Gothic (Gameplay #2) - Band of Brothers
11I've been playing some Gothic 1 this weekend and it's surprising just how similar Piranha Bytes' very first RPG from 2001 is to the more recent entries in the series such as Gothic 3. Everything from the overall quest and faction structure right down to individual monster types are pretty much identical across both games (the snappers sure hit harder in this game, though!), which sure made it easy for me to jump right into the experience and feel right at home with most of its gameplay elements.
Much has been made of the old school difficulty of the earlier Gothic games, but despite some unnecessarily bad controls Gothic 1 actually seems a little bit easier so far than both Gothic 3 and Risen ever was. For one thing, the smaller scope of this older game means that the player is able to both finish quest, clear the game world of precious loot and (most importantly) gain valuable skill points surprisingly fast. Even getting significantly better armor "only" took a few hours; partly because it's also somewhat easier to amass large amounts of cash by taking advantage of the game's lockpicking system.
Thus, far from being the slower, less well-paced experience one might expect from an earlier entry in an RPG series, Gothic 1 comes off as a condensed and focused little game compared to the later epics from the same developer.