Venetica is great. It really shouldn't be—it has slow combat like The Witcher 1, an obvious lack of polish, the character models range from okay to really bad, and the story isn't going to win any awards.

Despite all of that, it has a certain charm that few other games have. Part of that is the tone of the game, which is somewhere between totally serious and Fable-esque lighthearted weirdness. The fact that the areas are actually pretty interesting to explore doesn't hurt, either; there aren't any sections like Dragon Age's The Fade that you dread having to go through if you ever go through the game again. It's a great game to play through and relax to, really, and in a way its simplicity and roughness make it better than it would have been otherwise.

Obviously opinions about it vary pretty wildly.

not a great game but god enough, a bit buggy, i only went as far as the main city, probably finish it someday

The game reminds me of Risen anyone know if Risen 2 is worth it? Might get it for Christmas.

I thought that wasn't coming out til January?

"Has", "Will Have", we're all friends here. I already bought the DLC, in the form of the Season Pass, you are correct that the first drop hasn't yet happened. Though since I can't find a firm release date (unless one's been released since last weekend) I'd love to know how you know January.

I suppose with the season pass you technically bought it :P
As for the January release I heard from a friend that it was January, after googling just now I found out it hasn't been announced yet, I don't have AC3 so I'm not following it too much.

As far as i am concerned, despite it noticable flaws it has one thing a lot of modern (AAA) games seem to lack: FUN.

what is this fun of which you speak, it surely cannot be as important as graphics?

It's the fun-damentals of gaming ;)

Played a bit of this last night.

The starting village has an interesting architectural anomaly, none of the houses have doors...I dont mean there is a door and if you "activate" it, you get a message like "LOCKED!" (remember Undying lol :)), there are no doors ...well...the blacksmiths house has two doors funnily enough :).

I only played a bit, the VA isn't great, but its sufficant, very british accents for the italians, but it does the job. When something happens and you meet Death, you may be surprised to find that Death is actually The Elephant Man as played by John Hurt....unfortunately voiced by some lesser thespian.

Gfx are pleasent enough, lots of lovely "bloom" efx :P, but crisp and clear. The camera can be a tad annoying in confined spaces. But again, it does the job efficantly.

Combat so far has been press A to hit and X to dodge/roll, sometimes spaces can be a bit too confined to roll, so you tend to just roll into your enemies.

The story is the usual, orphan raised in a village, then the eveil guys attack the village looking for the orphan, she dies and meets Death, who tells her that she has unawakened powers, yada yada yada, but rather preciently he tells her that all her choices will lead to the same destination.....doesnt bode well for dialogue choices in the rest of the game, methinks :)

The game itself lends itself to exploration, but along rather confined paths, dialogue has a touch of intentional humour with some decent characters, doing their best after having been refused entrance to RADA, its a mixture of exploration, combat and light puzzles, with combat offering mage or melee methods of dealing with evil scallywags with pointy helmets.

So far, well worth a tenner.

It seemed to take a loooonnnnggg time to install for some reason, its only about 4 gigs but took about 20 minutes to install, which promted me to "cancel the install and start again, 'cos I though it was MY PC hanging, but yeah, it took its time installing.

If you already think so then I think you might be pleasantly surprised, because it gets better once you get to the city areas. Especially the inner city.

Picked this up retail a while back. Again an average game (had some technical issues) with some elements reminiscent of 3D Zelda games in terms of exploration and levels.

Well I just got to the windmill inn, so it's early days, I have only met melee trainers yet, so I havent spent any points yet as I want to be a mage.

Combos are also a bit shit (maybe its just me) I have tried all sorts of pauses between button presses but its not working, but as I'll be a mage its no big deal.

Lockpicking totally eludes me, lost all speech during what I assume is the tutorial with the two brothers, but both times the doors opened, I cant see any manual, its supposed to be on the disc, but I cant see and PDF file anywhere, but the game is simplistic enough, so its OK.

It can be annoying in its lack of information, for example, I found a locked chest in the blacksmiths house and a few in a copper mine, with no idea how they should be opened, therefore I spent a lot of time looking for keys that apparently cant be accessed until later.

The company's site is pretty useless too, I can see why the game failed to sell, but I still think its well worth a tenner.

Your weapon hand glows when you're supposed to attack again. Here's a screengrab showing it: PICHAAAA

I could swear it's like that from the beginning, though it's possible that it's something you have to upgrade to. Either way, it's always at the end of the attack, right before she brings the weapon back to her.

Yeah thanks, I figured it out in the end. The guy takes you out to "train" you and asks you to do combos and like a prat I was trying all sorts of different timings, even trying to make sense of the glowing hands, but to no avail.

In the end, I spent some time looking at the skill trees (they are a bit shite) and figured the spells were pointless, so I had 80 points saved, I spent them on melee skills....lo and behold, I could do combos then.

Still, the game is holding my interest so far.

Thanks for the reply 227 :)

Well, so far the game kinda climbs to the highest mountain and screams ....meh!

I went past the tutorial and into a dungeon prior to hitting Venice itself. Halfway through the dungeon, I had one of the most pointless shittiest boss battles ever, which unfortunately took me out of the uncompleted dungeon, so I couldnt continue exploring, so I reloaded a previous save, because someone gave me a pecial dagger that supposedly opened something.

Anyway, I went back, couldnt find anywhere to use the dagger, but found a couple of points where you can enter rooms via spirit portals, I thought cool, these must be "special" areas whicth reall cool loot....nope, just a few vendor trash items inside, dunno wtf reason they put them inside a hidden portal area.

Anyway, other than a few xp kills there really was no point in going back. so, into Venice we go, nice looking gfx too. Anyway, went into a house and a bloke goes bonkers cause I'm an intruder then gives me a quest anyway, but while I'm in the house I keep getting notifications that my "rep" is dropping, but I cba to reload.

Met someone in the netherworld and couldnt complete my dialogue options with him, just got one question and popped back into the real world, here I learned how to open chests, apparently I can go back to locked chests in previous areas and open them now, could I be arsed? nope....

If you have the game I would say play it if you have nothing better to do, but I would not recommend bothering with buying it, i played it for a little over 4 hours, maybe not alot in RPG terms, but it was a pretty pointless 4 hours tbh..

Also, if I alt tab out of the game, I have to log off my PC and restart the game all over again.