Already own all but one which I have no interest in playing.

The "II" from "Gothic II" is trimmed in the ad so I clicked hoping to get Gothic 1!
Oh well!

Already have all of them, except for The Guild which isn't of my interest, but great promo nonetheless.

"You already own all games from this promo. Enjoy them."

May dive in on getting Gothic II, though I wish Gothic I was in 'ere. Good thing it's running for a week; payday is Friday morn!

pah, figures the only series I'm interested in has a lower sale :(

Well, it also has a lower base price; still cheaper than the other games, but yeah, bummer it's not 40% :P

Well, crap, I already own every single one of them. Overly compulsive, I guess.

IIRC, there's a story recap at the beginning of Gothic II, but it doesn't really matter much, as your hero is basically reset to zero at the beginning of the sequel. You do revisit the island where the first game took place in Gothic II, but it's changed a lot since then; and most of the game takes place on an entirely new island, with just a handful of familiar faces around.
And yes, the controls of the two Gothics feel incredibly clumsy at first, but over time, you'll come to appreciate them. They are actually really good, just unorthodox.

Bah, once more nothing that I want or don't already own. :(
And yes, Germany is truely the land of beer. Czechs and Belgians just adopted what good quality they have, as parts of the Empire and its Reinheitsgebot. ;)

Play both or you're a bad man. Think of them as one "book", with II as the second half of that book. You'd be missing out on a lot of connections and backstory and wouldn't know what the heck was going on. A much less rich experience.
I don't think the learning curve is steep, just inaccessible if you don't know how to play. It's very simple: mouse is needed in tandem with most actions. For example, if you want to attack an enemy, you must hold left mouse button and hit W to attack forward. If you want to do a side swing, hold LMB and hit A or D (this is assuming you enable the alt controls in the menu). This applies to the inventory, conversation, etc. in some form or another. Pretty quickly it feels natural. Controls are improved a bit in the sequel.

First off, I hate beer. There, I said it.
Anyway, I will grab myself Gothic 2 and either Spellforce or Guild next week,

got spellforce ,as I've already got gothic 2 about 3 times :))...10x gog

Already have both on Steam actually, but I am interested for the goodies 8).