Review Gothic 2 deep love at Gamer's Hell

Tags: Gothic II

<a href="http://www.gamershell.com/">Gamer's Hell</a> has posted <a href="http://www.gamershell.com/reviews_Gothic2Review.shtml">their review</A> of <a href="http://www.gothic2.com">Gothic 2</a>, giving it a <b>9.2</b> and a <b>Gold Award</b> for being so cool, and probably because it's 3D too. Here's a bit about the story:
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<blockquote>Gothic 2 takes place right after Gothic 1, so at the beginning you?re briefly introduced to the ending of the first game where The Sleeper was killed and the magical barrier removed. Most of the convicts tried to escape but they would quickly find the neighbor city of Khorinis to not be very welcoming. Evil was undoubtedly still present even though The Sleeper was killed - to wit; the nasty orcs are planning to launch a big assault, backed up by dragons and more. At the end of Gothic 1 our hero was pretty much covered in rocks, but his mysterious wizard pal Xardos managed to teleport him to safety. Khorinis needs your help, so you set out from the mountain hideout to save the world. There?s one small problem though, when you were teleported out you lost nearly all your strength and abilities, so you?ll have to start entirely from the beginning.</blockquote>
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That's kind of silly. Telepo0rt them out in such a manner that the main reason for you teleporting them out, their strength and skills, is negated.
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Spotted this at <A href="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPGDot</a>.

 

Well, I've been looking towards this for a while, and I guess I have no excuse but to get the English version right now (somehow I missed the release, and I was too honest to "get" the Russian version which I think came out a while before). But first of all I should ignorantly comment on the review.

Damn. This is what I was afraid of when they said "sequel." The original left you off with pretty high stats in your specialization (the experience points were too hard to come by to make a decent generalized character), and ridiculously ph4t l3wt (which really spoiled the end-boss fight). This really trapped Piranha in a corner, but I think a better story device than that could have been invented.

Which I don't think is a good thing, considering that Gothic I already had too much useless l3wt (mostly because item usage was very closely linked with character stats, but item distribution wasn't balanced very well against character progression).

I played as a mostly melee character, and thought that the combat was most consistently balanced at the beginning (but I guess it's otherwise for magicians and pure arrowmen).

I don't like the sound of that. The thing that struck me about Gothic I is that it's the only RPG so far that does real-time melee combat right, mostly by keeping opponent strength in balance with player progression throughout the game, and keeping the relation between a character's health/endurance and attack damage at realistic propotions. The things that cemented the system were the good controls (once you get the hang of it, melee in Gothic feels like a really good beat-em-up) and the fact that you couldn't heal during combat. This made combat almost always very brief and challenging, and taking on packs of opponents directly meant certain death (half the fun was figuring out how to use the environment for the necessary, but small, lead).

Also of note is that either the new storyline isn't exactly consistent with the old (but why obsess with subtleties?), or (much more likely) the reviewer didn't play Gothic I/didn't pay attention to the story/didn't play the game he was reviewing (but why obsess over subtleties?). Choice quotes (Gothic I spoiler warning!!):

It had exactly 3. Nowhere in the game did you meet a single "imperial guard" - the prison wardens just had some very fancy armor that the convicts borrowed after they killed all of them (but I guess he just missed a detail like that when playing "one of [his] all-time favorite games").

I guess he missed that whole "Orcs are just a misunderstood, misguided ancient civilization that the humans like to pound on" bit.

Wow! You sure seem grateful for that life imprisonment they "wrongly sent" you to serve!

Ok, just to poke more fun at the reviewer now.

Lewk at teh perdy shiny! Once again, a game reviewer confuses a game's art with a game's graphics engine's features. Pretty soon, they'll start confusing the amount of inane dialogue and back-scripts a game has with the quality of the story!

 

I'm not too worried that the combat system will be anyth different; I think I know what he means about it feeling like "Blade" at higher levels. In the original, once you hit master with one-handed weapons, you could really tear up the enemy... provided it was just one.

 

If they were going to make the story a continuation, using the same guy, I don't know why they couldn't just ramp the toughness of the monsters in the continuation of the story as well. I know you got ridiculously powerful in Gothic, but extending the story on to where you fight uberdemons and stuff would have been a hell of a lot better than You are the same guy, only you forgot everything and you're now a weak pissant again!, which is probably the absolute lamest thing ever. If they wanted you to start from scratch, then make a new hero that starts from scratch.

The thing that worries me about them mentioning scrolls is that in Gothic, you were forced in to using magic at certain times and they'd just give you scrolls to let you get through those areas rather than simply allowing multiple methods of dealing with situations per character type. I really didn't like the This quest is for mages, but if you're a fighter or priest character, have a scroll or two. design there at all.

I thought the beginning of Gothic was hard, but then again, I didn't like the combat system either. I thought it was annoying. What I liked about Gothic was the setting of the camps, the interaction, and the freedom. Needless to say, once I picked a faction and those three things ended, I stopped playing the game.

There were three factions, but several factions offered character class choice. That's one thing I liked about Gothic as well.

 

The main reason for porting him out is so he can take part in Gothic 2 obviously. If you want to quibble about not being ub3r enough of pick apart rationalisations you might as well give up on RPG entirely, because (and close your ears if you still wanna play kids) magic isn't real

 

We might as well argue why the Avatar always started from scratch in Britannia instead of keeping his skills. Hell, even between 7 pt 1 and 2 he lost all his skills IIRC. I know he DEFINETELY loses all his skills in UW2 which takes place right after 7, while the Avatar is still in Britannia. Bah, give the new games the same leeway you gave your old favorites.

 

I think it's just rather trite to want to use the same guy from Gothic in Gothic 2 and make him lose his powers. If you want a guy to start from scratch, have it be a new character entirely, one who didn't get uber dealing with The Sleeper. If you want the same character from Gothic, then make Gothic 2 a continuation of the difficulty post Gothic. Do one or the other, because doing both is silly.

Of course you could make it where the guy from Gothic loses all his neat items, that's plausible. It's just a matter of making the monsters big and bad enough to where the uber character has a problem with them, and fitting the story around that.

 

again, why did you forgive it in Ultima and are not willing to in Gothic? I'm not saying yours is a *worse* implementation (BG2 for example was sucessful in that respect) I'm just saying it's one of those things I am willing to look past, because I managed to do it before.

 

I can't say I liked the whole avatar thing in Ultima either. A modern human getting sucked in to a fantasy world to save the day nearly a dozen times, starting from scratch just seemed a little silly. However, the silliness of avatar aside, we are talking about a person from another world/dimension/plane/whatever being manifested as a new creation each time versus Gothic's non-manifestation prison guy.

 

It does get explained fairly well right at the beginning why the prison guy is weak again. So there's no breach in the story line there. Unlike, say, Ultima 8 - 9.

 

I don't really mind losing all powers and uberabilities with the release of a sequel, even if the explanation is somewhat dodgy. It allows you to choose and explore different classes with your old character. I also think that playing low-level characters is far more interesting and rewarding than a character who start out with a lot of skills and powers. I.e. I like not being able to visit a certain mysterious Island because I first have to improve my Swimming skills. With all my skills of the original game intact this wouldn't be much of a challenge.

A skilled game designer might get around this problem and still make a game challenging and interesting whilst keeping the abilities of a character unaltered, but alas I've seen very few designers pull this of, especially in this era of "Power Ups", "Munchkinism" and "Instant Gratification".

 

Okay, let's look at this from a wizard's point of view. Why bother teleporting in someone that loses all reasons why you'd want them to defeat the great evil when you can not teleport someone who might possess some uberness at the local guard house? You know, go out and hire one of the NPCs who trains the player! Gosh, wouldn't that make more sense!

Does that objection rehashing make the case better? I mean, other than it being a nice thing to do, save the guy who defeated The Sleeper, it doesn't seem like a bright idea otherwise in terms of what the character in the game should be thinking.

 

It will become obvious why Xardas rescued the hero during the final chapters of the game. And he didn't try to be nice

On the other hand, Xardas isn't exactly well loved on the island. The fire mages for one thing despise him and the paladines wouldn't help him either. So this, along with the fact that he still needs the old champion for certain things is enough to summon him again.
The beginning dialogue between Xardas and the player does go along the line of "Innos' champion is the only one able to use that medaillon" etc.

 

Yep. You know, in a way, the vibe I get from this game is a bit "wht ultima IX SHOULD have been". I'm not saying it's perfect, but the feel of it is a lot more like an old Ultima than that piece of crap Ascension.

Speaking of which, anyone tried the dialogue patch for UIX?

 

Remember how you said you loved Gothic I before it came linear, Saint? Well, Gothic II's non-linear part (from what I've seen so far) is about a 100 times bigger. Definitely worth a look if you've got some cash burning a hole in your pocket.