Close to 30 hours in, stuck on the fight against the dark sorceress.
The game is great at times, but sadly it's brought down by a bunch of horrible stuff. I'm playing the PSP version, so some of it might have been fixed on PC.
- The thief feels bad. I'm at the end of the game and I still can't steal anything and half of the items are hidden behind this feature. And this guy is fucking useless and boring.
- Healing at town should be done automatically, or have a heal all for a cost button. Pointless menu.
- Giving an item is so hard. What a shit menu.
- the cheapest potions (10 gold each) should have been replaced with an item that auto-refills upon visits to town, this way you don't have to buy them when you come back. Again, remove menu bloat.
- Gold should have been independent from characters, like most modern games do it. It's a pain in the ass to revive a downed party not because of the gold penalty, but due to to - you guessed it - messing around in menus.
- Most quests aren't fun. Should have been more hand crafted encounters involved.
- Opening trapped chests is boring. The thief is mandatory (I'm probably wrong but I don't know an alternative), and his role is to essentially remove this game mechanic. It reduces trapped chests to another mandatory menu that doesn't offer any interesting decisions to the player. I would change it to having a visible failure chance to opening a chest, that is at least 5%, so you always have to consider if it's worth it. Thief level reduces failure chance but it's always a factor to consider. I would also instantly open the chest if it isn't trapped. REMOVE MENUS.
- I really like the limits on inventory space. You got 8 slots for equipable items, and 2 more for other items (loot and consumables). It makes you consider whether it's worth it to takes less equipment than you can so you can haul more on the way back.
- On the other hand, consumables feel kinda weak. There's no reason to use them unless you're a useless thief. Kind of a shame because it clashes with the limit on inventory space. That limit would have been way more important if you had to consider giving up on some equipable items in favor of consumables.
- The intro dungeon is way better in Original than in Gothic. It would still be good if the game had a default quick start party for the newbs. You want a thief for hidden doors, someone with mahama (escape fight), and diorome (teleport). I'm sure experienced players can do without those, but why not make it easy for new players?
- The dungeon design is fun because it feels like a place that might exist, but it's also kind of bad. The best way to move is to ignore all doors, which have nothing of interest behind them, and move on to the exit.
- Saving should have been moved into the town menu, or the map menu. It shouldn't be in a separate menu.
- I don't like having teleport in this game. Hopefully Gothic doesn't have it. It removes resource management, as you can always teleport in and out. It turns exploration to safe and boring, and encounters become all about the mage surviving. Deaths and resources used don't matter anymore. I would remove it and add shortcuts to the dungeon, that you unlock as you explore. This way you get the benefit of getting faster back to where you were, but without removing resource management altogether. It also rewards exploration.
- Seriously, this game gives you no reason to explore whatsoever, and it feels like a chore once you can teleport.
- I would add a gold-for-exp convertor in town to get rid of excess gold, which would fix the economy, and remove grinding when training new characters at the later stages of the game.
- I like how the game opens up after the tutorial.
I'm kinda done with the game at this point. I'll play something else for a bit before giving Gothic another chance.