After much trepidation, I've finally decided to thumbs-down this one. Read on for the last straw which made me do that.
Even though the game itself is quite good - it's the best game I've played this year - the developers have shown complete inability to listen to the players, and serious lack in technical skills too. It felt as if the entire original developer team had been reassigned to work on other projects right after the game was released, and some other people were put in charge of post-launch support. Since the release of 1.0, they've repeatedly broken unrelated game functionality with their patches in some really inexorable ways. Every patch had a hot fix, and sometimes even additional hot fixes for hot fixes. What was even worse is that instead of fixing actual bugs, they had this hell-bent fixation on nerfing the game in the ways most unpleasant to the players. Items got removed, replaced etc, while a lot of real bugs were never fixed. For example, even today, each time after I load a game I have to go to settings to disable and re-enable DLSS frame generation, because loading a save game breaks it.
Even worse so, initially they didn't even bother to document the nerfing they did. After players have started to call them on that, they started documenting the changes, but still didn't mention everything. Now, I still wanted to thumbs-up this game, but then I discovered the way they "nerfed" a particular high damage axe. Instead of simply removing it or replacing it with a lower-damage one, they've removed access to it. Essentially, you used to be able to climb to it, but not anymore. Mind you, the axe is still there, it's just that it's no longer accessible! You can still turn into a bloodfly and wiggle around and eventually get there, after wasting half an hour or so, and get that darn axe, but by the time I've managed to master this trick, I didn't want it anymore. If they really didn't want me to have it, so be it, but damn, the way they did that was so off-putting! You can find videos on YouTube of getting that axe before and after the patch, and you can clearly see the way the game used to be vs the way it is now. Needless to say, that change wasn't documented (and how would you document such a thing? "We've removed access to the item, even though it's still there"?). By making all those changes, the developers have pissed off most of their player base and broke a lot of already published game guides. Why?! What was the reason for that? Dear developers, the game is supposed to be fun! That's the entire reason for it to exist! Finding a powerful item feels great and rewarding, and for a lot of people that's one of the most important reasons to play! Sure, you can become overpowered, but don't you think one should be able to do so if that's what one really wants? Please let us have fun, please let us feel smart about our discoveries! Indulge us, this is just a game, that's why games exist! Now, if you really do want to balance everything out so that there's no incentive in exploring every nook and cranny of the world, do so BEFORE releasing the darn game! Doing this after the fact just stresses out everyone for no good reason whatsoever.
Other things I'd briefly notice for completeness: in all original Gothic games, sleeping would always fully restore health and mana. This was intended by developers and we players had a lot of fun with that mechanic. In this remake the level of restoration is dependent on the time you've spent awake. Not really a major thing, but this just shows that weird desire of removing fun out of things by this new developer.
Last but not least, the new lock-picking mechanic was universally disliked. I completely agree here - it's tedious and just not fun. In fact, the moment I've tried to pick my first lock, I've realized two things: that I'm never going to pick a lock manually in this game, and that a computer can do this 100% of the time. So I've decided to have my fun and add a bit of cyberpunk flavor to the game. I've alt-tabbed out of the game and wrote a program which would simply inject the required key presses in the correct order to open the lock for me. Now, every time I need to pick a lock, I alt-tab out of the game, enter lock parameters into my program (I still need to study the lock for that!), then schedule it to run after a two-second delay, during which I alt-tab back to the game. Then it quickly presses the keys needed and, if I've managed to input the lock parameters correctly, yay, the lock gets opened! I've actually had a lot of fun with this, and I'm still having it. So I actually have nothing to complain about personally, but yes, the mechanic itself sucks. Needless to say, the developer has ignored the hate and left the mechanic as is. Fine by me, I suppose.
In the end, it's a tumbs-down from me, because they clearly have some big dysfunction in their team. I've really tried, but no, the way they've removed access to that axe was too much. Sorry, I just can't. At this moment I can't say I'm holding my breath for Gothic 2 remake either. I hope they manage to fix their internal issues before it's released, since if not, it's more of that emotional roller coaster where you are given something great, but then you have to watch it become worse little by little.
