Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

Troika Games really got the bloodline of Black Isle Studio/Obsedian Entertainment. I am definitely stunned by the Code, intrigued by the Art, and fascinated by the Design.

There's a group of armed men in the room. Do you obey your superior and sneak past them, or do you kill them all mercilessly? If you do fight them, do you use your bare hands? A melee weapon? Or maybe you use your vampiric powers to trivialize it all? A human woman requires a critical blood transfusion; do you let her drink your blood at the cost of her serving you forever, or do you let her die? Do you obey the woman who acts rational yet rude, or the more unhinged one who has a romantic interest in you? Do you purchase blood packs to keep your thirst satiated, or do you calmly seduce a member of the populace and subtly drink their blood. Perhaps you do it by foce, but you might be caught by another human. Bloodlines is a semi-linear but mostly non-linear game in which you have many situations like this, choices everywhere with everything you do; even your vampiric race and powers available are a choice, except one: after bringing home a date, everything goes wrong: they suck your blood dry, and turn you into one of THEM. You're brought against your will into a tribunal, nearly executed, but as a last minute decision, spared by your new kin of the night. From there you must work as a fledgling vampire, and while the first jobs seem easy and unrelated, a dark plot brews below the surface. Vampire politics are a deadly game, and you're one of the center-pieces. You get to travel through various cities as you progress the story, and can do side-quests before progressing through the main game's missions. You can buy or procure weapons of all kinds, from ancient swords to powerful armaments like assault rifles and shotguns; meanwhile you level up your own skills and physical traits and vampiric powers. You must always be careful though; for if your nature is exposed, law enforcement agents, vampire hunters, and eventually, your own kin, will hunt you, if only to keep the Masquerade intact. But will you be able to maintain some humanity, or become a beast?

fuck the sewers

Definitive vampire experience. Hella worth time and money even after all these years.

I cannot say enough how much I love this game. Right off the bat though, let me say YOU HAVE TO PATCH THIS GAME. Don't let the fact that you need to go to Wesp5's Unofficial Patch (or the other one I don't use, I hear it works fine though, make your own choice) to make the game playable dissuade you though. Seriously, this game is immersive. The sounds of the city, of the wind, of the TV and radios that play different things depending on how you play the game, the unforgettable characters. What's your relationship with Heather like? How hard do you laugh at Fat Larry, how do you feel about Nines and Tung and those Sisters in the club? Do you want to demolish puny mortals with your spells? Do you want a game where the number of people you kill doesn't effect your experience points so you can actually just Obfuscate (magical stealth) past a dozen guards before killing their leader from behind with a fire ax while laughing like a lunatic? Do you just want to rage through moving ten times as fast as any mortal, his bullets whizzing through the space you were what seems like minutes before? My God, I've played through this game a dozen times and it never really gets old. Yes, the end is a bit of a grind with a bunch of combat, but by then you are invested as hell at seeing the ending. Play each clan... a couple times. Just play and immerse yourself (preferably at night with the lights off). Once you've beaten it a couple times you'll put it down... until someone mentions it on reddit or something and you'll play again. Even writing this review means that I'm going to play this again. Tonight! Maybe a Malkavian playthrough again (maybe not a good first time playthrough, FYI, but do what you want). This game is worth $20. Hell, it's worth $50, IMO. I'm buying it from GOG even though I originally bought it on Steam. Because DRM free might not normally be worth it to me. But for this game? Hell to the yes.