I just cant play this game. Its got a good story, characters, everything, but the people that made the commands for moving and attacking etc. were insane. Ive played morrowind, arx fatalis and numerous other action first person and third person games like this, without a problem. But with this game, i cant even figure out how to pick something up. This game had so much promise too, its really a shame.

Yeah, the controls are pretty atrocious, especially when you're first trying to learn them. However, I will say that after about 3 hours of playing you really start to adjust to them, and by the time you're about 6 hours in the controls will feel perfectly natural. The main thing that will prove difficult at first is that many controls require two keys, including attacking (LMB+up/right/left) and picking things up/talking to people (LMB+up).

If you have a gaming keyboard, program several key strokes (like "CNTRL UP" into a single key - it really helps. That's how you pick up things, BTW once the object is named.

Another option is to bypass it with a macro program such as AutoHotkey (free).

Gothic II fixes the bizarre controls so you don't need any workarounds for that one. :)

Don't forget to enable the alt control scheme in the options if you haven't. The controls really aren't bad once you understand them, and it's not hard to understand if it's explained to you, as Phoenix did. The annoying thing is the mouse controls are really slapped on -- the game isn't designed around the mouse at all.

What is the problem ?
Just get used for the fights and you must know how to block when to swing is not just primitive and boring like morrowind. It's not easy klick klick ....
Once you get used to it then you have no problem. I played morrowind not long because it was just boring all the way. Boring combat, Characters everything....

True the combat is a little crazy even after you get adapted to it. After a couple of hours you will get used to it.

I never block and I do fine. Because it wasn't needed, I never did program a key on the left of the board and reaching across the entire board with the hand that controls movement was akin to committing suicide.

The controls sure are bad and when i say bad i say BAD!!! Who the hell makes a single action like picking a fruit or open a chest need TWO keys to work, i'm sure the story is good and is a very good RPG but the controls just made me uninstall the game. I'm just to old now to have any patience to waist 3 hours to "learn" the controls i want to get right in the story and the action, if i'm battling the controls every turn them i just can't enjoy a game.

Ummmm......is it THAT hard to hold CTRL and Forward to pick up an item? :P
Or Attack + Movement keys to attack?

I found it much more refreshing then say...Oblivion simple clicking to attack.

Yeah, i guess to each their own, but i found the controls somewhat more immersive (like holding down CTRL and pressing forward to grab something, kind-of like pausing and reaching forward to grab something in front of me). The fighting system takes a bit getting used to, but the controls didn't bother me much until i learned them, what bothered me was the hit detection when i struck at an enemy which i would sometimes attack, the hit would register...even the enemy reacted to it, but no actual damage was done, no matter how much i hit the enemy, until i corrected my position relative to the enemy just slightly.

I installed Gothic 2 just to see how the controls compare to the first one, and my god is like night and day, the Gothic 2 controls (with some minor key changes) are perfect, they remind me of the Risen controls, so my opinion of Gothic 2 is totally different. :)

I've only played partway through Gothic 2, but in addition to making most actions single-click (as noted by Argoon above) and better all around, combat involves a lot less whiffing.

I did some testing in Gothic 1, and I noticed that the "no damage hits" seemed to be fixed by increasing Dex, which implies that they are an intentional part of the combat system that is just very poorly explained. This is a real pain with late-game enemies - e.g., Apocalyptic Templars are impossible to damage with untrained melee weapons with Dex short of 70 or so, even with the super-sword and over 200 strength.

Gothic 2 seems to have changed this - my untrained, low-stat attacks cause very little but non-null damage. Knocking someone out is tedious and dangerous, but *possible* now.

Dealing no damage was an unintended side-effect of how armour was implemented; the armour value reduces damage taken by that same number, but in the first game there was no minimum damage value so it could go all the way down to zero. This was fixed in Gothic II by having attacks always do a minimum of 5 damage. Refer to this post for more details. :)