It definitely has the Gothic DNA and a lot of the elements that made Gothic great are still here: a merc camp, a bustling town, and little pockets of ruins peppered throughout the wilderness. Exploring is still the main highlight of the game, here, however, the combat lacks the charm of the original series and follows a boring rhythm based combat system. Enemies will almost always block some of your attacks, which adds to the tedium since if you're beefing up a combat skill in particular it doesn't feel like your're a master swordsman at all. The game follows tradition and has a pretty grindy final act where you face TONS of enemies in armor, thankfully here it's easy to run past most enemies. All in all a solid title that doesn't retain all of what made Gothic great but has enough to warrant a playthrough, though I won't blame you for jumping ship before the final boss.
Positive note: I do like how they add traversal tools, e.g. telekinesis, transformation, it enhances the exploration and is something I want to see in Elex! Hopefully they nail the feel of the skill AND item progression.
Something that bothered me was that no matter how badass your armor is, every enemy will make you stagger if they connect w a hit, even a fucking pig, dog or squirrel. I remember getting good armor in Gothic and smiling as I saw the wolves and scavengers graze me.
Some final screens:
using the env to defeat an enemy, not bad
using tk to solve puzzles is great, sadly it only happens like 2 or 3 times in the game.
badass pic, very Gothic. will be avoiding Risen 2, 3, and Gothic 3. Moving on to Arx Liberatis!