You know, it always surprises me just how many people struggle with combat in Gothic, while the whole concept is very simple.
You bait an enemy into attacking --> you start defending yourself --> you recognize enemy attack pattern, so that you know when it's time for you to start attacking --> attack --> bait an enemy into attacking again, rinse and repeat.
Gothic's melee is literally pattern recognition, most of the time if you try to swing first, you are going to either trade hits or get hit before your attack lands, which even for new players becomes obvious very quickly.
Some enemies don't even have any variations to their attacks and timings, so you just go: block --> attack 1 or 2 times --> block --> attack 1 or 2 times ... You don't have to guess when and what they are going to do, it's braindead simple.
I wrote a couple of long posts about how combat works in Gothic here on codex, because it was apparent to me that people just weren't getting it, even recorded some videos showing how to beat high level enemies without investing a single point in combat related stats and skills, once you know their patterns their chance to hit you becomes marginally low and you can just chip them to death.
And enemy attack patterns in Gothic are simple, at most they do 3 or 4 swings with various timings that hit a short distance in front of them and have minimal tracking. In comparison, in modern action games, including RPGs, enemies have at least 3 or 4 attack chains that they can end at random and possibly even transition into other attacks, then they have various isolated attacks that they use depending on your positioning, whether you are behind or above them, etc, and those attacks and attack chains hit in wide arcs or even track you 360. Dealing with that is way more demanding than anything you face in Gothic, because it has none of that. How can you not handle Gothic if can deal with more complicated stuff, seriously?
