Rating: 
Summary: Ultima7 Reborn in 3D, a Perfect RPG
Review: Gothic 2 is perhaps the greatest 3d adventure game that I will ever play. I have been waiting awhile to write this review b/c I first wanted to finish the game. But this is no game, it truly is a virtual adventure. The environment of the game is incredible. Everyone's life is scripted, the computer characters really live out their lives. I have read that you can even catch a townsman pissing on a wall in an alley, though I never caught anyone in the act. I did, however, have my virtuous Paladin visit the brothel in town (tee hee), in the "Red Lantern District".
The many reviews written on Amazon do the game justice, so I will not critique the game here. But I will tell you of the fun that I had.
It all started with a nostalgia to play Ultima7, a HUGE 3-d Legend-of-zelda perspective computer game released in the early 90's that had such immersive and detailed world/plot/character development such that I have never seen in any game since. So anyways, there I was trying to load up this DOS game on my windowsXP system and it just wouldn't run. So while still in the mood for adventure, I loaded up Final Fantasy 7, Outcast (a brilliant PC game), D&D Planescape Torment, Betrayal at Krondor, even Zelda for N64 and Gamecube. But none of these games gave me the satisfaction of Adventure...except Outcast. But even Outcast is not a huge living world like Ultima7. I turned to our good friend google and searched Ultima7 and up came a review of this game, GOTHIC 2, to which it was compared. I bought Gothic2 with low expectations, for a measly $20, and it turned out to be the greatest most epic adventure I have ever had (on the computer). The gaming world is HUGE. It is basically separated into two areas: a medieval island, and an old mining valley. While loading a saved-game, or jumping back-and-forth between the two areas, will take about 40 sec of hard-drive crunching, the wait is well worth it! When I say the world is huge, it is all continuous and smooth. Once it is loaded, you can walk from the castle village in the south to the pyramids in the north without any computer delays. The run from south to north takes about 20 minutes!, assuming you have already killed all the monsters along your path. But still more amazing than the size of the world is its detail. The detail of the ground reminds me of HALO. Blury from a distance, but blades of grass at your feet. There is night & day (which cycles about every 20 minutes), snow in the mountains, rain-storms, bursts of lightning that illuminate everything around you, dense fog in the cemetaries and haunted woods, Even earthquakes. Another favorites about the environment are CAVES that do not look like boxes, but really caves. Some deep, others not-so-deep. Some have been used as tombs, others as stashes for the thieves. Early on in the game I came across a cliffside path with blood leading to a cave and found a stash of gold which I pounced on, and was shortly there-after pounced on and mauled to death by a shadowbeast (a big bear/lion animal). Suffice it to say, just walking around in the game world is a game in itself, with all the little details to make you feel that this island is modeled after a real place, and you are reinacting a real story.
There are many many characters in this game. Some rich, some poor, heros, villains, cowards, liars, etc. About half the people seem to enjoy getting high by smoking "swampweed" every night. In fact with the brothel, and the bloodfights, you can pretty much act out a medieval Grand-Theft-Auto. Fight with anyone in the game, knock them unconscious, steal their belongings, and then even draw your sword and finish them off. But unlike GrandTheftAuto, murdering people in cold blood will make you ostracized by all of the "good people" until you confess to a priest or militia leader and ask for forgiveness.
The story is very well done, and believable. It is almost as good as the immortal Betrayal at Krondor. Considering the game was created in/around Germany, the script translates very well. There do seem to be about 6 people doing all the voice-acting, which is embarassing at times since the dragons sound like the priests; the voice acting IS well-done, and you seldom have to read anything in the game.
Finally, I want to share with you one of my favorite things about the game: the ability to carry anything and everything imaginable: ie, Mary Poppin's bottomless carpet bag. I love picking everything up in the game and keeping them: old keys, old coins, notes, books, plants, and my favorite...swampweed. Many games today implement a "weight-limit" to what a character can carry. That just doesn't fly with me, b/c it is annoying when you have to drop an essential item in spot A when you run outta space in your pockets, only to find you need it to get past spot B.
I could go on & on about this game, b/c there is SO much to talk about. Suffice it to say, the game is breath-taking, the depth almost unimaginable, and you will get one heck of a long adventure out of this game. This game stands out among the rest in that the value of playing it is the EXPERIENCE. Not high points, and not killing as many demons/aliens/etc as you can. I recently played Half-Life2, a game that is receiving kudos from everyone under the sun. Having played and beaten Half-Life2, I will say that it is Addicting and fun, but it leaves you completely empty. There is no sense of adventure or accomplishment. HL2 is like riding through the Universal Studios tour. Gothic2 is like taking a Vacation to another land, another place, as you do when you read a good novel. By the way, HL2 took me 3 days to beat; Gothic2 lasted me 6 months!! No game that I have ever played comes close to the depth and realism of Gothic2. If your PC is strong enough to handle this game, it will be the best $20 bill you've ever spent on gaming. And you'll live happily ever after.
Rating:
Summary: Quite possibly the best RPG ever!
Review: Gothic II is the embodiment of RPG perfection. With spectacular graphics, amazing level design, (one of its best attributes), and a very nonlinear storyline, Gothic II outshines its original by far. When I bought Gothic I several years ago, it was widely unknown and the store I bought it from stopped carrying it shortly after I bought it. But it was a huge success! So of course when I saw Gothic II annnounced, I knew I had to buy it.
Gothic II has many seemingly minor improvements over its predecessor that actually make a world of difference. Here are five examples.
1. Finally, there is "happy" music - walk along the countryside when you are not battling to hear a nice, quiet little tune play.
2. Lo and behold! - the sky is actually BLUE! No more weird, yellow Gothic I sky! (Sorry if somebody actually enjoyed it - I know I didn't.)
3. Now when you trade with people, you can sell them an item and get gold for it - the trader has "infinite" gold, so you can sell all your items to him/her and they will pay you in gold. I liked this much better than Gothic I's awkward trading system, where you and the seller had to accept an agreement of trading one item for another item. In Gothic II when you want an item from a trader, you simply highlight it and press the action key. If you have enough gold, you'll buy it. If not, sell something of your own and get gold to buy it with. I love it.
4. Your inventory system has been redone - no more confusing "Sections" you have to go through to get to an item.
5. The levels are so much more DETAILED now! This is the most lavishly detailed game I have ever laid eyes on. Explore a forest; ferns dot the floor and ivy crawls up trees, shrubs and bushes are scattered about gloriously. I simply can't praise the level design enough.
The only negative I can complain of is that your health and mana don't recharge depending on your character level or a similar attribute, which is why I gave the game only four stars out of five. This may not sound like much, but to me it was a big problem. You have to find healing plants/potions and mana plants/potions lying around the level to restore your health. You can occasionally buy plants and potions from merchants, and sleeping the night out on a bed will restore health and mana as well, but the merchants run out of stuff and you can't very well sleep every time you finish a battle now can you? Keeping up health and mana later gets annoyingly difficult, considering plants don't regrow, merchants don't get new items, and as I just said, it wastes a huge amount of game time to sleep every time you finish a battle (and this isn't usually possible - where would you find a nice comfy bed out in the middle of a forest?)
But all in all, my final words are "Buy this game! You'll be glad you did!"
Rating: 
Summary: Looks good, but why all the delays?
Review: Gothic was a good game. Gothic 2 should be a better game. I've been waiting for this game for months, why all the delays. According to Gothic2.com the only thing left to do is translate the script from German to English. This can also be logically deduced, as the game is already out in Germany. Is Gothic 2 really that long, or are the translaters braindead? I'm also hoping that Gothic 2 will have some better graphics and fewer bugs than Gothic. If Gothic 2 lives up to be all it's hyped up to be, it should be a great game.
Rating:
Summary: Very good.
Review: Has to be one of the BEST RPG-type games I have EVER played. Gothic is also good; I would recommend it before you buy this. If you do not, you'll miss some of things that make this game "neat".You get to visit the old areas of Gothic, but they are "burnt" by the "dragons". A MUST buy!
Rating:
Summary: Best RPG ever!
Review: I already played Gothic 2 'cause I'm from germany and here Jowood released it in 2002! Gothic 2 is the best RPG I ever played! The AI of the over 400 Computer characters is one of the best AI i've ever seen! There are more than 150 weapons which all have individuel good and bad sides! The Animations are brilliant but sometimes you can't see the enemy because the detailed environment is so huge!
So finally i have to say that if you don't buy Gothic 2 you made a really big mistake! Gothic 2 is really long! It took me more then 35 hours to finish the game but i didn't play all quests!
Rating:
Summary: Immersive addiction
Review: I bought this game after reading a titilating review of it in the free "Computer Source" magazine. The idea behind this game seems to be a focus on exploration, combat, and talking to NPC's. You make choices in all of this that affect the path you take to complete, or fail, your quests (of which their are a few main ones and TONS of side ones). This is a role-playing game where you "get your hands" dirty more than your accounting skills, so if you like twiddling with numbers and clicking your character around you will be dissappointed. The controls are radically different than current crop of popular games, RPG or otherwise, and may seem cludgy at first. You hold down a key (CTRL by default) to begin targetting, and then tap an arrow key to swing or block. In order to physically dodge you need to let the target key up. After so many inpersonal RPG's (i.e. overhead view, clicking on objects) this style of combat was refreshing and rewardingly fun once I got used to it. There are definitely some glitches in the game engine in various areas that you'd see if you play this, but aren't really worth mentioning. The biggest two glitches (both dumb sounding) are the highlight color used in the menus (hard to see on my laptop's screen) and the fact that "new game" is selected by default even when in game or after you've died ... I've accidentally hit that so many times I lost count. Anyway, definitely worth a look if you're bored of current RPG's or if you want to try something different. Oh yah, one last thing that I just adored was that all NPC's actually TALK to you (i.e. they have voices). So, sometimes you DO have to read stuff on the screen, but for the most part when you're in a dialog you can just lean back and listen.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, diverting
Review: I got this after I picked up Gothic on sale and found it was playable. Gothic 2 is better, a bit plodding sometimes but you generally get your money's worth. My computer, a 1.4 Ghz Dell, .75 Gigs mem running W2K with a 32MB GeForce would freeze on occasion, the only cure being a reboot. Even so, the game design is good, graphics are interesting. But I found the ending a tad disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Single Player RPG I have ever played
Review: I have played nearly every major single player RPG (and some wierd obscure ones for that matter), and this game is the best out of all of them. GRAPHICS:
The graphics in this game are very good but not perfect. The world detail is truly amazing and it better than any other RPG I know of. Dense forests, towering stone castles, icy mountain tops, etc etc, this game has it all. The character detail is pretty good to, much better than Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights. I also like the armor and weapon detail too. It is always a treat when I get a new piece of armor or a weapon to try it on and see how it looks, and unlike other games, the better the armors rating is the cooler it looks. The special effects for spells are pretty good, but not quite as good as Neverwinter Nights if you are looking for a comparison. The lighting detail could be better. Another thing is I wished they would of made things more reflective. The armor is kind of shiny, but it would be really sweet if they made it so you could see your reflection in someone's armor. Also, the water detail isn't all that great. The animations aren't that great either. They did a good job with coordinating gestures and facial expressions with speech, but combat animations aren't really that great. Overall the graphics are very good, and certainly at the top of any RPG, but it's certainly not Doom III. SOUND:
This game has the best sound I have heard in any RPG - full surround and environmental effects. Another thing that is awesome is that everything is spoken, none of the dialogue is subtitled. I read somewhere that there is nine hours of recorded speech in this game, and this adds a lot to the game play. The voice acting isn't' all that bad as someone a few rows down mentioned, but I think it is pretty good for 9 hours of recorded speech. CONTROLS:
The controls aren't the best, and there are games with a lot better controls out there, but you get used to the controls fast and it really isn't a problem at all. GAMEPLAY:
This is where this game really shines. This is the most nonlinear single player game I have ever played, topping even morrowind. I would go so far as to say that this game is more non-linear than some online RPG's out there. The storyline is very gripping and is up there with Baldur's Gate II. NPC's have schedules. For example, a potion maker might wake up, get some breakfast, go out in the woods to collect herbs, come back and brew potions, go to the local tavern to get a few drinks, and then finally go back to his house and go to sleep. To give you an idea of how this effects game play, here is and example of a quest I did in the game: for a quest I needed to beat someone up, but I couldn't do it in front of the guards in plain daylight. I waited until night and followed him home from the tavern and beat the hell out of him while he was in a dark alley and no one was looking. The character development system isn't as elaborate as Dungeons and Dragons, but it is to the point and gets the job done very well. I actually like it a little better than Dungeon's and Dragons. You can learn different skills like brewing your own potions, making your own weapons, skinning animals, creating spells, etc etc. I also like the way they did the economy and items in this game. Gold never loses it's value, ever. Another thing is that you're not always getting a new weapon or armor to look at every two seconds like in Diablo. Whenever you get a new item it is a pretty big thing and helps you out a lot. They did an excellent job of balancing this game in that respect. Combat is probably the weakest part of the game play, but it is still very fun. Mainly this has to do with the controls and the graphics, because combat is not nicely animated like it is in Neverwinter Nights. You should mind though, that I am being very hard on this game, and combat is still extremely fun. I am merely pointing out that it could be better. OVERALL
This is an excellent game. It isn't perfect, but it's good points are really good, and they more than cancel out the bad points(which aren't very many) and defiantly gets my five stars.
Rating:
Summary: THE BEST ACTION/RPG EVER!!!!!!!!
Review: I have played the Gothic 1 at least 10 times and it never gets dull. I downloaded the Greman demo of gothic 2, IT WAS SWEET!!!!!!!. The game play has only gotten better and they fixed some of the control problems. Your character starts out a little better and the graphics are amazing. I highly recomend getting the demo, its worth it even though its German. This is going to be the best game ever.
Rating:
Summary: I can't wait.
Review: I just bought Gothic 2 from Poland and i am waiting for it. I couldnt wait until october for english version, and i thing that is too long, they should be done with translation already!!!
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