Gothic 1

Free4Ever

Free4Ever

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Apr 20, 2025
I'm doing my first playthrough of Gothic 1... it's fun, I'm just going back from the Swampcamp to the Old Camp, and I've already checked out the New Camp. Getting the game to run well was easy enough, and the controls became natural within the first hour or so.

I was wondering, is there some trick to a more story-focused playstyle?
The combat is "just OK", I can get it down to 2H/1H soon enough, and I've got a basic grasp of the economy... but I easily lose immersion so I'm not going to grind at them hard. I heard that the Swampcampers, the Spliffcult, if you join them,
your magic gets capped at level 4 out of 6
, so if I were playing by-the-book I wouldn't pick them.

Gothic.webp
 
handsareblack2 said:
Gothic and Morrowind are practically siblings.
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Difference is Morrowind has a fantastic main story and decent combat (if you can accept the fact that it's just a 3D interface for dicerolls) and Gothic has a terrible main story and combat so bad people are still whining about it.
I guess Morrowind is the clean cut sibling who has a high-paying white collar job while Gothic is the sleazy sibling who sells weed and probably plays in a garage band.
What does that make Arx Fatalis? The autistic savant cousin?
 
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I jumped in on Gothic 1 a year or two ago and was pretty impressed with it, but I struggled a lot. It felt like fighting against the game to try to understand how any mechanics worked, and I felt actively discouraged from exploring or experimenting because everything stomped my ass and everyone I talked to seemed lying and manipulative. Props to the game for creating such a ruthless atmosphere, not saying its a bad thing, but as someone coming in with zero knowledge, it very much felt like the game was telling me to fuck off if I wasn't already in the club. Like indie sandbox games expecting you to practically live on their wiki to learn to play.

I'll definitely come back to it some other time, like I said I was actually impressed with what I saw, but there's a lot of unintuitive shit that puts me off. I can break that barrier, sheer attrition is how I learned to play some of the more autistic STALKER mods and such, but Gothic 1 doesn't entice me into making that effort, it actively creates friction against that effort.
 
Lurkerish Kandor said:
I'll definitely come back to it some other time, like I said I was actually impressed with what I saw, but there's a lot of unintuitive shit that puts me off. I can break that barrier, sheer attrition is how I learned to play some of the more autistic STALKER mods and such, but Gothic 1 doesn't entice me into making that effort, it actively creates friction against that effort.
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It's super gratifying as you play it. The power curve is wicked. You just have to start off doing menial tasks when you begin and avoid danger. Remember, you are in a penal colony. You should be out microwaving peoples ramen and giving foot massages to all the big strong confident men around you, until you can methodically mop up the map.

With the combat system, all you need to know for now is that you need to increase melee weapon skill asap, and get more stronger. The clever thing about Gothic is that increased weapon skill means you begin to swing the sword properly and are able to connect multiple swings together. After getting some skill, and getting the basic controls and dodging down, you can literally kill any enemy in the entire game with an early game weapon.
 
I like how there is limited amount of enemies on the world map, and if you clean them up they don't come back. Being able to travel around the world freely is a much better reward than some stats increasing from an endless, boring grind.
 
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Tablet County said:
I guess Morrowind is the clean cut sibling who has a high-paying white collar job while Gothic is the sleazy sibling who sells weed and probably plays in a garage band.
What does that make Arx Fatalis? The autistic savant cousin?
Click to expand...
What does it make of Gothic 2 and 3 then? And its clones?
I tried playing Gothic 2, but I got burnt with how repetitive the formula is: You start as a noob doing mundane chores that no-one wants to do, everyone is a dick to you, you can theoretically go anywhere but you can't as everything can one-shot you... And so on. What's funny is how the game was remade repeatedly, as Seeth says.
 
Newcomer 42 said:
What does it make of Gothic 2 and 3 then? And its clones?
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Haven't Gothic devs been quite literally just making Gothic over and over under new name and occasionally setting ever since they released Gothic? I guess it would make them consistent, if nothing else. Morrowind may be a clean-cut sibling with a high paying job, but every single one of it's children was more retarded than the next. Only reason people liked those games was due to the studio that made it, guarantee neither Oblivion or Skyrim would be anywhere near as big as they are if they came from some random European studio nobody has ever heard of.
 
Newcomer 42 said:
What does it make of Gothic 2 and 3 then? And its clones?
I tried playing Gothic 2, but I got burnt with how repetitive the formula is: You start as a noob doing mundane chores that no-one wants to do, everyone is a dick to you, you can theoretically go anywhere but you can't as everything can one-shot you... And so on. What's funny is how the game was remade repeatedly, as Seeth says.
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worked for metroid
 
Lurkerish Kandor said:
I can break that barrier, sheer attrition is how I learned to play some of the more autistic STALKER mods and such, but Gothic 1 doesn't entice me into making that effort, it actively creates friction against that effort.
Click to expand...
I mean... once you break the barrier the game's over, right?

I like that I still don't know if I can take the ore I mine at the New Village out-of-town... I know that the miners there have to hand theirs in, so I did that too the one time I mined. But maybe it wasn't necessary? I don't feel like getting stabbed by the guards on my way out to find out.
 
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