Venetica (2009)

Played a good 2h of this today, and honestly it has some potential despite a bit of jank.

My first good impression was that this 2009 game has 1440p ultrawide support out of the box, which is not even a given with modern games. Woohoo! Thanks to that and to some smooth framerate, visually it looks pretty nice overall despite its age. The main character's model looks fine, and the NPCs look a bit more cartoony, but not in a bad way.

So far, the jankiest part is the combat. At some point, I was fighting a group of around 5 enemies,, while another group of 3 enemies were having a conversation a bit out of reach behind a low wall, but still very much in line of sight and earshot of my fight. After I killed everyone in the 1st group, I had low health and was destroyed by the 2nd group, which included a minor boss. Luckily, I saved between both groups, so I went back fully healed with a different approach. I got close enough so that only one of the two normal enemies followed me, which I killed easily. I went back to pull the 2nd enemy from the boss, but this time I triggered the "There she is!" cutscene. It did not matter, because I was still able to pull that 2nd enemy without the boss following me.

Combat against single opponents is very simple so far, you just click your mouse as fast as you can until the enemy randomly blocks you, and then you press the spacebar to roll to the side and you keep clicking. Sometimes they don't even block you or attack you, you just kill them by mashing the left mouse button. So yeah, very janky, but easy enough and finished quickly enough that it doesn't have time to bother me. It's still early to truly judge it though, so we'll see.

Audio is ok, with mostly good voice acting. My only gripe was a kinda intense waterfall background noise which you hear at some points in the village. It sounds like it's falling on your head, but you can't even see it.

Here's a few more random observations about these first two hours:

• There were a few "morality" choices, but I'm not sure if they have any effect whatsoever.
• One of the first quests you get is to find new clothes for the main character, because her dress is torn after the attack in the intro. You need to get them from the blacksmith who has a daughter around the same age. The clothes you get are pretty cool (the main costume from most screenshots and artwork), but I couldn't help but wonder why the MC only had a single white dress to her name. Maybe I wasn't paying attention during an early line of dialogue?
• The chickens run at a lower framerate than the rest of the game, which is funny.
• There was a puzzle with four switches in the wall to open a fireplace. Logically, I thought "they need to be used in a certain order, there's probably hints somewhere, but I'll try a random order first". Against all odds, I got it right on the first try. Now I'll live the rest of my life wondering "Am I awesome? Or would any other order have worked"?