Review Venetica, light on the RPG

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Venetica

Venetica was an action-RPG-adventure type thing released not too long ago. <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=196">JarlFrank takes it for a spin</a>:
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<blockquote>The story itself begins with assassins attacking the peaceful village you live in, killing your lover and burning some houses in the process. You fight them, are slain - and greeted by Death, who tells you he's your father.
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[...]
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While the story seems very simple and clichéd in the beginning, it becomes more involving and interesting the further the game progresses. The villain turns out to have some actual motivations instead of just wanting to destroy the world for fun, and the further you progress, the more details you'll learn about you, your father, his job and your quest.
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[...]
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In its essence, Venetica is an Action RPG, with a lot of emphasis put on the action. The combat reminded me most of Rise of the Argonauts, or a mixture of Gothic and The Witcher. You control your character from a third person perspective with the classical WASD + mouse combination. Combat is very "twitchy" and is mostly decided by player reflexes than character stats. You'll constantly have to dodge enemy attacks and deliver attack combos by left-clicking when you've finished your strike.</blockquote>
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It's light on the RPG but has some interesting features. <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=196">Read the rest</a>.

 

[ghostdog]

I've also encountered a handful of quests where the quest marker on the map pointed into the middle of nowhere

So, there isn't an English version yet ?

 

[spekkio]

English version was leaked ~20.01. Check Reloaded gaming service. I don't know if it's officialy available though.

 

[Droog White Smile]

So there's an English PC version as well, heh? Guess, I'll have to "purchase" it now.

 

[JarlFrank]

I've also encountered a handful of quests where the quest marker on the map pointed into the middle of nowhere

So, there isn't an English version yet ?

It's only incline when you've been given proper directions.
If you're told to "go to Marco's house" and the house is just called "house", like about 10 other houses in the district, and the quest marker points into the river, you have to try out every house in the district and hope to find the right one. Long loading times don't make this any more fun, either.

EDIT:
I dunno if the English version is officially out yet, the official site doesn't say too much about it, but there already is a Reloaded version out there, so you can already "demo" it and it won't take long till it's released.

 

[Suchy]

has tits?

 

[JarlFrank]

No bare ones, no.

 

[Droog White Smile]

How long is the game?

Is the performance even worse than Divinity 2's?

 

[spekkio]

Nothing than cannot be fixd by german modders.
linx

 

[JarlFrank]

How long is the game?

Is the performance even worse than Divinity 2's?

Having played both on 1920x1080 and max settings, Venetica ran a lot better overall than Divinity 2. So no, Divinity 2 is worse.

The game took me a little more than one week to complete, playing between 2 and 4 hours a day. If I had to take a guess... about 16 to 20 hours if you do most of the sidequests.

 

[spekkio]

Well, I've installed it finally and it's surely not lacking in the bloom territory:

 

[Texas Red]

Motherfucker I'm so tired of these ugly generic 3D games.

 

[Droog White Smile]

That's one ugly screenshot.

 

[spekkio]

I set quality to medium, game is still laggy as fuck (60-20 FPS), crashed after ~10 minutes. Quality coding right there. Looks like fun tho, I should go back to it in a couple of years

 

[JarlFrank]

http://s236.photobucket.com/albums/ff22 ... /Venetica/

Moar screenshots. Yes the developers really overused bloom.

 

[Gragt]

Excuse the bloom.

 

[Gorath]

How long is the game?

Is the performance even worse than Divinity 2's?

Having played both on 1920x1080 and max settings, Venetica ran a lot better overall than Divinity 2. So no, Divinity 2 is worse.

The game took me a little more than one week to complete, playing between 2 and 4 hours a day. If I had to take a guess... about 16 to 20 hours if you do most of the sidequests.

I spent ca. 30 hours on my first run through. Then 20 and counting on the second, but there's not much left. Maybe another 5 hours. I'm actually quite happy the developer decided against blowing the game up with filler material.

Stability of the retail version is fine IMHO. Maybe the guy who created the torrent should be blamed for some of the problems.
The game's performance is tolerable since the last patch. I would still recommend to apply the user mod to squeeze out another 10%. This open source engine clearly hit its limit.

The graphics is not very detailed, and the lighting falls from one extreme (bloom) into the other (darkness), but design and art style are very nice. So I think the game is a pleasure to look at, although one might objectively be able to criticise the graphics.

Calling Venetica "generic" is just wrong. The setting is fresh, the story is pretty good and the quest quality very solid. The whole netherworld thing is quite interesting. If you look careful enough you can even use the netherworld for quick travel.

The question might be what you expect. It's basically an adventure game with two skill trees on top and a surprisingly dynamic combat system which reminded me a bit of Rune. One of the German reviewers called Venetica the better Fable because this moral bullshit has been left out.
It's a good action game, but you should expect neither the next Fallout nor a Diablo clone. Actual roleplaying is thin beccause many choices are fake, but the game mechanics work well and different armour and weapons all have their strengths and weaknesses.

 

[JarlFrank]

How long is the game?

Is the performance even worse than Divinity 2's?

Having played both on 1920x1080 and max settings, Venetica ran a lot better overall than Divinity 2. So no, Divinity 2 is worse.

The game took me a little more than one week to complete, playing between 2 and 4 hours a day. If I had to take a guess... about 16 to 20 hours if you do most of the sidequests.

Stability of the retail version is fine IMHO. Maybe the guy who created the torrent should be blamed for some of the problems.

Nowhere did I complain about stability. I had no crashes whatsoever. Just a few bugs, some forcing me to reload and some being just a minor nuisance, and the performance was bad in the larger areas of the game. No stability problems, though.

And I gotta agree with you about the length. It's good that they didn't decide to put lots of filler into the game, there wasn't any point where I just thought "oh god not another huge combat section" like in, for example, Dragon Age.

 

[Black Cat]

@ Gorath

"I'm actually quite happy the developer decided against blowing the game up with filler material."

The game has quite a lot of filler stuffies if you try to do every thingie there is to do. The game even uses the very same quest several times on diferent maps, like that one about going to the roofs and breaking chimneys with a hammer, or that other one about hunting the big evil shrimp monster thingie in the sewers, or that one about looking for the bandits' hideouts and killing everyone inside.

Maybe the game gets better later on but being a completist Neko i got to the inner city and, like, saw the amount of places to break in and the amount of repeated quests and, like, lost the strenght to actually go and explore stuffies and do all sidequest thingies before going on, nya. So i just stoped there and stuffies.

Edity Edit: The evil demonic literate rats are ultra cool and kawaii, though. I'll steal them for my next The Dreaming chronicle, nya. :3

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Excuse the bloom.

Well played sire, none will know of this meeting.

 

[JarlFrank]

@ Gorath

"I'm actually quite happy the developer decided against blowing the game up with filler material."

The game has quite a lot of filler stuffies if you try to do every thingie there is to do. The game even uses the very same quest several times on diferent maps, like that one about going to the roofs and breaking chimneys with a hammer, or that other one about hunting the big evil shrimp monster thingie in the sewers, or that one about looking for the bandits' hideouts and killing everyone inside.

Maybe the game gets better later on but being a completist Neko i got to the inner city and, like, saw the amount of places to break in and the amount of repeated quests and, like, lost the strenght to actually go and explore stuffies and do all sidequest thingies before going on, nya. So i just stoped there and stuffies.

Edity Edit: The evil demonic literate rats are ultra cool and kawaii, though. I'll steal them for my next The Dreaming chronicle, nya. :3

Well yeah, many sidequests are of the "Kill x creatures!" type, but they're just optional sidequests. At least the mainquest isn't full of forced filler like NWN2 or DA :wink:

I did do the first cliffracer-killing quest, but just skipped the second because it was a boring quest. The completionist in me is annoyed by this, but I still prefer optional sidequest filler to obligatory mainquest filler. It's only too bad that there are no ending slides for the few choices you could make, therefore there's not much replayability.

 

[Droog White Smile]

Is there a lot of equipment to collect? How many uniquely looking pieces of armor are there in the game?

 

[JarlFrank]

Not much. About 4 regular weapons for each category (and two magic swords you can buy in a certain shop) and 4 armors. Leather, iron, scale, and a special magic dress you get towards the end. The cool thing is that each armor has its strengths and weaknesses. Scale armor is great against blunt, for example, but sucks against blades and spears.