A year has passed since the release of Gothic 2 Complete Classic on Nintendo Switch. For this reason, I decided to take a look at the technical state of the games developed by Piranha Bytes and released for the Nintendo Switch console a year ago.
A year and a half ago I wrote a similar text1 focusing on two games. Risen released for the Nintendo Switch console and its update on PC, and ELEX 2 already a year old. Both cases presented a picture of misery and despair with poor chances of improvement. Today we will focus on a different set of games. Gothic Classic, Gothic 2 Complete Classic and the aforementioned Risen.
Gothic Classic – Is there this DX11 or not?
Gothic Classic released on 28 September 2023 made a good first impression. The game ran smoothly, completing the game was seamless. The controls as well as the inventory, two of Gothic’s biggest headaches, were changed, upgraded. In addition, with the port, the developers added a few nuances that didn’t make it into the final game, but were available in older versions. For example, there are blackmailers on the road to the New Camp, who will accost us if we travel alone and demand tribute.
Unfortunately, THQ Nordic used a perfidious deception that was and still is intended to persuade us to buy this version of Gothic. We are talking about the improved lighting and shading. The graphical effects that are standard for Gothic these days were always just a modification to give the game a slightly newer feel. All thanks to the DirectX 11 modification, which introduced the aforementioned effects to the PC version.
The Nintendo Switch version was supposed to have these effects from “new” making the Switch version the best version of Gothic available on the market. You can see these announcements in the trailer announcing this release, it’s even written in text (01:27). As the outcry among fans rose, we began to receive assurances from THQ that the improved graphics would eventually make their way to the console. We can read such one assurance further below the trailers.
One patch and six months later, these lies were repeated, showing off the improved graphics in Gothic 1 in a trailer announcing an omnibus edition of Gothic 1 and 2 called “Gothic Classic Khorinis Saga”. Again, shots showing gameplay from the first Gothic have “DX11 mode” fired up, despite these settings not being available in the game itself.
Another lie is born in the release trailer for the Switch. At 3:54 to be exact, we hear that all improvements (apart from motion controls) will be coming to PC. It’s been over a year now, and just as the PC improvements weren’t visible, they still aren’t.
Gothic 2 Complete Classic – Is it better to become a “Dragon sheep” or to lie down on aN “EAR”?
Two months later, Gothic 2 Complete Classic debuted on 29.11.2023 for the Nintendo Switch console. The developers had done their homework and this time the improved lighting and shading was available in the release. Admittedly, performance in the city drops noticeably when these effects are enabled, but gameplay is still possible as we don’t have dynamic skirmishes there.
However, no one expected the authors to trip up the translation. More specifically, the game has a problem with the Polish letter Ł. If a word or a whole phrase starts with this letter, the game won’t display it. For example, in G2 we distinguish ranged weapons such as “Kusza” (en. “Crossbow”) and “uk” (with not removed Ł letter it means “Bow”). At night, in order to regenerate life, we sleep on a “óżko”. In Polish, it sounds similar to the word “ear”. With not removed Ł letter it means “Bed”.
On the other hand, if we choose the path of the mercenary, we can advance on the “owcę Smoków”. In English, it means “Dragon Sheep”. We have already pointed out this interesting error in our premiere review. To make matters worse, the game has received two quite substantial patches since its release, but these did not correct this problem.
The screenshots below, show a couple of these errors.
Hope for improvement was revived again when Gothic Classic Khorinis Saga was announced. It was the perfect opportunity to patch such a direct bug. Unfortunately, neither the bug with the letter Ł nor the improved lighting in Gothic 1 was fixed/added.
Risen – replay from fun
In this case, I will use my own words that I wrote a year ago:
Unfortunately, for more than two months we have not received a single official patch to fix critical bugs. Launching the game you will notice that the music is terribly quiet. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the game, for some unexplained reason, turns the volume down in Windows itself. Secondly, the in-game sound setting suggests that we have a 5.1 sound system selected, worse still, we can’t change this to regular speakers/headphones. Another big problem is disappearing saves. If you played Risen before the release of the “new” version, your previous progress will not be visible in the game. True, you can manually copy the saves to a new folder, but this is a search for files all over your computer.
Admittedly, four patches have been released in the beta version of the game. However, they are not perfect, and bugs related, for example, to the audio system continue to occur. The developers have made breakneck attempts to fix these bugs but have resorted to changing systems instead of fixing the bug. In addition, most players are not even aware of their existence, nor do they know how to run these patches on their PC. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that this isn’t even a Remaster, but barely a mildly altered original game. We didn’t even get a new DirectX version and Risen continues to run under DirectX 9. The rotten cherry on the disgusting cake is the 100% price increase to 67.99 Polish Zloty.
I would just like to add that these four beta patches available on Steam are not available on the GOG platform.
What next?
All these problems, unfinished business, and hot aires put THQ Nordic in a very bad light. Bearing in mind that I have repeatedly reported at least the problems in Risen 1 on the official Discord server, and no responses have been forthcoming, we should think twice about what Gothic Remake might bring us. After the demonstrations at PGA, a lot of attention was paid to poorly working and looking animations. Based on our experiences with G1, G2 and Risen on Switch, can we expect these elements to improve in Gothic Remake? This is a question you will have to answer for yourselves …
