YMMV / Venetica

• Catharsis Factor: Towards the end of the game, you get to summon the vengeful spirit of a previous city councilor, who delivers a truly majestic "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the current corrupt council members.
• Demonic Spiders: Grippers in the catacombs aren't particularly difficult to fight or dodge, but their claws are inexplicably more powerful than most of the enemies you're going to run into, dealing immense damage to your health bar. The only way you'd survive a sojourn into the catacombs is to never get hit.
• Fair for Its Day: At first glance, Princess Chiamaka and the Juma warriors seem to invoke some rather insensitive Darkest Africa stereotypes: their tribal land is even literally dark and full of monsters, as it's been corrupted by Victor. However, you later learn Chiamaka was forced to join forces with Victor to try and protect her people, making her an Anti-Villain. Moreover, she's the only boss you don't kill, as Defeat Means Friendship kicks in after Chiamaka realizes she and Scarlett are evenly matched and decides to help her. We last see Chiamaka working to restore her homeland, which has already started returning to normal, possibly pushing her to Hero of Another Story status. You can also trade with the Juma and participate in their fighting arena afterwards. All of this was still fairly uncommon in 2009 and a lot more nuanced than most games. The depiction of Hector and the Persians, in comparison, is far less charitable.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: The Venetian Doge has rather questionable taste in clothing.
• Follow the Leader: The game shares quite a few similarities with The Witcher, which came out a year earlier. They include the general design of Venetica city, split into several large hubs, and the way supernatural enemies need to be killed with a separate blade.
• Game-Breaker: Using the sword Zamazar's Wrath of the East and maxing out the Blood Toll spell. Zamazar's Wrath grants Mental Energy on a kill (regardless if the blade deals the killing blow or not,) and Blood Toll at max level heals for pretty much your entire health bar. And it's possible to abuse the game's mechanics and use Blood Toll to hit multiple enemies that are close together, despite being a single-target spell. Using both together effectively means you can heal with near impunity, and can easily top off your Mental Energy with basic combat. The thing stopping this from being too overpowered is that Blood Toll has a cooldown of 20 seconds.
  • The description of Venomous Eclipse implies that, at level one for example, you would deal 30 damage immediately, plus an additional 30 damage after ten seconds. However, it actually deals 30 damage per second for ten seconds, for a total of 300 damage. Normally, this is balanced by the fact that it has an immense energy cost, which is negated by the ZWotE. Fully upgraded, and with the ZWotE, you can deal 1430 damage every 2.5 seconds, which can kill any susceptible enemy in the game.
• Guide Dang It!: Several quests and fights will have the player pulling their hair out due to the obtuse presentation of information and janky mechanics. For instance, one quest has you look for a diary in a certain house... Unfortunately, all but a few doors (none of which are the one you're looking for) are labelled as anything other than "Room".
• Hate Sink: The Doge. He's a Fat Bastard Adipose Rex who spends most of his screen time stuffing his face with food and wine (in spite of being an undead monster than needs no sustenance), regularly dismisses the warnings and advice of his undead colleagues as Scarlett progresses in her mission, is hated by pretty much all of Venice due to his oppressive policies, even before he became undead and abused his new power; he rules with an iron fist using his corrupt Marauder guards, Hector's Persian mercenaries, Princess Chiamaka's Juma warriors, and the Mistress' assassins to subjugate and control the populace; and he's a sexist to boot, being particularly dismissive and despicable to the Princess by addressing her as if she's no more than an exotic prostitute.
  • To a lesser extent with Leon, Scarlett's half-brother. The kid suffers a serious inferiority complex and is always trying to prove himself just as capable or even better than Scarlett, despite her trying to keep him out of her adventures for his safety. And every time he reappears, he's either complaining about not being better than Scarlett at fighting or whatever, or he's acting like he already knows better than her. He's easily swayed by Victor, and is staunchly loyal to him and his Utopia Justifies the Means plan to destroy and reshape the world to his liking.
• Hero of Another Story: Princess Chiamaka could be seen as this, especially after her Heel–Face Turn. She was forced to collaborate with Victor and is dedicated to doing the best for her people and their land.
• Hollywood Homely: The people in Scarlett's home town seem convinced that she's pretty average, especially when compared to the apparently much hotter but never-seen blacksmith's daughter.
• Obvious Beta: The early versions of the game were littered with various low and mid-level bugs.
• Scrappy Weapon: The Moonblade itself. It's supposed to be for killing monsters, but it's far more practical as a finishing weapon because of how pitiful its damage is. Its final upgrade is overshadowed by mid-game swords. It doesn't help that it's the only weapon you can use within the spirit realm.
• So Okay, It's Average: Apart from the graphics and engine, there's nothing in the game you can look at and say 'this is wrong'. It's got decent action RPG gameplay, decent roleplaying, decent design... and yet it all adds up to a game that's just all right.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: As Graham and Paul of LRR mention in their Let's Play (which only lasted until the first boss fight), if it weren't for the poor interface and responsiveness and lack of polish (they made a point out of Dervish being spelled Derwish in a number of different places) a lot of the game would be pretty good. They mention it specifically in regards to the Mistress boss fight, which they thought was a pretty good idea on the whole let down by not giving the player any clue what to do during the first and last stages.

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