Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York

Coteries of New York is not a great visual novel if you're looking for a deep, branching story and choices that fully affect your path. It has only one ending and tons of dead ends, meaning your path only affects whether you fail miserably or reach the intended (and pretty abrupt) finale. It also lacks some of the modern quality-of-life features like skipping previously read text or multiple save slots. However, if you can accept all that, you get a quite interesting short story that really catches the climate and basic structure of the World of Darkness setting, and build an interesting jumping point for the other two games in this series. It also does a fine job of inroducing potencial newbies to Vampire the Masquerade without boring the veterans to death with lore dumps. And it makes you FEEL like a flegdling vampire, powerful and extremely vulnerable at the same time, having to navigate the political schemes and dangers you only have a very limited understanding of. It falls short of 5 stars due to the pacing problems and the fact it never takes the time to explore any of the subplots or relationships with real depth... But if you're just looking for a nice, relatively short read in the VtM universe, it's worth checking out and finishing at least two runs, to see all coterie candidates and experiment with side quests a bit. It does a lot more right than it does wrong, if you set your expectations right.

This really shouldn't be in the Action or RPG category. There's no gameplay. The choices you make throughout the story don't have any impact on the outcome. It feels kind of pointless. It would be better if they just made a real game rather than cobbling together what is effectively a slide show with dialogue and none of the descriptive text that makes real novels worthwhile.

Coteries of New York is a short Visual Novel. I have mixed feelings about this one, but one thing that I can wholeheartedly praise is the atmosphere. The art and music - sparse but great - and the writing really nail the power fantasy and everpresent paranoia, terror, and listlessness that a VTM vampire lives with. Especially at the start. The game really makes you feel like a new vampire surrounded by older, fiercer, and more intelligent elders ready to use you and discard you. Another thing the VN does an indisputably well is introduce the player to the world of VTM. It's cool, but it feels excessive at times. It's strange to me. The game is a VN, which is a pretty niche genre. I imagine most of your audience is already familiar with the setting? Now for the criticisms: First, the game is too linear. I have no problems with kinetic (no choices) visual novels, but the game tries to make you feel like you're making choices that matter, and they generally don't. It's deceptive. Second, the game's mechanics are underutilized. The titular "coterie" is non-existent. You read through a quest chain for each character, and at the end the character says "see you around". As far as I can tell there's minimal interaction between coterie members, or between members and the main plot My last and most significant point is the quality of the writing. I have to say I got bored with some of the questlines. The writing is definitely quite good at places, but some events/questlines are too bland for my liking. It seems like the writers were too concerned with keeping things accessible for newcomers. As for the main plot, it was quite a letdown. I'm being vague to avoid spoilers... let's just say that I liked the overall angle they went for, but the execution was not great. What I hate is that they force our character to remain oblivious. It makes sense, but it's just not that fun to read. Overall, I'd say Coteries is worth a read if you're a VTM fan. Get it on sale.

is what this feels like: some cool ideas, good art and ambience, and writing that feels like it came from a good GM but not a professional writer. There's not much game here, even for a visual novel. It is non-linear – in the sense that you choose what to do and in what order – but it doesn't have much branching choice or roleplaying. Basically you pick 1 of 3 preset characters and decide which side stories they'll do and whether they'll do what they're supposed to or bugger it up. Still, I had fun, it had a strong "one more story, one more night" appeal to me. As I said, view it as a few good tabletop sessions with a fairly railroady GM. If you can get it on sale for a few dollars that's well worth it for a VtM fan. Full price is insulting though.

The Story is so enthralling that I've become addicted to it.