Recent reviews by Diabetic Senpai

Crazy, chaotically funny mayhem going on all over the place.

Fun weapons, fun lobbies, fun fun!

The new beta content is siiiiiiiiiiiiiick, need more of it!

This is a love letter to THQ and piranha bytes.

To start with, the Gothic franchise is my favorite one. Gothic 3 is my favorite game of all time (although flawed as it is). After exploring every corner and pixel of this playable teaser I decided to write a review. I will try to compare this playable teaser to the first installment as much as I can.


The graphics are stunning, it shows off the isle of Khorinis in jaw dropping quality.
The world is vibrant, the color palette is a bit different compared to the rest of the Gothic games. I'm sure that most of the Gothic fans noticed the difference. It's a bit too bright for me, as I am used to the more dark and gritty feel of the previous installments. However, it works, the new color palette gives more life and more "kick" to the atmosphere.
Comparing Gothic 1 and this one has already been done, so you can check it for yourself on youtube. I won't be stating the obvious about Gothic 1 being 18 years old.


Combat:

The combat system is a breath of fresh air for the Gothic franchise, It's a obvious improvement on the previous "spam left click" system (or in the case of Gothic 1, the spam of "ctrl + ^ arrow"system). It works and feels natural, it doesn't break the immersion of the Gothic universe - on the contrary, it transforms the mindless left clicking into an actual reason for thinking and making strategies on approaching certain fights.
The only problem I noticed consists of these weird invincibility frames. When the player staggers their opponent, they get this weird invincibility frame even though they should be wide open for the next blow. I get it that they put this in so they eliminate the left click spam, but they could have implemented a exponentially growing stamina cost for each successive attack. It needs minor improvements but overall, the change in the combat is very welcome.

Camera:

Other than some weird pans when the player stands with his back facing the wall, the camera acts normally and no noticeable lag occurs when you move it (looking at you Gothic3).

AI:

Needs tons of improvement, when facing a human the AI does these weird "resets" where the enemy gets confused when the player starts backing up to a wall.
The beasts attack in one pattern that is easily remembered, you should make it so they switch it up a bit... They should be unpredictable wild beasts after all!

Sound:
It's decent, the ambient music is very nice to listen to. The battle music seems a bit more on the "happier" side. It needs more of a gritty feel to it.
Get Kai Rosenkranz into it if you didn't already, he'll know what to


This is really important as it distances this teaser from the previous installments.

First one being, and I cannot stress this enough... ENEMIES MUST DROP WHAT THEY ARE CARRYING.
If an npc carries a weapon, and I see it on his belt,shinning and calling me to take it, I should be able to kill the npc for it! IT IS HIGHLY UNIMMERSIVE IF THEIR WEAPONS MAGICALLY DISAPPEAR. The first thing that caught my eye in Gothic is the fact that you can get what the npc was carrying, and that is hiiiiighly satisfying to do. You can get away with this if you buff the stats of the npcs carrying the weapons and not the weapons themselves, so the npcs stay strong with the same weapons.

Secondly, and I'm sure this one isn't intended to stay... ALL NON ESSENTIAL NPCS MUST BE KILLABLE. I tried killing one of the npcs and they were craazy strong, after a few tries I managed to get them...only to find out that they instantly regenerate their full hp for no apparent reason. You played it smart when you disabled the drawing of our weapons near essential npcs like Diego, which I like. However, we should be able to kill off the rest of the npcs if we wish to.

Thirdly, get my homeboy Crispin Freeman to do the voice of the unnamed hero, as he previously has done in Gothic 3. It's really not the whole package without him :)
The current voice actor is doing a fine job, but the lines that the unnamed hero says are a bit immersion breaking, I never imagined my unnamed hero swearing and gushing out so many bad words and so frequently at that.

And finally, get rid of the false positives. There are too many randomly placed watchtowers with ladders leading up to them. I dove into too many of those trying to climb them up only to end up disappointed and sad :(
It was a bit lazy to strap the models of health potions onto the barrels as well, I nearly broke my e button trying to get them off of the barrel. Invisible walls blocking me from jumping into the river and my early doom aren't welcome either.

Good:
-Visuals
- Combat(with minor improvements)
- Narrative
- Camera

Decent:
- Sound

Bad:
- AI
- immersion breakers(listed above)

I'm looking forward to see what is gonna become of this passion project, if everything goes south I've got myself a ~2h replayable Gothic experience to add to the pile :)

So anyways, I started blastin'