Gothic Remake Review
Summary: For the hardcore fans of the franchise that just wanted a 1:1 remake of the original without anything added or removed, Gothic Remake is a dream come true. But even the avid Gothic fans are not safe from the performance horrors caused by the Unreal Engine 5, and that makes the Gothic Remake not everybody’s cup of tea.
2.6
A Suger-Coated Remaster
Gothic has been a very influential RPG franchise, and when it was announced in 2020 that a remake was in the works, many old-time RPG fans were excited to see such an impactful series being revived. But doing a remake of such titles is not as easy as it seems because the fans expect the same quality of gameplay and visuals, plus some “added value” that can justify the remake. So comes the million-dollar question: Did Alkimia Interactive and THQ Nordic manage to bring such value to this franchise with this revival?
Gothic 1 Remake follows the story of an unnamed protagonist who is a convict sent to the mining colony in the Valley of the Mines. The mining colony is an open-air prison whose inmates are locked inside a dome by the power of a magical spell. Any living creature that enters the dome can no longer leave it, but the king needs the ore available in the vicinity of the mining colony, so he made a trade deal with the leader of the convicts. As the protagonist tries to find a way to break the spell and find a way out, he needs to find people he can trust in different factions of the colony and make connections, but there is a mysterious letter that is given to him before his conviction, a letter that sets far greater consequences in motion. A sense of mystery is the cornerstone of the game’s narrative, and it works flawlessly as a propelling force that encourages the players to follow the breadcrumbs and see where the mystery takes them.
Alkimia Interactive calls the game a “faithful remake” with a “modernized combat system,” but it is really difficult to accept that. Gothic 1 Remake suffers from lots of mechanical and user experience issues. First and foremost, the combat system is not modernized at all; it’s just outdated! The game uses a classic lock-on system, which is engaged manually by the player in order to enter combat. Combat here means swinging the melee weapons slowly and steadily in horizontal and vertical directions, or using ranged weapons and spells by aiming them at the enemy. That’s it about the combat! After learning basic melee skills, players can perform combos, which are, in reality, the same previously used swings with a knockback effect at the end of them. Even this awfully simplistic combat system is not implemented properly, as the lock-on camera just changes from one enemy to another mid-combat, and the aiming has some sort of hidden aim-assist that can’t be turned off and keeps the reticle focused on the centre mass of the enemies, making headshots almost impossible. The combat feels stiff and bulky, and due to the game’s exploration and progression system, it’s almost impossible to fight groups of enemies without being shredded to pieces.
The progression system of the game is unique and remains almost the same as the original title. Defeating enemies rewards the player with experience points, and those experience points should be invested in learning new skills or increasing basic stats such as health, mana, and strength, which increase damage with melee weapons. The problem is that you need to find people who can provide you with your needs, whether it is increasing your stats, getting better weapons, buying consumables, learning new skills or magical spells, or learning how to hunt animals. They teach you the skills you need and you pay them for their lessons. Though the idea seems nice on paper, it’s not implemented correctly in the game as it creates a causality dilemma. Enemy strength in the game does not scale with player level, which means everything is just lethal early on. So, before wandering around the Valley of the Mines, the “Hero” should become stronger, but to get stronger, resources and experience are needed, which are obtained from exploration. You want to stick to the main quest, then? Good luck, because to complete it, you need to do errands and fights for the NPCs, which means more combat and exploration, which you can’t do because you are not strong enough. This broken cycle is what caused me 14 hours just to complete the very first chapter of the game, and the original game had 6 chapters!
The devs hide this broken design under the “no handholding” slogan, but as an avid soulslike fan, I can firmly say this is just bad game design. I spent more than 300 hours on Elden Ring; it took me 13 hours of sweat and F words to beat Promised Consort Radahn before the nerfing of the first patch, yet I knew what needed to be done: XP farming, finding better gear, as well as some good old-fashioned Gitting Gud. But here in Gothic 1 Remake, the cycle is broken. You can’t become stronger because you need to find other people to teach you the skills you need, and exploration to get the resources needed for learning is dangerous even in the starting area. The combat system is also painfully dull, so the players are constantly hitting brick walls no matter what aspect of the game they are trying to invest in: story, exploration, or combat.
I completed Sekiro, which many claim to be “the most difficult” Soulslike game, with full achievements unlocked. I am not someone who runs away from a challenge. But Gothic Remake is not “modernized” as the devs claim. A good user experience is nonexistent here as everything, even the map, needs to be accessed through the inventory. That means to check the maps, which should be bought from cartographers found around the world and are not available early on, the player needs to open the inventory, go through the items, find the map, then select and view it. This procedure can’t be done while moving, and the map can’t be zoomed in or out for more precise pathfinding. There are examples in exploration as well. Players cannot run while holding their sword but running with a torch is allowed. The lack of attention to making the experience more enjoyable has nothing to do with hand-holding; it is just a bright example of a total lack of modernized RPG mechanics and poor UX design.
Adding Unreal Engine 5 performance issues to all the above-mentioned problems acts like the final nail in the coffin. Though the game looks great and extremely photo-realistic, it is really demanding when it comes to performance and suffers from constant stutters that are the trademark of the engine, already plaguing titles like Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. The stutters are felt the most every single time the game is loaded after death, which happens often thanks to the sheer difficulty of the game. After loading is finished, player input just freezes for around three seconds while the texture and lighting of the world around the character load, and as you can expect, the enemies and NPCs not only reset their positions during this time — e.g., wake up if they were sleeping and catch you sneaking in their room — but can attack the player or move around as well.
Final Thoughts
Gothic Remake is a difficult game to recommend in 2026. For average RPG fans, there are better “classic” action RPGs out there; Avowed is one of them that, just like Gothic 1 Remake, has simplistic classic gameplay mechanics with a level of combat and exploration polish that is far superior to Gothic Remake. At the same time, for the hardcore fans of the franchise that just wanted a 1:1 remake of the original without anything added or removed, Gothic Remake is a dream come true. But even the avid Gothic fans are not safe from the performance horrors caused by Unreal Engine 5, and that makes the Gothic 1 Remake not everybody’s cup of tea.
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