Trending
Before the Gothic series, RPGs were a foreign land to me. I had no interest in them, no entry point, no context. The first role-playing game I ever touched was Gothic 3, and that was all it took. That one game, rough and uncompromising as it was, turned me into someone who, from that moment on, played every game in the genre, and I mean it, every game I could get my hands on.
The irony, of course, is that I never actually played Gothic 1. By the time I became a fan, it looked too old to bother with, and I never corrected that. So when THQ Nordic announced a full remake, my excitement was not rooted in nostalgia for the original. It was rooted in curiosity and in gratitude for a franchise that changed how I play games. I wanted to finally experience where it all began.
However, that experience didn't start smoothly, so to speak. My PC review code was completely unplayable at launch due to whitelisting issues I could not resolve despite extended back-and-forth with THQ Nordic's support team, who were really helpful and responsive all the way through but ultimately unable to fix the problem. A PS5 code came through, and I was able to spend time with the game there instead, though that came with its own set of problems. More on that shortly.
Story - The Colony, Intact
The premise of Gothic needs no reinvention because it was never broken. The Nameless Hero is a prisoner thrown into a brutal mining colony where survival depends on reputation, faction choices, combat skill, and exploration. A magical barrier traps prisoners and mages alike; the inmates seize control, three factions emerge, and one unknown convict will change everything. The entire setup was actually inherited from the original, and Alkimia Interactive has not tried to smooth it over or make it more accessible or something. The Colony is still a hostile and dangerous place, morally ambiguous in the best possible way.
What the remake did right, though, is the expansion of the story, or more like fixing the potholes left in the original, offering more content and lore about the orcs and their culture, and allowing us to decide our general stance towards them. The language of the orcs was expanded and professionalised with the assistance of a linguist. I say again, I never played the original, but that doesn't mean I didn't do my homework and do some detective work online, and when I compare what I experienced in the short time I had a chance to play the remake, the right and crucial places, regarding the story, are treated, and that's very commendable.
Quests from the original have been supplemented with additional plot options and narrative threads, and through new faction-specific quests, the remake adds at least 30 hours of additional content across all three camp affiliations (ones I obviously missed due to my short in-game time; my focus was solely on the main quests). Also, in all the quests I played, the choices had real consequences, and I don't know if that was the case in the original, but here, what you choose really matters, and it can easily change the entire plotlines, which gives the game huge replayability value.
Gameplay - Brilliant in Places, Punishing Everywhere Else
Let me give credit where it is clearly due. The quest design in Gothic 1 Remake is excellent. The game does not hand you a map at the start, and that is entirely intentional. You feel lost, properly lost, in a way that almost no modern RPG allows. Your character has to earn his place, do petty work, make decisions without full information, and slowly find his bearings. It is designed very cleverly, and it works beautifully. That sense of a survivor figuring things out one small task at a time is something the genre has almost entirely abandoned, and it is wonderful to see it here.
The difficulty, on the other hand, is a real problem that needs to be spoken of. On normal difficulty, this game is brutally hard from the very first minute. Every enemy hit takes roughly half your health bar, including the earliest encounters that should function as a warm-up. You will be killed by creatures that ought to teach you the basics, not wipe you out.
As your character progresses, acquires better armour, and finds stronger weapons, the balance does shift somewhat, but the early hours represent a serious design flaw. I can already see lots of players simply giving up and never reaching the parts of the game that reward patience. You can drop to easy, naturally, but that comes with its own compromises, and it should not be necessary just to survive the opening chapter.
The combat itself is another source of frustration. It is slow and clunky in ways that go beyond faithful recreation of the original. There is no lock-on mechanic, and the pacing of exchanges leaves you feeling disconnected from the action, leaving you rather vulnerable all the time. Respecting the spirit of the original is admirable; reproducing its weakest elements unchanged is a different matter entirely. A lock-on button and some adjustments to combat responsiveness would have cost nothing and gained a great deal.
The map is roughly 20% larger than the original, with the extra space used to flesh out locations that could not be fully realised in 2001, giving familiar areas more detail and atmosphere. What Alkimia built here is genuinely interesting to explore. The world rewards curiosity. It is just a pity that the combat system makes so much of that exploration feel like a risk rather than a pleasure.
The main questline took me around 22 hours to complete, and I want to be transparent about the context of that number. My playthrough felt less like a proper exploration of the Colony and more like a speedrun driven by review deadline pressure. There was no time to breathe, to get sidetracked, or to let the world pull me in directions I had not planned. Even so, the main questline held up. It is interesting; it keeps you engaged, and it is the kind of story that rewards attention.
What demands the most attention and the most patience, though, are the dialogues. Conversations in Gothic 1 Remake are long. Sometimes very long. They stretch across random NPCs as readily as they do major story characters, and skipping them is not an option if you actually want to understand what you are doing and why. These dialogues are the backbone of how the game communicates its world, its quests, and its politics, so engaging with them is not optional. But the pacing of many of these exchanges outstays its welcome, and there will be moments where you find yourself sitting through a conversation that seems designed to test your commitment to the story rather than reward it.
Visuals and Performance - Beautiful, Broken
The game looks quite impressive, simple as that. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, the remake features all-new assets, a huge increase in texture and lighting detail, and support for higher frame rates and resolutions, while retaining the gritty atmosphere of the original. Face models are among the best I have seen in any RPG this generation; the environments carry real weight and character, and the art direction stays true to the dark, grimy identity of the Colony throughout. More than 600 unique faces and body types populate the prison colony. This is what the developers promised before the game was released, and to be honest, I had my reservations, but to believe it, I simply had to see it with my own eyes.
However, none of that matters much if you cannot run it. On PC, I could not play the game at all at launch due to whitelisting errors that THQ Nordic's support team was unable to resolve despite their best efforts. On PS5, the game is locked to 30 frames per second on the standard console, and the experience in practice felt even lower than that, frequently dropping into territory that is genuinely uncomfortable to watch. I would estimate the real figure sits closer to 25 FPS for meaningful stretches.
If you own a standard PS5 and you are considering picking this up, please wait. The performance as it stands is not acceptable, and playing through it was, without exaggeration, a real pain, through and through. Reports from other players suggest that even the PS5 Pro struggles to hit 60 FPS consistently, with the console appearing to be locked to 30 regardless of settings. The UE5 implementation across platforms has real problems that need patching before this becomes a comfortable experience for most console players.
Sound - A Composer Returns
Composer Kai Rosenkranz scored the original Gothic in 2001, and his music became as inseparable from the series as the world itself. To be honest, I didn't know this earlier, but once the main menu loaded for the first time, the opening soundtrack hit me like a truck. I had to investigate deeply to see who the talent is that composed such a banger. As I found out, Kai was recruited directly from the dev team to do his magic in the remake, and his presence is one of the most significant and reassuring creative decisions Alkimia made. The music in this game is out of this world, and it is easily one of the best soundtracks I have experienced in a video game, full stop.
The other sounds, voice acting, and sound effects are okay and nothing that deserves praise or critique, but in comparison to the soundtrack, everything seems small.
Conclusion
Gothic 1 Remake is a game I genuinely wanted to love, and in places I did. The quest design is inspired, the world is richly built, and the story (at least the parts I experienced) is genuinely good. For someone like me, coming to Gothic 1 for the first time, there is something that feels quite special about finally stepping into a world I only knew from its sequels. But the difficulty balance is off, the combat needs work, and the performance on launch is simply not good enough. A game this thoughtfully constructed deserves better than to be sent out in a state where the majority of players cannot run it properly. With patches and patience, Gothic 1 Remake could become essential. Right now, it is a promising and frustrating experience in roughly equal measure.
The Good
Quest design that genuinely respects player intelligence- Starting without a map creates a real sense of survival and discovery
- The world expanded thoughtfully, with faction quests adding 30+ hours of content
- Kai Rosenkranz returns to score the soundtrack
- Face models and environments are among the best in the genre
The Bad
Normal difficulty is punishingly hard from the opening minutes- Combat is clunky and slow, with no lock-on option
- Standard PS5 performance sits around 25 FPS, making the experience genuinely painful
