(the only skill cut off is alchemy.) 

Off topic aside but this game is gorgeous. The weather effects were incredible and just walking around and listening to the bgm made for an enjoyable experience on its own. Favorite area was probably the tundra around the Innos shrine, and also the entire climb leading up to it. Wish there was more stuff to see and do up there. 

I'm ultimately satisfied with the mage path and appreciate the addition of the novice circle, but so many runes felt meh. You're basically only using fire bolt for the first two chunks of the game and then switching to ice bolt/wind fist whenever you need to freeze/push something. Lightning Ball came in clutch for single target bosses but aside from that and obvious utility spells there's not much to mess around with (even late game is really just storm of fire spam). I played most of Gothic OG and know early mage is rough, but this just felt kinda stale and even frustrating in cases like stone golem boss in orc territory and the final boss of the orc cemetery who have high resist to magic:

Stone Golem 2 was easily the lowest point in the game for the build which is kind of funny because the other two went down in three seconds. You either have the strength (or amulets) and the foresight to hold on to a decent blunt weapon, or you have patience, mana pots, and a fire bolt that only does 1 damage to a 600 hp boss. I probably could've made it easier on myself if I invested in learning the dodge roll and just going the melee route but honestly, looking at the end stats, I understand why I was worried I might've spread myself too thin. (Why is climbing 5LP man). Getting circles unlocked early is important for keeping your spell damage decent since it scales and hitting the mana cap made it so that I didn't have to waste too much time waiting to build up enough exhaustion for sleeping. 

Temple of The Sleeper also kinda sucked but moreso for its length and dizzying layout. None of the individual fights were hard at all but I was stretched for mana by the end. I didn't even know about the stones+mini bosses until after I reached the very end and had to backtrack all the way to the start. 

Chapter VI was a great for rp at least. Finding the new robes, and Xardas acknowledging that you're a mage and helping you make the Uriziel rune was an awesome touch. Earlier in my playthrough I wished there were summon runes like in COM: Archolos but seeing what the stone golem scroll did to the final boss made me understand why they were limited. 

  
I had a good time altogether; hope they bring some of the resistances down just a bit and fix chain lightning and rain of fire in the future cause it's kinda criminal seeing them get outperformed by a rune from a circle beneath it. 

Finished my pure mage run yesterday, thought I'd share my final stats and experiences.