Gothic 1 (Released March 15 2001)

The Story

The human kingdom of Myrtana has been invaded by orcs and the king needed magic ore to forge the weapons needed to defeat them. He decreed that anyone who committed a crime, no matter no small, would be sentenced to slave labor on the island of Khorinis to mine the magical ore. To prevent anyone from escaping, the king ordered a magical barrier to be raised around the colony that would allow people to enter but would stop people from exiting. Something went wrong with the raising of the barrier and it trapped the magicians responsible inside with the prisoners, in the chaos the prisoners took control of the colony and now the king is forced to negotiate with the prisoners for the ore. That's when you arrive to the colony.

Gameplay

The Atmosphere

The game immediately establishes its brutal, lawless atmosphere by having you PUSHED into the colony and then punched in the face by one of the welcoming prisoners. You start off in rags and unarmed. The only item of importance is one unsealed letter that you can't tell anyone about or they'll steal it from you, so you have to be careful how you speak to people here.

Don't think you can just walk into people's homes in broad daylight and take anything you please.

Woe to you if you don't heed my warning and talk back to people

Controls

You can play the entirety of Gothic 1 without ever using your mouse. One button, that you will use to fight and interact with the environment is the control key.

Arrow keys to move. Alt to jump up. Later you can learn how to perform an acrobatic jump.

To pick something up you hold control and press up. To this day, I have no idea how to drop items. This doesn't matter, as you can just dump all your loot into a merchant's inventory or a random chest to make navigation of your inventory easier and there are no weight penalties for carrying too many items or even item carrying limits.

To sleep on a bed, hold control up to get a menu that allows you to time travel forward from day to night or night to day and restore both your mana and health pools.

To speak to an NPC hold control and press up.

To start lockpicking hold control and press up. You may press left or right until with lockpicks until you figure out the combination through trial and error or until you break all of your lockpicks. Save scumming is recommended.

It is unusual to have to use an ACTION key to do everything in an RPG but it does make sense as you play the game.

Combat

You have probably figured out by now that if you want to do anything besides move and jump in this game you need to use the control key. You would be right in assuming this applies to combat as well. To fight you have to get into "combat mode" which will unsheathe your weapon allowing you to attack people. This will scare people into threatening you if you do this around neutral NPCs though.

To swing while in "combat mode", press left or right. For ranged weapons including spells hold control and press up, there is an auto targetting system that locks onto your target.

Enemies

At the beginning of the game, don't think you can take anything on besides scavengers...

molerats...

and of course, meatbugs

Equipment

You might say, ah, but I can purchase equipment to make myself tougher right? The problem is the first accessible armors available are prohibitively expensive and did I mention that you brought nothing with but a letter into the colony? After the buyable armors, you'll have to side with one of three factions to receive better armor.

Weapons have their respective strength and dexterity requirements, of which you can raise by visiting trainers.

The Verdict

You're the quite literally, the worst fighter in the colony at the start of the game. Even the lowest of the low, diggers, can beat you up for your precious ores. You'll despise the protaganist for being such a pushover, getting yelled at and talked down to all game and losing one on one to simple molerats. You're not use to just being able to walk into people's houses and takingall their stuff. For a very long time, you will just have to be everyone's errand boy.

But at the end of the day, you'll love it!

Imagine if everything you came across was just level scaled and you could just demolish or with average effort, defeat everything you came across? It would give you no satisfaction in the end game. You want to hate the characters you come across, that way you actually FEEL GREAT when you return and knock them down. Yes, in this game if you so desire once you become strong enough, you can come back and kill off your bullies from the start of the game. I would highly recommend playing this game.