IMHO, it is very unfortunate that an otherwise great rpg is mired with such an anti-user-friendly problems. I tried playing Gothic 1, I really wanted to like it, but in the end I just gave up due to the control scheme. And as far as I was able to tell, the control scheme is pretty much the same in the sequel.

For some reason, this kind of problems happen alot in games produced by European studios. Sometimes I'm able to cope with it, sometimes not, regardless of how good the game actually is.