Vampyr

This game is a bit of a slog to get through in the first bit but definitely opens up around level 10. Once you have some abilities and points invested in upgrading your stats, the combat becomes fluid. With a higher stamina you can attack more and that makes things go a lot smoother than the beginning, where you're lucky to swing 3 times and still be able to dodge. Graphics are great. I love the art style. Everything has a painted look and I don't even care if that's due to budget issues.

I'm tempted to give this game five stars to counterbalance all the one-star reviews. This is simply not a one-star game. It's actually a pretty good game. I ended up very much enjoying it and not regretting the time I spent on it. The highlights are the story, atmosphere, characters, and voice-acting. The story is extremely solid, and I liked the lore (I'm not familiar with the source material). It unfolds well, though towards the end of the game you'll end up spending a little too much time running around the map (especially if you forgot to unlock some door when you had the chance, in which case you'll have to go around or backtrack to unlock it). The dialog system works surprisingly well. It could be more sophisticated, but it's on par with what I've seen in other games. And yes, the vast majority of this game is dialog, with good to very good writing and superb voice acting. They do channel you down certain paths, and it's not like a completely free/open-ended roleplaying experience. You're playing a character, and not everything about him is up to your choice; however, I rarely found this frustrating. The combat is fine. It's more like Witcher 3 than Dark Souls, and yes, the auto-lock-on can be pretty annoying pretty frequently. But, the focus isn't the combat, and it's not that hard, so even with lock-on issues, I rarely died. To some saying your character seems very underpowered: I pumped endurance (like a Souls game) and health, and other "basics" like blood%, and only picked one offensive ability and one 'ultimate'. I think spreading yourself thin on spells/abilities may make it harder. I played this because I wanted the atmosphere of a vampire in WWI-era London during the flu pandemic. Gorgeous graphics, great voice acting, nailed the atmosphere. Give it a chance. Also, it's cool that you get to play as a doctor, and moreover, England's greatest expert on blood transfusions.

NOTE: I'm reviewing the PS4 version. Vampyr has an interesting enough premise, a good immediate setup, and probably one of the greatest visual representations of a decaying urban cityscape. To that last point, my imagination was doing a lot of work filling in the foul smells that must have gone with the rotting timber and constant cesspools that lined the streets. That's no small accomplishment in design. The game plays out pretty roughly, but is somewhat nostalgiac of earlier RPG-action hybrids, and while it's a bit touchy and fairly glitchy, it holds the interest for quite a while. Of course, this assumes you want a slow burn and steady buildup. Best of all, Vampyr's morality system actually does hamstring you for taking the moral high road, slowing your progress and making the game much more challenging. Unfortunately, this is also where it starts to fall apart. Difficulty spikes abound when you play this way, and progress fizzles too often as you churn out minor victories and super slow XP buildup to overcome the stalled boss or similar challenge. Going in circles, patrolling for the same set of irritants to wipe out over and over again. Egh. I like to play to as much completion as possible, and that killed this game for me. Ultimately I only made it about 60% of the way through before giving up, without regrets. Will I return to it? I doubt it. But I enjoyed the time I spent with it, and if you can get it on sale, it's probably worth it.

I played through this game on the hardest difficulty without feeding on anyone. It was hard but I loved the combat and the story this game told. I finished It wanting more. I plan on playing through again to see all the vampire powers I missed out on. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone looking for a great story. Play at your preferred difficulty and enjoy.

... and quite frankly it is really shame because I liked the story. I liked the Protagonist and characters you can interact with (which makes it more difficult to play as a bad guy) I really loved the graphics, the atmosphere and the soundtrack. The NPC system where you gather clues and improve the level of blood is a very nice touch. Had no problems with UI. Everything is very clear and smooth. The thing that really overwhelmed me is annoying repetetive fighting against the same enemies over and over again combined with completely broken paths in the city with lots of irritating dead ends or closed gates (which makes it impossible to avoid fight in certain situations), lack of minimap, totally illegible map from the inventory menu, broken XP system, too many piles of junk to gather, broken shooting (character shoots where he runs, not where you point your camera). Loading screens are just too long... which is really painful when you keep dying while struggling with some lot on a route to the next checkpoint. The fighting itself can make your blood boil. Some enemies are OP and can kill you with a single critical hit. I ended my unpleasant adventure at the end of Chapter IV. Some crashes (with Unreal Engine logs) made me finally uninstal it and never look back. It was just too much to bare. I think this game had a great potential, but it should have been designed in a different way - something similar to Deus Ex or Dishonored series where you had this possibility to avoid fighting and solving all the problems by your wits, diplomacy or stealth. Previous Dontnod games were true gems... but this one (sadly) went wrong.