I love Gothic 2, so I thought I would like NOTR. But it's just really poorly thought out. They nerfed the leveling system! The devs thought the ways to master the game were bad, for some reason, so they made it a tedious slog.

The monster buffs are awful. I'm level 13, pure strength and one-handed melee, and I cannot take out one warg. The increased cost for stats is waaaay too much. You cannot rush a good weapon in the temple because of the increased stat requirements on weapons (130 strength for the orc slayer). You have to start doubling LP to gain stats starting at 30 stat points.

I like that there are new quests... but it is just not fun with that they did to it. I wish I could find a mod to revert to the old system. And leaving the game world at Chapter 2, before things even get started, to go to a completely new area? That is crazy clunky and smashes the flow.

Do yourself a favor and do not install NOTR. It ruins Gothic 2.

I was in the same boat as you for a long time. Always playing G2 vanilla. After getting past the new learning curve and getting used to NOTR, however, I would never be able to play G2 without it anymore.

Yes, it's best to consider NOTR a separate game. It's a very different experience but has its own strengths.

The worst thing they did in Gothic 2 overall was the change to weapon skills and damage calculation. You deal irrelevant damage, unless the atbitrary RNG % chance of the weapon skill procs. Meaning the combat is in a big part simply about pure RNG. Enemies can either hit you for 10% of your HP or one shot you if they get lucky RNG. You will deal irrelevant damage with all hits unless you get lucky with the RNG, because the damage you deal is massively reduced if the hit doesn't proc the weapon skill chance. I'm still at 30% one handed and like 115 strength in Chapter 3. Having 70% of my hits do basically nothing can get pretty annoying. I can kill an enemy in 1-3 hits, or 15 hits if unlucky. An enemy can randomly one tap me, or land 4 hits while taking only half of my HP...

In Gothic 1, weapon skills simply improved the attack animations and damage was always weapon damage + strength - armor. This aspect of pure randomness in G2 is vastly detrimental I feel, where combat is mostly just a game of chance, especially in the early parts of the game. At least animals always deal flat damage with no randomness.

Regarding Wargs, they are basically roadblocks until about Chapter 3. They deal 150 damage, have 100 weapon protection and several hundred HP (500 by guess) + they also attack you in packs. They will one shot you in chapter 1 and 2 shot you in chapter 2. Even with 113 weapon protection, a 110 damage weapon, 115 strength and 30% weapon skill, I can't take on more than 2 or 3 at once at level 25.

But other than the RNG (which was there even without NotR), I like the difficulty increase. I still can't just steamroll everything and I'm level 25 in chapter 3. Although the cost increase in LP is pretty massive. Basically a waste to increase anything above 90 hard points.