“Venetica” is an action role-playing game from German developer DTP Entertainment. While it boasts some fairly impressive features, it seems to be missing a certain something to makes it special.

The game starts out with Scarlett, the unwitting and at the time unknowing daughter of death, professing her love for her squeeze, Benedict. After a raid on their village, Scarlett has to protect herself and ultimately loses Benedict to the invaders. It is here that she learns that she is the daughter of Death, who in this game is a physical being.

The story is set up to be quite amazing, but it really takes a while to get going. From the outset, the player can choose to make their quest one of redemption for Benedict, revenge or even a quest for answers. This only really changes the dialogue trees in the game, however.

This brings up the voice acting: it’s pretty bad. The main character’s voice actress and her inflection is usually dead on however, and adds a bit of believability.

On the combat side, it’s pretty standard fare, focusing on timing based attacks and dodging out of the way. It seems a bit on the clunky side at first, but once the player gets the hang of the combat form, it’s rewarding to take on something that could probably eviscerate the game’s petite heroine. Once the player finds the Moon Blade, or Death’s scythe blade, Scarlett can resurrect if she has enough of the game’s twilight energy. Twilight energy can only be replenished by using the Moon Blade, which always makes it the game’s go-to weapon.

Any weapons in your inventory can be switched fairly quickly, and each can have their own special attributes placed on them. For example, if Scarlett gets lost, she can switch to her war hammer and use the “Raven’s Path” spell to find her way. Using the weapons as spell pages is beneficial and necessary once the adventure really gets going.

Gaining abilities is fairly interesting, as the game will have Scarlett seeking out certain people to train her physical or mental skills. Later on, Scarlett can even learn a block maneuver that adds another notch to the relatively shallow combat. It’s a welcome and rewarding ability.

The game can be completed around 15 hours, and is rather beefy for a game nowadays. It features an enjoyable heroine and a journey of self-discovery, even if some of the quests are shallow. The game also seems to use a few annoying game lengthening techniques, but is overall tolerable.

The title’s graphical issues are quite easy to fix, but take the player out of the immersion quite often. The game’s scenery is gorgeous, and the lighting effects add another layer to the game’s day and night cycle. Unfortunately, the non-player characters seem to have gotten the short end of the stick as they are hideous and blotchy. Scarlett and the enemies are in high-def, but it seems like an interesting choice.

Still, the game is enjoyable, and for those that are looking for a casual role-playing experience, it will be rewarding. Those looking for depth will be rather disappointed.