Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York

This is a well written visual novel which is respectful to the World of Darkness source material. The characters have certain depth and the whole narrative makes sense, specially after you clear the game. That being said, the game it's short, very short. At its usual 20$ price I would advice not to bite, but if offered on a substantially lower price I'd recomend you to give it a try. Unlike what other reviewers say, I'd not say that none of your decisions matters. Quite the contrary, since the 4 story archs offered to you will be shaped by your choices. The "main" storyline, though, won't and that's one point that has drawn criticism to the game. It's a pitty that this game did not follow up in an episodic way, letting the story continue. Still, I enjoyed my playthrough

Overall a positive experience despite a few serious drawbacks. The good: The story was quite enjoyable. (Abrupt ending, but if you've played VTM: Bloodlines, that's not super surprising.) The bad: Lack of long-term results in response to your choices. If you really try, you can die, but you have to work at it. Otherwise, you can't fail and there's only one ending. Only one! In a visual novel! The ugly: You can't load an earlier save to make a different choice. The game only allows one save per character and doesn't allow you to exit without saving, meaning that if you want to see the reaction to a different choice, you have to play through the whole game again. I'm guessing it was a deliberate choice trying to ramp up tension, but it just comes off as annoying. (In case, like me, you think you'll be clever and "exit" by forcing it to close using windows task manager: nope, it saved before closing.) There is no "skip seen" option. If you want to see what changes there are (due to choices or character background), you have to reread every line each time you replay the game. This is another option that's standard in free visual novels, so it's a weird omission. Finally, an issue that's immersion-breaking rather than just annoying: Your character is always referred to as "they." It's one thing if, in real life or in games, someone asks for they/them/their pronouns, but otherwise it's super weird. If it'd require too much coding to change pronouns based on character (and considering I've seen free visual novels that do it, this seems lazy) you could just rewrite lines to avoid needing gendered pronouns at all. For instance, change, "Yeah, they're here," to, "Yeah, the person you're waiting for is here." And, "Give it to them," could easily become, "Give it to the fledgling." Not hard. Ultimately? Worth playing, but get it on sale.

This game/interactive story is a good introduction in the universe of Vampire the masquerade. It quickly immerses us in the political meanderings of the vampire societies of the 21st century. The intigers mingle with each other and even if our decisions have little impact, the story is fun to follow, modern and the atmosphere is good.

Direct to Netflix quality visual novel with a couple of decent supporting characters and interesting plot points, but hamstrung by incomplete branching paths, occasionally hamfisted writing, and hilariously feminized male characters. Buy on sale, play with a couple drinks after dinner, and it's alright. Hot take: If you don't like the ending, it's because you're genre illiterate.

This game is great for those looking to enjoy beautiful artwork. Even if you don't find the story interesting the animated illustrations are beautiful to behold. I found myself spending minutes looking at every new scene before I even started reading dialogue for them. The story is okay, it's pretty basic you become a vampire kind of stuff, however, it was interesting enough for me that I was thinking about the game when I wasn't playing it. Your actions don't really have consequences for the story so the game is more like reading a book where you know the words are all written down already and you just read it. Basically, the game is like reading a visual novel. This was my first Vampire: The Masquerade game and I really liked the lore behind everything. Throughout the game you can read a building dictionary of vampire terms and culture explaining how vampires live in our world. I would highly recommend this game if you like visual novels or just great artwork. I really felt like I was in a museum except all the artwork had subtle animations making them much more beautiful.