Venetica for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

Game started out well enough, until it locked..no autosave feature.
Combat is easy and repetitive, while the graphics are worthy of last generation consoles.

I really did try to keep an open-mind while playing this game. I know it can be very expensive to develop a game and the market for them can be brutal. However, this game turned out to be a textbook example of how not to make a game.
I'll start with the graphics. There are reviews that comment on this and they are not exaggerated. To say they are out-dated is something of an overstatement. It reminded me of the first Fable if it were done in the cheapest way possible.
Combat was clumsy and awkward. I felt like it was trying to copy mechanics of a bad Sega Genesis game. You progress through the game gathering XP to spend on skills that help in combat, but you also need to find trainers to unlock these skills. I truly feel that it is odd I have to find a trainer in order to perform a simple block. Apparently you need someone to tell you to move out of the way of sharp metal objects.
The story and quests are completely generic. The story actually opens with your town being attacked by faceless mercenaries. This is something that used to occur in games until players complained about seeing it in every game. To make matters worse: you are then faced with several fetch missions.
The dialog is so amateurish I found myself laughing unintentionally. It really came off as sounding like the developers found people off the street and recorded them. Think of everyone sounding like a bad William Shatner impression, but none of these people were intending to sound like him. Then you have the odd sound glitches that should have been caught in the first stages of testing. There are several times dialog will overlap and you'll hear two people speaking at once and not be able to understand either.
In all it just seems like the developers didn't know what they were doing or didn't care. It has been a long time since I played a game this bad.