Venetica is a like a rough cut gem. There is something of value there; it just needs some polish to make it shine.
Art direction - There is a consistent theme throughout the world. Adding theart to the creative and interesting architecture only helps to makeexploration a treat. There is none of the overblown HD graphics here. Peoplewith weaker systems should be able to play it. The only real issue is thelack of polish. There are spots of misaligned textures, places where you cansee the seams between terrain textures, and not enough character skins forthe population. Most of the time I was having too much fun playing to noticethe flaws.
Stability - I played through the entire game on a Win 7 x64 system with aquad core chip. The game crashed once. There was a lot of lag at one pointbut that was due more to playing for several hours then any serious failingon the developer's part. When I came back the next day and reloaded the samesave game the lag was gone.
Story - Standard save the world RPG storyline. However, there are at leasttwo ending. (They advertise three). This is where Deck 13 gets bonus points.The ending you see depends on how you act throughout the entire game. UnlikeSingularity or Jedi Academy, where it is just a flip of the coin, themultiple endings in Venetica give you a reason to replay.
Bonus points - Scarlett's armor. Deck 13 designed several outfits forScarlett that look function as well as sexy. There is no trashy sex sellsnonsense here. They even managed to make plate armor look good. Personally Ithink the Persian and African armors are stone cold ugly but the sourcematerial only allows for some much room to tweak.
The vibrant world combine with fluid combat mechanics make the game wellworth a play through. I really hope Deck 13 makes more RPGs. We could usemore that are not as super serious like the games made by Bioware. Seeingwhat they did here I would love to see Deck 13 take a shot at a story thatdoes not follow the usual save the world routine. There is potential for itto end up as a classic on par with Planescape: Torment.