BITOD #1 — Gothic 3 The Beginning
The Beginning had nothing to do with the Gothic 3 game or Gothic series at all. It was JoWooD's first take on mobile gaming. They did it once, but the result was nice.
Welcome to BITOD (Back In The Old Days) – a series that looks back at old games released for mobile phones in the days when Java and Symbian were the only mobile operating systems to choose from, and phones were just starting to move on from old-fashioned character-limited screens. Here, I’ll be bringing back memories of the games we used to play, or discovering them anew for younger folks who never had the chance to experience them.
The short history of mobile Gothic
Gothic 3: The Beginning was developed by HandyGames in 2007 and published by JoWooD on January 15, 2008 for Java-based phones. Almost two decades ago, I was 11 years old and using a Sony Ericsson K550i, which I had received as a First Communion gift. I didn’t play much on it, since back then mobile games weren’t really a thing anyone talked about yet.
I bought the game by sending a premium SMS with a code I found in one of the Polish gaming magazines. I don’t remember exactly how much I paid, but German ads from the time suggest the price was around €4.99 – quite a lot back then, especially considering that PC games only cost about twice as much.
Of the people who went to the primary school with me, I think only one or two others also decided to invest in The Beginning—and only because they recognized or had played the “main” entries in the series. The game wasn’t advertised on TV in my parts and never reached the popularity of its PC counterparts, but The Beginning did win an award at the German Developer Awards 2008 in Essen in the Best Mobile Game category.
Although the game supposedly achieved considerable success in Europe (though I don’t have concrete stats—if anyone does, feel free to share!), HandyGames expressed interest in creating another mobile title set in the Gothic universe. However, in the meantime, JoWooD and Piranha Bytes reached a legal settlement under which the rights to the Gothic franchise reverted to Piranha, while JoWooD retained only the ability to complete Gothic 4 and release expansions for it. Piranha Bytes was never interested in bringing their “child” to mobile screens, so HandyGames ended up with just one Gothic mobile title and went on to pursue other projects.
Young Xardas fulfills his grand-grandfather’s wish
Although Gothic 3: The Beginning isn’t available on Android or iOS, and my trusty k550i was lost to the attic around 2010 in favor of a knock-off BlackBerry Curve, you can still play it today thanks to the blessing of emulation — I used J2ME Loader and a Nokia 6233 preset. I can’t provide a link to the game files, unfortunately, since copyright lasts a long time, but they’re very easy to find online.
The Beginning doesn’t have much in common with the main Gothic series released on PC — in fact, it doesn’t even take place in the same world as Gothic 3. Instead, it’s set 140 years before the events of Gothic 1, on the island of Khorinis — which also looks quite different from the one familiar to fans of Gothic 2. A young Xardas — known in later games as the outcast necromancer — has a dream of his great-grandfather, Buthomar, who pleads for help in reawakening the island’s dormant magic. To do so, Xardas must seek out four of his ancestor’s followers — Four Chosen — and, with their help, repel an invading army of orcs.
The hero travels across the island of Khorinis — its cities, villages, and ancient ruins — in search of magical symbols and runes belonging to the Chosen. With their help, he gathers the magical power needed to defeat Corgar and Dusaro, the leaders of the dark horde.
The Beginning is fairly simple and in many ways resembles the PC Gothic games — the hero has various stats that can be improved by spending Learning Points with training masters, who can increase health, strength, mana, or combat skills. Throughout the game, you'll encounter enemies like wolves, scavengers, bandits, and orcs — all familiar foes from the "main" Gothic titles.
The game world includes various types of melee and ranged weapons, armor, magical runes, collectible items, and healing items. You can buy and sell goods. Some locations feature locked chests that require lockpicks to open, and lockpicking involves the classic mini-game of pressing left and right to unlock each part of the mechanism — with one key difference: unlike the fixed combinations in the main Gothic series, the lock combinations in The Beginning are randomized every time you load a save.
An enclosed composition of nothing outstanding
In addition to the main quest, there are also side quests — such as killing beasts blocking a path, searching for missing characters or items — and completing them is highly recommended, as progression is slowed down by the increasing difficulty. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to get softlocked by fighting enemies that are too strong and using up all your healing items. At that point, winning may depend entirely on RNG — whether you manage to land enough hits before the enemy takes you down. With this, that’s a lot of content for a game that takes around 6 hours to beat.
Mobile Khorinis is a wintry island, so the graphical presentation doesn't offer much in terms of detail — here and there you’ll find fallen logs, scattered bones, or leafless trees. Most of the sprites are fairly abstract; Xardas doesn’t even look like Xardas and could be anyone if not for the portrait in the bottom-left corner of the screen. I think this can be attributed to the limited storage capacity of phones from that era and performance levels comparable to a modern calculator.
The music isn’t particularly remarkable either — it features themes from Gothic 3 and earlier entries in the series, but recreated in an 8-bit style. At first, it sparks some nostalgia and makes you curious to hear how HandyGames tackled Kai Rosenkranz’s compositions, but in the long run, it becomes grating. Characters have no voice acting, everything is text-based, and combat sounds are very minimal. For obvious reasons, I didn’t run any performance tests — the game is locked at around 20 FPS anyway, and it can be run on anything that supports Java or is capable of emulating it.
Is it still good?
Gothic 3: The Beginning definitely wouldn’t score high if it were released in its current form today. Since then, hundreds of games with similar gameplay but much better execution have been released on Android — including ones I’ve previously reviewed like 9th Dawn Remake, the widely popular Inotia series, Crashlands, or Andor’s Trail. And that’s not even counting the ability to emulate full-fledged PC games on smartphones, in which case something like Drova: Forsaken Kin would be a much better pick.
But if we go back nearly 20 years, The Beginning was actually a solid mobile RPG, largely because it had no real competition. It offered everything players expected from PC titles at the time — just on a phone, letting you play wherever and whenever you wanted. If THQ Nordic ever decides to officially bring Gothic to Android or iOS, they’d certainly win back a few long-time fans.