This game took me 7 hours to beat, with me using a guide once or twice on some extremely obtuse part. And after beating it, I can safely say, this game perfectly describes the Germans. Venetica is a game that is obviously heavily inspired by Fable and the Witcher 1, and both of those games are great, but Venetica somehow found a way to mix all the bad parts of those games into one. It took the horrible combat of fable, meaning that the entirety of combat is pressing one button until you get carpal tunnel, it also took the terrible fetch quests witcher, meaning that 90% of the game is going through the same streets back and forward as slowly as possible. This game is not good, it's boring, it's tedious, it's broken in most parts, but I can't help but love it, it has a certain charm. For a game that came from a company that mostly makes point and click it's not terrible, just extremely boring, but the passion shining behind the wall of going up and down the same stairs in the arsenal district keeps you going. In the end, not a gem in the rough, it's a pretty bad game with little redeeming qualities, but if you can enjoy a game with a little soul in it, it's worth a try.
I used GOG for a couple years now, and this is the first time I'm leaving a review. This game caused enough of an emotional response out of me to write my first review. The presentation is fine. The game severely changed the atmosphere from the Disney world of bright colours, to a dark moody, and edgy heavy metal world. The camera just like in Sands of Time is barely controllable, but where Sands of Time made up for that matter by giving multiple retries and frequent checkpoints, Warrior Within has none of that. Each save point can be 10 to 20 minutes apart, meaning a lot of times death means replayingto the same sections over and over again. And the actual sands are so rare it feels like you’re always playing on hardcore mode, preserving your health, and hoping that the Prince doesn't throw himself off causing you to lose the last of your sands. On a gameplay level, the game didn't make a single stride forward. The traps, platforming and even enemies are almost the same, the only major difference being added to the game being the dual wielding mechanic, which becomes redundant a hour into the game when you unlock the upgraded one handed sword. The story, just like the first game, is weak. It’s not supposed to be a masterpiece, but the first game at least held interesting notions and stakes, while this game kills any tension of interest when the Prince makes his 5000th angry grunt at some shadow demon. I feel like all my criticisms and gripes with the game come from the fact that it didn't do enough. I have no nostalgia for any of the PoP games, but where the first game was legitimately good, I find the second one a bore. It took the exactly the same gameplay of the first game, and tried to mix it with its new world of hardcore gore and death, but the gameplay cracked under this, it wasn’t made for this type of game. Where Warrior Within could have reinvented itself, it choose to stay the same game while playing heavy metal
