Fun and difficult, another one of the best rps of all time!

This game much like the first starts you out like a nobody and makes you work for everything you want. It excels in the first half, and in the expansion, but really falls apart once the dragons get involved. The balance changes introduced by the expansion really do make that feeling of accomplishment diminish when my shining paladin with his cool as heck sword gets murked by some bandits protecting a lighthouse. By the end of the game I was fed up, and resolved to simply cheat so that my character could at least combat the enemies in my way. The LP were so stingy that by simply learning some cool skills like lockpicking and some smithing, I had not created an optimal enough character to weather the endless hordes of the end game. The dragon fights were terrible regen stunlock fests, utter trash. Also, I felt like being locked out of magic just for joining the militia was a little too harsh, I would prefer extra hoops to jump through rather than a flat no (at least for the first couple chapters.)
You may think I hated this game, and that is not the case. This game is a marvelous creation of human inginuity, burdened by a minmaxing focus and a fair amount of jank. The balance before the expansion may have been better, but I do feel the game greatly benefited from the returning faces and additional plot that was added making it feel more connected to the first. Also the German voice acting is far superior, I switched after hearing Diego for the first time, look how they massacred my boy.

The only one that works for me is the Night of The Raven expansion. It's not the same Gothic II I remember but it still holds up and sucked me right in. Not sure if this is considered better than the OG Gothic II but it's very good. same basic gameplay.
Has sort of a Zelda vive to it but way more depth. This is actually better than Zelda.