Venetica - Gold Edition

This is a wonderful game. It`s a fairytale like right out of Arabian nights. The style is a bit cartoonish, read Americam mcGee Alice, Torchlight or arpgs like Titan quest. Even fans of the Elder scrolls, Gothic & Divine Divinity should enjoy this. The story is not bad, very romantic. Music is great. The problem is it`s very unstable. Just crashing all the time. Specially if you crank up the graphics. You`ll learn not to feel like a coward for saving very often. This almost took a star or even 2 out but I had 55 great hours here so it`s 5 OK.

The good: story, atmosphere, stunning world design, intuitive UI, enemies can and will one-shot kill you (then you resurrect and enjoy a fight, with some respect for their strength), lockpicking requires some (small) effort. The bad: a few crashes when during scene transitions (save before entering that door!!); although there is a fast-travel system within Venice, those 2 times you need to visit the countryside....(wear comfortable shoes). I finished it in 24h of game time, it didn't feel too short, but don't expect a huge map to explore

It's a fun game I'd recommend picking up on a sale. The story isn't much to write home about, defeating the big bad that's introduced in the beginning, but everything else is good. The graphics have aged well, as the devs focused more on the art style than on making a realistic looking game. The dialogue is fun and the characters are, at least to me, memorable. The sound direction and gameplay are likewise fun. Aside from the subpar story, I also had to dock a point for the bugs. They will happen, and some of them are game-breaking (e.g. exiting a certain door in the outer city, ghosting through the floor in the arsenal district, etc.). All of them are fixable though, you just have to put in the time and effort.

Maybe because the protagonist looks very much like my (now deceased) mom. But also because this game has a soul, is as interesting as a good adventure game, while also being an excellent action game with a hint of RPG. Yep, love it!

Venetica displays ambition and chooses a setting not so often used - Venice during its time of splendor, with a badass heroine, Scarlett, who has Death for father. Unfortunately, you can tell right at the beginning that the story will be lackluster, what with Scarlett's lover's ludicrous demise, kicking her desire for revenge, and Death ordering her to kill the Immortal Archonte but never bothering to explain anything. The game consists then of slaying 5 undead cartoonish villain, until you get the power to vanquish the Archonte himself. There's no real build-up or organic flow to this : everytime you need it Scarlett will meet her deceased lover in the Otherworld, being granted the new required power. The last section is quite farcical : you gather allies on the fly to depose the Doge and people you never met before trust Scarlett to lead the revolt just like that. This could be forgiven if Venetica had interesting gameplay. Alas, the AI is lacking (you can lure them one by one easily) and comboing works on the vast majority of ennemies. With the ability to resurrect several times and the trove of healing items, you barely need to dodge or block attacks. Sadly it makes many of the magic skills a moot point, since combat takes so few efforts. At best you must be wary of not being comboed to death yourself. Questing is your standard uninspired RPG fare, with a lot of slaying enemies and fetching stuff, sometimes copy pasted content- plus sometimes a bit too much of backtracking, in a Venice not that large to explore. From time to time Scarlett can make choices, leading to one of two endings - that, plus the three Guilds to join, is still a bit weak for replayability. Venetica does have its moment though, the voice acting is OK and on the whole it's simple- which can be refreshing. Still I fail to see how this can be viewed as a gem, at best,I think the game is mediocre.