As regular readers of my game articles will know, my love for gaming came from fantasy RPGs. It has always been my absolute favourite genre and I have enjoyed many of the classics growing up. Watching my Nan playing old, janky high-fantasy RPGs like Two Worlds or Risen was definitely the foundation of this love and for that reason, games of similar ilk I have always had a soft spot for. In the case of the latter example, Risen, this was developed by the German studio Pirahna Bytes (God rest their souls) and they were definitely known for targeting a very specific set of RPG players. Their catalogue comprises of the Gothic, Risen, and Elex series of games; all of which fall into this specific type of RPG. These games are known for their respect for the player, rarely giving them any direction and just throwing them into the world to fend for themselves. When you begin these games, you can hardly kill a small bug or whatever may be at the bottom of the food chain in the given universe. Due to this, the progression in all these games is perhaps their greatest feat, really making you feel like you earn every reward you have coming to you. In turn, the RPG elements are also great, as decisions you make regarding your build and the story can greatly impact your progression as you move through it. These games are punishing, but not in the way that Dark Souls or Elden Ring are. Primarily, this is down to you actively having to fight the game itself due to its jankiness, but that’s part of these games’ charm. But another reason is because it forces you to learn the world, for example, what is most effective way to kill a certain enemy, or who can you forge an alliance with in order to get to where you want to be. Immersion is paramount with these games and they are examples of true RPGs, flaws and all. This is all relevant because the original Gothic, one of Pirahana Bytes catalogue which I had never touched before prior to this, has been remade. Though not by Pirahna Bytes and instead by Alkimia Interactive, a studio specfically made by THQ Nordic to make this remake, Gothic Remake is a solid game that apes exactly what makes Pirahna Bytes’ games great, and yet being so faithful as to keep it as janky as anything they have made. With an excellent modern coat of paint, this is a mostly well-made remake and a good time, even if it is riddled with bugs.

Gothic Remake puts you in the shoes of an unnamed hero and tosses you into a mining colony that has been turned into a prison of sorts. Surrounded by an impenetrable magical barrier that was accidentally created by a circle of mages, everybody who enters this place cannot leave or they will die instantly. You are thrown into this colony with nothing more than a note that you are tasked with delivering to the fire mages. Where those fire mages are is up to you to figure out, whether that be through asking people where they are, or just hoping you will stumble upon it. Of course, since you are thrown in with nothing else, that means you have been dropped into this relatively hostile world with no means to defend yourself. Thus you must get stronger by punching mole rats until you finally can get yourself a weapon! If you survive long enough, the world will open up to you and it becomes clear that there are three camps in this colony: the Old Camp, the New Camp, and the Swamp camp. If you want to survive any longer than that, you must join one of these camps and earn their trust by doing quests for them. Quests will gain you experience and enough gear to get stronger and allow you to get a foothold in the brutality of the world. The stronger you get, the more you can explore and the more you will learn about the world around you and the many secrets it hides.

The main praise I can give this game all stems from that excellent progression model that has been developed from Pirahna Bytes, way back when this game originally came out in 2001. To start off weedy and weak to then progressively grow to become a powerful warrior is tremendously satisfying and it really makes you feel like you have earnt that progression. You will have to go through many hardships to progress and that is what makes it so worth it in the end. It is also very interesting and particularly immersive how you actually go about using your experience to develop. Instead of getting skill points to dump into a skill tree to make your stats go up, you get learning points which you have to bring to teachers across the world to increase your skillset. Of course, as well as these learning points, you will need to pay these trainers for their time too, but it is definitely worth doing so. As soon as I got a sword, I was adamant that I was going to become a warrior that specialised in edge weapons, thus I needed to find somebody that could help me to actually swing a sword properly. Without any training, trying to hit with a weapon reuslts in you hitting slowly and without any finesse, which obviously does not bode well when you get into life or death situations. I managed to get enough learning points and money to train as a master in one-handed weapons straight away, thanks to the trainer in the Old Camp. This made my attack much faster, more powerful, and intensified by combos. Enemies themselves have no levels, so once you have the capability to dispose of them, they cease to become an issue throughout the rest of the game. Scavengers, for example, start off as the main enemies that you fight in the wilderness, but once you have got some training and a decent weapon, they become trivial will really accentuates your progress. It is a simple progression model but it works really well. This does trail off towards the end of the game when you start to no longer need training and instead are just looking for your stats to go up in your gear. Still the foundational progression the game is built on is good enough that it does not tarnish the experience.

The world, its exploration and the quests within it are all very solid in Gothic, but the beauty of it is that you have to discover it all for yourself. There is a main questline here and the story is pretty decent. It mainly concerns you trying to escape the barrier with some companions that you meet along the way, discovering in the process that a dark Orc power is brewing under the surface of the colony and threatening to destroy the world. It is probably nothing you have not seen before, but it is competently written and is quite engaging. This is particularly the case because the faction quests are tied to the main quest. After all, you have to join one of the factions in order to begin the main quest and although there is not a hell of a lot of variation depending on who you choose, it works well for shaping your own story and giving the player agency. Side quests are found through the world and in the camps and mostly they are just your typical fetch quests or being tasked with killing something. The world has moved on from these kind of quests and the game does show its age in this regard, mainly due to them being rarely impactful and resulting in nothing more than experience, money and a swift pat on the back. The main feast to be had with this game is the exploration which, like many of this game’s aspects, is simple but effective. Similarly with combat, you have to train in exploration skills like diving underwater and climbing, but obviously you must find these trainers first. Once you do unlock these abilities and find use for them though, it evokes a similar feeling to that of a metroidvania, feeling like your desperate search for abilities has paid off. There are no quest markers or anything in the world and the only map you can get is the one you buy, which only shows your location in relation to the world and nothing else. Other than enemies that are obviously too strong for you in the early game, you can go pretty much anywhere from you want and find new gear and lots of beautiful and intriguing places. It certainly helps that this remake has given this game some pretty spectacular graphics so there are rarely moments where you are not gawking at the vistas in front of you. Some of the main quests force you to explore, pushing to the borders of the world and that is where the game shines. Giving you a place to go, perhaps seeing it in the distance, and you just have to go and find a way to get to it. That is how exploration should be and it is very effective here.

Gothic Remake is a solid experience offering a well built RPG system that feels very immersive and gives a lot of respect to the player, refusing to hold their hand too much. However, these games are known to fall within the ‘Eurojank’ genre for a reason, and this remake is no different. It can certainly be clunky at times, whether that is down to the actual gameplay itself or the many bugs that it contains. Perhaps the biggest and most frustrating one for me was towards the end where the audio decided to keep breaking and the only way to fix it was to restart the game. It happened so often that I had to give up trying to fix it and ended up doing the final chapter in an awkward silence. It is a shame because without things like that, this would be an great game that I would recommend to any RPG fan. If you know what you are getting yourself into, can get past a bit of jank, and are prepared for a steep learning curve, then there is a lot to love about this game. The pros certainly outweigh the cons I would encourage you to give it a try and see if it clicks for you. I certainly hope Alkimia take on Gothic 2 next and hopefully iron out some of their shortcomings here.