Maybe because he is Czech? :P
Seriously though, I don't think that creators knew the meaning of many words they were using. Szlachta means "the nobility" in Polish, and I had a good laugh when the voice actor tried to pronounce "Vaclav".

Uuu I knew it sounds kinda like 'Šlechta'! You're probly right, there were just trying to give it the Slovak 'feel' instead of thinking about it

This game is pretty terrible.
The combat system is boring as hell - you hold the mouse button down and your sword passes directly through the enemy's chest, but the game seems to think you missed. In the one in 10,000 chance that the game registers your hits enough that the enemy is going to die soon, the enemy will walk away from you, making your attacks useless since you have to stand completely still to attack.If you're lucky, the enemy will get stuck in a wall long enough for you to kill it finally.
Your retard AI squad mates are the least helpful people on earth. If they're not getting in your way and making it harder to navigate, they're killing themselves by casting 10 unnecessary spells (I shit you not - you can die from casting your spells) on every rat you fight. Unfortunately, you can't just leave them to rot, because you need them to absorb hits while you miss your swing for the 80th time.
But wait! When you're not struggling to navigate the dungeons without getting stuck in the furniture, you'll be talking to people! Oh boy, will you be talking to people. For a LOOONG time. That wouldn't be so bad, but the dialog is stupid and silly because they have random olde english words thrown in hither and thither which in my mind is worse than if the old timey peasants were calling you their 'brosef'. Verily.
I'm gonna go inject as many drugs as I can directly into my frontal lobe in the hopes that I can forget wasting my money on this crap.I can only hope that this post saves some guy $6.00, which he in turn spends on a lottery ticket and wins the jackpot. That's about as probable as actually landing a hit in this game, anyways.

It seems that your expectations were a little bit too high for a game released in 2000.
I remember having a very good time with this game a while back. I enjoyed the setting, the story, the weapons, the spells and the levels were looking very good too. Indeed, the party is not very smart mainly just rushing into enemies and this can be frustrating, but it is not a major problem. I can only conclude that this kind of game is not for you. And 6$ it's not a fortune, most people can afford to buy a lottery ticket AND this game

About party members casting unnecessary spells - that is what Coterie AI Options in options menu are for.

Exactly.

Just a *bit* harsh on a decade old videogame, I think it's aged particularly well given that I'd never played it (bar the demo, back in the day) before.
"the dialog is stupid and silly because they have random olde english words thrown in hither and thither"
I really didn't see the problem with this. It's a clich� pen and paper based RPG title, the dialogue is hardly out of place.

IIRC, Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption was one of the first games to use the Quake III engine when it became licensed (though I've read in other places that it used a modified version of the Quake II engine). That would in part explain the dated graphics.

Apparently it uses the Nod Engine. No, I've never heard of it before either.

You probably found out by now but I think I should clarify. I just reinstalled the game and what I said was correct, but you need to check "auto repeat attack" option in controls menu.
And about NOD engine - this is what I found:
http://www.planetvampire.com/info/engine/
Apparently it wasn't used in any other game (at least not under that name). Even official Nihilistic Software website doesn't use that name under game page any more.

Huh, I guess you learning something new every day.

It's a 10 year old game. As far as these things go, it's quite good, even today. Great music, too. At the time, player controlled party based combat in 3d was pretty ahead of its time. That and NWN are my favorite action/RPGs from the era. At the time, the graphics were very, very nice too. The dialogue is, admittedly, somewhat cliched genre stuff, but you can't have it all.
Also, you suck at this game. Use the AI options. Every semi-real-time party-based game from KOTOR on has most of the same problems as this game. I don't think that's a major failing. Additionally, like in the Elder Scrolls series and DnD games like NWN, you miss more at low skill levels. It's not actually a real-time game.
Granted the game goes down a bit when you get guns, but eh. Good effort.
Nitpick. "Hither and thither" are not "Old English". They're Early Modern English (though I suppose you could make an argument for late middle). "Hider" and "Thider" are the equivalent words in Old English (and most of Middle).

Yeah, it's news to me too. Although I think a game a lot like this did use an id tech engine.

LOL what's the big issue... I sucked almost 99.5% enemies in the entire game to death and I am not complaining... I had so much fun playing it, taunting, mesmerizing all the idiots and traveling through all the stages from medieval till the modern city. As for the AI, what I did was put them on hold everywhere i went, so I focused on only my main hero, Christof? In the times where I actually attacked, pretty much nothing stood in my way.