Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

I played this on the PC once and enjoyed it. I also had the chance to play a poor mac port that had constant crashing among other issues. I really want a good mac port of this. Still a highly recommended game with all the bugs.

In the beginning it shows promise (assuming you're using community patches like the ones that come with the GOG edition here). Wow! So many different dialogue trees and level triggers in the missions. So much freedom to play the character you want. Then you hit the Warrens. Er, OK... Maybe that was just a brief faltering. It'll be back to itself in no time. Backtracking, backtracking, backtracking... Oh that's weird, I guess the hub is just cut down to Steve Blum doing an accent at me... Then WHAM! Two end dungeons and bosses that aren't even worthy of being called amateurish. I am 0% surprised Troika went out of business after this. The end sequence can only be described as absurd. This is not game design. This is not what a good RPG, imm sim or FPS look like, and it's certainly not what a good brawler looks like. It's not what anything good looks like. Good on you guys for enjoying it but this thing is simply bad. Amazingly bad: 1. Half the game is backtracking and fetch quests 2. Combat is terrible and unwieldy no matter your stats 3. Character progression is almost entirely numeric and not interesting 4. Everyone gets locked in to (an almost impossible, think Sekiro hard) combat ending 5. Characters exist only to give one quest and maybe make a reappearance later for, what... closure? 6. Bugs, even with years of fan cleanup The whole game is set up to annoy you. You guys are certainly showcasing your, er, mental fortitude by rating it this highly. I'm giving it a low 2/5, just because I was entertained in the beginning. God (or Caine? I guess?) help you guys if the sequel comes out after 100 years and is even close to this one in quality. Because I'm guessing more layoffs will follow.

It was amazing in every single way as long as it lasted but then missions started to bug and I can't turn them in. So long... I know people love this game and I can already see why, but when a game breaks like that it annoys me more than it pleases me so for me it has to be rated bellow average as it is.

This it.

Back in the days, I loved the original tabletop game. And when Redemption came out? MAN, I was instantly in love with it. The dark streets of old Prague, “modern” London and, as the main dish, the ability to drink blood. Sure, it wasn't the first game to do that (everybody should remember at least Blood Omen), but with all that fancy 3D and atmosphere-oriented gameplay, it was just way too special. Obviously I've waited for Bloodlines. One of my biggest complains about the Redemption was the fact that player never actually had a choice. He was forced to join Brujah clan, while yours truly always had a soft place for Toreador guys. Anyway, Bloodlines came out and... I hated it. With passion. Sure, character creation was there and it wasn't that bad. The problem is – the game itself was unbearable. And not because it was REALLY buggy, but because the game felt lacking and level design was absolutely horrible. See, Bloodlines is a small game. Don't expect it to offer huge levels to you. But at the same time it can confuse the heck out of you so you can spend a lot of time just wandering between some annoying pipes, trying to figure out how they work. The game also doesn't have enough optional stuff. Sure, Redemption didn't have optional quests at all, but see, there's a big difference between the games with no proper character customization and the games with full character customization. Bloodlines feels like there's just not enough room to use your powers. And it sure isn't Planescape: Torment. Which means that nobody cares that you're a good talker. You'll still need to shoot. A LOT. And that's my biggest problem. The game doesn't really bring FPS element to RPG genre. It brings RPG element to FPS and ruins it. At the end, Bloodlines feels a lot like a bad FPS with many uncomfortable details that don't even feel at home here. Mix it with lack of optional quests, small maps and horrible level design, and you'll get it why I've never ever liked this game.