Gothic, my beloved, oh how I miss you. Your dense worldbuilding, your memorable characters, your unique open-world design, your grounded vibes. How I long for these low-poly 3D models and those goofy face textures, the broken but somehow still fun combat system, the progression from an absolute loser to a world-ending killer machine and yes, even all the jank that these games brought to the table as well. In short: I love Gothic and for about 20 years or so, this series has been down in the dumpster. With the original studio disbanded and the IP disregarded for years, it’s looking pretty grim for Gothic these days.
However, every now and again there is a sign of life, a spark of hope if you will that maybe, Gothic isn’t as dead as everyone makes it out to be. When games like Enderal are released, clearly inspired by Gothic in its progression systems and overall tone. Or when Archolos proved that the soul of Gothic never really died, it just wandered from Germany to Poland. The release of Drova can be seen as one such moment. Its developers make no secret of the fact that they drew heavy inspiration from Gothic in many ways and you can feel that in every aspect of its design. It starts with Bodo Henkel voicing the German intro cinematic, reminding players of his phenomenal work as Xardas all these years ago. But it doesn’t end there. You can feel the spirit of Gothic in every fiber of this game. In many ways, this really is a 2D Gothic game.
Just like its spiritual predecessor, Drova features a believable and reactive world that never feels like it was built specifically for the player but one where the player is only a visitor, a guy like everyone else who has to make the best of the situation they are thrown into. This is not a playground for you to ♥♥♥♥ around in. This is a world with its own rules, laws, societal conventions and if you don’t adhere to them, you will face the consequences. Break into someone’s home and they will come after you. Draw a weapon and a guard will warn you and attack you in case you ignore their orders. Steal an armor from someone’s personal chest, equip it and talk to the owner and they will kick your ass.
This reactiveness extends to the quest design as well. Most quests are designed in ways that give you various options for solving them. Don’t get me wrong, you still have your standard RPG quests like “Kill 10 wolves” or “Bring me a bear pelt” or whatever but for the most part, you deal with complex matters that can be addressed in multiple ways. Will you attempt to heal the wounded huntress or let her die and if you choose to help her, do you even know how? Will you keep the identity of an impostor and potential murderer to yourself for personal financial gain or will you hand him over to the authorities? Whatever you do, your actions have consequences. A traitor you helped get arrested gets chained to the wall and you can walk by him every day. Others who assisted him are excluded from the community they lived in and can now be found at the town’s gates. It’s really cool to see how the world changes dynamically based on your decisions. It’s very Gothic in that regard.
Drova also gets right what made Gothic’s world design so amazing and unique. From the onset, large sections of the world are accessible to you right away. You can [i]technically[/i] go anywhere you please but there are natural barriers preventing you from straying too far from the path. Especially in the beginning, most monsters and bandits you come across pose a challenge you are simply not prepared for yet. Still, if you are stubborn and you are looking for this exact kind of challenge, you can overcome it by playing skillfully. Thereby, you can access parts of the map that are designed as late-game areas and you can even slightly sequence-break the game by getting an overpowered weapon or other equipment early on. I think that is what I always loved about Gothic – the ability to disrupt the “intended experience”, to stubbornly venture into the wilds and take on enemies I really should just ignore but be rewarded a thousandfold in case of success. Of course, the developers know this and have designed their game around it, an “intended unintentionality” if you will. It’s a little sad that so few open-world games follow this design philosophy but it is all the more reassuring when games like Drova come out and prove that this is still so much more engaging than traditional open world design.
So, with everything this game gets right, why did it fail to win me over completely? The building blocks of a Gothic-like masterpiece are all here after all, no? Well yes, the worldbuilding is great, the quest design is varied and you have your typical Gothic-isms like having to join a faction, find advocates in your camp and so on. However, there are some aspects that really drag this game down.
For one, the level design can be extremely restrictive and frustrating. This is a 2D game with clearly defined areas that are accessible and others that are not. There are paths connecting the areas but you cannot roam freely through the world. In Gothic, you could climb to higher platforms or jump around like a madman (especially with the acrobatics skill lol) and so, your movement was never really limited. In Drova, this is not an option. You follow the paths laid out before you and that’s it. When you want to get somewhere and you check your map and think “Oh, I just have to go North”, this often leads to a dead end and you have to walk miles and miles around to get where you need to go. I’m exaggerating a bit but seriously, I would often just hug the wall and run around looking for that way up to the plateau or something for minutes. I would often get lost too (♥♥♥♥ the swamp btw.) and end up in places I really didn’t want to go. This could have been prevented by adding some kind of mode for traversal – jumping, climbing, ropes you can hang off of walls, anything really. Anything to prevent these comically long stretches of backtracking.
Story- and pacing-wise I was a bit confused by the game as well. For the first 12 hours or so there is basically no story at all. After the introduction, you are thrown into this new world and you spend a long time just getting accustomed to this unknown environment. The game does a good job in introducing the lore, the characters, the factions and so on but the actual plot is missing entirely. Of course, this is partly my own fault for dragging out the first chapter so much. You can join a faction pretty early which kickstarts the main story but with all the things you can already do in Act one, the places you can visit and the quests you can complete, I just wish the game would sprinkle some story beats here and there. The main theme, the core conflict remains rather murky for much too long. Eventually, things start to get more interesting and some story sequences are genuinely well-designed (the chapter in the primeval forest in particular), but I still have my reservations in this respect. It’s not just the pacing but also some contrivances towards the end that make the story feel unplausible at times.
Ultimately, I enjoyed my time with Drova. I like the Celtic-mythological setting, the worldbuilding, the grounded conversations and progression systems, all bathed in phenomenal pixel-art that deserves special mention. The combat is alright too albeit a bit hectic, especially in group battles. I also appreciate the high diversity in character designs but I just wish the characters themselves were more memorable. An equivalent to Gothic’s Diego or Enderal’s Jaspar is sorely missing. The level design can be obnoxious, the story is a bit whatever, the pacing can be iffy and the final chapters are a bit of a drag but still, Drova breathes Gothic in all its facets and I will never grow tired of this series or games that attempt to deliver a similar experience.
