Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

- It’s been 18 years since Troika (this game’s developers) have disbanded, yet their legacy continues to endure. A game rushed out before it was finished, riddled with bugs, yet beloved by a small and dedicated community. - Bloodlines’ biggest feature is letting you pick the vampire clan from which you hail from, and interact with the many members of the other clans. This results in many roleplaying moments, as well as reasons to replay the game. - The world is divided into 4 hub areas for you to explore, which get unlocked as the story progresses. As for side missions, they’re all well put together and thought out to fit the game’s theme. NO radiant quests here. - Gameplay wise there’s dialog and combat. Dialog is a joy to engage in, thanks to the excellent voice acting. My suggestion is investing heavily in the Persuade skill. - Combat unfortunately feels clunky, especially ranged combat in the early game. My recommendation is to focus on Unarmed/Melee in the Santa Monica and Downtown areas, then start investing skill points into Firearms only after reaching Hollywood. - But whatever you do, make sure you download the latest version of the UNOFFICIAL PATCH, install it and play from the new shortcut it creates. If you want to make sure it’s installed correctly, just go to the Gameplay Options menu and there you should see "unofficial patch" written along with the current version number.

Played for the first time this year and man, what a great experience! It's a shame this game is a buggy mess, but it's not that big off a deal since unofficial patch fix most of the game-breaking bugs. Unfortunally, the final session took a big dip in quality, mostly 'cause it felt rushed with very underwhelming endings. Besides that, definetly became one of my favorite games! It has a great atmosphere, great characters and pretty good writing, I'm really excited for the sequel!

This is the greatest vampire game EVER. My only complaints are extreme difficulty spikes in just some specific areas, and lack of truly deep character customization (visual) and frustrating skyrim-style limitations placed on skill/level/ability points. Redemption has NOTHING on this game. The game could have used some more love in the free-roam-exploration department in my opinion, and no- I don't mean like in many other games that have free roam and fail to deliver in every other way. more exploration and freedom would have made this game feel less cramped and had that potential increase in freedom been filled with an appropriately increased amount of content- I say free roam would have been a welcome addition. This game is special, like MASS EFFECT ONE special. KOTOR1/2 special. Yea. You know that feeling. It's worth it. Patch it, Mod it, Enjoy. This is one of those no regret purchases on gog.com

Every character feels like a person, no matter how weak or strong, with phenomenal writing and some truly insane possibilities and replayability. One of the true RPG classics. Oh, and thanks to the Merchant's Guild for the recommendation.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is a really amazing game, yet for some reason it doesn't get as much exposure as it should. I enjoyed this game as much as I enjoyed Fallout or Elder Scrolls RPGs, but VTMB is nowhere as famous as those 2. The GOG version already included the Unofficial Patch which makes the game easy to run on newer systems, and features cloud saving. For me, the most appealing part of this game is the atmosphere. It's set in the then-modern day world of early '00s Los Angeles. We don't usually see RPGs or immersive sims in contemporary urban settings. Combat is either melee or firearms, with some unique vampire moves like the ability to drain your enemy dry. Stealth is overpowered in this game, and I love it! You can sneak through most combat missions while doing stealth kills. Boss fights, however, are unavoidable and difficult. If they're too hard for you, you can just use the console to help. I should mention that VTMB has no quest markers or fast travel. However, it's not a big deal since the hub areas are pretty small, and the quest locations are easy and quite obvious. I love this game, and I will be waiting for the long-delayed Bloodlines 2.