Gothic 1 Remake PS5 Review 7.5/10 "A Throwback in the Truest Sense of the Word"

Gothic 1 Remake Review – A Gritty, Grubby Triumph with Proper Old‑School Bite

Bugs, Quirks and the Lack of Hand‑Holding

I’ve had many a dalliance with the Gothic series over the years, most recently in 2024, when Gothic 2 was released on Switch. Piranha Bytes very much had their own approach and vibe to their creations, and I was gutted when they closed their doors last year, having given us the Gothic, Risen and Elex series of games. Titles that were definitely flawed, but also idiosyncratic and rich with a dry sense of European humour as well as being unique, memorable experiences for better or worse.

I heard of this Gothic remake a couple of years ago, and I have been yearning for it ever since, and reviewing and scoring this game was oddly difficult because…well, it kind of does what you want/expect a Gothic game to do. Still, there are some design issues and other aspects that are lacking. That said, I fully appreciate that there is a large chunk of fans of the original out there that will embrace this and see it as a genuine GOTY, and I completely understand that viewpoint.

The original Gothic was released in 2001 on PC and is set in and around a penal colony that is under a magic barrier. Nothing living can escape the barrier, and the folks who live within it have split into various groups with their own ways and goals. The remake reflects this main plotline whilst breaking away in terms of the various side quests and its own twists on the design of the original. 

Your character is given a message that needs to be delivered to the leader of the fire mages, and is unceremoniously booted down into the barrier for his quest to begin. There are three main camps that you are made aware of at the start of the game: the Old Camp, the New Camp, and a cult of ‘sleepers’ that reside in the swamp. After a few hours getting used to the citizens of each area, you can decide who you want to throw your oar in with to proceed through the rest of Gothic’s chapters.

The world of Gothic is – as with the original – a fun place to explore, but it is tough. Even on the lowest difficulty, you’ll need to parry and weave in combat (hammering buttons will see you cut down in seconds), and - in the early game especially – deviating down the wrong path will see you killed in a single hit, often with no warning. As the game itself tells you…save regularly (read – constantly). 

Kai Rosenkranz returns from the original to provide sweeping orchestral scores galore, and the music very much fits the mood, from the more rollicking songs as you roam the countryside murdering fauna in cold blood through to the highlights for me of the darker, more sinister locations you come across in which the audio genuinely adds a sense of ominous dread to your exploration. The only blip in the sound dept for me was an out-of-place tribal drum roll that in any other game would signify a warning that you've been spotted by an attacker, but here is part of a main theme. So not only do you hear it pretty consistently, but it was constantly jarring me into a sense of fight or flight throughout. This could just be me…but it was a bit of an irritation.

There is a lack of hand-holding in Gothic that runs to its core; there are no quest markers and no on-screen directions or compass; this leads you to find your own way around the land and again adds to the sense that you are making your own way through the world of Gothic. That said, there are a fair number of bugs here, and all too often I wouldn’t get the right dialogue option to proceed a quest, or outright couldn’t find someone no matter how much I scoured the camp in question, leading to a lot of dead time. Luckily for me, I managed to happen across the person/place I needed to be at whilst roaming around the wilderness, but the way in which the place/character reacted made it very clear I had missed a chunk of the bugged quest.

The game runs at 30fps quite consistently and whilst it’s hardly going to win awards for how it looks, I found it nailed the kind of vibe I expected from the Gothic games, and the gritty realism of the colony felt well-realised and suitably grubby. The layouts of the various camps and roads through…wow, they are breathtakingly complex. I swear I will never know my way around the swamp camp without looking at every single sign that I happen across, as it’s just a constant winding array of similar huts and paths entwined around forestry, absolutely baffling. It got to the point that every single night-time, I pegged it for a bed, any bed until morning – not out of a sense of concern for my safety at the hands of enemies, just so I didn’t wander off a cliff or into the wilderness, helped by some genuinely lovely lighting effects as you scoot around with a light spell, or perhaps a burning torch to guide you.

The combat is tough, but satisfying once you get used to the timing, and taking down an enemy to rinse their corpse of goodies is always good fun. The game continues the Piranha Bytes way of making you feel like you are cutting your own path through the world – which is a design highlight – in that you can go around on the nick, be a goody two-shoes, or anything in between. There was a point early on where a purposefully irritating character was getting on my nerves, so I asked him to follow me out into the countryside, where I promptly stabbed him to death behind a rock. 

I was constantly amused by quest lines that had me finding out what had transpired with a previously sent courier or member of a camp, sent off on some seemingly simple mission, only to discover that they had basically just spent the last week getting hammered or really, really stoned - or the myriad times that I came across a group of enemies too hard to handle on my lonesome, so I lured them back to a nearby village so that the guards could take care of them. And if they bested the guards? I’d ransack their corpses before I scarpered in a bed to flog their items to raise cash for better weapons and armour so that I could do it myself next time. Good!

I enjoyed my time with Gothic, especially for the first few hours, as it really felt like I’d discovered a hidden gem of a game from yesteryear; it had that rugged appeal that always pulls me back to games like Risen, Boiling Point and the like. In a way – for a while at least - it was the perfect remake of Gothic, warts and all. 

Yet, the further I got in, the more the niggles arose. The constant back-tracking, happening across the exact same groups of enemies in the exact same spots on the map, the hard crashes that saw me lose some of my progress - at one point a good 20 minutes of clearing out a particularly tough, labyrinthine cave - and the fact that the characters and humour wasn't quite as fun and snappy as the original in their bone-dry responses and quirks. 

Clunky though the combat is, it’s what to be expected of Gothic; the music is mostly great, and the traversal surprisingly smooth – from what I initially expected at least. There are also some genuinely breath-taking moments in the visuals; two that stood out to me were the first time I walked into the enormous cavern that housed the heart of the New Camp, and the myriad huts and buildings set in the bowl of the earth opened up in true grandeur, absolutely beautiful. 

Also, the moment that I emerged on a clifftop waterfall after a particularly gruelling underground section- it was at night, and I wandered over to the edge to get my bearings and was treated to dozens of torchlights in the distance lighting up the Old Camp, again – a glorious moment that shows there’s beauty in this rugged, unforgiving world. 

I’d also like to note that the developers are very open with players, and are super-tight on crushing pesky bugs, with multiple updates happening during the time I spent with Gothic, and from their initial response to the launch and from my personal experience I have no doubt that they are fully supporting this title as much as possible. 

I really look forward to what they bring us next, as there’s clearly a lot of talent at the studio. They’ve captured the spark and verve that make the Gothic games so special, and considering this is their first release, it’s an incredible achievement.

SUMMARY
If you like Piranha Bytes titles, you’ll love this, and if this is your first time in the world of Gothic...it could well be a little different to other RPGs you’ve played, but it will absolutely reward your patience if you click with its style.

7.5/10

🧊COOL 🧊

(also available on Xbox Series X/S, Windows)

Developer – Alkimia Interactive

Publisher – THQ Nordic