Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

so ive nto been playing this game long.... the onyl thing i can think to say is that ti needs a minimap and proper quest markers..... ive had to look up where im supposed to go more then once..... but other that that its been a fun game so far!

If I had played this when I was 16, I would have absolutely eaten this up and probably made it a big part of my personality for a long, long time. Playing it for the first time as an adult, I can still admire the confident worldbuilding, incredibly charismatic writing, and impeccable early-2000s silliness while also conceding that holy moly, this game constantly feels like it is falling apart as you are playing. Every technical aspect of it feels like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces only technically fit together but you've got to really wedge them in there in order to make it work. Quests break, A.I. is not, and the balance between the different playstyles is all over the place. Knowing a bit about the game's development history and the situation with the source engine, it's probably difficult to say where the devs' intentionally stops and the kind of busted version of the source engine begins, and the game is obviously fully playable from start to finish. But either way, it did result in a game that, for me, was on average pretty unpleasant to play for a lot of the time. The story, though, the character, the world: Fantastic, and in a different timeline, potentially formative.

A lot has been said about this game. Needless to say I got 100 hrs on record, and tha's on GOG only, not to count all the previos experiences. Let me just add that my fiancee, who's not into vidyagames very much, is now on her second playthrough because she was enthralled by the world, the writing, the characters and the oveall atmosphere of the early 2000s, and now earns for something similar. Me too. By god if only CD Projekt, instead of developing CP2077, took the project of remaking this game. Don't get me wrong, CP2077 is a great game on it's own. But VTMB needs it, badly. Not even because of the bug thing, but because it's aging, and it shows. And I hate to see how rights holders ban all the fan attempts at remaking it. I kinda want to start learning game design and coding to do it myself, maybe gather a team, maybe become a part of one, and give this game justice. Whether it could be Source 2, Unreal, whatever. Maybe I am destined to get this going and just didn't realize it yet. After all, it is the blood of Caine which makes our fate.

The world and its inhabitants are interesting and unique, and the game has that charming and eccentric early-2000s vibe to it. Too bad the combat gameplay has aged poorly.

Being released the same day as Half-Life 2 obviously damaged the company enough to stop making games. How about you give them some money by buying this, loving it because it's indeed too fucking good, and maybe we might get some quality games in our industry again ;)