A couple of posts have compared V:Redemption to Diablo, and while i have a lotta love for the Blizzard classic and arpg's i was hoping for a more tradional rpg.
Is there a world to explore with Redemption? Are there a lot of quests and do you have a lot of character options when it comes to leveling up and during dialogue?
Cheers

This is not like Diablo. There are a lot of dungeons and it is rather action heavy, but it's story-driven rather than loot-driven. You won't do multiple run throughs with the same character, or grind for loot, and you can pause the action at any time to give orders to your coterie (or party). It's probably closer to Baldur's Gate than Diablo.

I've literally only started to play but the early impressions are of Diablo style combat, at the moment, though it would seem that there's room to expand as I can see party commands and special action bars for spells and abilities that have been greyed out due to me not advancing far enough into the game as of yet.
So far though the dialogue and presentation of the game is more in depth than the Diablos but falls far, far short of the Baldur's Gate games with very very little choice in dialogue options.
My experience of the combat (killing rats in a mine) has been strikingly similar to Blizzard's behemoths though, so far.
It's early days yet though. :P
I hope that sort of helps :(

Is the combat difficult? I don't mean challenging, I mean unfair.

If you could update me after you have played a little more and let me know if the gameplay turns a corner i would be mucho grando appreciative. The more i read about Redemption though, the more i think its time to re-install Bloodlines :)
Cheers.

I wouldn't say any fights are unfair. Certainly some are more difficult than others, but you've often got three other coterie members and four vampires leads to a lot of damage.
I'd say one of the biggest challenges is keeping the coterie under control in a fight. You see, vampires have magic powers. Magic powers require blood. The AI on your coterie members is very loose with the blood and magic, so if you don't keep them under control they'll drain themselves dry on simple fights and that makes bosses and tough fights even more difficult. There are two ways of handling this; you can either disable AI from using magic in the options and manage them entirely on your own, or you can limit their supply of blood by only giving it to them when you want them to use magic.

The problem is we now live in a dumbed down gamer/dumbed down media world, which means if a game has any third person combat it is called 'Diablo like'. It seems the only game the media or anybody can come up with is Diablo. Hence games like Divine Divinity, while being REAL rpg's are called 'Diablo like' because they have the small 3/4 view! If Fallout 1 and 2 were being released for the first time now, they would be called 'Diablo like'!
Diablo is a hack'n'slash rpg. It is about combat, with little of the roleplaying option you get in real RPG's like quests, multiple NPC's to talk to, etc.
Vampire Masquerade, like Bloodlines after it, are real RPG's!
It strikes me as very humorous that this game is being called 'Diablo like', a more action orientated game, and yet an almost wholly action game, like Mass Effect gets called an RPG!
There is no doubt that there is now great confusion about what makes an RPG. Which is a sure sign that the genre is disappearing. The same happened with the Adventure genre, with the confusion over whether 'action-adventures' were still adventures. Many were called as such. This 'confusion' was a symptom of the Adventure genre's decline. Having games like Borderlands and Mass Effect and Bioshock and Jade Empire called 'RPG's' is part of this same 'confusion' - except this time it's about RPG's, hence, from my perspective, another sign of the same symptom that led to the adventure genre decline, meaning the real RPG genre will now decline in the same way.

I disagree with you, I can't imagine an in depth RPG with as much atmosphere as any of the original Fallout games being released nowadays anyway but even if (heaven forbid) we'd only, just now, be sampling their delights then I don't think they'd draw comparisons with Diablo.
I think the comparing of Blizzard's isometric, combat heavy rpg's with Vampire: Masquerade is a legitimate one from what I've played so far, the combat, at any rate, is as fast and frentic as Diablo's for which is where I believe the games are at their most similar, It should also be noted that Diablo revolutionised the genre with this approach to gameplay hence why so many games are said to derive their ideas and essence from the 1995 original grandaddy of the genre*.
*By genre here, I'm reffering to the pointand clickasfastasyoucan,hackthatgoblinapartandtakehisgoldnowbacktotownforabiggerswordsowecandoitagain subgenre. ;P

Divine Divinity a 'real' rpg? I loved the hack n slash action but story, characters, in depth questing and dialogue options must have completely passed me by.
The tragic/comic character of Morte from Planescape and the twisted look and speech of The Master from Fallout are just two rpg characters that i still recall today, many years after completing those games.
I remeber smacking some orcs in Divine Divinity and a helluva lot of skeletons. I don't recall playing a 'real' rpg.
I guess our view of an rpg differs, which is fine.

Thanks.

You can tell by the replies to my post that their definitely is confusion about what makes an RPG.
Real RPG's are about the avatar (you!) and how much depth (attributes and skills) you have to change that character and how the world changes via NPC's and quests and storyline with regards how you build that character. Diablo doesn't have that. Divinity does. Mass Effect doesn't have that Fallout 1,2 and 3 did. Jade Empire didn't have that, Oblivion did. practically all RPG's prior to 2002 had it, with some exceptions.
Don't believe me, believe Todd Howard of Bethesda, involved in every Bethesda RPG since Arena, He was talking about Morrowind (which he was Project Leader for) prior to the release of that game - and I quote:
"I think that character development is the core element that drives any RPG (what I call a 'real' RPG today, because of all the fakes!), and always will be. You do need a good story, or a good world, in which to use that character, but the first thing to get right is the character development."
When you look at the lead character of games like Jade Empire, Mass Effect and Diablo, to name a few, we see very little depth to the character (in terms of stats and skills) and a world that reacts to him/her and changes because of him or her. Rather, in these games, we see the emphasis on the armour and weapons , these are what many many games now put the stats into. This means the story and the world can be much more linear.
In 'real' RPG's, for example (as in Oblivion, The Witcher, Fallout, etc), the character depth has to mean a much more non linear world. If you can be very diplomatic or very stealthy, you can only be that in a gameworld that reacts to those stats/attributes. By having a character with no diplomatic and stealth requirements, you do not need a world that caters for that. Therefore the gameworld can be much more simpler. This is why we get Mass Effect and Borderland style 'RPG's' that 10-15 years ago would have been called 'Action-Adventures'. Only in the last 5 years have we heard terms like 'Action-RPG' and games with 'Lite RPG elements'.
We have seen with both Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2 recently how the publishers has pointed out more effort had gone into the action element, meaning, by extension, less roleplaying. In Mass Effect 2, for example, you no longer travel between locations in the city, talking to NPC's as you went. you fast travel there instead.
Even Dragon Age was not a true open world RPG, and was much closer to Mass Effect than Baldur's Gate. The game, when looked at without emotion, had 10-12 locations that you fast travelled to, enter a main story linear quest (The Deep Roads quest, for example), finish this linear quest, have a cutscene/conversation, then fast travel to the next linear main story quest. Inbetween you had the chantry notice boards. While these were called 'Chantry quests' they were really just 'fast travel somewhere, fight some creatures fast travel back. Now I finished Dragon Age, and thought it was a good game, but it wasn't an open world, non linear RPG like Baldur's Gate, but rather had the Mass Effect more linear storytelling and quest structure. Also, the variation between Human or Elf, for example, as you travelled through the gameworld was not as pronounced in gameworld reactions to you or you to it than the hype suggested.
So I would say that other than Bethesda, there is no large Western RPG maker any more. All we have are retro titles like Daggerfall, Wizardry or the Fallout series, or titles that still seem to be coming out of Eastern Europe, with RPG's like The Witcher, The Gothic series (including Risen and the soon to be released Gothic 4), Two Worlds, Drakensang and King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame. Eastern European seems to be the last bastion on pc ONLY games, and PC style open world non linear 'real' RPG's, with no influences from the console market. Equally, Western publishers, like Bioware are taking more and more notice of the console market. It's no coincidence that as Bioware have moved from PC only to our current multiformat market, so it has gone from Baldur's Gate 2 to Mass Effect 2, both called 'RPG's', but miles apart. If that's not genre confusion, I don't know what is.

Uk_John, firstly im not confused im just a guy who has a different opinion to you. It would be nice if you could respect that, i don't know if its your intent to condescend but thats how it comes across.
I agree with much of your opening paragraph and yet fail to see how this applies to Divine Divinity. Maybe my recollection is fuzzy but in DD i could choose how my character could kill a world of enemies, through melee, bow or magic. I could open chests or get mercantile bonuses. The list goes on and while the mechanics of my character were there, i could not choose a smart/dumb character, beautiful or ugly. I don't recall i single quest where i could rely on charm or guile, choose good or evil or anything inbetween. The world was crammed with npc's, but they were hardly a vibrant collection of characters.
Did the world evolve? Did new storylines open up in response to how you played the game?
An rpg game for me is about character choice, the options available in how they can interact with the game world and combat should just be a part of that. I want to see a colourful collection of npc's and a real atmosphere of travel and adventure running throughout the game.
Divinity didn't have that for me, Oblivion too for that matter. I don't think your confused or a dumb gamer for thinking the opposite. Your just a guy with a different take on what makes a real rpg.

UK_John, firstly: don't take the whole thing so seriously. The topic is about ... the topic sentence. Nothing else.
Secondly, stop quoting people. They are only people too. Like me or you.
Thirdly, do you know what RPG is for me? Nothing you play with a computer. And most importantly, NOTHING which has scripted dialogues. A Role-playing Game starts with people and a book and dice. So if you want to argue about what an RPG is, you should know that 'good' MMORPGs are the closest to 'real' RPGs. Why? You play with people. There is no scripted dialogues. Of course not every MMOs can be a space for that. In Warhammer Online for example, you can't sit down. You won't find a vendor that sells alcohol. etc etc
So, just stop loving your little games and also stop spitting on others because you don't like them. Nobody said Diablo is an RPG. It's a hack'n'slash...

Once again posts show how everyone is not sure any more what an RPG is. 10-15 years ago that wouldn;t have been a problem - that alone should tell you something about what's happening to the RPG genre in today's multiformat market. The adventure genre was first muddied and confused then disappeared. Hope this muddying an confusion around RPG's doesn't mean the same thing.