Cav's Place

Not that it really counts as a game, but I wanted to add one more item to the list for 2025, so I went through this… And I must say that it didn’t quite feel like Gothic, and that’s definitely not just because of the updated graphics. Sure, I played that 21 years ago, but I still remember that atmosphere, that world, and I’m pretty sure that I could still slip right back into it as easily as I did whenever I tried to get back to Gothic II, which happened a number of times over a span of several years, the reasons for giving up having to do with certain frustrating moments that I couldn’t get just right, mainly because of the difficulty added by Night of the Raven. But, again, here it just didn’t feel right, and the couple of information dumps that tried to provide some of the lore weren’t of much help either, though Kirgo is the one more interesting character.
I wonder how much the fact that it definitely didn’t sound like a Gothic game had to do with it. And, on that note, while plenty of graphics options are available and it’s good that you can also switch to a classic camera angle, because the default one is a pain, especially in combat, I must wonder why the sound volumes are locked in this demo, and why’s the music so loud. The fact that the controls can’t be customized doesn’t help either. And item highlighting barely counts as a feature when you need to be right next to an item for it to kick in. And seeing dialogue options that are missed unless picked in the right order, or information that’s not logged, or the differences between speech and subtitles, plus issues like a quest that I apparently completed without being aware that I had it or a phase that I apparently failed because I already had what was required, in what’s such a short demo, really makes me have doubts about the likely quality of the actual game.