Tried playing Gothic 1 and the controls were pretty terrible. I did a few quests in the Old Town but got tired of the controls and eventually gave up. Didn't play Gothic 2 nor 3 because they are a direct sequel AFAIK and didn't want to ruin the experience.
Controls are fine. I fucking wince every time I see someone on the Codex complain about them... and it happens far more than it should.
Absolutely. It's a non standard control scheme but it makes perfect sense once you are used to it. I remember playing it on a laptop and not having to use the mouse much was a boon in itself.
It is kinda funny how people today assume that every game needs to follow a standard control scheme. When Gothic was developed, there was no standard control scheme, and the mouse control was added last-minute before release, because it was only shortly before release that mouselook became standard in games.
I remember reading an early preview in a German gaming mag, and the developers were really proud of the control scheme they had come up with (the original one). Gothic was the first 3D game that had found a sensible way of using ladders.
From what the gam has become, that preview was funny anyway. That was at a time when 3D engines couldn't display large outside areas, and that was the reason the game is set in a prison, because at that time the entire prison was an underground dungeon.