I just finished playing through the demo on Xbox 360. This is the first time I've ever played a Gothic game, and since I did it on console, I'm guessing my impressions won't be far off from what your typical console noob would have. Though I do have a history of PC gaming so I'm a little more patient and forgiving.
At first I was sort of unopinionated. It didn't seem great, and it didn't seem bad. By the end I was starting to get into it though, and starting to feel kind of like a badass as I was fighting tougher enemies and getting visible armor upgrades and more spells. The combat feels really simple and easy at first, but then by the time you get magic, things start feeling better. (I played it on normal, which was selected by default) I did think it was odd that I had to press my magic or bow button once to equip it and get a crosshair, and then again to fire. But I guess with a one button method, you'd be firing your first shot with no crosshair. (though with the bow you'd be charging up a shot, so it would work fine.) By the end of the game, I was still pretty much button mashing, but weaving in spells and dodges too. Some attacks I needed to get out of melee range or roll to the side (since a block wasn't enough), and I also figured out quickly that I could stunlock something by hitting it with lightning, doing a small melee combo, then hitting it with lightning again before it became unstunned.
Visually, the game is sort of a mixed bag. The environments look great, and the textures are nice too. Everything has nice high resolution textures it seems, which you don't always get on console games. The characters are not bad looking, but not amazing either, and the character animations are laughable in some spots. Especially the main character's lips. They don't open, they distort and stretch around. I don't think any effort went into lip syncing, but that's probably because of being translated from another language. You get the same thing in pretty much all Japanese games. I'm gonna guess the game is running at 720p or lower, and has little to no antialiasing going on. The high detail in the environments and textures results in some noticeable shimmering as you move around, and you lose a lot of detail in objects as you get further away from them.
The UI seems almost like it was designed by someone who hasn't played console games before. That's not to say it's bad, it's just strangely different visually than what I would expect. Like when you talk to someone and it gives you 2 dialog options, but they're in a box nearly the width of the screen and tall enough for 5 dialog options. Below that is another box with all 4 face buttons listen, and only the ones that have functions have text next to them. It just seems like a lot to have on screen when you're just displaying 2 lines of text and a single button prompt. Items and equipment can be mapped to the Dpad, which has 4 additional slots available if you hold the left bumper. (for 8 slots total) There are only 2 things I would say are clunky about the UI. Targetting an NPC or object in the world is odd. I want to point my camera at them, but the game wants me to point my character at them (does the game keep the camera fixed behind the character in PC? On Xbox, pressing the left analog stick moves the character in the direction you press, even if that means having the character running toward the camera.) The other thing is that I was wanting to be able to swap back and forth between a two-hander and a sword and shield, but found that I had to map both the 1 hander and the shield to buttons to swap to them. Then I needed a third mapping for the two-hander if I didn't want to enter the inventory to equip it. Oh, and there's a radial menu that comes up if you hit start. It has 5 options: skills & spells, map, crafting, quests, and inventory. Everything else about the UI was pretty much how you would expect it.
I didn't mess with the crafting, so I have no idea how any of that works.
I'm not gonna run right out and reserve it, but I'm much more impressed now than I was when I first started the demo. I honestly only downloaded it because I saw the demo up, then saw the discussion here. It does seem a little rough around the edges, but seems like something I could get into possibly. The small taste of equipment and skill upgrades could be something that would hold my attention for quite a while if it's done well in the full game.
Oh, and the color mode settings for European vs US. It's just called "tone map" in the settings, and I wasn't sure if it was talking about color or speech tone (like maybe the language would be different.) I didn't change it until I was in a cave, so I didn't notice the difference. Though someone did say "what's up?" to me right after I set it to US, and I thought it was definitely a language thing. But I changed it back and she said it again, haha. I started a new game and messed with it. Yea, the grass and trees are visibly bright green in US mode, vs a dull green in Eu mode.
