Gothic Remake – Review

Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected to play the remake of one of my favorite games of all time in 2026. Just like its main hero, Gothic Remake struggled against all odds, was completely redesigned after a disastrous first trailer, and finally managed to find its identity thanks to the feedback received from the dedicated community, followed by a successful launch.

As a fan of the original games, however, I remained skeptical. Especially since remakes have the nasty tendency of losing the main focus of the original product. To my absolute surprise, Alkimia Interactive not only managed to faithfully recreate the brutally beautiful Valley of the Mines, but actually improved upon the original game by adding crucial details to various key moments in the story, without tampering with the main plot. This was confirmation enough for me that the gritty world originally created by Piranha Bytes was in good hands. I currently have over 100 hours in the remake, going for my second playthrough, and I can say that Gothic Remake is one of my favorite games of this year so far.

Note: Gothic Remake was played on a PlayStation 5, performance may vary between platforms.

Once again, you are put in the shoes of the Nameless Hero, just another convict thrown into the Magical Prison set up by the magicians to supply the king’s war against the orcs. After the explanatory cutscene, you are welcomed by Bullit & Co., receive the customary fist in the face and end up being rescued by your future best friend/mentor Diego. He will waste no time in reminding you that you are the equivalent of boot dirt in the colony. Nobody cares about you and you have to figure out how to survive in this crazy world. The colony manages to retain the original feeling of oppression and the pains you have to go through in order to climb up the hierarchical ladder. Everybody tries to take advantage of you, extort you, make you do their job for them or even rob you simply because they don’t like your mug. Even the ones that truly want to be your friend are usually so annoying you’re better off without them – see Mud, one of the most iconic Gothic NPCs.

At the same time, the Remake is slightly more accessible. You have now different sliders and options that will help improve your experience, together with three difficulty modes: Novice, offering an increase in experience gained, Gothic, which is the original game’s difficulty, and Hard, where you gain less experience and enemies pack a real punch. You also have the option to switch on a Permadeath option, where a single death will mean the end of your hero.
I was worried about the difficulty options at first, since I am of the belief that one singular difficulty works wonders for a game like Gothic. Luckily, no matter which difficulty you choose, the game still delivers. I can also gladly say that Novice difficulty doesn’t trivialize the game, Gothic Remake will still be absolutely unforgiving and a wolf can and will still demolish you in the first chapter even with the extra experience. For that I salute the developers, it’s not easy taking these kinds of risks in today’s RPG market.

While I’ll forever be an enjoyer of the original Gothic’s graphics, I have to give credit where credit is due: The Remake is absolutely beautiful!! Beautifully dirty would be the more appropriate description, but the recreation of The Valley of Mines is incredible! Every original pathway, hill, cave and tree has been recreated faithfully, but that’s not all – Alkimia Interactive added extra caves and paths which are perfectly integrated in the already detailed world. Despite still not needing a map to find my own way in the Valley, I was sometimes confused whenever I found an extra path, a cave with extra packs of wolves waiting, or even a new NPC that promised to teach me how to fist fight in exchange for some healing ointment. The dreaded forest is now a thing of beauty, although this time around it actually invited me to explore it, compared to the original where the entire area gave me a big “DO NOT ENTER VIBE” every time I approached it. The Unreal Engine 5 has been super hard at work in this game and it shows.

The enemies have been faithfully recreated as well. I had no clue that scavengers actually had a protective bone layer on their heads until I played the Remake. Molerats aren’t just chubby pigs anymore, they actually look horrible now (in the best possible way), orc dogs can’t be mistaken for wolves anymore and shadowbeasts… yeah, they still make me run in terror. As for the dreaded orcs, they are now hybrids between those of Gothic 1 and Gothic 3, and really feel like menacing powerhouses that could easily topple the kingdom of Myrtana.

The biggest change were made to the camps, however. The Old and New Camp are things of beauty, feeling completely new even though they have the same structure as in the original game. I felt like a child again exploring the marketplace of the Old Camp trying to steal from Fisk’s chests, or going in the New Camp’s cave and trying to find out where the hell to find Wolf. Alkimia Interactive even took the creative liberty to change key places, especially in the New Camp: The rice farmers have new barracks now where they sleep during the night, and the Water Mages have a completely different headquarters, designed to be more in tune with their Varant origins.
Swamp Camp on the other hand feels like a completely new area (with the exception of Temple Square, which remained unchanged). It is enormous and lush, and I actually got completely lost the first time I got there. The swamp itself really feels like a real life marsh, with dense vegetation which often hides major threats. Believe me, you will not see those swampsharks coming!

While the original Gothic had its charm with the weird English voice acting, this time around the voice actors actually nailed the delivery of their lines. The Nameless Hero doesn’t sound like he’s reciting his lines from a page anymore, Diego sounds confident and cynical, Gomez acts like a proper ruler hellbent on extorting everyone for his own gains, and the entirety of Swamp Camp is properly baked this time around. My favorite might be Xardas, whose voice actor really managed to sell this complex character. I really enjoyed everyone’s performance in the Remake and there were very few moments when the voice acting wasn’t up to par.

And since no true Gothic game is complete without a killer soundtrack, the Remake brings back the original composer Kai Rosenkranz, which in my opinion is the only valid musical choice when it comes to this franchise. The original soundtrack was remastered and reinterpreted, while still retaining its original magic. For those with finer hearing, you will even catch some soundtrack easter eggs from his other entries in the franchise, especially on a specific pathway between the old lighthouse and the fire lizard beach. Veterans will know what I mean..!

What truly sold the original Gothic games to their fans was the immersion and a world that actually felt alive. The remake goes the full length to retain the same atmosphere and even doubles down in many aspects. Just like in the original, the population wakes up in the morning, people do their chores during the day, gather around the campfires at dusk and finally go to sleep. Some NPCs may decide to take a break by watching the local fight, drink a bottle of beer and gossip with their neighbors, or even throw darts at a makeshift dart board stuck to their huts. You can join in on some of these activities, too, by cooking meat at the community frying pan, mining for ore, or smoking a joint with the fellow sect members. Unfortunately, you can’t play darts or cut wood however, maybe the developers will add these actions in a later patch.

The NPCs react as well if you interrupt them, for instance if you bump into an NPC while he’s enjoying some stew, he will mumble curses at you while still chewing. Or if you sit in front of the guy who tries to play darts, he will berate you and refuse to play until you move. This is even more interesting with the camp guards: if you deliberately disturb them by blocking their path or pulling a weapon out, they will draw their swords and even attack you unless you behave. And obviously, do not dare to go into other people’s houses, because their owners will angrily ask you to leave before calling in the guards and attacking you.

The world outside the camps is also reactive, animals usually gather in packs, hunt each other (e.g. wolves hunting molerats), or call each other out when they feel threatened. If you kill any type of enemy, they will not disappear, and will instead remain in place for the remainder of the chapter. The animals will even start to rot and get overrun by flies and maggots over time. What I noticed in the Remake is that if you attack a pack and dispatch most of the animals instantly, the few remaining animals will run away from you, which might in turn alert other kinds of animals.

The weather and time of day also has an impact on the world, most notably the storms. Whenever a storm starts, every NPC abandons whatever they were doing and they run for cover, waiting for the rain to pass. I found this to be a very neat addition since nobody likes to get wet, really. What I didn’t expect though was to be actually struck by lightning while I was scaling some pathways near the New Camp. Now I see why everyone took a break during the rain!

It might take a while to adjust to the gameplay of Gothic Remake. At first, the game will feel unpolished and clunky, though this is intended, and how gameplay should feel by design. Since you are nothing but a worthless prisoner, you cannot fight at all, your arrows will bounce off of enemies and you won’t even be able to drop from a higher ledge without breaking your knees… or well, lose some health. Gothic Remake does not hold your hand whatsoever when it comes to improving your character, you have no quest markers or even a minimap, instead you will have to figure everything out by yourself.

Which makes everything more satisfying once you manage to defeat your first enemies, solve your first quests, level up, and use those skill points to become better. More than anything, Gothic Remake encourages the players to use their intuition, learn the rules of the world they’re stuck in and equip themselves with the right tools. You might be an untalented peasant with a sword, but spending some hard earned ore and skill points on a trainer might unlock the ability to beat that nasty wolf that blocks your path towards the Free Mine.

Oh, and don’t sleep on any kind of armor – even the digger clothes – armor in this game is incredibly precious and it makes the difference between being one shot by a bird and surviving the encounter with an entire pack of them. Later on, as you join one of the factions, you will receive better armor which you can even improve for better survivability. If you also consider the plethora of protective rings, amulets and potions that you can find, you will eventually be able to become an unbeatable warrior, easily dispatching almost every enemy in the game without any effort.

There’s also an emphasis on exploration, enabled by completely new skills added in the Remake. You can now learn how to become a better diver, which allows you to hold your breath underwater for longer, perfect for exploring the brand new caves or open the chests at the bottom of the lake. Another new addition is the ability to climb walls, which gives the world a new layer of verticality. If you ever wondered what is in the mountains next to the Old Mine without using cheat codes or a harpy transformation, now you can find out!
But probably the most fun mechanic is the Ride Scavenger skill that you learn from a new NPC. You can now have your own Scavenger to ride around, covering great distances with ease. I actually like this mechanic a lot, having a murderous oversized chicken that you can ride and pet is definitely more fun than learning Acrobatics and vaulting myself from one corner of the map to the other.

Note: Do go and learn Acrobatics from Buster still, it becomes crucial for combat and you also get a funny nod to the old skill’s properties.

In terms of melee combat, Alkimia Interactive changed the mechanics of swinging your weapon around while still retaining the core idea. While you can’t do much untrained, once you learn how to fight you actually unlock the ability to string combos by pressing the buttons at the right time. You have four types of attacks – two side sweeps, a forward attack and a slam attack, and they change their properties depending on the weapon you use. With a sword you can lunge forward, while you can swing a club like a baseball bat, stunning or even knocking the opponent down. Each weapon type has different animations and speed, making the combat slightly more tense this time around.
As a safety net, you also have the ability to parry every attack, which can trivialize some encounters if you have good reaction times. The enemies also have limited attack patterns, so you could easily take on bigger prey early as long as you learned how the animations for the said enemy works. In fact, I’d say that this parry system lessened the actual danger of orcs – even the biggest orc brute is trivial as long as you know how to parry his telegraphed attacks.

The magic, however… my goodness, the developers nailed it big time. The magic is utterly beautiful in this game. You can either cast magic via one-time use scrolls, or by using runes that depend on a rank called Circle of Magic. Each of the camps in the game have their magic teacher and if you want to follow the path of mana, the remake delivers in spades – fire tornadoes, balls of lightning, ice magic, summons, gusts of wind that knocks enemies away… everything you could ever desire. I don’t normally play as a magician in RPGs, even in Gothic, but even I had to experiment with the fun particle effects that were added to this game.

As for ranged combat, it’s been improved as well, but it is not as flashy as melee or magic. You can now free-aim, as opposed to the original which had locked-on targeting. Learning bows and crossbows allows you to load your arrows and bolts faster and certain changes to the story allow you to now be a pure ranged build from start to finish if you so desire. Bows and crossbows are best used for stealth gameplay and honestly, it’s smarter to deal with a pack of black goblins from afar rather than be surrounded by them while I hack away with my axe.

Overall, I’d say that the combat is just as enjoyable as in the original, with an extra flair added to the magic system. If I am missing something however, I’d say that the remake did not retain the finer details of the original, such as pivoting from one leg to the other once you are a one handed master, or taking a knee to reload the crossbow faster once you’ve mastered it. On the other hand, you can flip your greatsword like a genuine witcher, so I can’t complain too much!

Finally, while we are in the gameplay section, I have to mention the bane of every Gothic Remake player – the Lockpicking minigame. Obviously you can cosplay as a master thief as well, lockpicking chests and doors and pickpocketing unsuspecting enemies. Lockpicking has been transformed from a simple left-right combination minigame into a highly complex ordeal, where you have to push around various gates, some gates being linked to each other. Some chests are so infuriatingly difficult to open and yield such little rewards, that most will find this minigame to be more frustrating than anything. I do enjoy the minigame myself but I have to agree, it’s very annoying to tinker with a chest for five minutes just to pick up six ore nuggets and two torches. Alkimia Interactive did add an update with their patch, where you actually get experience if you succesfully lockpick, which finally makes it feels like it’s worth opening every single chest in the game.

The place where Alkimia Interactive took the most liberty were in writing the story and its characters. I was worried about it at first, but after finishing the game I can say that they did a great job overall.

The main story is still the same. The premise is that King Rhobar II is losing his war with the orcs, so he commissions the mages of the realm to create this magical barrier that traps every convict and forces them to mine ore for his war. The plan backfires, mages get trapped in the barrier too, convicts revolt and they decide to force the king to trade goods and people in exchange for the precious mineral. The colony is split into three factions: The Old Camp who prefers to maintain the status quo and keep trading while remaining the strongest camp, the New Camp who decides to gathers ore in order to blow up the magical barrier, and the Swamp Camp, whose members pray to a mysterious deity called The Sleeper, to which they can communicate by smoking copious amount of swampweed. You are being thrown into this brutal world and you have to decide which faction to join while also figuring out a way to get out of this colony.

Some key changes have been made, which are also linked to newer areas in the game. For instance this time around, the focus stones have a different role than just being catalysts for the mages’ spell. The events of Chapter 4 are better depicted with a cutscene, there’s additional info added about the Sleeper, together with more details about the relationship between the leader of the Swamp Camp Y’berion and Cor Kalom. Without delving into spoiler territory, the biggest changes were made in the final three chapters of the game. And while I can see why some would dislike those changes (especially the final boss), I personally loved these modifications. My favorite new moment was the final boss actually, which now felt like a proper final confrontation.

The main characters’ personalities and quests have been significantly improved. Your main allies in the Valley were always Diego, Gorn, Milten and Lester, but the Remake added additional lines of dialogue and even unique sidequests, giving you a better reason to trust them. Most of the NPCs have been reworked and improved, for instance Thorus is not just the “You shall not pass” guy anymore, instead he starts to trust you more over time, and even shares some minor advice and agrees with you during some critical moments of the game. Or Quentin, a new character, the leader of a hidden bandits faction: He has a very interesting point of view when it comes to magic and its usage. Even the female prisoners now have lines of dialogue and sidequests and all I can say is, if you thought Gomez was a scumbag before, wait until you meet him now.

Reworking the characters and their quests is an incredibly slippery slope in a Remake, but once again I am glad and even amazed by the great work that the developers did here.

Unfortunately, Gothic Remake had its own share of bugs at launch. A whole lot of bugs actually. At launch, the game was a mess, players had their save files corrupted, broken quests, sound randomly disappearing, all manners of issues that could ruin the time of even the most devoted Gothic fan. Fortunately, the developers are very receptive to feedback, worked very hard, and released a number of patches that largely fixed the more critical issues. The game is actually in a very stable state now. There are still bugs to be fixed, one resulting in an unobtainable trophy at the time of writing, but overall I was pleased with the development team’s prompt response to issues. With further feedback and bug reports, I expect this game to be fixed as soon as possible.

The game also struggles in some places, most notably in the Old Camp or in places with high enemy density. The game runs at an uncapped 60FPS (it was 30FPS at launch, which annoyed a lot of people), but framerates still drop periodically, which might be jarring for someone who asks for graphical fidelity. There’s some issues with the shadows and field of view too, items popping in and out of existence, but these shouldn’t be too troublesome really.

What is troublesome though, oddly enough, is the high-end graphics actually obstructing some items. The game is so detailed that you might actually end up missing various items or even cave entrances all while your sight is being stolen by the beautiful rays of the sun or some random, wonderful polygonal rock. Not sure how this issue could be solved however, since adding any kind of “visual enhancement” to the items might actually ruin the whole immersion.

Finally, despite the numerous patches, you can still accidentally break several quests by killing enemies ahead of time or reaching places you shouldn’t be able to. It seems that every game with the Gothic DNA has this issue and the Remake is not immune either.

From a completionist point of view, I have to say that Gothic Remake is harder than Gothic Classic. Obviously, if you want to fully explore the game and discover every single quest, you will have to do three individual playthroughs, siding with the Old Camp, the New Camp and the Sect Camp. For the Platinum Trophy, while it would be technically possible to grab every trophy in one run, it would take so much planning, preparation and knowledge of game events that it’s safer to simply play the game twice.

The Gothic Remake list has a number of trophies largely linked to main quests, side quests and combat. A few of them will be missable, notably the one that asks you to advance to the sixth circle of magic, but only three trophies will truly test a Gothic fan – No time to die, Insomnia Champion and Overachiever.

Insomnia Champion requires you to not sleep once for the entire playthrough. This is tougher than it sounds, because during the night you will not see a damn thing and all the NPCs will go to sleep, reacting violently if you go to their cabin and wake them up to turn in a quest or trade. This means you will have to wait until morning to resume any activity that does not involve slaughtering the local fauna, which can make the game a slog. On the flip side, nighttime is the best time to lockpick chests so make sure you plan your actions accordingly.

No time to die asks you to finish the game in Permadeath mode. This cannot be done on the easiest difficulty, you must play on Gothic or Hard difficulty. Pre-patch this mode wasn’t too hard, if you were killed by an enemy you could quit to the main menu and reload, but now the developers patched this mode and if you die, your in-game profile gets marked with a skull. The game is ruthless no matter how experienced you are with the series, so make sure to use the cloud saving if you want to avoid headaches.

Finally the hardest trophy in the game, also currently unobtainable on PS5, is Overachiever. For this trophy, you are required to learn every single lesson in the game, of which there are 46. Since there is only a limited number of enemies, the amount of experience you can gain is limited. Not only will you have to play the game on Novice (because it yields more experience), you will have to completely avoid the Swamp Camp as you can’t progress to the next circles of magic there, and you will also have to systematically clear up the entire map during each chapter and kill various NPCs in the game at certain points so that you can gain as much experience as possible. It’s an incredibly frustrating trophy that goes against the way Gothic should be played. As for why it’s unobtainable, the trophy is requires you to learn 49 lessons instead of the available 46.

Suffices to say, I am in absolute awe with this game. Alkimia Interactive, helped by the massive feedback from the fans, managed to actually recreate the magic of Gothic from 25 years ago. It still needs to be polished and fixed via patches for sure, but considering that a newly formed team managed to develop a full remake of a 25 years old game, make it successful, improve on the characters and the world, respect the entire Gothic lore, keep the combat just as satisfying as it initially was AND still have time to add the In Extremo easter egg in the game… no wonder that Gothic Remake ended up being my favorite game of this year so far.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish my second playthrough as a New Camper, all while dreaming of a Gothic 2 Remake. Welcome to the colony!