Venetica - Gold Edition

For me, the game is fun. It has a certain charm to it, the cliches, the story is presented like children fairytales. It's not difficult to play it. The difficulty may lie in that F5 (for quick save) will be heavily used. It crashes a lot. Sometimes, DXVK will run out of memory. Yes, I'm running it in Linux, playonlinux (wine), DXVK and nVidia Physix (must be installed, otherwise the game wouldn't even start). There are also other visual bugs, however I didn't encounter any game breaking ones like quest failures and such. There are some mods for it which will improve the graphics, though the game will crash more often.

First of all, thank you GOG for making me actually discover that this game exists. I was not expecting to have this much fun from this game that I have never heard before but here we are. My negatives: - Immediately after starting the game, you are thrown into this romance thing as the driving force of the plot (at least at first) and I could not even care about what happens regarding that because it is not developed enough in the game. Also the voice acting didn't really convince me enough to make the romance believable. - English subtitles seriously need some work. - They really should have fleshed out the crafting system into its own thing instead of dragging stuff around the inventory. - Had some crashes, nothing prevented me from completing the game, but they still happened. - Smaller rooms around the world have the same level design copy pasted. My positives: + I really enjoyed the graphics. Normally I don't really care that much about modern graphics, like I can even find the graphics of a game from 1990s beautiful to this day, so it is not surprise that I liked it. But to me it is still impressive for a 10+ year old game. + I really liked the environments, and level design of the main areas. They in my opinion looked cool. And even though most of the game takes place in Venice, different areas still had their own identity, which I really liked. + I liked the combat system. It is repetitive at times, but the game is not absurdly long, and they introduce new ways to defeat enemies as the game goes on, like having to use different type of weapons and skills to defeat certain enemies etc. + I liked the boss fights. They were simple enough but still provided their own twist for each of them and it was fun. + Aside from the romance part, I liked the story. It wasn't the best, but it still did its job. I would have given this a 3/5, but since I got it for free I give it a 4/5. Thanks again GOG.

Neat game. I like the graphics and the overall game-play. The story is ok. I think the romance is quite unconvincing. The plot is contrived in some points. It's not the end of the world. It is refreshing to see a fantasy game that is not set in Made-Up-Fantasy-World-Number-40532. It is set in Venice, which is great, but the city just kinda looks like Venice... and people speak in Brittish accents... The protagonist sounds too much like Lara Croft for some one who is supposed to be Italian. Overall the setting is good. Combat is quite clunky, but enjoyable. I like that gear you pick up is not junk like in most RPGs, and different types of weapons are useful in specific situations. It is cool that you have to tailor the gear you come accross to fit you, and the fan-service is appreciated. The problem with the game is that it needs polish. It has lots of glitches that will mess up with your quests. Every time you load a new zone the loading screen plays an anoying music that gets on my nerves so much I dread entering houses. The lockpicking minigame is hell and you have to do it to most chests in the game, which is not worth it. The boss fight with the spirit assassin is horrible since you cannot damage it until it lets you, randomly. The puzzles are too obtuse to me, but it might be that I suck at video-game puzzles. Bottom line is: this is a charming game that needs some love.

PROS: The game has so much charm to it,the fact you can see your model on the loading screen based on what your wearing in game...it just hits that feeling of progression. There is only a few armors in this game but are modeled on Scarlett and not just stat sticks. There is 3 factions to join once you get to venice which is nice for rp purposes. Honestly the charchters in the game were enjoyable and can see multiple runs being somewhat differnt depending on your dialouge options. The combat while dated in a sense was still a fun time but there is obviously better weapons that others CONS: Got a graphical bug multiple times where it would not load in the zone and it would just be black with objects floating (best way to fix is just go back to main menu of the game and then say cont should fix it.) Game crashed many times as well luckily the saves never corrupted and such. many audio bugs or graphical when a cutscene is happening you could see a enemy still attacking you they are not part of the scene(quite funny) and then other random people talking ever so often. While I said combat is fun it can be annoying at times you can get stunlocked like crazy mad by multiple enemies and you just have to wait till end of their combo GRIPE: No endgame status report kinda deal to show how your choices mattered and how it changed the area like during end credits. Not a deal breaker but wouldve been nice. OVERALL: love the game it was so enjoyable to play and had a smile on my face whether it was dialogue you know was taken at differnt days because of mic quality or just a nostalgia trip. If you are hesitant to get it then wait for a sale, but if you are a fan of old rpgs like this do yourself a favor and play it already!!!

This game has one of the best level designs of all games I have played so far (user maps in UT2k4 aside). The story is great, too. It is a bit heavy on resources, though. Another plus: one of the few games that features a heroine and does so without any attire. It feels just natural. Last hint: there is a mod for better textures out there. Although it weighs down even more on the resources, try to find it.