Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

Despite being an RPG fan and avid gamer for over 35 years, VtM: Bloodlines is a game I never got around to playing. As I'm on a vintage game binge at the moment, I thought it was time to give it a try and see what all the fuss is about. After a couple of hours playing I can safely say... I don't see what the fuss is about. So far nothing about this game has stood out to me as being exceptional, particularly good, or even particularly interesting. Graphically, there are games from the same era that look far better. The audio is also pretty poor by the standards of the time... I just finished playing a game from 1996 that sounds way better than Bloodlines. The voice acting of nearly every character so far has been incredibly poor too, which is never a good thing in a voiced RPG... I'd rather have text than bad actors. The game begins with no character customisation beyond choosing a clan and gender. The attributes and skills on offer are also pretty limited, but also linked meaning it's pointless having one without the another... so why not just combine them into one for simplicity? Presumably to give the illusion of choice. Then we get to the actual gameplay. Vampires across the board are generally depicted as strong, agile, graceful creatures, yet your character in Bloodlines is slow, can barely jump two metres, and has just a few arbitrary "vampiric" abilities that didn't really feel useful at all... at least with the clan I chose. The game constantly jumps between first and third person depending on what you're doing, which is bloody horrible. And as for the combat, it is by far the absolute worst part of the entire game. Melee is just a three-hit-combo button mash, and the gunplay is worse than the original Wolfenstein 3D from 1992. Beyond awful. Given all of the above, I can only assume that it is the storytelling of Bloodlines that has created it's cult following. However, I simply can't root through the garbage to find the prize in this one. Uninstalled.

This game is only fun until you leave the Downtown area. The very second you reach Hollywood it turns to crap. Suddenly the characters suck, level design is terrible, story turns stupid and everything just gets worse. Then you get to Chinatown and it all somehow gets even more terrible. Finally, the ending of the game. The ending ruins whatever slight chance of making this game again. If you buy this (save your money and don't) only play until you leave Downtown.

I bought this because of the hype and praise given here. Don't be fooled like I was. I assume this game is over hyped from people who love the tabletop RPG  . There are many good things about this game. Story, characters, factions, voice acting. In fact this part is great! I never liked vampire lore. Sucking blood. Not very creative. Bela Lugosi and Twilight say it all.  But the characters, story and lore in this game made me rethink vampire possibilities. The sad part is you will spend 5% of your game with the good stuff. The rest of the time you will be doing the fighting. 95% of the game is fighting. Fight mechanics felt like playing with oven mitts on even when you level up.It got so bad after 35 hours I just turned on god mode so I could enjoy the story.If you reached 35 hours and the game play and levels still stinks, the game stinks. The graphics and level design, meh.... Don't get me wrong. All things considered, it is an OK game, but it is not the great game it could have been.

Was enjoying the game like ever. But when you reach Giovanni Mansion (Sarcophagus Room) at the middle of the story the game crashes and it´s impossible to continue. I can´t recommend to buy this version.

The game is very fun to play and so on and so on... Until you get stuck on a lift. Yep - a lift. Well known, old bug near the end of the game, when you are unable to call a ride. If you know about it you can install a patch, but if you are playing it for the 1st time - guess what - it is necessary to advance in a game, so you can't finish it. Fun fact - the only way to repair the bug is to reinstall the game and start it over. 1/5 for this.