Venetica

Venetica is an action role-playing game . The game was developed by the German developer Deck13 and distributed by the publisher dtp entertainment .

action

"The office of death " is filled again at regular intervals . The next "death" was supposed to be a certain Victor. However, he had previously engaged in the forbidden arts of necromancy , which is why he was denied the office of death, which he considered to be his birthright. Out of frustration and revenge, he decided to wipe out humanity. Through a ritual and a loophole in the laws of death, he and four of his subjects became undead . The laws of death no longer apply to them. The four servants of Victor have specific tasks:

The princess: She leads the order of assassins . Victors indomitable opponents are to be killed by them.
Hector: He masters maritime trade. With him a trade monopoly should be achieved. His troops are Persian soldiers.
Chiamara: The African Juma princess has necromantic powers and a large number of warriors.
The Doge : He rules Venice and can, if necessary, cede his rights to the others.

The present death broke the rules and fathered his daughter Scarlett with a woman shortly before taking up office. Without her knowledge, she has almost the powers of death. Scarlett is taken to a mountain village to grow up there. She doesn't know her origin. Assassins attack the mountain village. After the attack is repulsed, Scarlett learns of their origins and skills. After finding the lunar blade , an artifact that alone is capable of definitively killing undead creatures, Scarlett travels to Venice and kills the leader of the assassins, who is one of Victor's four servants.

The task now is to find out whether the Black Grimoire still exists. It should have been destroyed by the keeper Sophistus. The undead prince Victor needs the grimoire in order to realize his plans. Sophistus is taken to a Persian ship and killed when Scarlett finally gets through to him. Scarlett then kills the Persian commander, Hector, and sinks the ship. Scarlett now visits Sophistus' ghost in his house. He says he didn't destroy the grimoire. After Scarlett finds it, Scarlett burns it. The Black Grimoire is not destroyed, its “content” lives on in an intermediate world.

Chiamara puts a poisonous curse on Scarlett, which can only be lifted by the princess herself and which is otherwise fatal. Scarlett travels to Africa to pick it up. After a duel with Chiamara, Chiamara gives up and lifts the curse, so the poison is neutralized. She gives Scarlett an essence with which she can reach Victor. Scarlett defeats Victor in a fight in Venice. You, or optionally death, “kills” Victor for good.

Game world

Venice is based on the real Venice in the architectural style. The play world city consists of a total of four districts, which can be reached by land or via gondoliers :

Outer district: Mainly traders and the lower class of society live in it. There are catacombs under the Outer District.

Inner district: the middle class lives in it. There are only a few dealers here. In the south is the half-destroyed "High Cathedral". The ship of the Persian Armed Forces anchored in the south. There are catacombs under the Inner District.

Arsenal District: Only criminals live here. There is no city guard in this district. The network of streets is very ramified. There is a tavern, a brothel, a church and a kind of hospital here. Here ships are built for the Doge of Venice and brought into port. As long as this is done, the laws will not be enforced here. Catacombs are located under the Arsenal district.

Hafen: Compared to the other districts, it is very small and relatively poor in population. Ships anchor here with which Scarlett can travel to Africa in the Juma tribal land. The Juma tribal land is located in Africa. It's neglected and dried up. The Juma warriors and their princess Chiamara live here.

Well-known voice actors were hired for the dubbing, including Manja Doering (Scarlett), Claudia Urbschat-Mingues (Liora), Dennis Schmidt-Foss (Benedict) and Lutz Riedel (death).

Game principle and technology

Scarlett has three energy bars:

Life energy (reduced in case of damage; can be regenerated by "resting" and food / potions)
Mental energy (is required for spells; can be regenerated by "refreshing" and herbs / potions)
Shadow energy (required for the transition into the shadow realm; can be charged by the moon blade and poison mushrooms)

There are four types of weapons that Scarlett can use:

the moon blade
Swords
Hammers and Axes
Spears

Each type of weapon attacks at different speeds and has combination attacks, which Scarlett can only learn in the course of the game.

In addition, Scarlett can learn "Spiritual Skills":

passive, such as B. speaking to ghosts
active, such as B. a poison cloud

The shadow world exists parallel to the normal world. Scarlett can get into this through an ability. In this, opponents cannot see you, but Scarlett himself sees the rest of the world. Here Scarlett can talk to ghosts in certain places. Scarlett enters hidden rooms through portals of the dead, which are only visible in the shadowy world. There is a time limit for staying in this world. If this is exceeded, Scarlett automatically reappears in the normal world. In order to get back into the shadow world, the ability has to regenerate. This happens after a few seconds.

Only the moon blade can ultimately kill undead creatures. If Scarlett kills with the blade, whatever the enemy, it charges the "shadow energy". With this shadow energy, Scarlett can die a maximum of seven times, depending on the game progress. When Scarlett dies, she immediately wakes up in the shadow world and receives 50 percent of her life energy back.

Production notes

Venetica was released for Windows in September 2009 and shortly afterwards for the Xbox 360 . A PlayStation 3 version only followed in 2010.

reception

As part of the German developer award 2009 Venetica received the audience award “Best German Action Game 2009”.

Venetica was generally rated positively by the trade press . So forgave PC Games 79% game, GameStar 83% and 4Players.de awarded 80 out of 100 possible points. The Computer Bild Spiele gave Venetica the note 1.63, due to technical errors and bugs and the relatively high hardware requirements, however, led her through a devaluation to 3.25. Most of the bugs in Venetica were fixed with the two patches that appeared soon after the release . It is also worth mentioning that the second patch significantly upgraded the graphics. In addition, many bugs have been removed and improvements have been added (e.g. quick saves).

GameStar magazine called Venetica one of the “most remarkable German titles in recent years”.