Yes, but the "prison" is just a generic fantasy world with knights, mages and thieves
"Prison' is not a good way to "define" g1, a penal colony is a better therm. Like Ushuaia and Australia was in past.. And having 3 camps, one ruled by a iron first ore baron, other by water magicians and mercenaries trying to create a magical ore nuke to blow up a barrier and other with stoners addicted to swampweed who follows a strange religion is not "generic fantasy"...
Arcania has smooth gameplay (like D3), true, but the story and dialogue is a clever parody specifically designed to mock tryhard retards who use terms like "ludonarrative dissonance". I'm not surprised you hate it given that you're the punch line to the Arcania joke.
Gothic, since G1 is all about immersion. In what other game, when you pay someone to train you in one handed or two handed, your animation and stance changes? Cooldowns in rune magic(that shouldn't work past G3) and the awful story telling are just few of the hundreds of problems with Arcania. Luckily, PB made non canon and now, Gothic 4 arcania is just arcania because this shit doesn't deserve the gothic name.
MerlinPlays has a good video showing why G1 is great.
I feel, is a typical representative of russian thought in modding. Technically impressive - artistically bankrupt, and, let's face it, nobody plays Gothic because he's impressed with it's technical side. Returning adds a whole slew of mechanics that Gothic never needed, it's quests make no sense and, if I remember correctly, you couldn't complete most without looking them up, massive amounts of non-immersive or outright nonsensical content completely break the coherence of the world and irreplicable climate it built. I could go on but just thinking about how you can be so passionate about Gothic to put so much work into modding it while simultaneously not understanding in the least what made it so great makes my head hurt (yes, the "remake" is guilty of it too).
Most of the "hard to find stuff" are optional. If you wanna complete ret, you will have a hard task ahead.
As for the new mechanics, fatigue and other mechancis only exists on hardest difficulties. You can play on easy/normal and not care about it. The point of returning 2.0 is to bring a lot of fanfic work into gothic universe, you can dislike the Keepers and say that they killed most mysteries involving Gods, but see it as a fanfic. And you don't need to do that questline, nor the assassins questline(which is a good way to make a bridge with G3).
And ret also did a amazing thing. Make dragons fells more like legendary creatures. They have regen, summons, can cast circle 6 magic and a deadly 1k damage breath weapon with strong melee attacks, can push you 100m away knocking your down and only by being 300m near the fire/cold dragon lair, you take constant fire/cold damage.
And please. Don't compare with the remake. The remake is 100% trash. Some people on gothic community is too purist with mods. I mean, VtMB had the Antitribu mod which allows you to play as a Giovanni and Lasombra. Mount & Blade? Has WW2 mods, Star Wars and even Naruto mods. Nobody complains. When people mod a lot of OPTIONAL content and allow the PC to become apprentice of Xardas, the same guy who teaches circle 6 on G1, the purists "they are killing gothic story!!!"