Archolos: The Gothic Prequel that deserves its own thread

Games
#1

Archolos is a free, non-commercial open world RPG developed on Gothic II engine (requires its ownership, but you do not need G2 installed). It takes place in Gothic universe and is set before Gothic 1, with its own world, story, full polish voice acting and orchestral soundtrack.

It has been getting a significant acclaim, such as 98% positive rating on Steam out of almost 10,000 reviews, and its director is now working at CD Projekt on upcoming Cyberpunk expansion.

I started playing recently, still only just at the beginning, but I absolutely love what I played so far. Wonderful atmosphere.

Funnily enough, just like another masterpiece of a non-commercial RPG - Enderal - Archolos also starts on a ship’s lower deck, with your character getting tossed overboard.

But soon, you find yourself on land

and in a first village, where the adventure opens up.

#2

Stupid steam search turned up nothing when I searched for Archolos.

When I searched for The Chronicles of, it turned up though.

Unlike Enderal, I don’t need to spend $15 to check it out, so I can install it now. Nice.
EDIT: Oops, I was wrong, you need to spend $10 and buy Gothic 2 Gold Edition on Steam, even if you own it on GOG, like I do. So I guess this goes into the backlog too.

#3

Oh hey cool. I don’t need to buy rebuy Gothic 2 gold on Steam after all.

There’s a version of this mod on GoG too:

#4

Or, if you do prefer the Steam version, you can get it for less than a dollar…

https://www.eneba.com/steam-gothic-ii-gold-edition-steam-key-global

#5

I fired it up.

I moved around the left thumbstick, the d-pad, tried pressing buttons. Nothing. Can’t navigate the menu.

Maybe mouse? I moved the mouse, nothing, no cursor.

Then I remembered: Oh right, based off Gothic. Keyboard only, right? Man, I don’t know if I can do that anymore.

#6

I think it does let you use a mouse. I had to edit sensitivity in an ini file. Like olden times. I didn’t get very far with the game.

#7

Gothic supports a mouse. Even the original Gothic from 2001, I played it with a mouse back in 2001. There is no cursor, but mouse and WSAD can be used normally. And I am playing Archolos with Xbone controller thanks to Steam Input. There is a preset for it.

#8

Well, I couldn’t find any way to play with a controller. The internet isn’t much help. I saw some posts by you Paul in their forums.

In the old days, two computers ago, maybe from 2005-2010, I used to use Xpadder a lot to map controls to the controller, because PC games had really poor controller support. But these days, controller support is everywhere, so I can’t be bothered to go to those lengths anymore.

Oh well, plenty of other games. The intro is pretty brutal in terms of being so retro. I had forgotten how bad the first two Gothic games looked compared to modern games.

#9

Actually it is quite simple. Just add Archolos to steam as a nonsteam game (or buy the steam version for less than a dollar from the link I posted above), open big picture mode, go to manage - controller configuration and download some preset (I am using Dark Souls like preset).

As for graphics, I find it quite charming. DX11 renderer adds some nice effects, too.

#10

Made it to Archolos proper, the town. Similar feeling as when entering Novigrad, it is so well done.

Gotta say even graphically G2 ages very well.

#11

Chilling at the office, exploring Archolos