So first of all, I would rate this game at around 8.5/10. I would recommend it to not only people who played the original Gothic but also to anyone who likes a good RPG with unique world and progression system.
I absolutely love how they changed the world in the remake, while still preserving what was set in the original game. The overall layout of the map was unchanged, which makes it much easier for old players to find their way in. But there are some new locations and most of the existing ones were modified to better fit the new look of the game or fit better logically, so it manages to keep being interesting even if you played the original. For the new player, I feel like the changes make it easier to find your way in the game, but it still can feel pretty overwhelming if you won't get access to any map in the beginning of the game.
Just like in the original, the music fits the setting very well and I love it. It's not exactly the same, since they modernized some of the tracks and also added some new ones, but they seem very fitting to the overall game atmosphere.
I'm not going to go deep into the plot and lore of the game, but I liked how they tried to expand some of the plot threads and they seem like good addition to what was shown in the original.
Another thing that is worth to mention is that I really like how they changed the picklocking mechanic, although I have some gripes with it. Overall I liked it, but I feel like there are still some aspects that they didn't manage to fix about them. My main issue is that the difficulty rating on the locks is something that feels like very randomized and not very acccurate. There is some kind of pattern that sometimes syncs two lock parts together, which seems to be the main issue. The highier the level of lockpicking, the less likely it is that you will encounter them, but they still appear even on the hightest level of lockpicking. The main indicator that these locks are way to hard to solve is that the players have created a lot of different apps to automatically solve these locks, so that says a lot about this situation.
I think that if they added some visual way to display how each lock parts are connected to each other in game, it would make it much easier to manage and it might even solve the issue with some locks, since I wouldn't have to take out my notepad or any of the user created lock solvers apps. One way to display it would be if selecting one lock part, would highlight all other lock parts that are connected to it and show how they are related to it (in which way they would move). This wouldn't even have to be something that is automatically displayed on each new lock, but could require to first move the lock part to display the connection between other lock parts or it could even be added as part of the lockpicking skill.
When it comes to gameplay and especially fighting, I liked how they tried to change the systems that were used in the original, but I also feel like they came up short in some terms. My main grip is that they tried to make changes, but at the same time it feels like they tried to be faithful to the original a little too much and they also didn't take into account some of the things that were present in the Gothic 2 or some of the mods that came along for both of these games.
Starting with fighting, I played as a mage and since I was playing this game close to the release (last time I opened the game was about 12th of June), I didn't manage to experience the changes that they managed to add in the further updates/patches. During my playthorugh I felt like while there were a lot of different spells that we could use, a lot of them weren't as powerful or took way too long to cast, which caused them to not be even usable in usual fights. Most of the time I was forced to use either the frost arrow or flame arrow runes, which are the very first runes that you can get and use in the game, since they are very fast to cast and don't use much mana, which can't be said about any other spell in the game (apart from some of the endgame ones). It really felt like nobody even considered that players might try to play mage-only playthrough without using weapons (or at least with barely using them). Good luck beating stone golem that is almost invulnerable to magic without a melee weapon or any summon.
Potions and collectible plants are a great example why I think that they made a mistake by not taking into account how it was implemented in Gothic 2 and some of the mods that were developed for both of the original games. I really missed some quality-of-life features that were added in these regarding both how potions work and how plants could be used. In the remake, potions restore a static value each time, which is the same as it worked in the original Gothic 1. During an endgame, even if you have the best potions available, you still have to drink a lot of them to restore full health to your character. If you won't use them much through a whole game then you might have enough of them, but otherwise I hope that you have a big reserve of money to stock up on them. As a mage, I had to non-stop restore my mana, which caused me to use a lot of items and potions to restore it from the start of the game. I really wish that they added that the potion would restore either the static value or the percentage value of health/mana if it would be highier than a set static value.
I hoped that my potion shortage would be resolved though alchemy, but once again I was mistaken. Alchemy doesn't only require you to have an adequate plant and the flask to create a potion, but also usually some additional items, that you would mostly find by buying them through vendors, which are also pricey if you try to buy them in bulk. Sometimes if you don't have most of the ingredients for the potions, it's cheapier to buy potions directly, which also seems strange and very expensive.
When it comes to collectible plants, I was happy that they added a way for these plants to respawn in the world in the places where we already collected them, but the plants don't restore much health/mana on their own and you can't easily convert them into potions/soups. Most of the plants don't even have any useful receipes that they could be used in, so they just sit in your inventory. Some of the plants can be used for cooking soupes, but these recipes usually require you to also use some rare ingredients.
In the remake they have also added the system for simulating economy for the merchants. For example if you would sell a lot of the same item to a vendor, he starts to lower the price for the item and if you want to buy items in bulk, they would start to set their prices highier and highier the more you buy. While I really liked this system, it makes it painful to buy and sell anything in bulk, which also makes it almost impossible to sell your hunter trophies.
I also have an issue with inventory, since while it works, the sorting mechanic seems pretty weird (sometimes it appears to be random) and the fact that the same weapons don't stack is an atrocity and it makes it painful to sometimes find some items in it.
There are also some bugs when it comes to how NPCs detect that the player has commited any type of crime. This causes them to become angry and attack player, which can break a lot of things and softlock player. from progressing. I once had an issue with whole tavern attacking me, because a day earlier I stole some items when no one was around. At the time it was fine, but later on I couldn't enter the tavern, because they would attack me .
Overall I would still recommend this game, since it's well made and you can feel like they understood the original game very well. Most of the issues that I mentioned are parts that could be patched out later on in the future updates and I really hope that they will work on this and will use it as a base for the Gothic 2 Remake that might happen in the future.
