“You are a man with no name, no identity, and no talents.” There now, you all know it (watches almost everybody walking away). “No, please come back. I was only bringing everybody in the right mood for my Gothic II review”.

Enough chit-chat, time I start telling some interesting things about Gothic II. Gothic II is a great game. It doesn’t feature a flashy multiplayer mode, big guns or other things of that sort. No, it’s just a great single player game.

In Gothic II you play a man that after his adventures in Gothic (including the defeating of evil) is being brought back to life by the necromancer Xardas. The reason for his return is the fact that our hero hasn’t done his business properly, because evil has returned and needs to get his ass kicked once again.

The first thing you notice when playing Gothic II is that the world in which you play is huge and very interactive. Almost with anything you encounter there is something you can do with it. And there start all the negative points. The big problem with Gothic II is that its strong points are also its weaknesses. In almost everything at a sudden point is the freedom of the player driven a bit too far.

The world in which you play for instance is really huge and extremely varied. Everywhere you go you can find caves, wolves to kill for meat, loot along the road … But sometimes the world is just a bit too big and you’re running for five minutes to arrive at a place and then notice you don’t need to be there. So you have to run all the way back.

The quests you need to fulfill are very general. I mean, there are a hundred different ways of achieving your goal and in the mean time you are given lots of new sub-quests than can help you achieve that goal. But by this system you can be playing quite a lot of time to finish only the first quest.

And as always there should be monsters. In Gothic II these monsters are hidden everywhere. You can’t move two metres off the road or you encounter some new monster ready to swallow your guts. And there are you then, swinging you’re little wooden stick. So, it's reloading that bit then. An auto save would be quite useful in these cases.

The weapons are well thought for the rest and quite easy to find (and loose). You start with the standard wooden stick which can be found in a forest near you. After a little search you can find a sword or a dagger and some arrows. A bow is what you need next and look there, is it a bow? Yes it is. So easy is the finding of weapons in Gothic II.

Sound could be better. Sometimes it’s like a needle of an old record that’s stuck and so the piece is repeated over and over again. But most of the time, the music is quite ok. Voice acting could be a bit better, but it gets better when you turn on the subtitles.

Gameplay was quite ok. Period. It’s not the best I ever saw, but certainly not the worst. Also the AI was put together very well. For instance, never run into a crowd with your sword in your hand, everybody will pull out his/her sword and they will come after you.

As you can see the game is quite ok. For the fans, a must. For others, there are better things to play.