Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

The start is a bit hard but the game gets more enjoyable further on. Great Game. Already owned it once...had to have it again.

This game is average. It has some strong story at parts, where at others the dialogue isn't as strong. It combines contemporary and medieval at the end which I enjoyed having both your traditional medieval with guns later on and more of a cyberpunk feel to the second half of the game. There isn't much exploration or choice for an rpg and it is mainly crawl through a dungeon, which I don't mind but I prefer better story telling, choices, and exploration of towns and NPC's, which this didn't have a ton of. It wasn't a bad game and had a decent story, just wasn't one of the best RPG's in my opinion.

So we can't talk about Redemption without talking a bit on Vampire the Masquerade (VtM). VtM is a pen and paper rpg, in which players play vampires who belong to various secret society who have fought and conspired against each other since time immemorial. Usually, by manipulating human society from the shadows. Set in the modern day, it focused on an upcoming vampire apocalypse called "Gehenna". In which ancient vampires called "Antediluvians" are going to rise and consume the world. It also really tries to be mature and serious, with varying degrees of success. With later editions definitely improving on this aspect. You play a crusader named Christof, who becomes involved in the affairs of vampires while trying to reunite with his beloved, in a journey that stretches from Dark Age's Prague to modern New York. Now, Redemption does an odd thing with this source material. On the one hand it uses specific terminology so much, it's frankly almost incomprehensible without some basic familiarity with the source material. On the other hand, it uses the terms without context anyway. So there's a point where this knowledge doesn't really explains things all that much. The gameplay is third person, point and click, hack and slash. And it is a little unwieldy. You control up to four characters, but in the heat of battle I usually depended on the AI rather then try and skip between them. The AI is fidgety, and has some odd quirks about what powers or items it likes to use. It has a very frustrating resource management behaviors about "blood". But enemies are even dumber, so it balances out. And there is an overwhelming number of powers to choose from, not all of them are well explained. It is overwhelming and confusing. VtM fans will get a kick out of it, or grow annoyed with the scatter-shot use of the material. Under the haphazard use of the setting, the plot and characters are very traditional. At its core, it's a confusing game that aged poorly. I like it though.

I've played the game ~15 years ago and it was one of my favourite games back then. I'm sure the reviews pointing out repetitive, linear gameplay and old school camera movement are right, it's likely that i was annoyed by it when i played through the game back then, BUT i don't remember any of that, because the game has great atmosphere. What i remeber is the voice of Serena, the great music, the sound of the footsteps in the snow at Vienna, the graphics at Vienna, Christoph's cries when he gets burned by sunlight and similar stuff related to atmosphere. It was magical. I guess the graphics are still ok(old graphics probably aren't a concern for you while shopping on gog) since it was among the most beatiful games when it came out. If you think you can let yourself slip into this game's world it definetely worth a try. Even if certain gameplay elemetns will annoy you, in a decade you will only remember a game with a great atmoshere that you want to experience again.

After seeing some negative revieuws about this game regarding combat and AI I had to place this message so people don't get scared by that. Combat is easy if build correctly and very hard if build wrong, you can solo the whole game and just leave the AI for what it is making the game allot more fun. (Spells-->feral claw)( stat DEX-STR-WITS)(Manipulation if high enough you can buy items and sell them back for more gold). For me this is the best vampire game i have played so far with a good balance between action and story.