polish mate got me this, i thought the controls were in polish at first but it's a great game after u get used to them

Open world RPG that still to this day feels unique thanks to the atmosphere and prison colony setting. You start off with literally nothing and everything is against you. You are free to explore almost wherever you want whenever you want. The open world is small compared to modern games, but packed with detail. Each major area is full of people going on about their day, you can observe their routines and use it to your advantage. They also react to your actions in ways that make sense which is still a feature that is rarely done well in today’s games. The overall story is fairly generic, but gets the job done. The controls take time getting used to, however they feel quite natural once you get there.

Gothic 1 took me 65 hours to %100 it (played most of that time in offline mode) , and i could say that i did not expect it to be this good , since it's a game from 2001 and it might not be as well-heard as the other old games from those times (Morrowind or deus ex for example) but although i enjoyed my time spent on this game i have my gripes for this game :

1. Combat and overall mechanic of this game : I might be a little too harsh on a game like this , but tbh this game's whole combat system isn't as engaging as the other games of that era , the camera movement is a little too clunky for a new gen like me , and the default control layout for the game was way too off.

2. Choosing which faction you wanna join throughout your run will not change the outcome of the game (bummer).

3. Even though this is an old game and it is expected to download a few mods in order to play it properly (not complaining about that) , i still experienced crashes and bugs throughout my playthrough (i had to reload the game so many times to get past a specific bug i was experiencing near the end of the game).

But if we wanna look past these problems that i listed , this game's world design and it's story elements are quite unique in their own way.
I'd say this game is a solid 7/10 and you won't regret playing Gothic 1 (but don't expect a once-in-a-lifetime experience out of it).