It’s fun to mess around and see what works and what doesn’t. Figuring things out is why I started playing video games in the first place, and since escaping Jabu-Jabu’s Belly on my first run through Ocarina of Time, I was hooked. This is exactly why, when I heard the infamously tossed-into-the-fire ARPG Gothic was being remade, I had to sink my talons into it to see exactly why it meshed so well with the cult following it has retained over the past two decades. What Gothic 1 Remake brings to the table is an undeniable true-to-form remake of the original with a shiny coat of paint onto modern consoles and PC, for better or worse.
The best way to describe Gothic 1 Remake would be if Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s opening segment were stretched out over the span of an entire game; it really tosses you into the deep end. The story starts by letting you know your exact place in the world: a bottom feeder. Your main mission is to waltz into the barrier-protected and inmate-led society of The Colony and deliver a letter to some mages on the inside. While this sounds simple enough, Gothic 1 Remake’s world state makes it so that The Colony responds one of two ways to your insurgency on the status quo: people either hate you, or they hate you. Let me explain.
The Colony is a small mining region set inside the Kingdom of Myrtana. The kingdom is under siege by a horde of Orc invaders, and the kingdom needs to fight back using magical weaponry forged from ore, ore only found in mines like the one The Colony is stacked on top of. The thing is, the mine is a prison where inmates are punished with hard labour. To keep labour cheap and The Colony safe, the kingdom hoisted a strong barrier to keep the prison-state in check, and the convicts from escaping. This blunder also trapped the guards inside, and in no time, the prisoners revolted and took over The Colony.
Where we come in is right in the middle of this cold war of sorts between The Colony and the Kingdom of Myrtana as an unnamed Hero. The Kingdom needs The Colony’s ore, so they have agreed and have staved off hostility to help one another out. Ore for food and (a bastardized form) freedom, so to speak. This novel world-building tells you everything you need to know about The Colony and its residents. The inmates are running the asylum.
While the premise of Gothic 1 Remake sounds simple, it’s far from it. Just like in Fallout: New Vegas, you are sent on a fool’s errand, and The Colony doesn’t tip its delivery men. Everything in The Colony wants to kill you, gaslight you or rob you. The team at Piranha Bytes did a stupendous job of building the fantasy version of HBO’s Oz, and Alkimia Interactive faithfully brought it forward. Based on interactions and world-building, Gothic 1 Remake knocks it out of the park. You really feel like the forgotten swill of society.
The world-building remains faithful to the original, and that’s a good thing. There are three major areas in Gothic 1 Remake, ruled by their own factions. The Old Camp could be considered the sanest of the bunch. People will let you know they don’t like you, and everyone will generally respond when you ask questions. The New Camp is filled with radical folk who despise authority.
These guys would be considered the types that cannot mesh with the general population in prison; they behave as such, and talking to someone could be asking for them to stab you with the pointy end. The Swamp Camp is filled with spiritualists who seem to smoke swamp weed all day, and they have a higher power called The Sleeper they’re waiting on to break the barrier. This world has gone to the crazies.
“What Gothic 1 Remake brings to the table is an undeniable true-to-form remake of the original with a shiny coat of paint onto modern consoles and PC, for better or worse.”
Juggling these three factions is key to progressing in Gothic 1 Remake, and each interaction is laced with the resentment players would expect from a prisoner-based society. While some interactions are hilarious (a guy yells at you for running through his hut, although it’s blocking the road), some are bewildering to the point of madness. For example, if you joke with the Old Camp’s guard and say you want to burn the camp down, he gets rough like an overzealous bouncer and maims you. This can occur in many conversations, and sometimes, it will lock you out of progressing a certain quest.
Seeing as how Gothic 1 Remake is a fresh port of the original, running into soft quest locks is maddening, especially when they’re not meant to happen. The Swamp Camp asks you to recruit another member for afternoon Sleeper worship, and in my playthrough, the NPC would not follow due to a different quest I had already completed, soft-locking my progress. Gothic 1 Remake’s insistence on letting the player figure it out also has huge drawbacks.
During exploration of The Colony, I found a key item that was for a quest (no spoilers), down the line and completed major questline objectives early on. To my dismay, the quest behaves like I never found the item and pushes me down the same path anyway. If Gothic 1 Remake lets you skip steps, the game’s narrative should back it up or address it. This issue skewers the immersion the team delivers by asking the player to go out and discover things, ultimately making finding items feel like a punishment for exploration rather than a reward.
Gothic 1 Remake also delivers a combat system I can only describe as built on molasses. Each swing with any weapon has a significant delay and feels like you’re shipping it the long way, and this stifles in-game momentum. The face buttons of the controller are each listed as “attack 1-4,” and you can put together some decent combos when you level up skills (which is done by NPCs). This feels like an intuitive combat system on paper, and it could work, but enemies have a major flaw. The biggest issue with Gothic 1 Remake’s combat is its lack of a poise identifier.
While Gothic 1 Remake has some of the coolest enemy designs (the floating death mosquito and T. rex without arms, called a Scavenger, are nasty), they behave inconsistently when you deal damage to them. While facing a group of three Scavengers, I pulled a huge overhand swing three times. Only one of the enemies reliably had a step back animation, allowing me to reposition and dodge.
The other two reliably tanked my swings and had no stagger. In an ARPG, the balance in combat is paramount to a good time and Gothic 1 Remake hits the RNG seemingly every time on the player’s hit. On the flip side, enemies almost always stagger you when you’re hit. It’s worth mentioning that as you build your character and learn new skills for combat, this becomes cushioned, but it never fully goes away and always feels a bit unfair.
While this does make it feel like The Colony is dangerous, it already does a great job of that with the myriad humans who will lie, cheat and steal their way through conversations to entrap you. These were the best parts of my playthrough, seeing how Gothic 1 Remake channels the worst humanity has to offer through The Colony’s dregs. Oftentimes, it will feel like the developer set a trap and is snickering around the corner to see if you fell for it. In my case, I fell for every trap every time, and this was good fun.
Aside from the combat, traversal in Gothic 1 Remake feels stiff. While Alkimia Interactive brought a serious visual upgrade to The Colony, walking around and travelling feels like combat, like your main character is underwater and responds a little too slowly when you hit buttons like forward. Everything feels a little too slow, and falling even five feet from the ground will accrue fall damage for your hero. Instead of feeling realistic, it lends itself further to frustration. In a world where everything is trying to take advantage of you, getting stuck in the atmosphere often feels bad. Swimming mechanics are somehow even worse (before developing your skills).
Navigating the Swamp Camp is still an absolute nightmare in this remake. Although there are arrows that tell you where things are in camp, finding the entrance is still like finding Waldo that is not on the page. All three camps feel like this before finding a map, and it just feels like a missed opportunity for this Remake to show players where the door is. While other titles like Dread Delusion also use a similar directional approach, Gothic 1 Remake’s neutral palette forces the atmosphere to bleed into itself and makes navigation very difficult in these small areas.
It might be just my problem, but all three major areas could use a big EXIT sign to show you the way out of the camps. Even after mentioning those gripes, Alkimia Interactive’s approach to ‘find your way’ is a breath of fresh air outside of the main camps, and finding a map in The Colony feels like you just got the keys to the castle.
All in all, Gothic 1 Remake is a serious upgrade, flaws and all. Alkimia Interactive brought everything (and I mean everything) from the original to 2026, while also including some upgrades (you can now ride a Scavenger!) and quality of life improvements. While Gothic 1 Remake looks better than ever, some of the ideas from the original have shown their age, and the remade graphics put a spotlight on where gameplay feels dated, and where it just feels like a bad time.
The world of Gothic 1 Remake is its strongest feature, giving The Colony and its degenerate inhabitants a new coat of paint to bleed through, and it sure looks pretty, down to a Swamp Camp resident’s less-than-appealing face. However, all the genuine frustration from the original bleeds through in this remake.
In the mission of remaining blindingly faithful to the original, it feels like Alkimia Interactive forgot to remake some of the issues and just let them in as features (like the impossible-to-navigate Swamp Camp) in spite of an actual Remake. The Gothic 1 Remake is faithful to the original to a fault, but due to a fresh coat of paint, these issues are more apparent than ever and make it a hard recommendation to those who like smooth gameplay.
