This afternoon I installed and played the Gothic 4 demo. It took 2 hours and 5 mins to finish.
Here's my review:
First off the character modelling looks console'ish with not very hi-res graphics to say the least. then when the talking started you knew straight away a small budget had been given for the voice overs and the talking was somewhat average, but not bad because they didn't drone on.
Next was the so obvious 'this has to be seen on a 42" TV screen using a console, so lets make the font huge and have a box around it 1/3 the screen size! In short then, it took about 30 seconds to see this was a console game with a console viewpoint that had been converted to PC with only the control system changed.
I had to go to see the father of my bride-to-be and on the way to the village noticed I couldn;t walk as that was considered 'sneaking' and I didn't have the skill for that, although noticed the excellent landscape graphics with an excellent DOF and lovely water that was not over the top as in many games.
In the village had lots of people to talk to who just had comments to make. Many different voices here, which was nice. All the NPC's had different faces, so that was good too.
The conversation options in the demo were not multi-choice, as in Neverwinter Nights or Mass Effect. you just went through each one until there's nothing more to say. As you get sent off to fight goblins and wolves you discover that the combat is a lot of fun, with the ability to hold the right mouse button and then roll right with D and left with A etc. What I liked about this was it took the enemies a couple of seconds to work out where you were allowing an occasional attack from the rear!
Pretty quickly weapons were upgraded and armour parts (bracers) started appearing.
These weapons all looked the business and by the end of the demo was already getting some interesting magical weapons, spell scrolls and armour.
In the demo you get to level 4.and there are typical choices for skills, with 3 points everytime you level up, in lunge, sneak, precision, etc.
The demo got interesting after you meet the Witch. After she gives you the ability to use magic (only through scrolls at the moment) you find straight away in the dungeon crawl she sends you on that tactics seem to be employed in a very interesting way.You get to fight a beetle type character that once wounded about 50% goes back into his shell and heals. You cannot hurt it while it's in it's shell,. and this is where the Witches lightning spells come into effect. they don't do much damage, but they shock the beetle out of his shell,. with the lightning scroll in quickslot 3 and your main melee weapon in slot 1, you hit the beetle a couple time with the weapon, the beetle goes into shell, you hit '3' an zap the creature with the lightning bolt, it leaves the shell, you switch to '1' and hit again, repeat until dead. Now this was neat combat!
Alongside these beetles you got one hit to kill dirt spider type creatures that jumped at your face. These came in 2-3's
Then came the Queen beetle, the came some Worker beetles, then some failed paladins, then some more failed paladins and failed spellcasters, then some skeltons. These were all animated excellently, and the beetles and wolves had excellent physics, really flopping around and moving realisitcally. the Worker beetles were a bit like spiders, and they were quite scary for it. The also 'catapulted' over your head then attacked from the back! The wolves 'slinked' through the woods like panthers and were jet black - very impressive!
The dungeon/cave itself was lit by blue quartz and had the typical mushrooms, etc. the lighting and mist was just right and conveyed a lot of atmosphere. Also human enemies come at you in numbers, so you need slots for your healing potions too as you'll be going through 2-3 in the bigger fights!
By the end you have gone from clothing through leather and then plate armour. You have gone from a shepherd's hook to a hammer that takes 10% of the enemies lifeforce and gives it to you! You also get a short bow, a crossbow and regular, fire and dragonslayer arrows and bolts.
As you teleport out of the dungeon you seem in a dream and at the end of a hall you see the King slumped on his throne and his entourage standing around him. It seems a dream due to mistiness around the edges of the screen.
And that's it. More or less. I have left some details out in case you want to play the demo.
I would say the combat seems fun and the gameworld looks fantastic. The creatures are animated wonderfully and look great with great physics.
On the downside, speech seems average at best with no conversation choices but rather choose them all. The village is quite large and well laid out and day/night cycles are nice.
If the story turns out interesting, voice work can be overlooked to some degree (I feel), but overall I feel this will be seen as another Two Worlds with scores in the 70;s and 80's rather than 80's and 90's
Hope this helps people....! :)