Gothic II

- Don't get into fights with more than one thing at a time, especially at the beginning, or you'll die. Learn to time your attacks, not just swing wildly.

- There are like three or so different ways to get into the city at the beginning, any of them work fine, but I'd recommend working with the farmer; you get a nice set of starting armor out of it to boot.

- I recommend exploring, but carefully and with saves, and only during the daytime. At night shadowbeasts roam the forests and that's bad.

- Humans won't kill you (most of them, anyway), but just knock you out, take your gold, and possibly your weapon.

- The first time I played, I don't think I had the manual and I don't remember losing much from the experience. There's backstory on factions and history and whatnot, but nothing you can't learn from the game. And the interface is many, many times improved from the first game.

- When it comes to joining a faction, as far as I remember, until you've actually joined them and become one of them, you can do the joining quests for all of the factions, gaining a whole lot of xp and some decent items in the process.