A handful more tepid reviews have come in for Deck13’s Action RPG Venetica, with lack of polish and production value knocking it down a few pegs. IGN, 6/10.
Still, Venetica is really about the relationship between the mortal world and the twilight world, and it’s cleverly incorporated into the gameplay. There are certain enemies you can only kill if you switch to the twilight world, and you’ll need to solve quests by using twilight powers you gain along your journey. For example, in most games, skeletons are scattered about for atmosphere. While the same is true in Venetica, as you progress through the game you can eventually interact with them, which is really cool. The way Venetica handles lock picking is also clever, and although it’s essentially just a memory mini-game, it’s skinned in an interesting manner.
Venetica’s other saving grace is that the story is told in an interesting way. The game incorporates both morality and branching storylines, which may not be fully original features anymore but are still welcome additions. When you reach Venice there are three guilds you can choose to join, one that’s focused on melee and technically the “dishonorable” choice, one that’s based on necromancy and the “honorable” choice, and a third that’s not associated with any morality or particular skill set. You can only choose one and based on your decision the story will unfold differently.
Throughout my time in Venice the worst thing I encountered was map inaccuracies. If you’re someone who relies heavily on following a game for advice on where to go next, you’ll end up really frustrated here. Just navigating the map in general is a pain, but at times the tracking dot will be in a completely wrong spot. For example, it showed that someone’s house was in the middle of the Venetian waterways. Call me crazy, but I don’t think anybody builds their house in the middle of a canal. After wandering around the outer city for a while I finally found the correct building — on land — but it took time and a lot of trial and error. I also had quest givers tell me the wrong place to go, or became frustrated because I didn’t realize I lacked the proper twilight powers to complete a certain quest.
Gay Gamer, no score but a recommendation.
Thankfully, Venetica’s core gameplay is quite strong. Combat can be surprisingly deep despite implementing the same one button combat of Fable. That depth comes from the four types of weapons Scarlett can wield. Swords are your standard all-around weapon, while hammers and axes are slower but provide more power and can fight off larger groups. Then there are spears, which are fast and give you the extra defense of a shield. Then there is the moonblade, which controls similarly to swords but is unique because it is the only way to kill undead enemies. Using the right weapon in the right situation adds much needed variety to the combat. Scarlett can also use necromancy powers in combat to send swarms of ravens at her foes, drain health, and later in the game summon fallen enemies to fight for her. Using abilities can be a bit of a pain in the 360 or PS3 version, as abilities can only be used if they are set as one of the d-pad shortcut commands. Four shortcuts would normally be fine, but blocking with each weapon is treated as a separate skill that must be assigned a shortcut. It should be noted that this is slightly less of a problem on the PC where you have all of the number keys to assign shortcuts. Since I was playing on the Xbox 360, this basically meant that I used dodging (the X button) more than blocking so that shortcut buttons would be open for the more interesting necromancy skills.
With necromancy being a key part of the game, Venetica has a very interesting way of dealing with player deaths. When Scarlett is killed, instead of getting a game over screen, she is resurrected as a ghost. As a ghost, time moves slower and enemies forget about her, allowing you to make a quick escape to recover or get into position for stealthy revenge on her killers. At the start of the game Scarlett can only resurrect once, and then must refill a twilight meter by killing enemies with the moonblade, but later in the game she can fall in battle four or more times before the twilight meter runs out. I thought this was a very clever way of handling death in a game, allowing the player to basically earn back their life rather than being immediately forced to start over.
Gaming Age, no score in a fairly negative piece.
The problem in getting to Venice wasn’t anything that the game threw at me, in the sense of gameplay or difficulty at least. Instead, the biggest thing I had to combat was the crippling bugs present from the onset. The first one hit right when I was going through the cave/corridor that would lead me to Venice. A bit of dialogue engaged and then the scene stuck, where I could hear music, and see visuals (that were animated, but not advancing) and I could not get past this point. Loading up two previous save files ended up with the same pseudo-freezing bug in the same spot, which in turn forced me to start over.
The second instance occurred much earlier this time, after visiting the local Blacksmith and equipping his daughter’s clothes. This time the situation was similar, where the game halted mid-dialogue with some other character. Once again, reverting to previous saves did nothing, and I was forced to restart again. At this point I’m seriously aggravated, because while I can forgive a buggy game (ala Fallout: New Vegas), I can’t abide by a game that forces me to restart at the beginning every couple hours or so.
The third attempt didn’t appear that it was going to fare much better, as dialogue subtitles were now showing up on screen and then staying well past their scenes, stacking up in blocks of text not unlike a game of Tetris. Some of the text would mash together, while other lines would stack on top of pre-existing lines. They did eventually clear though, but once again I suffered a game crippling freeze right around the Blacksmith section again. I was ready to write this review off right then, but I put the game away for a day and promised to give it one more go, this time erasing all saved information and game data from the PS3 hard drive to give it a fresh start.
Whether or not that was the exact trick that made it all work again I’m not sure, but the fourth attempt the next day was at least successful, and up to this point I have yet to run into another game freezing bug like the previous. So at least that part is seemingly done, but it’s still an awful bug to encounter so early in the adventure, and didn’t bode well for my future enjoyment of Venetica.
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