Trojan_generic
Magister
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I see only two pieces of equipment, nothing else.
-
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Venetica, an RPG from Deck13
- Thread starter larpingdude14
- Start date
I see only two pieces of equipment, nothing else.
Immortal
Arcane
Maybe it can, I've never played it. My issue was that you say Venetica is not a trash game.. then compare it to Elder Scrolls: Redguard.. which is a piece of shit.
Just saw a blatant contradiction.
Telengard
Arcane
Certainly not. There's even a review.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/venetica-light-on-the-rpg.40772/
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=196
Though as the game was console trash action adventure, discussions were lackluster.
fastjack
Augur
of course.
Baron Dupek
Arcane
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- Jul 23, 2013
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- 1,871,348
Venetica? More like Venerica amrite guise?
why did dark souls get so much discussion then
Because it is a stat based dungeon crawler?
Doesn'tmeananything
Learned
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- Jun 12, 2015
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- 91
Not really stat-based, is it, when everyone and their mother has done/is doing SL1 runs.
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- Jun 18, 2002
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- 28,542
It got reviewed: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=196This game is six years old and yet there's basically no proper thread about it on the 'dex
Late Bloomer
Scholar
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- Apr 7, 2022
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- 3,929
Free on GoG for a time
Lord_Potato
Arcane
A charming little Gothic-lite. Combat is actually more responsive and less janky than in most PB games
LarryTyphoid
Scholar
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Been playing this recently since I've had it installed for awhile and I wanna get it out of the way. It's okay. I haven't really played any German RPGs, let alone console action-adventure types like this one. There's three aspects of this game that could interest you before you've played it: the setting of Venice, the female protagonist, and the fact that said protagonist is the daughter of Death and so has necromancy powers. But the game really doesn't capitalize on all of them as much as they could.
Venice is pretty cool (a brief conversation about the setting of Venice with fantadomat is what made me reinstall the game in the first place), but it takes way too long to get there; you have to slog through two dungeons and a boss fight before entering Venice, and that's not counting all the fetch quests and boring dialogue. It's like 2-3 hours of bullshit, and it's just a terrible game before you get to Venice.
I've noticed when replaying games like Fallout with a female character, that the game really isn't designed with it in mind. Just about all RPGs with gender options were designed with a male character in mind. It's more understandable for NPCs to ask for help from a man, but it's often strange with a female character. Town guards recruiting for a bandit hunt, or fully grown farmers asking for help clearing out pests on the field - these things don't make sense for a female character. Why would they ask a woman to perform such physical and dangerous tasks? Of course, they can't redesign the entire game's quests to account for this, and it'd be a pretty boring RPG if a female character got treated like women in the real world are, but a little bit of flavorful dialogue can go a long way to maintain the suspension of disbelief. But despite ONLY featuring a female character, and so not having to write separate dialogue for two different gender options, Venetica doesn't bother trying to justify having a female protagonist in an action game. A fully grown, able-bodied man will ask a 90 pound woman with a bare midriff and a dinky dagger to clear out a cave of dangerous monsters without batting an eye, offering help, or expressing any concern. It makes me suspect that the female protagonist was something come up with late in development. Scarlett could be a man and nothing whatsoever would change, except for needing a suit instead of a dress for the Doge's palace. Any Fallout game (even the Bethesda ones) has more convincing dialogue for female PCs. I haven't played it, but just from watching the trailer, I could tell that recent "Lay-D Denton" mod for Deus Ex had a more convincing female protagonist, and that's in a fan-made mod. You can't even say that it's because Venetica is set in a fantasy world where women are just as capable as men, because the gender roles in the world of Venetica are just like you'd expect them to be for the setting. You never fight any female enemies, sans some boss fights. There aren't any female guards or grunts, so Venetica's setting is even more conservative than Thief 2's. I imagine the only reason they went with a female-only protagonist in the end is so they could put a bitch's midriff on the cover.
The Death powers are extremely weak, and are almost never used for roleplaying. Scarlett can resurrect herself when she runs out of health, and you can use this in non-combat situations only two times: once, at the very beginning of the game, as a mandatory scripted cutscene, and second, when first entering the Arsenal district, where you can get your throat cut and then come back to scare the rogues (which leads into combat anyway). Not to mention that it quickly becomes busted in combat and makes everything too easy. You can't raise the dead in combat to help you or anything, so just about any 90s CRPG has Venetica beat on that front.
Scarlett can talk to dead people, but it's not like you can talk to any corpse; not all of these talks are plot-mandatory or scripted, to be fair, but it's way too rare. It would have been way cooler if you could get just a single line of dialogue from any corpse you see in the game, kinda like the ghosts in System Shock 2, but intentionally invoked by a player casting a spell. The roleplaying possibilities for being a necromancer, especially in a game that's all about it in concept, are immense, but Venetica does not capitalize on it. For example, you can go into the world of the dead, and then back, and you can use this to sneak past enemies or get sneak attacks. There's a quest where some rebels ask you to sneak onto a ship and blow up the gunpowder its carrying. So, can you use your twilight world shifting ability to sneak past the guards on the ship, like you would any enemy? No, they're blocking you no matter what. You have to wait until a specific time of night for them to leave. Why is it like this?
Every quest in the game should have made use of Scarlett's abilities. What is the point of her being the daughter of Death if she can't actually act like it? Again, like the female protagonist, it feels like something that was added late in development, despite being crucial to the story. You could do some really evil stuff for villainous playthroughs (seeing as this game does have two different endings depending on morality), like killing someone and then continuing to torture their soul in the afterlife, or at least threatening someone with the possibility. Or talking to someone's dead loved one, and then twisting their words back to them, to coerce someone into doing something they wouldn't otherwise.
That's all not mentioning all of the casualized console-tard shit you'd expect in this game, like not being able to kill any friendly NPCs. The thing in this game that reminded me most of classic CPRGs is the exploration, which thankfully doesn't depend entirely on quest markers (though objectives are still marked on the map), but even that is limited by the inability to jump, or even fall off of ledges. This is the first console RPG I've played in a long time, and it's been jarring. I wasn't really hot on Ultima 7 when I finished it recently, but I've definitely come to appreciate it more by comparison.
I didn't mean to write a book about this game. I just started typing and didn't stop for awhile
TL;DR, this game is okay but it also sucks.
Venice is pretty cool (a brief conversation about the setting of Venice with fantadomat is what made me reinstall the game in the first place), but it takes way too long to get there; you have to slog through two dungeons and a boss fight before entering Venice, and that's not counting all the fetch quests and boring dialogue. It's like 2-3 hours of bullshit, and it's just a terrible game before you get to Venice.
I've noticed when replaying games like Fallout with a female character, that the game really isn't designed with it in mind. Just about all RPGs with gender options were designed with a male character in mind. It's more understandable for NPCs to ask for help from a man, but it's often strange with a female character. Town guards recruiting for a bandit hunt, or fully grown farmers asking for help clearing out pests on the field - these things don't make sense for a female character. Why would they ask a woman to perform such physical and dangerous tasks? Of course, they can't redesign the entire game's quests to account for this, and it'd be a pretty boring RPG if a female character got treated like women in the real world are
, but a little bit of flavorful dialogue can go a long way to maintain the suspension of disbelief. But despite ONLY featuring a female character, and so not having to write separate dialogue for two different gender options, Venetica doesn't bother trying to justify having a female protagonist in an action game. A fully grown, able-bodied man will ask a 90 pound woman with a bare midriff and a dinky dagger to clear out a cave of dangerous monsters without batting an eye, offering help, or expressing any concern. It makes me suspect that the female protagonist was something come up with late in development. Scarlett could be a man and nothing whatsoever would change, except for needing a suit instead of a dress for the Doge's palace. Any Fallout game (even the Bethesda ones) has more convincing dialogue for female PCs. I haven't played it, but just from watching the trailer, I could tell that recent "Lay-D Denton" mod for Deus Ex had a more convincing female protagonist, and that's in a fan-made mod. You can't even say that it's because Venetica is set in a fantasy world where women are just as capable as men, because the gender roles in the world of Venetica are just like you'd expect them to be for the setting. You never fight any female enemies, sans some boss fights. There aren't any female guards or grunts, so Venetica's setting is even more conservative than Thief 2's. I imagine the only reason they went with a female-only protagonist in the end is so they could put a bitch's midriff on the cover.The Death powers are extremely weak, and are almost never used for roleplaying. Scarlett can resurrect herself when she runs out of health, and you can use this in non-combat situations only two times: once, at the very beginning of the game, as a mandatory scripted cutscene, and second, when first entering the Arsenal district, where you can get your throat cut and then come back to scare the rogues (which leads into combat anyway). Not to mention that it quickly becomes busted in combat and makes everything too easy. You can't raise the dead in combat to help you or anything, so just about any 90s CRPG has Venetica beat on that front.
Scarlett can talk to dead people, but it's not like you can talk to any corpse; not all of these talks are plot-mandatory or scripted, to be fair, but it's way too rare. It would have been way cooler if you could get just a single line of dialogue from any corpse you see in the game, kinda like the ghosts in System Shock 2, but intentionally invoked by a player casting a spell. The roleplaying possibilities for being a necromancer, especially in a game that's all about it in concept, are immense, but Venetica does not capitalize on it. For example, you can go into the world of the dead, and then back, and you can use this to sneak past enemies or get sneak attacks. There's a quest where some rebels ask you to sneak onto a ship and blow up the gunpowder its carrying. So, can you use your twilight world shifting ability to sneak past the guards on the ship, like you would any enemy? No, they're blocking you no matter what. You have to wait until a specific time of night for them to leave. Why is it like this?
Every quest in the game should have made use of Scarlett's abilities. What is the point of her being the daughter of Death if she can't actually act like it? Again, like the female protagonist, it feels like something that was added late in development, despite being crucial to the story. You could do some really evil stuff for villainous playthroughs (seeing as this game does have two different endings depending on morality), like killing someone and then continuing to torture their soul in the afterlife, or at least threatening someone with the possibility. Or talking to someone's dead loved one, and then twisting their words back to them, to coerce someone into doing something they wouldn't otherwise.
That's all not mentioning all of the casualized console-tard shit you'd expect in this game, like not being able to kill any friendly NPCs. The thing in this game that reminded me most of classic CPRGs is the exploration, which thankfully doesn't depend entirely on quest markers (though objectives are still marked on the map), but even that is limited by the inability to jump, or even fall off of ledges. This is the first console RPG I've played in a long time, and it's been jarring. I wasn't really hot on Ultima 7 when I finished it recently, but I've definitely come to appreciate it more by comparison.
I didn't mean to write a book about this game. I just started typing and didn't stop for awhile
TL;DR, this game is okay but it also sucks.
Immortal
Arcane
LarryTyphoid
Scholar
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Finished this game recently. I really can't fathom as to how it got such a positive review on the Codex. It's all so half-assed. The difference between the "honorable" and "villainous" endings amount to lame 5 second cutscenes.
There's a part near the end of the game where you have to betray the faction you picked at the start. Except you don't get to fight the guy actually giving you your quests (there's only one actual NPC per faction, of course). Instead there's a "secret head of all 3 guilds" who you fight. So there's no interaction with your actual guild or anything. They hype up this guild shit as some big element of C&C and it's just a farce. Now that I think about it, there's no C&C in this game at all. There's moral options but nobody ever treats you differently, and I'd know because I tried going the evil path. You never get recognized for being evil or anything - at the beginning of the game you can kill two villagers of your own hometown and nobody will ever even mention it. So in terms of C&C this game's weaker than Knights of the Old Republic which came out like 8 years earlier. Maybe Deck13 should've spent less time crafting a pretty looking city and more time making a good RPG.
The story is fucking boring and ends in a retarded boss fight against a guy you never even meet prior. You hear about him a lot and how he's evil or something, and he dies like a bitch. And nobody ever reacts to anything. When you return to your home village near the end for the main story, all the dialogue is the exact same. Scarlett will still talk to the gate guards and ask for permission to leave. I even ran into an area I neglected before, and I found a bunch of literal level 1 enemies who were talking about orders from their master, who was the first boss of the game that I killed like 15 hours prior. I guess they were in that little area the whole time and were out of the loop. So, yeah, this game sucks. It's the first German RPG I've played, and I sure hope Gothic is better than this shit.
There's a part near the end of the game where you have to betray the faction you picked at the start. Except you don't get to fight the guy actually giving you your quests (there's only one actual NPC per faction, of course). Instead there's a "secret head of all 3 guilds" who you fight. So there's no interaction with your actual guild or anything. They hype up this guild shit as some big element of C&C and it's just a farce. Now that I think about it, there's no C&C in this game at all. There's moral options but nobody ever treats you differently, and I'd know because I tried going the evil path. You never get recognized for being evil or anything - at the beginning of the game you can kill two villagers of your own hometown and nobody will ever even mention it. So in terms of C&C this game's weaker than Knights of the Old Republic which came out like 8 years earlier. Maybe Deck13 should've spent less time crafting a pretty looking city and more time making a good RPG.
The story is fucking boring and ends in a retarded boss fight against a guy you never even meet prior. You hear about him a lot and how he's evil or something, and he dies like a bitch. And nobody ever reacts to anything. When you return to your home village near the end for the main story, all the dialogue is the exact same. Scarlett will still talk to the gate guards and ask for permission to leave. I even ran into an area I neglected before, and I found a bunch of literal level 1 enemies who were talking about orders from their master, who was the first boss of the game that I killed like 15 hours prior. I guess they were in that little area the whole time and were out of the loop. So, yeah, this game sucks. It's the first German RPG I've played, and I sure hope Gothic is better than this shit.
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JarlFrank gonna Frank.
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I haven't finished it, but i found it fun for what it is: a low budget ARPG. It also helps if you find its type of humor funny - i found myself often laughing with what was going on and the MC's deadpan reactions.
But TBH i think JarlFrank's review was fine - you complain about lack of C&C and the review explicitly mentions that there isn't really any.
Any game that features a female protagonist whose feet you get to see automatically gains a big bonus in my mind and I'm gonna like it even if it sucks
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Any game that features a female protagonist whose feet you get to see automatically gains a big bonus in my mind and I'm gonna like it even if it sucks
There was also quite the RPG drought back then.
LarryTyphoid
Scholar
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I've never played another RPG with an exclusively female protagonist, but Scarlett's pretty mid as far as waifus goAny game that features a female protagonist whose feet you get to see automatically gains a big bonus in my mind and I'm gonna like it even if it sucks
Not really, 2009 had Risen, Divinity 2, Risen, Demon Souls and Dragon Age Origins all of which were significantly better than Venetica.Any game that features a female protagonist whose feet you get to see automatically gains a big bonus in my mind and I'm gonna like it even if it sucks
There was also quite the RPG drought back then.
The best thing about it is the original German writing and voice acting. Still the game is the perfect example of a 6/10 RPG.
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
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only decent game there is divinity 2, but it was really bad on release due to bugs/crashesNot really, 2009 had Risen, Divinity 2, Risen, Demon Souls and Dragon Age Origins all of which were significantly better than Venetica.Any game that features a female protagonist whose feet you get to see automatically gains a big bonus in my mind and I'm gonna like it even if it sucks
There was also quite the RPG drought back then.
The best thing about it is the original German writing and voice acting. Still the game is the perfect example of a 6/10 RPG.
still had a while to go for the dragon knight saga version
Sarathiour
Cipher
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