Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

I remember finishing this game back when it came out and the most I can remember is the disappointed feelings. I loved Diablo-style gameplay , loved the lore of this game, loved the settings spanning the centuries, loved vampires... this should have been amazing, but it really fell short for me and just kept getting worse the more I played it. It starts strong and at the beginning the game really grabs you. But it keeps repeating the formula way too much. The gameplay is just crawling through dungeons and killing enemies and it starts to get tiring in the end. I think the two biggest reasons for this for me were the story and the weapons and combat. After the beginning the story starts getting more and more sparse, as if they didn't really have the time to invest into it as much in the beginning when they were grabbing you with it. Alone this wouldn't be enough to sink the game, if the mechanics of the endless combat were good. But I remember how broken the weapon balance was. The best weapons I got in the game were actually the blades and medieval weapons that you receive in the first time period in the game. If you grab something good in there, you have no reason to ever upgrade after that, because what you receive later seemed to be completely inferior. Firearms? Assault rifles? Forget it. They miss all the time and your best bet is still the rusty blade you got at the start. So what you end up having later in the game is stale story that gets told more and more lazily; no need to upgrade your weapons, meaning no need to change/improve your character in any way, leaving only endlessly repeating combat with no rewards. I finished it, but it wasn't so good.

I love everything about old games like this - from the janky graphics to the awkward controls to the bad voice acting. None of it matters because the gameplay is just so much fun for my older gamer sensibilities, arguably more so than modern games. The lack of streamlined everything is incredibly refreshing. I've just finished the intro and am about to embark on adventures with a new party member, and I am SO looking forward to it.

Graphics suck, even for the time period it was released, combat is horrible, monsters are laughable. Just to briefly list a few things.

Believe it or not, as a kid this was one of my favourite games. I still count it among them for that reason. You know why? Cause I happened to stumble upon the one correct way to play this RPG, was willing to overlook its remaining flaws, and was awed by its graphics and subject matter. But having recently watched an extensive blind LP of it on YouTube, by someone who tried a different approach than me, and viewing it through the lens of modern developments, it has become clear to me what utter garbage this game is. Horrible AI. Linear story. Tiny or cramped environments where your party gets in each other's way constantly. Frustrating mechanics at every turn. Glitches & bugs galore. An RPG with ridiculous customization, weapon and spell options, yet so hard and unbalanced that unless you go pure melee figther or stunlock, you will likely never beat it. The game part of this game is broken, the RPG part even more. It barely works as an action game, which is how my kid self experienced and appreciated it. Good points are graphics and cutscenes, historical references and locations, and a pretty cool story. It gets the tertiary stuff right, just not what matters: The gameplay.

Then your first mission sends you to a mine, where you fumble around in the dark even while holding a torch. I suspect most people just quit at the 4 hour mark due to this.