I realised only after writing this that someone has already done a review for Gothic 2, so I'll post this here. It's ~2200 characters if felip wants to improve his book and implement it. The other page could be compiled from the existing review.
Gothic 2: Night of the Raven is a third person action adventure RPG by Piranha Bytes. It started out and was first released as Gothic 2, but was later completed with the addon Night of the Raven. It appeals less to casual players than those interested in a challenge, but cannot be characterised as arcane. It has a cult following of what seem like mostly normal humans.
Its game world is rather small, but it is compactly and intelligently designed. The resulting effect is closer to Mario 64 than Oblivion.
The story concerns the return of evil dragons and the hero's quest to save the land. The story itself is linear but a few somewhat different paths can be taken through it by joining different factions.
The monsters in the game are sometimes meant to be avoided instead of engaged, even when they try to block your path. This can provide for interesting travel not often found in games of this sort. For instance, there are orcs surrounding the Valley castle in the second chapter. They can be humanely defeated only later in the game but the player must still find a way into the castle through their ranks.
The quests in the game are typical of the genre, but often become interesting due to the nature of the travel, map design, and so on.
The game does not have many monster types, but the ones it has are usually very different from each other as well as memorable. They contribute to creating a good feeling of tight game design and gameplay.
The game has melee combat, ranged combat, and magic. However, it seems to have been balanced for melee combat. The melee combat system has been characterised both as awkward and masterful, often by the same people. It has three different attack patterns depending on the skill of the character. Once you have mastered using one of them, you may be forced to deal with a new one. Ultimately, the melee combat system is a unique and arguably successful attempt at creating gameplay that is challenging to master, varied, and interesting.
The soundtrack is laudable and atmospheric, containing only original music composed for the game by Kai Rosenkranz.
The game as a whole is perhaps the greatest of its kind, and its fans are doomed to ever wander the planet looking for a worthy successor.
it's a free ebook isn't it
