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Exceptional game, with some irritating flaws Aside from the Elder Scrolls series, few games offer the degree of freedom you enjoy in Gothic 2. You can explore a vast, realistic world at will, meet a host of strange and unique creatures and individuals, and (naturally) kill them. There are numerous quest paths to take, and options available for class customization. The graphics are exquisite, and the sounds and soundtrack well done. Though voice acting is a bit bland, it's at least understandable and doesn't detract from the experience. The actor and monster AI are quite well done, though it tends to work better outside of combat rather than in. Monsters often get stuck if you're up on a rock or ledge, though I'm half convinced this is a feature rather than a deficiency (more on that later). Town citizens react in a realistic manner if you try to steal from them or act aggressively. Of particular note is that drawing weapons is considered a hostile action- something strangely absent in many RPGs. The realism is enhanced by excellent modeling (though human characters and expressions are somewhat uniform) and occasional cinematics. The first thing you're likely to notice about Gothic, however, is that the controls are very odd. Strafing makes you go perpendicular to the direction you're facing- it doesn't allow you to move diagonally. This will certainly throw anyone familiar with FPS controls. You click to target an enemy in combat, and then use directional keys to perform attacks or a block. Your character tries to track the target, but more often than not hits something or someone else. Additionally, the controls are sometimes very unresponsive. Accessing your inventory causes you to put away your weapon, and you have to run through your presorted items (which can be massive in number, since there's no encumbrance limitation) and select, say, that healing potion. Most of the time if you need healing in combat, you will die. Couple these problems with the fact that early on, most enemies will be able to smack you down with ridiculous ease, and you have a pretty harsh initiation into the world of Gothic 2. It doesn't help that most of the vermin out there come in packs. I found myself doing a lot of running until I hit about level 15. It's a good thing guards lend you a hand if you happen to lead some monsters by. This also makes that occasional rock or ledge extremely useful, provided you have a ranged attack. The world itself is actually quite small, as you'll see when you get a map (you have to buy one- no freebies like in most RPGs). However, the developers did a great job of expanding the world vertically, so there's a surprising number of places to visit. Many of these are creepy caverns filled with monsters and treasure, and secret areas lurk in hidden corners away from roads. The different environments have creatures to match, and you can usually tell when you're treading on the territory of some powerful beast (wonder where this blood trail leads...) There's enough NPCs around to make the world seem reasonably populated, and they go about their business like real people would. As for more serious problems, I noticed significant game instability during saving. Furthermore, whenever it crashed during a save, the save was unrecoverable (yikes!). I also saw the world reset every time I changed areas during a chapter transition. This led to weird things like people I had killed returning to life. The patch didn't fix these problems. Lastly, if your PC isn't relatively powerful, you're going to see some major lag in populated areas like Khorinnis. Reduced video settings might fix this, but playing on low detail in this game is just no fun. One cosmetic gripe I had was the lack of character customization- you have precisely one choice in terms of your appearance and voice. This is for continuity purposes, I understand, and doesn't detract too much from the game experience. Nevertheless, it is something missing that's present in most current games. There are scores of quests, most of which work as expected. I did see a few quest bugs, but that's to be expected given the complexity of the game. The main quest is what drives the plot, and although it does have some interesting twists, it isn't exactly brilliant. I suppose the developers spent so much time and energy on the world, the graphics, and the side quests that they had little juice left to work on the main quest. However, there's enough paths to make the game replayable nevertheless. Specifically, you can play as a mercenary, paladin, or fire mage, and each route leads to unique quests and capabilities. If I could resolve the technical issues with the game, I'd likely play it through again. In summary, Gothic 2 isn't a perfect game, but it's definitely a great one. For what it costs now, it's one serious bargain for any RPG addict.