Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

I remember playing this gaming when I was in high school and then replaying it throughout college. Even though this game was buggy and needed the fan-made patches, it was still a good game overall with rich storytelling, fascinating lore, intriguing characters, good dialogue, and challenging (in an enjoyable way) combat. What makes this game truly great is its replayability. There are so many ways to solve quests: you can be the muscle and fight your way through or be the charmer who talks your way out.

With the latest unofficial patch this game is now remarkably stable. The gameplay reminds me quite a bit of the first Deus Ex. The story is complex, characters are mostly well fleshed out, there are often multiple ways of completing quests, each with different rewards and sometimes different consequences. Voice actors are mostly good and I actually wanna hear them narate their dialog instead of skipping through it. The graphics are holding up surprisingly well. This is the first iteration of the Source Engine, texture resolution and polygon count are a bit low, but lighting and sound are atmospheric and character's faces are well done. The game includes the basic unofficial patch. The plus patch can be downloaded here for instance: http://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4647/7/ (you may have to open the download link in a new tab for it to work)

If you're not blinded by nostalgia, no amount of hype will live past what this game does wrong. It's still a good piece of entertainment, I'd say, just not worth the flawless 5-star status it enjoys on GOG. Then again, this is GOG, so reviewing games based on rose-tinted glasses is to be expected.

Amazing game. Great story, great characters. Great game even for people who never heard about vampire the masquerade tabletop RPG. REcommended

I have played this game over and over again. I literally have the T-shirt, has Jeanette on the fron and scares children. Has The game is beautiful and ghothic and poetic in bloody depravity. Art somehow still holds up. Completely different playstyles written for, different approaches for everything. Want to be a emo goody 2 shoes like every other game? good. Want to be a nilistic bastard laying bodies in every dark ally? let LA burn. Someone needs to hunt down everyone who ever worked for Troika and force them to make a sequal.