Vampyr

I really enjoyed this game. The voice acting and characters were fantastic, and so was the setting. Yes it isn't a AAA game, but they did brilliantly with the money they had. Recommend for people who are into RPG's and story driven games.

Simply love the story. The freedom this game affords you in its world and the story pacing is very much to my liking. Picked it up on a sale and it was so worth every penny, however at full price it may have been another story. I am a sucker for stories like this and the lore behind it. I love the powers this game affords you.

(NOTE: Based on experience with the PS4 version. I will not comment on technical glitches as that may differ on the PC version) The game starts off with the right mood. You are a fledgling vampire, trying to make sense of what on Earth is going on around you. London feels dark and foreboding. Then... you eventually encounter combat for the first time. "That's... it?", I thought, as I emerged victorious in a completely uninteresting fight. And thus begins the theme of the game. The atmosphere of the world, the graphics, the characters, the story... all are decently compelling. In fact, if this game were a movie, it could be a memorable vampire thriller. The thought of a surgeon, a man of science, coming to grips with the supernatural is enticing, for sure. However, the gameplay just falls absolutely flat. For one, the combat is just a chore. While occasional enjoyment can be found in whooping ass, combat is extremely unresponsive and your character will either feel grossly underpowered or stupidly overpowered. Enemies have a tendency to float across the ground to grab you from afar; guns go right through walls so don't bother with cover. Enemies only become more annoying as the game goes on, especially in tight spaces. To advance your character, you spend XP like many RPGs. However, combat gives you a laughably small amount of XP: to the point of making difficult fights pointless. This tempts you to "embrace" friendly NPCs for a massive XP boost. Alternatively, you can *make everyone as sick as possible so you can get credit for healing them.* Healing the sick rewards tons of XP. It is truly more perverse than simply sucking blood. Still, crafting medicine is a chore as ingredients can be hard to find. The world building and characters are compelling with excellent voice acting. Shame about everything else. Unless you want to tough out dull, frustrating gameplay for the story, feel free to skip this one.

Story and gameplay are very well worked out. The atmosphere is great and I love the characters. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of fine-tuning: Many opponents are "overpowered." Whitechapel doesn't look like the original Whitechapel. Switching weapons is also not explained - something like a brief explanation is missing in the game. But many characters are not properly worked out, there is a lack of soul and too many questions remain open for me.

In my humble opinion everything this game tried to implement was really well executed. Graphics: it’s beautiful and provides perfect dark atmosphere of London at night. Story: is very captivating due to interesting characters each with their own backstory and mystery (or two) to solve and may have one or multiple connections to other district inhabitants, so choose your prey to feed on very carefully. You’ll fill every life you take in the game as you hear your victim’s last words while doing it. Also every district has it’s own linked storyline which forces you to make a choice in the end and face the hard consequences. Music/Voice: main and most secondary characters are very well done. Soundtracks are elevating dark mystical atmosphere even more Gameplay: controls is very responsive and you have many unique skills to choose/try what you like. Good reflexes and timing is a key to master this combat system, brainless buttons mashing will drain your stamina very quickly which is always dangerous in this game, because you cannot attack or dodge without it. You could respec and pick different skills as many times as you want, but it’ll cost you more money each time you do it. Also if you don’t want to kill anyone, don’t expect to max out your build (not to mention acquiring all possible skills) even if you’ll do all possible side quests as well, because you’ll probably not going to get any skill from “Special” abilities while doing pacifist play through. All in all, for an AA game it’s 10/10 for what it offers. P.S. The best (happiest) ending is still possible for those, that screw-up few district storylines and kill some people as well. Happy hunting!))