I hear that Risen is kind of the unofficial sequel of Gothic 3. I have Gothic 2 in my box today from GOG, and I want to know if there is anything I'd be missing from Gothic 2 that Risen doesn't have.

To be honest, I haven't dived too deeply into Risen yet. I'm still playing Skyrim (I know, boo, hiss) but I like what I've heard about feeling an actual sense of progression. It's the top item on my backlog ... but would I get anything out of Gothic 2 that I might not get out of Risen?

Thanks!

Yes.

Aside from grafics and maybe controls Gothic 2(Gold) is superior. Risen is slightly shallower the world isn't quiet as fleshed out. Considering side quests and size it's more like Gothic 1. On the plus side it doesn't suffer from those awkward controls but the setting is no macht at all.

Gothic II + NotR is, and always will be, my favourite RPG.
No other game comes even close in terms of atmosphere and fun, for me it is the perfect RPG (with some minor flaws, I can admit that).
I played Risen... and I really do not think it is as good as the Gothic games. While the setting is similar and it feels a bit like Gothic, it is inferior in every way. Maybe I am just a fanboy...

So, I hope you bought this pile of awesomeness at a higher discount, but I would even buy it for 5$ while this sale lasts.

Firstly I should say that I recently finished playing Gothic 2 with NoTR addon (once more), and it definitely gave the same fun (even more) after so many years. Right now, I am playing Gothic 3, again, with great fun.

I wouldn't say Risen is a sequel of Gothic 3, official or unofficial, because the two games have nothing to do with each other (as far as I know). Gothic, Gothic 2 and Gothic 3 follow a storyline with a number of core characters but Risen has a completely different story set in a different world with different characters.

I played Gothic, Gothic 2+NoTR and Gothic 3 multiple times in the last 10+ years. It is my favorite series in 3rd person action RPG genre. They have beautiful and alive worlds, wonderful music, challenging gameplay and a lot of exploration and fun. I even like the controls a lot (especially Gothic 1's controls) because they make me feel that I am really interacting with the world and that's because I have to press multiple keys to accomplish a desired action. I can keep playing them again and again without getting bored at all. I also played Risen a bit (I had to give a break but I will continue later). Risen has many similarities to Gothic in terms of gameplay but I can say that the two games (Risen and Gothic 2) feel completely different and the feeling that Gothic games create is like nothing else. I played a lot of RPGs, old ones and new ones and I never found such a good feeling in any other game.

I would say, just give Gothic 2 (+ NoTR) a try and it might become your favorite too :) However, if you haven't played Gothic 1 (and I am guessing you did not since you are asking whether you should play Gothic 2 or not), I highly recommend playing that one first before Gothic 2. It is not required but you will be glad you did that. If your taste is similar to mine, after playing all Gothic games, you will just wish that there was another Gothic game and another and another...

Thanks for the feedback, everybody. I have Gothic 2 safely on my shelf at the moment! I'll look into Gothic 1 but I'm not super secure as to how much free time I'll have in the months ahead ... Would I want to play Gothic 1 first for plot purposes?

Gothic 2 is like a continuation of the story that starts in Gothic 1 and you will meet a lot of characters in Gothic 2 from Gothic 1 which you will also meet in Gothic 3. There will be a lot of references to what took place in Gothic 1. As I said, it is not required for the game to make sense. But some things will make a lot more sense when you first play the first game. You can play Gothic 2 without playing Gothic 1 first and have a lot of fun but my suggestion is to play the first one first.

arondash is absolutely right.
You do not have to play the first game first, I played Gothic II first myself.
But there are many references and characters from the first game in the second one, so it should provide a better experience.
Apart from that the first game is just as great as the second one (perhaps a little bit less, mostly because of the awful controls).

At one point in Risen's development the opening cutscene was going to start by alluding to Gothic 3's Xardas ending (see the Risen-Introkonzept).

Where exactly on that page? News archive? If so, do you know the month?

It's the individual frames on that page. The pictures are suspiciously familiar if you've played the Xardas ending of Gothic 3, and the text (unfortunately only in German) also says similar things about going to another land etc. if you take the time to type it into a translator.