Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

This is a legendary game.

I feel sorry for anyone who was introduced to VTM with Bloodlines. Redemption is FAR superior. The character development system is so much better. The items are more vast, you get a party to command. Great game. The only negative in the game is that you cannot do any form of random encounter with enemies. There is a set number of enemies to defeat, so make use of your experience gains wisely. This would make an excellent remake, and an excellent TV show.

First of all, GET IT! GET IT WITH THE COMMUNITY PATCH! Without the community patch it's not so good, buggy, but with... oh heaven. This is probably my favorite RPG ever along with Fallout2, Planescape: Torment and Arcanum. In fact, I place it second after Torment. The plot and characters in this game are nothing less than masterful. The atmosphere is something you just don't find in games anymore. It's incredibly, it's.. it's ALIVE. Everything fits perfectly within the theme, all the powers, the skills, the characters, the dialogue.. And the gameplay is among the best in RPGs. It's basically the deepest RPG possible, with a beautiful FPS engine for combat and exploration. Combat is intense, and you can stealth around if you like (gorgeous stealth kills also :), The skills all feed into the FPS system brilliantly, with weapons skills adjusting your bullet trajectory to be more accurate according to aim, etc. I don't want to say anything about the plot because it's simply so fun to go along with, so I shant. Basically, get it. It's one of the best games ever made. (Just make sure to get the community patch!)

First of all, this post is heavy with SPOILERS. Do not continue reading this if you do not want to be spoiled. You have been WARNED! Here are some of my random thoughts, in random and no particular order, on the game Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption. GRAPHICS. Superb for the year it was released (year 2000 if I am not mistaken). The disciplines give out nice animations. Characters' shadows and reflections in the mirrors are excellent touch. Although not applied to all objects, certain details are amusing. For example, I could see the Queen Elizabeth II's face on the pound notes dropped by my slain enemies in London, and later on in New York I could see that the money changes to dollar bills. CONTROLS. As I mentioned in the thread linked above, in the beginning I was annoyed with the lack of WASD keyboard controls of the game. Believe it or not, when I first started playing this game, the camera work gave me simulator sickness. Simulator sickness in a 3rd-person view instead of 1st-person (as in FPS), no less. Would you believe that?! But after a while I got used to it (and perhaps gaining allies like Wilhem and Serena early in the game helped me to adjust to the camera work), and in the end I could play for hours during the weekends. MUSIC SCORES. For the most part, the music scores are quite atmospheric and give the game a certain gothic feel, with the exception of the music score in Ardan's Chantry levels. The music score there is greatly annoying to the point of beyond redemption (pun intended). VOICE OVERS. I found no fault with the game voice overs. A few characters may have exaggerated a little, but I did not mind. Of course subtitles missing from a few cutscenes/videos were still a bit annoying. PATCH. Do not forget to patch the game before playing it. The patch will allow you to save anytime anywhere, a feature that was sorely missing in the retail game. REPLAYABILITY. This one I am not too sure. Although I enjoyed the game, I do not think I will replay it any time soon. I am sure multiplayer will give lots of replayability, but since I do not do multiplaying, I cannot comment on that. I may look out for the sequel though, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, provided I can get hold of the game. INVENTORY. Frankly the inventory slot sucks. It fills up much too soon, and items cannot re-arrange themselves to accomodate new item, although the space is still enough. It was annoying when Christof was alone, such as in the Society of Leopold. I had to backtrack just to collect the drops because the inventory is too limiting. LURING AND FEEDING. I overused Firestorm and Feed discipline spells in the game. In the first half, I had to rely on Serena for Firestorm to lure an enemy, and then Christof feed on it. In the second half of the game, Christof got powerful enough to do all the luring and feeding by himself. My only beef is that the luring and feeding can be too time consuming. About Firestorm, in the beginning it acted as the luring spell, but in the end it was one of my killing spell by itself. Did I mention I overuse this spell? COTERIE AI. Well, in the first half of the game, I cursed at my stupid allies for either getting in the way (I tried to feed on an enemy but ended up feeding on one of my own allies instead in the middle of chaotic click fest) or for casting powerful discipline spells (and wasting blood in the process) merely to fight an unworthy enemy such as a rat. But in the second half of the game when Christof got more powerful, I either went soloing (and only asked for my allies to rejoin me later) or no longer cared much for their actions (because by then discipline rings, blood rings/amulets, etc. made blood spending less important anyway). By the second half of the game, I either killed enemies alone from afar with Firestorm discipline spell, or let my allies hack them while I stood and rained them with the same spell. TRAINING (AND GETTING MONEY AT THE SAME TIME). I put just one dot in the Awaken discipline spell. When my party killed an enemy, if this enemy gives out good experience point, I then resurrected it with the Awaken discipline spell only to kill it again. Repeat the process, and I not only got much experience for my party but also enough drops for cash. My favorite enemies in this category are Setite Lords (500 experience points if I am not mistaken). I even did it with a few of the bosses (Werewolf and Underprince). The Underprince dropped diamonds almost everytime I killed him EXPERIENCE POINTS. It does not matter whether Christof went soloing or with his allies. I used Christof solo to kill a Setite Lord again and again, and Pink who just stood there without lifting his hand to help got experience points all the same. About Pink, since I knew he would leave the party (I read walkthrough), I did not bother to spend his experience points. By the time he left my party he had over 130,000 unspent experience points. OTHER DISCIPLINE SPELLS. Walk The Abyss is nice to have. Spirit's Touch is necessary if you do not want to buy its scrolls again and again. Torch is great for dark levels such as the Tower of London. It seems that people like Feral Claws, Potence, Call Lightning, Cloak Of Shadows, Fortitude, Theft Of Vitae, and Immolate; but I do not find them necessary. Celerity is a must, because Christof moves like a cement truck. Firestorm and Feed are my overused spells (did I mention that already?). Prison of Ice makes the two battles with the final boss, shall we quote Darth Vader and Kyle Katarn, "all too easy." STORY LOOSE ENDS. I wonder what happened to Serena? In New York, Wilhem did not mention about her and Christof did not bother to ask him about her. What happened to Etrius? He just escaped like that, and poor Erik was unavenged? What happened to Pink after he left? Maybe someone more familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade story can inform me about these?

If you came here looking for the other Vampires : The Masquarade game (Which is amazing and you should totally play), you're at the wrong place. Tefemption is a completely different game with a completely different story and gameplay, that came out several year earlier and its only connection with Bloodlines is the setting. I'm not going to dive into the story part of the game (Other reviews will tell you more, I'm just saying that it's good and does a great job at driving the game forward), as I'd rather talk about the gameplay. It's obvious from the start that Nihilistic was aiming for a game in the style of Diablo, although it ends up playing more like a Real-Time Baldur's Gate. If that doesn't ring a bell, think Dragon Age Origins without pause or The Witcher 1 with multiple characters, and you'll see what I mean : You need to control up to 4 characters at once (!) in a game which was obviously designed with multiplayer in mind, and the very simple AI just doesn't hold up to the complex task of replacing a human player, let alone 3. You'll need to micro-manage them constantly to make sure they don't run out of blood and potions every time you encounter a mob of rats, run into ranged enemies with a sword instead of luring them, attempt to shoot through walls (especially corners) or completely disregard area hazards like toxic gases or sun rays. These all appear to be oversights to designing the game to be played in multiplayer first and attempting to polish the engine over the content. The big issue with this is that what ends up being the main draw of the the game, the story, is only avilable in simgle player, and you need a mod to play it in multiplayer. One can certainly enjoy the game in SP (I know I have), but you'll run into each of those issues all the time, and it can wear you down after a while. I highly reccomand you mod the game with Age of Redemption to fet the MP campaign, if you plan to get this game.