Gothic 1 Remake

Well, you did it, Alkimia! It is not a perfect game or remake, but it was a great experience that left me wanting more, either another playthrough or, hopefully, a remake of G2: Night of the Raven The good: 1. You captured the essence and atmosphere of the original. You made no compromises to appeal to a broader audience and stayed true to the design principles of the original G1. For me, this is the most important thing that makes this remake successful. 2. The graphics are generally beautiful, although not always consistent - more on that below. 3. Exploration is amazing. The new areas fit the original world very well and were a lot of fun to explore. Climbing was a great addition, as were the new underwater locations. The skill that greatly increases your diving time was also a great idea, especially with such a high limit. 4. You stayed true to the original's design, so almost all the good things from the original are still here. Amazing! 5. The change combat animations at higher skill levels is a great concept (as in the original). 6. It is good there are combos in the combat (as in the original). 7. Free aiming with bows and magic is a great improvement over the original. 8. I was worried that adding difficulty levels was an attempt to appeal to a broader audience, but you handled it very well. 9. Armor design is very good, those look perfect. And adding upgrade feature that changes looks and stats of the armours is a great improvement over the original! The bad: 1. The combat is too slow compared to the original. It feels too inert and unresponsive. The original combat was snappy and responsive, and animation cancelling made it feel great. Combat in the remake is still enjoyable, but in my opinion, it is worse than the original. 2. Some plot changes made the twists feel less surprising. Why did the Old Mine collapse so soon? Why wasn't the New Camp preparing for a war with the Old Camp as soon as they heard the news? Lares even says that Gomez is very likely to attack them to restore their mining operation, yet he doesn't seem to do anything about it. This feels like weaker writing than in the original. 3. Ur-Shak's story also feels strange. Is he exiled from the Orc enclave or not? Why do the orcs accept him back into the enclave? His situation makes less sense than it did in the original. 4. Graphic oftern is overexposed, too much light is making evey colour bleached out. 5. Some designs have this "ohohoo this is a crazy evil creature with a malicious grin on its face" vibe. It is too "over the top" approach vs original Gothic "down-to-earth" creatures design philosophy that are more of Gothic-world animals than malicious monsters. That tendency can be seen also in buildings design etc. 6. Aaand on the design. Swords have strange proportions, seem too short. Something feels off here. 7. Ur-Shak's speech is a bit of a letdown. In the original, you could really feel that human language wasn't his native language. He used simple sentence structures and forms (at least in the Polish dubbing), which made him feel much more authentic. It's a shame the remake missed this. 8. Crafting needs an overhaul. You can't check your recipes in any menu, smithing feels almost useless, and the smithing minigame feels more like something from a mobile game. Alchemy and scroll writing are okay at best. 9. The lockpicking minigame is too tedious. At some point I started using an online lock solver because solving locks could take several minutes and seriously disrupted the flow of the game. 10. Some of the story changes also create problems with the world's logic. Why does the Old Camp still allow us to move around freely after Gomez's attack on the mine, when he already knows that we are working with the Water Mages and the New Camp? Overall, you did a great job, and I would be very happy to see you make a remake of G2: Night of the Raven — or even a reimagining of G3 with a new, more interesting and consistent plot that connects better with G1 and G2 - that would be spectacular!