Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York

Honestly, I think this game could have been great if they had spent more time on it. As it is, I can't endorse it. I'm a huge Vampire the Masquerade fan, I own all the TTRPG books; so it doesn't take much to get me onboard with new VtM content. But this state this game in is a mess. There's not enough time to explore relationships with all the characters you meet. I was even skipped forward past events that I didn't experience in the game and had to peice togeather what happened based on the context of conversations that take place after the fact. The story feels so rushed, both tecnically and in terms of the pacing. The ending is out of left feild, and not in a good way. All of the forshadowing takes place before you even start making decisions, all of which have zero impact on the outcome. This game needed at least another year in development to flesh out a plausible story and introduce multiple endings. At the very least, it could have used a month or two in QA to work out all of the glaring bugs. I really wanted to like this game, but it's just not fun at all. Maybe I will get more out of it on multiple playthroughs; but knowing the ending is always the same and that your choices have little to no impact don't have me in a rush to revisit this mess.

+ Good art style + Not bad atmosphere + Interesting side characters, really liked the nospheratu and the malk girl + The first malk girl quest is wonderfully written - Very little amount of character and background art, there are mostly static images, only half chars has individual art, background art is reused a lot - No voice over - Very little choice, player almost doesn't impact anything - Only one ending - Only 3 clans, doesn't affect game much - Very short, if you read fast it's 4-5 hours - Can't choose the sect to join +- Don't like the music +- The final achivement seems bugged

Seriously guys, you got me, ha ha...very funny...and now where is the rest of the game? Everything starts fine, you know nothing (which is good) you feel confused (which is even better) you feel like a pawn of bigger forces which works behind the scenes, do chores for people and do not have slightest idea behind their motivations, you start to build your own crew, slowly find your footing and ...the end.

I was really having fun with it- and then the credits rolled. Greatly enjoyed the art and sound direction, the NPCs were interesting and vibrant. The story has a charming vibe of a tabletop game being played via text. Unfortunately, at a little over three hours (I do read fast, but still, even a very slow reader that takes time to appreciate every detail of NPC design and background art, won't squeeze out more than six hours out of it) it felt more like an appetizer than a fully-fledged game. Very abrupt ending. Despite the slight disappointment at the length of the game and lack of character customisation (would it really be this hard to at least let us choose the PC's gender, since most NPCs refer to them as "they" anyways?), I do hope the studio gets another chance to make a vtm (or another WoD-property) VN and this time, take their sweet time with it to develop a longer storyline.

I wasn't even able to finish building my own coterie before the game ended. Not to mantion actually get the team together and do, I don't know, coterie things. The game is short, there is no agency, the ending is confusing, and of course everthing have to be woke... I feel bad I bought the game and didn't waited for reviews, I saw VTM and just went for it. I will make sure to be more carefull when Bloodlines comes out.