Vampyr

As a big fan of Vampire lore I really wanted to love this game but there were a few things I didn't like about it. First off just be forewarned this is not a true open world game. It does well to create the sense of an open world but it is linear. There are a few spots where you can teleport to but there were way too many places that look like you could teleport to but can't. The teleportation ability was so limited that it felt like it was just added in at the end. There were scaffolds 10 feet high that I could teleport to but in another spot it was not possible to teleport to a scaffold 3 feet high. I read many complaints about the combat system but I didn't see any problems with it. I liked that there were more available abilities than just enough for the buttons on the controller. You can mix and match moves any way you want. The only issue I has was with enemy vulnerabilities. Each enemy has at least one vulnerability but problems arise when you get attacked my multiple attackers that are vulnerable to different abilities. You need to have have a move set that covers all the bases. This is where leveling up becomes critical. Unfortunately if you want to get the best ending and not kill any citizens getting enough xp to level up each attack will be an absolute nightmare. For some reason drinking the blood of enemies to kill them will get you hardly any xp compared to citizens. This really irked me. Also vampire hunters wielding crosses can hurt you but random crosses lying around the environment do nothing. Not well thought out folks. I was pretty happy with all the other game mechanics like scavenging and crafting. With a little bit of learning I was able to defeat enemies fairly well. I found the story line to be ok but I was hoping for something closer to Bram Stokers stories. This game had a lot of potential. Hopefully there will be a sequel with a more traditional story line and more attention to detail.

Pro: - Greate atmosphere - Interesting story and setting - System of managing stability of district is interesting Cons: - Tedious combat - Ton of bugs (including several game breaking) - Really long segment with nothing but talking - The game keeps beating you over the head with modern political messages (It gets really annoying and takes you out of the game) - System of managing stability of districs is ilogical The game had potential, but its problems make it boring and annoying to play. I cannot recomend the game for anyone.

This game got obvious technical flaws that includes crash to desktop ("CTD") from time to time again, FPS stuttering** by the engine (although running on modern computer) or some logical plot holes (for example the protagonist might be looking like the personification of the walking dead, but everyone doesn't seem to care or even to be able to see it, they are like: "Hello, Dr Reid! Lovely to see you."). Seems the devs ran out of time to complete the game during crunch before release. :-( A final patch or definitive edition would be very welcome, but unfortunately highly unlikely after all this time. But, the game behind the problems is a lovely victorian vampire action title in a postapocalyptic version of London. The combat is fun and the story, conversations and characters sophisticated. Well, it's obviously not a Vampire The Masquerade title but it shares similiarities. I like the setting and power fantasy very much at the end of the day. And I would buy a sequel for sure. At least if it is playable after all. **By the way, there is a fix for the stuttering. It's tedious but works: Play a bit with the grafic settings, disable Vsync ingame and enable it via your card driver. Restart the game. Sooner or later you should get stable FPS at max settings. The stuttering can't be fixed by turning all settings down, that won't do anything. It's a problem caused by the engine/game. (Unreal Engine though, lol.)

First off, the things this game does well is in story telling and the characters(if you look at the game taking place within a couple of nights, rather than a few weeks, so just barely getting to know people) are top notch. Lasting consequenses for what you do, and being locked into it trough the autosave system is top notch. The issues however lies around combat and exploration. You're activly punished for exploring, or attempting boss battles. The combat\exploration phase of this game takes a lot of inspiration from the souls series, so when you die, any and all spent resources will be spent, making an difficult boss fight even more difficult. For those of us that never use consumables unless we can find a steady use of it(in souls-like games) it means we get stuck with never using any consumables at all in this game. This doesn't make the game more or less difficult, it simply means we end up not using a wide variety of tools at our disposal, in fair of it being worthless when\if we die. Exploration is hampered in the same way, certain places you'll meet NPCs that you have to save, if you do not save them before resting(leveling up), they will die. This means if you happend to find an difficult encounter that you just can't solve without resting, then your SOL and that NPC will die. As such, you are activly detered from exploring, unless you have plenty of levels already. Because of the auto save system, which work so well with the consequenses, once an encounter is found, you effectivly can't rest(level up) anymore, at all. Because when you do, that NPC dies, unless you finish that encounter(with your underleved character). It's not impossible to win them mind you, enemies mostly scale in the damage they do than anything else, so perseverence and good doding will save the day, but it feels like a cheap and poorly designed mechanic. Also bullets are rare, yet if you use a gun those bullets are spent if you die, making using a gun the worst choice in the game.

THE GOOD: The atmosphere of the game is off the charts, depicting the night of London with fog, dirt and debris, and inflicted with disease and death. It's almost palpable. The score is memorable, with austere violins and some synthesizer tracks, and the voice acting - especially from the protagonist - has the right tone: serious but with a touch of humanity, it feels real and not over the top. The story has, at least for me, some unexpected and memorable moments (the surgery is one example, but I won't spoil it). THE NOT SO GOOD: The combat is competent, but you're almost on your toes fighting enemies since they can level up quite much, and you don't always feel like a superhero - the combat is sometimes too much hectic for my taste. When your foes are too difficult, it's time to take a nap and level up, using your xp in upgrades. (tip: stamina is VERY important). THE BAD: the autocamera during combat can hide you in some corners/rooms, and the loading times can be very frustrating when you die in combat and have to reload. To my knowledge, it's just a bug where the game is just idle, one workaround can be to kill the application in the task manager and start the game again to load the save faster. TIPS: you'll talk a LOT in this game, and the sidequests are as important as the main story. I finished the game without embracing/killing any npc to gain xp, just doing all the quests was enough to level up from time to time. Try to maintain all the npc's healthy and alive, especially the main npc's of each district, since the death of any of them will have consequences on their district (will have more monsters and mobs fighting you). When you sleep, some npc's might get sick, and you need to cure them with specific medicine for each of 9 possible diseases (research+craft). Overall, it's a great experience and I loved the game - imo it just needs some polish for the camera and load times. Definitely interested in a sequel or more adventures in the same universe.