Venetica

Just finished Fallout after 2 months 220+ hours and went right into Venetica.

I was in a gaming mood, I'll be off work till Monday, and I didn't want to wait until either Jan 11 for the US Venetica release date or end of January for 2worlds2. So I went to Gogamer, and purchased 3 games for the Priority Mail deal and got the game after only a 2 day wait. (btw, its arrival coincided with finishing Fallout)

What a gaming culture shock. After the contemporary near photo realism of Fallout Vegas, I go to a cartoony type fantasy world of Venetica. And I love it. Yes the game has some rough spots and threads very closely to Aracania, at least in the opening but I am having a ball.

With the Euru/UK version out now and the US version coming in 2 weeks, I thought it would be good to have a central place to post some comments instead of posting in the occasional news thread.

I started V, got stuck in a battle/choke point I just couldn't win and then F:NV and 2W2 both arrived, so I haven't looked at it in ages. Until I got stuck, I was enjoying it. I HATE choke point battles, especially when you win the first and then the enemy transforms into something even tougher while you are at half health or something!!

I haven't got to the point yet where I can ditch the game. If I don't ditch the game on the first day, then it is usually around the 25 hour mark. If I get stuck after that and I'm liking the game, then its off to the Internets to get some help.

Well, 10 hours in and not a single crash. And after enduring crashes in Fallout Vegas on a very regular basis, this gaming sure feels nice. Ran into my first boss last night and it was very similar to the final boss in Risen. Venetica took out the Arcadyness and it was no where near as frustrating as the Risen final boss.

Hard to believe the game was only 30 bucks. It's at least as good as Arcania. (this is not a slam, I liked Arcania)

Originally Posted by Dajjer
Hard to believe the game was only 30 bucks.

[Cynism]Go and say thnk you to the publisher who was not interested in giving this game a much better start …[/Cynism] Personally, I find it sad that some games are just sold as low-price games in the american market or not at all, just because some publishers there don't believe they fit in there … [Cynism]Meanwhile we here get every trash at full price.[/Cynism] Drakensang was a similar case. THQ was said to have sold it as a low bughed or mid-price game, just because it isn't so much "action-oriented" as the publishers seem to believe all of the public (read : the buyers) want gmes to be … Meanwhile e get overflooded with action trash and non-trash here, because the U.S. based publishers firmly believe that we - the customers of overseas - should behave exactly like american customers regarding game/genre preferrence …
Okay, enough ranted for today …

When the gaming industry started getting ruled by the suits everything changed. Fortunately, there are still enough small game developers out there that want to do their own thing and give us games like Witcher and Venetica.

I earlier stated that this game was not epic. I might be wrong about that. I'm 15 hours in and have not even gotten into the main city. I can easily see anohter 5 hours doing some quest around the outer town.

Additionally, the game world is huge, but not in the ordinary sense. This game basically takes place in one city, Venice. But the city is huge. Any old time gamers remember an RPG called Alternate Lives? That game took place in only one city and was very very playable. Venetica is sorta like Alternate Lives only 10 gaming generations beyond. And actually even more playable.

The combat system is "almost" too hand eye. Almost, but thus far this hand eye challenged gamer is making it through. And there are a massive amount of nice touches in this game that continue to surprise. I should be really jaded after playing Fallout Vegas, what I deem a masterpiece. But I am not.

Looks like snow in my neck of the wood today, so back to some glorious gaming. Unless the family makes me put on some DVDs

Originally Posted by Dajjer
When the gaming industry started getting ruled by the suits everything changed.

Yes. Just take a look at what happened with the Games Workshop.

I loved this game, here some of my feelings click On the page two is a little conclusion and I tried to keep it as spoiler-free as possible.

One of the pleasant surprises in Venetica are difference between sword, moonblade, hammer/waraxes. I liked. And I'm sure going to make at last two more playthrough with different styles.

Somehow I would like to get sequel to venetica (I know, impossible but man has got to have dreams).

Being a modder for many years i had a friend over seas send me a copy of Venetica. I loved this game, hard to explain why, probably for the same reasons i love the Divinity 2 series, lots of character. They could have made Venice a bit more epic in allowing all map areas to be explored. I remember thinking, it would be really cool if i had access to that area or those houses or wondering where a bridge may go that i cannot access. But it didn't take too much away from the experience. This is a game i will certainly play again and i reccomend it highly. It's a FAR cry better than Arcania IMO mostly due to the simple FUN factor.

Go get it!!

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Yes. Just take a look at what happened with the Games Workshop.

I understand if this is directed at their horrible approach to their fanbase by suing everyone and anything that is related to the Warhammer World (sometimes even people who sold GW products, bastards), but as for the game itself I really don't understand the whining I'm hearing about GW. Although, they just released a whole bunch of new Skaven miniatures so I'm pretty happy with them right now

Their games are not that bad. I love Mordheim. I don't get to play WFB at all anymore and W40k sucks compared to WFB. Although W40k is by far the more popular one. Seems to do well in America while WFB does well in Europe.

Oh well, they might go the route of TSR if they keep it up and then hopefully someone like Wizards of the Coast will pick them up and revitalize the hobby (WOTC before they sold out).

@Corwin are you talking about the first boss monster you face? It's a little difficult, but just concentrate on those tentacles when they come down and then when she transforms just stay out of her way when she attacks and go crazy on her when she isn't.

I think in most boss fights it's relatively obvious where the weak spot is. They aren't that hard if you stay in motion and drink a potion once in a while. Absolutely no comparison to Risen's boss fight.

Remember, fast clicky action is not my thing; I'm a SLOW player. I tried for over an hour to get past that fight and couldn't. I plan to ask my son to play that fight for me sometime; he's good at that stuff and then I will continue the game.

I'm not much of a fast hand-eye coordination player either. I'm too old and worn out. It's why I play RPGs. Leave the twitchy stuff for the youngsters.

Maybe I'll play it on Easy, if that'll help. I noticed Mora did that and seemed to enjoy the game a lot. I'm an old fart like Corwin, so I don't want to subject myself to too much frustration. I might soil my plastic diapers.

Level up the weapon style that causes damage to spirits…can't remember off hand which one that was. It was a dagger I think, but I had that thing as high as I could go because I knew it would come in handy with a lot of things that weren't affected by my magic.

When I hit that monster it did considerable more damage than if I had only put a point or two into it.

It really sucks that you're stuck at that part. Once you get past that the world really opens up.

Not to worry, While still playing F:NV and TW2, I downloaded G2:Gold (from Steam) to see if it would work in Win7 64 bit (my old version didn't). 87 hours later I'm still in chapter 2.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
I understand if this is directed at their horrible approach to their fanbase by suing everyone and anything that is related to the Warhammer World

This is exactly how I meant it.

Plus, I heard that they increased the prices, too.

Originally Posted by Corwin
Not to worry, While still playing F:NV and TW2, I downloaded G2:Gold (from Steam) to see if it would work in Win7 64 bit (my old version didn't). 87 hours later I'm still in chapter 2.

Well, you certainly couldn't pick a better game (G2) to replay. Absolutely the best game ever. I seldom replay games but G2 was one of the few I replayed. Never replaying is why I put in 220 hours into Fallout Vegas. I explore everything, do all quests, try to maximize stats. Most games don't have much left after I do all that. But Gothic is not most games.

@Gorath
The 1st boss in Venetica is no where near as frustrating and game world changing as that boss in Risen, but beating it pretty much involved the same type of strategy.

my update
I am over 25 hours in, I have beaten two bosses and the 3rd one should be coming up soon. I am really enjoying this game. There are some problems with the game of course (no jumping, not open world, a tiny tad too twitchy for your standard RPG, but WOW, what a first effort by these guys.

I hope they do more RPGs because they are clearly on the right track. RPGs have come from action guys, FPS guys and RTS guys but this may be one of the first RPGs to come from Adventure guys. I really like this style.

Actually, the brilliant Quest for Glory series came from an adventure background.

That's true. I forgot about that one probably because Quest for Glory never really seemed like an RPG to me, just a adventure game with minimal RPG elements. But thanks for the refresher heads up.

However, I really like Deck 13's take on the RPG genre. If they build on Venetica they can be an RPG house to watch out for.

The only real drawback seems to be that they use a ressource-intensive engine.

Just defeated my third boss. The first run through took me around an hour and I just gave up. One of the problems/bugs was the boss monster was dropping something and my character could not un-equip to pick it up.

There was another problem/bug if I died during the boss encounter, when I resurrected the weapon I died with was no longer available.

The final problem/bug that had me quit, was during the battle, after the boss creature flew back in the air, I was no longer able to attack. It was then I figured the game got stuck in some kind of bug loop. After some research and a quick machine reboot I got back into the game and beat the end boss in less than 2 minutes.

I refuse to complain about the one bug because the game has been very stable.