World of Gothic – Review
written by: Don-Esteban
translation: BlackLizard

Postcard views. Beautiful places can be found in countless numbers. But they’re nothing but nice postcard pictures. Beautiful waterfalls in a dramatic setting. Unyielding castle at the foot of the mountains. A huge tree in the swamp.

You won’t get in here

Strong meat is also the inaccessible Setarrif, at which gate you will simply be turned down – even though the ensuing short dialogue here belongs to the funnier quarrels Arcania has to offer. Was there not enough time to implement the town – which is after all the big opponent of the Myrtanians under King Rhobar III? Wouldn’t this have been a good opportunity to present an alternative view to the Myrtanian perspective? Couldn’t this have been used to give a face to the second big party in the conflict over Argaan? To tear it from its position as the anonymous opponent? At least this way you are spared the usual 20 clone-NPC and tree more „get“ and „bring“ quests. And possibly, the DLC production of “Errand Boy Adventure in Setarrif” is already running at full speed at Spellbound.

From the view of a Gothic veteran the moments in the game when the hero’s four friends support you, have to be rays of hope. For example in Thorniara. Nevertheless, also here it is only a small pleasure. In line with the whole game, the game part of Thorniara just offers a high tubular level - a nested version of it. And just like the disappointing Vengard in Gothic 3, Thorniara only serves as a lifeless backdrop to the running work of the hero. In Arcania, the running is necessary for the usual fetch and delivery quests, which the whole game appears to be built of. Activate two of those, get five of these, fetch that three times. In between you may beat up some in-between opponent. , Like an unfailing errand boy you will be sent from one end of the city tube to the other. And if it ever comes to taking a turnoff somewhere, then it will certainly be at the opposite end again. And the quest giver you have to return to, is often just a wall or a breast-high fence away. However, those present invincible barriers, so that you will have to go back through umpteen streets, and after numerous circles and winding alleys you finally arrive at your destination. The irritating thing is that you are not free to decide which road to take to reach your destination, but have to follow the given tube design because the town is limited by barricades and other obstacles. Thus, you are occupied with just running around in Thorniara, allowing the developers to add a few hours of gaming time in a quite cheap manner. All the while you can admire the certainly beautiful houses from the outside. Houses which are quite diverse within the defined architectural style. The insides of most of them cannot be entered. And in case there should happen to be an open door, you won’t find anything except for some random stuff. By putting voices of frightened inhabitants behind the closed doors, the developers unsufficiently mask the emptiness in the town raided by groups of the undead. Lively towns do look different. Certainly it is fun to explore Thorniara in cheat-mode with the free camera. But not really in the game, together with the hero. Too often you stand in front of some fence, a gate, a wall or simply an unusable door.

Spellbound announced over the course of the development, that open questions from the previous parts of the Gothic series will be answered, that loose plot ends will be connected and finished. Alright, but which ones then? After playing Arcania I haven’t noticed anything of the like. Instead new, alien, divine entities and creatures were introduced. Followers of different, competing gods are mercilessly intertwined at several points in the game, and modular components shamelessly exploited for own purposes. More than once my eyebrows were raised questioningly.

While the story on Argaan starts wide-spread, in the second half it becomes more hectic and erratic. Was Spellbound running out of time?

Something grew together, which in the eyes of the insider does not belong together. The storyline starts as a ballad of revenge. This may sound like a cliché, but it should conform with roleplay standards. But after following the thread of the story over several hours, without really getting more input, except for the information that the king is bad and the country at war, the story gets more and more rushed in the second half. Opponents are introduced, explained by a few lines of dialogue and shortly after, I have to knock them flat already, without truly having experienced them as antagonists in the game. Hence the story increasingly drifts off to some supernatural good/evil story about opposing angel-like creatures. This makes a very superficial and constructed impression. The connection of the storyline with the Gothic universe remains in the dark.

Inventory

The inventory lacks every suitable possibility for a comparison. Didn’t the developers line up, to raise the rather modest inventory of the Gothic games to a standard level? Now you have to compare every item manually to figure out the one which has the best attributes. There isn‘t even a sorting function available, so that the items just end up in the inventory in the order they were picked up. The trade menu is missing these help functions as well. It’s incomprehensible why such a standard function was omitted. The extremely plain design of all ingame menus like inventory, questlog, character screen and the map, may be mentioned on as side note. Gothic has never been a game with lots of design flourishes, yet a graphical improvement or two would have been a welcome treat.

Combat system

“Watch your enemies closely, to be able to evade their most devastating attacks.” This phrase on the loading screen must be meant ironically. The combat system, which even allows stylish combinations of successive slashes if the timing is right, is also manageable with dumb endless clicking. Simply pummel the opponent non-stop, so that he never gets to launch a counter-attack in the first place. This way you are almost always certain to win. Besides, this tactic barely consumes stamina. The time to carefully observe your enemy can be spared in any case. Should an opponent block for once, a longer press on the left mouse-button helps to perform a power-slash which breaks through the block.

The combat system is designed for uncomplicated action. There is hardly any demand for tactics.

This does not change with rising difficulty level, either. Then the opponents can simply take more hits, while your own character sustains more damage. In short, fights only take longer because you have to beat your opponent more often before he bites the dust. Another annoying fact is the missing possibility to adjust the distance between the camera and the hero. Neither in normal mode nor during the combat mode do we have influence on how close we zoom in. Even worse: in a fight the camera automatically zooms out – most likely well meant, to get a better overview. However the result is that during a fight in the forest, the treetops obscure our view. Concisely, the combat system is designed more for constant action and quick fights. A complete contrast to Risen for example, where tactical opportunities actually existed, with which the quite daring fights were spiced up.

Items

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began.

This path raises curiosity for more. But there isn‘t much to discover away from the road.

What’s left is the hunt for new items, weapons, armor. Like in action-RPGs like Diablo or Titan Quest. But to support this approach the range of collectible weapons and other items turns out to be a little too small. Regarding weapon types, there are only one-handed swords and axes as well as two-handed ones: axes, swords and a few halberds. For long-range fighting, some bows and crossbows are added. Armor is received after having accomplished certain missions over the course of the main storyline. On the one hand it gives satisfaction to have mastered an important stage, on the other hand the range of armor is not really very large. Every time you can choose between variants of close-combat, long-range-fight, and one for mages. Each of them with different bonuses. Instead of two rings, as in previous games of the series, you may now equip one ring and a pair of braces. There are helmets too. Not many though. Almost all parts of equipment bring numerous bonuses, at times for five or more different attributes. This makes it even more difficult to compare them in the inventary without any help function. By the way, your search for battle staffs will be in vain. Prerequisites to equip or use certain weapons do not exist. So, as a shepherd you can theoretically already swing the biggest two-handed ax and use every rune. Any other approach would have probably clashed with the simplified game-concept anyway.

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