Vampyr

Most of the reviews here are on the mark. The game could have been awesome but felt short in some important mechanics. Some good things about the game: - The environment is relatively well done; - Story seems good. Not very original but can be a motivator to keep playing; - The character interaction is interesting, especially find ways to unveil their background; - Amoral gameplay; interesting outcomes depending on how you play. Things that fell short expectations: - Savegames are saved automatically, which means that when making a mistake you have to either manually backup the save game (by that I mean copying the savegame manually to another file) or start it again. This for me is a MAJOR dealbreaker. Not by itself but because of the way the hint/miss dialogue element was implemented. - The comparison with LA Noire in some comments is spot-on: the dialogues to discover or miss a hint are not logical or rational; sometimes you think that selecting a certain answer will send you thorough one direction but what the character says is completely different. Random hit/misses with a automatic savegame system? Horrible combination. - Combat is meh. Very simple and the skills are not very cool. If the other parts of the game were great, this could have been overlooked (in my opinion). - Treating diseases is cheap and mostly doesn't really affect the NPCs responses. Combination between characters and environment feels shallow. Gets repetitive very soon. I will not continue playing the game because I just lost 7 hours of gameplay half an hour ago because of a lost hint that didn't really make sense (and I forgot to backup the savegame). For those thinking in getting it, the game could be interesting for the first 5 to 10 hours but do not expect much after that. Also, comparing to the available titles in the market, this game should cost $15 maximum.

but somewhere during the development someone decided to put tedious and annoying combat into the game + enemies respawning if you die or rest to level up (yes you can't level up unless you rest). Story is ok-ish but gets dumber by the end of the game, but that would have been fine if it wasn't for the combat, because the tedium of it destroys all the interest you could possibly have in the story as you go. Also, you can talk to people in the streets and find out secrets, but it serves nothing to get you more XP. Most of it is completely pointless fluff and the stuff that is more interesting is very disconnected from everything else you do in the game, so in the end you also do that not to "solve" some side mystery, but to get more XP by sitting through the dialogue. If you do all the sidequests and whatnot, the game is like 25 to 30 hours (if you don't die and repeat much), but like 75% of it is not the story but running around the streets and fighting the same fights over and over. It seems like the whole combat mechanic and RPG elements (the RPG elements are only combat oriented, there are no non-combat stats like stealth or speech or something) had been simply slapped onto an adventure game in development and the game had been remade into something duller than it could have been. Do you want an RPG with Vampires? There's VtM: Bloodlines. Do you want an adventure game with RPG elements or mystery solving? There's The Council or Sherlock Holmes games, Hero-U if you want something funny. Do you want to play something like dark souls with enemies respawning and whatnot, all combat? Yeah there's plenty of titles fitting the bill. Do you want to play some tedious mess of all of the above combined? Then buy this game.

I was having a important conversation, then the game somehow glitch/bug and didn't acknowledage my dialog choice. After multiple attempt to get the dialog to work, I tried clicking other dialogs and no reactions. Then the game unfreeze after multiple attempt to get it to respond and and select a dialog I didn't want to. Now I am stuck with it.

Vampyr is a good example of 7/10 game. It's definitely enjoyable, and while playing the game, you regularly spend a good time, but the systems unfortunately gets old and repetitive as you understand what they do. Vampyr is divided in two distinct part : citizens area, where you speak, speak, investigate, speak more, and investigate. It's fully voiced over and there is a real enjoyment in getting to know everyone, at least for the first couple of areas (there are 4 citizens area). The goal is the same for each of those areas : get to know everyone, but that's where the system starts showing weakness. You get to know everyone there but nothing happens. You get investigations from them but they reward very little, and they often revolve around the same idea anyway (get there, kill stuff, find something, come back). The reward is poor because the game revolves around one idea : you are rewarded from "embracing citizens" which gives you XP. Talking to them and investigate helps acquiring hints that improve how much you know them and improve said reward. But the whole point is to breed them so they give you more XP, while tying the good endings to you not eating anyone. The second part of the game is travel between citizen areas. They are fight infested areas you simply travel back and forth from, with no fast travel. The combat is agreeable and enjoyable. It's no Dark Souls, but it does the job well enough, and there is not enough XP to get all the skills, so you are encouraged to make builds. You get a bit of XP from these fights, but unless you feed on citizens, you are always underlevelled, which makes the combat more difficult (funnier too imo). The problem with that bit is simply that it gets very repititive. Boss fights are decently made. Long story short ? Nothing is perfect in that game, it's not a 5 stars game for sure, but it sure is enjoyable, it's well made, A for effort.

The fundamental problem with Vampyr is the game doesn't know what it wants to be. It's got RPG & storytelling components, interactions with people, but strongly encourages you to kill characters before you've even unlocked hints about them because you desperately need the XP. It has a bizarre design choice where you have to kill Citizens for XP, while the game lore suggests vampires can blend in, drink blood without killing their victims, alter memories, and... well, none of the things you get to do as the protagonist. It spends too much time trying to make clever statements, and not enough time actually producing good gameplay value. The combat is clunky, and most of the time you will be under-levelled unless you go full psychopath re Citizens. Add to that enemies respawning immediately after you die, and you have a recipe for endless tedium of re-attempting the same fights getting one-shot you for the slightest error. This isn't fun, just a new way to create repetitive strain injuries. When an enemy made a jump attack, missed me due to dodging, then we're yanked together because of hit boxes (and then I die anyway!), I'd had enough. To add insult to injury, there are no saves; any errors you make due to the incompetent game design, bugs you encounter, or just happen to walk into an area that is vastly over your level and trigger consequences you cannot possibly do anything about yet - sorry, you get to start the game again. Roguelikes usually have the courtesy of being short gameplay loops for a reason. For a game that allegedly revolves around story & choices, most of the characters are breathtakingly shallow. Once you've exhausted a few hints & investigations, they're just taking up space in the background. Coming from real vampire games like Masquerade, it feels lacklustre & no time really spent on what being a vampire can be about. It's just not a satisfying game. Play on Easy, get a mod for full XP start, or just spend your valuable time elsewhere.