Let's Play Venetica

Madcat

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Hi,

I'm in the process of doing a Video Let's Play of Venetica, an action RPG from Deck 13 interactive, and I thought it might be of interest to people on this board.

Episode One

The game sees you playing Scarlett, the daughter of Death, on a quest to destroy a group of undead people who threaten the balance of the world.

Visually the game is very reminiscent of the Euro-comic style, and whilst reviews have panned the voice acting, I quite like it for the most part - maybe it's just an accent thing with the various British and European accents the characters have sounding more natural to me than American ones would.

Combat is a mix of timed mouse-clicking and hot-key activated abilities - half way between pure action games and MMO combat.

The plot is conversation driven and there seem to be two sorts of puzzles so far - four part button pushing type things, and a pattern following one which can have well over 8 steps.

Character customisation comes in the form of spending points into various skill trees - one for each weapon type (except Axes which share a tree with Hammers) and a whole bunch of themed Necromancy spells which seem to get unlocked at various plot intervals.
 
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I watched the first video, and it made me more interested in the game. It looks more interesting than I expected it to. Sorry, won't watch the rest, but I'll probably buy it instead ;)
 
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Victory!

Recommend getting PS3 or PC - apparently the 360 version is pretty buggy.

There's a patch for the PC game on the dev's website.

Editted to add: Due to my speed of play - one or two hours a week, anyone who buys the game is going to get far ahead of me very quickly.
 
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It's been on my 'to get' list for a while now. I'm always on the lookout for RPGs that aren't the typical fantasy cliche. I just wish that it were available on more digital download sites than just Direct2Drive or that they would put it on sale at least. If it were on the Steam Summer Sale I would have grabbed it in a heartbeat.

I suppose I could always grab it on Amazon for $20, but it does annoy me when boxed versions are cheaper than digital downloads even though they have no packaging or physical product expenses at all.

For what it's worth, I'm also a slow player these days. In my younger days I'd marathon through games in no time but now a single game will usually take me quite some time to complete.
 
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I enjoyed Venetica a lot. It's basically the typical Deck 13 adventure tech (Ankh, Jack Keane) with simple but quite effective character development on top. The combat is quite to the point and surprisingly direct, meaning it feels dynamic and kicks ass without being brutal.

The international reviews are completely off track, IMO. The game mechanics work well, Venetica has personality and a fresh, attractive setting. The German loca is great (but the English one probably less so, I suspect), bugs are under control in the patched up version.
So this is an 80% game, +/- a bit for the loca. Just don't expect anything else than a story-driven action-RPG in medieval Venice. Combat is generally against small groups of opponents. The 5 or so boss fights are well done, there's always a timely hint how to win the fight. And don't let the comic graphics fool you. Venetica is no comedy.

Myrthos played the XBox conversion. He wrote that the port is solid. So while it might not be as good as the PC version or the slightly improved PS3 version there shouldn't be a reason to outright avoid it.
 
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It looks actaully pretty good.How deep is the story.
 
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Reviews always seem to be harsh on indie/smaller/non-US developers while conveniently overlooking flaws of AAA big US developer games. That's why I ingore them. Plus originality and doing something different scores a lot of points in my book just for even trying. I'm also pretty lenient on voice acting. I don't need Star Trek or Stargate actors just as long is it's passable and not completely awful.

Anyway, I caved and just ordered the boxed copy (PC) on Amazon. It's only $20 US and if you add another $5 or more worth of items to your cart the shipping is free.
 
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The combat is quite to the point and surprisingly direct, meaning it feels dynamic and kicks ass without being brutal.
I wish I wasn't so bad at timing slow weapons - the hammer is seriously fun.

The international reviews are completely off track, IMO. The game mechanics work well, Venetica has personality and a fresh, attractive setting. The German loca is great (but the English one probably less so, I suspect), bugs are under control in the patched up version.
Well, it's a native German game, so I'd hope the German localisation is good. :)

I'm from the UK and quite like the voice-acting - the sites that seem to have the most problem with it are US ones.

re: Bugs - I've found two so far - one NPC didn't register that I'd killed the things threatening him (fortunately only a sidequest), and I fell through one hole in the world in the inner city, but was able to free myself by swimming around a bit.

And there's the spinny conversation bug where Scarlett faces away from whomever she's talking to, but that's pretty rare and doesn't affect anything except your screenshots.

And don't let the comic graphics fool you. Venetica is no comedy.
Oh, not at all, however, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have a sense of humour about it - for instance the bread Selling lady after you switch the fountain back on - 'Bread. Bread. Slightly soggy bread because some idiot started the fountain up. Bread', or Scarlett telling the street sweeper lady, 'These boots are made for walking'.

re: The Story

It doesn't seem to be doing anything very complicated, but it's engagingly told, the NPCs are entertaining and the main character is likable.
 
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It looks actaully pretty good.How deep is the story.
I agree with pretty much everything Madcat wrote.
You're playing Death's Daughter. For dramatic reasons she's the only one who can stop the bad guy from doing very bad things. She has some special powers, etc. Standard fantasy stuff from there.
What lifts it above average are a few ironic remarks here and there, a couple of relatively interesting NPCs and one plot twist which I didn't see coming. So no great story, but quite okay. A few scenes degrade to soap opera niveau, but fortunately this happens rarely.

What should be mentioned is that the main character is attractive. It's a pleasure to look at Scarlet in her custom fit armor. She looks classy and in the game's context believable, while she neither has to wear battle bikinis nor s/m clothes.

For what it's worth, I'm also a slow player these days. In my younger days I'd marathon through games in no time but now a single game will usually take me quite some time to complete.
Venetica is ca. 25-30 hours long if you also do optional stuff like treasure hunting. My first run through took slightly longer, but since then Deck 13 has added two independent quicksaves. This speeds things up quite a bit.

I wish I wasn't so bad at timing slow weapons - the hammer is seriously fun.
I liked the hammer too. It's the old rock, paper, scissors thing though. The hammer is most effective against a certain kind of opponent.

The original release version had a number of serious bugs. Some even made it necessary to leave the game.
 
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Can you do a DragonAge and have her run around in her panties.
 
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No, but I'm sure that there's a mod for that.

One of the later sets of armor is more revealing if that's what you like.
 
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Awesome videos - you've convinced me to try the game!
 
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Yes, great videos.

The voice acting is a whole level weaker than in the German version. How would you guys rate the voice acting in these vids? It sounds okay to me. Mediocre but still okay.
 
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Glad you like the videos, and I hope the people who're going to try the game enjoy it as much as I have been.

re; The voice acting - hmm - it does vary, for instance Scarlett and Benedict and the Undead Five have had a lot more attention paid to their voices than more incidental NPCs - I think what saves it is that so far, nothing important has been horribly over-acted. No-one's hamming it up.

And here's a moment from the Quest for Sidequests that made me laugh...

I can see the 4th wall from here...
 
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I'm happy to see that other people enjoyed this game. It wasn't great, but it was clearly made with a lot of passion and heart, and I though that it was a reasonably solid "RPG-lite" action-adventure title. For some reason, it was simply enjoyable to play despite its shortcomings. I really hope Deck 13 gets another crack at the RPG genre with either a follow up to Venetica or a different game-world.
 
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I really hope that - if they manage to do it - that they'll use a different engine, then.

Their adventure game called "Haunted" will now be finally be published by dtp, I see, after quite an Odyssey.

I played the game on the Games Com in 2009, there at the booth of HMH Interactive, the game's publisher of then, and in 2010 at the booth of JoWood, who wanted to publish the game within the next months … And now it seems that dtp has finally bought its rights from the remains of JoWood … And I'm glad about it … The game is about a young girl, who works together with 3 different ghosts who have all their special abilities the other ghosts do ot have. In the section I played at both Games Com's, she was trapped inside of a building of an insane (?) woman a scientist ? and the girl has to escape from there. The setting is that of the Victorian Era in London, as far as I can remember.
 
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Deck 13 is working on two action-RPGs. One we won't cover (a Moorhuhn license title) and one still unannounced game for a bigger publisher. They indeed have new multi-platform tech now.
 
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Ah, yes, that Moorhuhn thingy … I didn't remember Deck 13 does that …
 
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Gameswelt TV had a couple of developer portraits during the summer. Among them PB, Spellbound and Deck 13. Pretty interesting stuff.
 
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