Venetica: Gold Edition (PC) Review

It's telling that the nearly unanimous word on Venetica: Gold Edition is that Scarlett is a very likable protagonist. Delivering a female protagonist who stood on her own feet, never needed to be rescued, and wasn't sexualised to the point where men felt dirty just for playing (think Final Fantasy X-2), Venetica very much deserved the benefit of the doubt. That's what makes it so terribly disappointing: generally, people want to love the game, and it then does everything possible to ensure that no one does.

A significant chunk of playtime consists of fighting enemies with one of four different weapon types, and combat is reminiscent of the Dark Souls games, albeit much easier. A customisable hotbar allows spells and combat manoeuvres to be used at the press of a button, but Venetica fails to provide reasons to actually use these abilities. There is a rhythm to combat, which can be learned and exploited; enemies are stunned during a combo, so Scarlett can wail on them until they die, without fear of counterattack. When there actually is a counterattack, a simple press of the Spacebar causes Scarlett to roll out of the way and only take half damage if she is struck, and then the process of smashing the enemy into jelly can resume.

Venetica: Gold Edition varies between passable and great until Venice is reached, at which point everything slows to a crawl and becomes the ipso facto standard by which tedium is measured. The city is massive, nearly every door can be entered, side-quests are dropped repeatedly, and the main quest of the game falls into obscurity. The journal offers no real help on most of these quests, and tracking quests on the map is a hit-and-miss affair that sometimes fails to function at all.

All of these side-quests revolve around finding some thing or some group of things, killing them, and then returning to the person who gave the quest for a paltry amount of experience points. These quest givers might also give ducats, the in-game currency, but Scarlett doesn't have a problem finding gold and there's nothing worth purchasing anyway. To add an extra dose of realism, every slain humanoid drops its weapon (and many drop their armour), and selling these weapons provides Scarlett with all the gold she needs.

Of course, no action RPG loaded to the brim with MMO-style side-quests would be complete without an inconsequential levelling system, and Venetica: Gold Edition certainly has one of those: in fact, it's so irrelevant that it's easy to forget levels have been gained, resulting in stat points not being distributed until a dozen of them has been done. At each new level, thirty Skill Points (SP) and three Ability Points are earned. The Skill Points are used at different vendors to purchase new melee or magical skills, and the Ability Points are used to increase one of Scarlett's primary attributes, such as Strength or Wisdom. Whether these have any impact on combat is anyone's guess, but it certainly seems that the stat changes don't have any noticeable effect. The same is true of the spells: aside from the moments when the plot requires a specific spell be used, none of the magic is ever worthwhile.

Venetica: Gold Edition is extremely disappointing, and that's without getting into the frequent crashes. Talking to a particular merchant might cause a crash, opening the menu during a cut-scene might cause a crash, and any number of random acts might also cause a crash. It is advised to save frequently, which makes the lack of a Quick Save button more lamentable than it otherwise would be.