skomand: I'm really interested in Gothic, but I'm wondering: how essential is it that I play Gothic 1 before Gothic 2?
Essential enough to reconsider and play Gothic 1 for starters.
Some may say that Gothic 1 is even better than Gothic 2. But for me Gothic 1 + 2 is like a one big game really. You can't split them up, they are part of the same.
And this is solely my humble opinion, the choice is yours.
However I have a feeling that you might have already knew the answer before creating this thread :)