you can play Gothic again, just pick a different faction, it's an almost different experience. Even Risen can't give you that.
Bullshit.
G1, just like R1, has VERY little variation in character progression.
You start invariably as a melee char.
Later on you can main as a ranged char if you want.
Old camp routes:
a) as a Guard - melee/ranged all the way until the betrayal, and then you join the New camp as a Mercenary.
b) as a Magician of fire - sure, you can use spell runes now, but they are relatively weak, and mana will run out quick. So you will fall back on the ranged/melee attacks quite often for a while. Then you get kicked out from the Old camp and join the New camp as a Mercenary.
New camp route:
Become a rogue, then a Mercenary. Melee/ranged all the way.
If you got kicked out from the Old camp, you also become a Mercenary.
Around chapter 4, EVERYONE will get promoted to a Water mage, (ex)Old camp or New Camp, doesn't matter. Now you can learn magic completely.
Eventually, you meet and join Xardas. Should you learn the 6th circle of magic from him (requires learning the 5th circle from Saturas as a water mage), you can become a necromancer.
Swamp camp -
the only sorta-unique playthrough:
You become a Novice, and then a Templar. Melee-focused, plus you can learn up to 4th circle of magic.
Since you never get kicked out from your sect, you do NOT join the water mages, hence the access to 5-6th circles of magic is closed off to you, so you actually finish the game as a member of the swamp camp.
As you can see, the whole difference between the 4 various paths available to you from the beginning boils down to:
a) how early you get access to magic (old camp mages and swamp camp templars get it around chapter 3, everybody else gets it around chapter 4).
b) how much magic you get to use (swamp camp tops out at 4th circle, everybody else can get up to 6th if they desire so).
Given how many stat boosts and SPs you get during your typical G1 playthrough, you will invariably end up as a melee/ranged/caster generalist killing machine, the only variation being is what you prefer to LARP as.