Has anyone tried Gothic 2 Returning 2.0 ?

[Suuns]

Geetings Everyone,
I am a long time Gothic fan and was very excited to find out that people did an unoffical remake of a game which adds tons of new stuff. But before I install it I want to ask if anyone has tried it out and if it is worth the time and most importantly is it safe? Does it work win win10?

If you have no idea what I am talking about, see this video:
https://youtu.be/OZCjjnG483U

[kris.aalst]

From what I gather (much to my disappointment)... It's a nice effort and all, but it's far from perfect. And there isn't really an English version; well there is a version that has the 'EN' label but the translation/localization is awful.

[[AK] GaroK]

I heard that this mods just takes a crapton of random assets(some even allegedly stolen from other mods), makes some story and squeezes it into clustertruck of a mod. Never played it tho.

But the original russian Gothic actor voices the main hero, this is so dope.
I'm gonna check it out when my russian will be good enough.

[m662]

It should work with windows 10 provided you don't forget adding it to the DEP list.
It is perfectly safe I have not encountered any viruses. I do get two false positives with ClamWIn, ClamSentinel but those programs go off at every kind of file. Furthermore do not use the Directx11 mod its not stable in any capacity you will crash a lot due to out of memory messages. (more so than without it)

Regarding the translation its not great and you really want to use Alternative Balance (AB) instead of the vanilla returning 2.0 AB unlike vanilla returning has only two difficulties called Gothic and Nightmare and you can decide if you want stamina, hunger active.

Don't underestimate it though The game is brutally difficult even on the lowest difficulty. The first mission has you dealing with a snapper. You will rely heavily on magic for the first parts of the game and on ranged weapons. Vegetation will block your view constantly in caves and in the forest so you want to keep a ranged spell, weapon handy at all times just to check your environment. Though there is a patch for it called nograss I tend to keep the vegetation on as it does make the world feel more real.

Also animals will attack much faster and will only sometimes give of a warning. So no cheesing around a scavenger with 3 warning sounds it will charge you with all its pack members before your able to turn tail.

The game itself got very slow in pacing you will do a lot of fetch quests some will make little sense due to the bad translation that is done. It can take hours before your ready to travel on your own in the world you really need to rely on story npc's for the first part and the bad news is they can die rather fast. And where Gothic is already known for putting a enemy roadblock in your way to avoid wandering of to early these modders put enemy roadblocks between low level quests. So no running from point A to B you will die a lot.

Economy wise it got also a lot harder items cost a lot so you want to carefully think about what to get.

All in all not a bad mod for veteran gothic players. Don't expect a great story though and certainly not one that keeps to the lore all the time. But if you want a darksouls kind of experience with the gothic world go for it.

[Suuns]

Thanks for the replies guys. I don't know if I want to invest +250hours in fetch quests and medium quality story. Although I know Russian very well, I might consider this mod later in life.

As for now I am more interested if there is a mod which graphically enhances it and maybe adds armor and weapon? Nothing gamechanging for that matter. Good old Gothic II, but much better looking.

[m662]

I understand your hestitation and yes it is a big time investment indeed.

Regarding graphic mods I would recommend this one.
https://www.nexusmods.com/gothic2/mods/4

You do require a free nexus account to download,

I have no mod knowledge however regarding extra armor and weapons but you should be able to just combine any smaller mod you find with the above graphic mod.

[Branded Swordsman 𒉭]

Originally posted by m662:

It should work with windows 10 provided you don't forget adding it to the DEP list.
It is perfectly safe I have not encountered any viruses. I do get two false positives with ClamWIn, ClamSentinel but those programs go off at every kind of file. Furthermore do not use the Directx11 mod its not stable in any capacity you will crash a lot due to out of memory messages. (more so than without it)

Regarding the translation its not great and you really want to use Alternative Balance (AB) instead of the vanilla returning 2.0 AB unlike vanilla returning has only two difficulties called Gothic and Nightmare and you can decide if you want stamina, hunger active.

Don't underestimate it though The game is brutally difficult even on the lowest difficulty. The first mission has you dealing with a snapper. You will rely heavily on magic for the first parts of the game and on ranged weapons. Vegetation will block your view constantly in caves and in the forest so you want to keep a ranged spell, weapon handy at all times just to check your environment. Though there is a patch for it called nograss I tend to keep the vegetation on as it does make the world feel more real.

Also animals will attack much faster and will only sometimes give of a warning. So no cheesing around a scavenger with 3 warning sounds it will charge you with all its pack members before your able to turn tail.

The game itself got very slow in pacing you will do a lot of fetch quests some will make little sense due to the bad translation that is done. It can take hours before your ready to travel on your own in the world you really need to rely on story npc's for the first part and the bad news is they can die rather fast. And where Gothic is already known for putting a enemy roadblock in your way to avoid wandering of to early these modders put enemy roadblocks between low level quests. So no running from point A to B you will die a lot.

Economy wise it got also a lot harder items cost a lot so you want to carefully think about what to get.

All in all not a bad mod for veteran gothic players. Don't expect a great story though and certainly not one that keeps to the lore all the time. But if you want a darksouls kind of experience with the gothic world go for it.

Dx11 worked fine for me on Gothic 1 but the 2nd just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lags so hard in towns occasionally with the Returning mod. I'll check out the graphics mod you posted from nexus i suppose.

[m662]

Originally posted by Pro-Pain:

Dx11 worked fine for me on Gothic 1 but the 2nd just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lags so hard in towns occasionally with the Returning mod. I'll check out the graphics mod you posted from nexus i suppose.

They basically gave up on optimizing it for Gothic 2 because of its memory leaks and honestly it doesn't do a lot for the game not on its own atleast. L'Hiver is a perfect example how Dx11 really did make a impact especially in Lighting and Shadow placement. But Gothic 2 vanilla and Returning 2.0 Dx11 effect is marginal at best. Lets not forget the game was designed on Dx7 a good texture replacement will do more for the game.

Also its very very important to be able to run Returning 2.0 with atleast 200% viewing range because agroing is so much more dangerous and if you do that with a decent rig on Dx11 your frames are going down the drain due to the memory issues as you experienced in the City, wait till your at the Orc Encampment...

I hope you enjoy the Graphic mod.

[yacks]

Don't bother. The quest design is poorly made.

Many, many, times there are quests way down the line you don't know are coming and just as part of normal exploration you'll kill every day creatures, not knowing they were meant for a quest later. You'll get the quest and it'll be stuck in your inventory forever as it won't retro-complete nor will the mobs spawn again.

Many other quests have you needing to find an NPC, only to have it surrounded by spawns of other one hit mobs from other quests, the NPC dies and the quest chain is broken. No option to even go back and remove the quest by saying "Sorry I couldn't speak to this guy as he's dead."

Other times creatures are spawned right on top of major NPCs like Onar, who one hit kill him when you are playing on hard, closing down multiple questlines and threads you'll never get to finish.

Be careful of being chased by monsters who'll also kill NPCs. There's a questline later where Mika the guard at the East gate is supposed to tell you "He went thatta way" and then the NPC you are after magically spawns. But seeing as Mika was one hit killed by an orc chasing me about 30 hours earlier, he was no longer around to say "He went thatta way" and thus magically spawn the NPC into existance. Another dead quest stuck in your journal.

Poorly, POORLY designed. Consequence is fine. Having quests stuck in your journal you can't get rid because of bad design is not fine.

[kris.aalst]

Xardas is back, it seems, necroing threads

[Enkidu]

Originally posted by kris.aalst:

From what I gather (much to my disappointment)... It's a nice effort and all, but it's far from perfect. And there isn't really an English version; well there is a version that has the 'EN' label but the translation/localization is awful.

To be honest the same thing can be said about the originals translation.

[Sliverz_Fx]

In case anyone's still reading this topic. I've made an installation guide for Gothic II: Returning 2.0 AB with the Aughust 2020 patch on youtube as well as a playthrough of the game (still in progress) in case you get stuck. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKSrQ4Pidg8&t=2s