Note: This review concerns the 2001 release of Gothic (Gothic 1 on Steam, billed as Gothic Classic for Switch), as made available via Steam and Good Old Games. It does not cover the original printing release, only the versions patched with the latest official updates. This review is also relevant to the Switch port in terms of content and game engine, but the controls are different and I have only tested the PC port.
In 2001, the German developers Piranha Bytes wanted to revolutionize the world of games with a title that provided an open world with many features that later games would have to copy. That game was Gothic, a low-fantasy RPG that even today remains widely beloved. It's still somewhat flawed in execution, but even now still deserves its laurels. The first Gothic would set the tone for all canonical Gothic games (those made by Pirahna Bytes) to follow. It would be a low-fantasy setting RPG, one with a high emphasis on realism, a seamless open world with practically no loading times, and it would be a very challenging world where tactical gameplay would always be key. The story starts with King Rhobar II of Myrtana fighting a hard war against the relentless orcs. Their tenacity forces him to take drastic measures, sending all convicts regardless of their crimes to a valley of mines to gather magic ore for his army to make quality weapons. To prevent them from escaping, his mages erect a magical barrier, but this goes awry and traps the mages and guards in with the prisoners. The prisoners revolt and take over, forcing Rhobar II to strike a deal with them to keep the ore going. The story proper begins when one convict is sent in with a message for the mages inside the barrier given by the King. The prisoners must then not only survive inside the near lawless zone inside the barrier, they must discover how to stop a threat far greater than the orcs in the process. It's with this premise the game takes place in the format of an action RPG. You must do quests, learn skills for survival, get better gear, and find items to help your progress. This game tends towards the difficult, with your hero a literal inept at most basic things, so they must learn how to properly wield weapons, hunt animals, and many other skills simply to survive before doing their quest properly. They must also join one of three factions within the prison colony to further enhance their chances of survival. The world is shown to be brutal, and the protagonist is forced to make many hard and morally questionable choices to simply survive, with his possible allies consisting mostly of fellow convicts with their own goals and motivations. Worth special mention is that this world is shown to be a realistic one. NPCs follow schedules and will do many actions such as sleeping, eating, and patrolling, and they will obey logic and retire at logical times. Enemies of different types can and will infight. The player is capable of performing many of these actions as well, even those that don't have any other purpose except immersion in the world.

Graphically, this is an early 2000 game, just barely above PS1 quality with a lot of low poly models for quite a few set pieces. Regardless, the placement of these items is generally excellent, and each area of the game world has a distinctive feel. The general color scheme is appropriately in line with a low-fantasy aesthetic, with a lot of gritty, dark tones, and a general feeling of grime, brutishness, and toughness makes many parts of the game feel rugged and ancient. Overall, while it's not perfect (tree models have even the leaves be solid so you need to walk around the leaves to avoid getting stuck), it's got a great atmosphere for the game world it presents. The sound effects tilt pretty far toward realism and do a great job of setting the mood in various areas. The music also tends towards the ambient and ominous, with flutes and guitar prominent in many pieces. Appropriately, a few themes tend towards the gothic as well. The controls of Gothic 1 are probably going to be the weakest link for many. Mouse support was a pretty late addition to the original game, it was designed to be nigh entirely keyboard-based, and you get dropped into the world with no tutorials and are given a brief area at the beginning to figure things out. While using a somewhat familiar WASD for movement, the rest of the controls are very poorly explained and will take a lot of practice to learn. Worse, combat controls are likely to frustrate, as the lock-on for enemies and the swings of your weapon have limited frames at lower levels. Given how combat is based on figuring out enemy movement and attacking at proper moments, this part of the game is going to take quite a bit of trial and error. There are fan mods to add gamepad support and there is some backported support for the slightly less annoying Gothic 2 controls, but by default, the controls are going to frustrate. Stability-wise, the first Gothic game was not the most stable game on release and hasn't aged well at all since. The player of these titles is essentially required to download many mods made by the community to keep this playing well on any contemporary computer and even some period-accurate computers will benefit in the extreme from several of these fixes. Otherwise, the engine is horrifically crash-prone. When properly patched and buttressed with certain fan mods to give it modern-day polish, it can hold up reasonably well on modern PCs, though frequent saves and multiple save files are still recommended. The Switch ports have been getting regular bug fixes, but are still based on the original rickety codebase for the PC games. Playability in Linux and Steam Deck is possible but requires a lot of custom tweaks, it is not formally supported especially on the latter. Morally, the Gothic games are going to have a lot of concerning content. Violence is going to be pretty graphic, especially if you turn the blood settings up to max. Even with it disabled, you can still see some brief bloody violence in the opening cutscenes. It is possible to murder people, which must be done on purpose in civilized areas by stabbing them in the chest while they are down. Whether a player chooses to do this is up to them, though some quests may require it. Violence is otherwise only done in self-defense against humanoids and various creatures.

Language is not overly severe. Some d*mns and a rare b*st**d, but that's it. The script was translated fairly literally from the original German, and the usage of "Hell" comes from proper German, for the word "pale/bright". In-game, it's used primarily for a form of mushroom that fits this description. The word s*** tends to be overheard in a stock NPC chatter line in one of the game areas on occasion. Sexual content is fairly low, with a total of two women in this game. While scantily clad and broad implied references to them being used as sex slaves are mentioned, the graphical style of the game combined with their fairly sparse appearance means the game has little of a sexual note. There are one or two crude jokes about someone having committed bestiality as throwaway lines at one point as well. Note: While disabled in all ports, it is entirely possible to render a female NPC entirely nude via modification of a game file. In fact, there is no actual nudity for either gender unless the game is modded. The game setting is primarily a low-fantasy RPG setting, but the supernatural, while not the absolute focus of the plot, does have some presence. The main religion of the series focuses on three main god figures but their purpose and morality are not explored much in this game. The magic system does have the possibility of using necromantic powers, though this is optional, and one of the protagonists is an admitted necromancer. Undead and demonic enemies also play a role. There is a cult dedicated to a being called "The Sleeper", though the game does not act like this is a good thing, and this is discovered to be hiding some darker implications. Authority in this game is going to be some shade of corrupted. Due to the setting being a giant prison colony trapped inside a magical barrier, all NPC humans are some form of prisoner. While some individuals are honorable enough, all forms of authority are going to have a seedy side. Worse, since your own goal is personal survival and to deal with a far greater threat, none of the three factions you can join need to be given absolute loyalty, and in fact, you will have to turn on one or more of them at some point to deal with larger threats. There is a pronounced amount of alcohol consumption; either beer, wine, or a form of schnapps distilled from rice. There is smoking in the form of swampweed reefers, described in-game as being like a combination of marijuana and narcotic in nature. There are options to imbibe these like alcohol, and some quests require their distribution. Given this game sells super cheap quite often, has a lot of fun underneath its dated surface impression, and deserves its laurels as a classic pillar of open-world RPGs, I recommend it, so long as you can put up with its limitations. Morally, it's a dark, complicated tale with a lot of cynical, grey-on-gray morality that is not fit for anyone who is not mature enough to handle its themes. If you can deal with a dark, and, no pun intended, gothic story, then I certainly recommend this title, even despite the flaws.