDICT
Still, for all my raging about the shittyness of some aspects of the game, its still not THAT bad. You probably wont uninstall it immediately or begin a boxing match with your monitor out of frustration. It functions, sort of, as an RPG....you get to grind and fetch Weasel Sponges and beat the crap out of extremely hapless goblins. I mean its a formula pretty much guaranteed to keep you going as long as the most basic elements are in place, which they are...
But wait...no, fuck that.
This game is a steaming pile of boring regurgitated cliches and completely content-less gameplay mixed up in some crappy industrial studio where they probably keep their underpaid designers locked in grey shipping crates and feed them cold malt-o-meal. If you buy or download this game, you will play through the whole shitty thing and then sit back after 20 hours of grinding and think: "Why the fuck did I do that". You will be completely unfulfilled, you will never discuss the game again with anyone, and you will never play it again unless gripped in the jaws of mindcrushing boredom. Meanwhile, there are people learning how to rock-climb and running through sunlit meadows and fucking, and you just sat in an office chair and brought ugly virtual men ugly virtual items again and again for the better part of 3 days.
Don't do it.
