Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines is, was, and shall be an amazing game (so long as it is/was/will be used with the unofficial patch). It defined some of the best gaming experiences in my teenage years, and is definitely worth purchasing. There is however a potential problem in the gog.com release. The unofficial patches "Basic" version is included from the moment of the game being installed, according to gog.com. This may render it incompatible with some of the best community content that this game has (And believe me, it has a lot... on top of this, the majority of the full-game mods add amazing things to the game, acting almost like an expansion pack to the Unofficial Patch Plus). If there isn't already a way to install the game with only the final Troika-Created Official Patch installed on top of it (not the unofficial patch) a lot of those mods (Such as Clan Quest Mod, The Final Nights, and Camerilla Edition) may be subject to extremely severe and possibly crash-inducing or game-breaking bugs due to leftover files from the Basic Patch included in this release- If they install at all. Furthermore, this may prevent you from installing the newer releases of the unofficial patch until gog.com updates the files on their end- Instructions on it say that you have to apply each version to a clean install of VTMB, making updates require a reinstall for the core game in the steam version. Hopefully I am writing this in vain and there's already a version downloadable on gog.com that does not include the unofficial patch in any capacity, since access to the best content on planet vampire (which kept operating thanks to a very dedicated moderator nabbing the IGN version before it disappeared and hosting the files on a server at his expense) depends on having a clean copy patched only to the last official, dev-created patch. I don't think this is the case, though, and the "Final Nights" Author has been warning people to avoid this release if they plan on using his mod.

I finished my 55 h, full playthrough of the game. It is a great content-wise, only the plot and some minor lore implications suck, especially if you know about Jewish mythology and make the connection Pisha=Pizna aka Lilith. Besides that lore black hole, the gameplay consists of most fun I have ever had with a video game besides The Saboteur. Bloodlines gives a much more pleasant and broader introduction to the VTM formula than Redemption did, though Redemption was more comprehensive in demonstrating the lore, e.g. different vampire types and their creations. In comparison, Redemption has multiple communities of Tzimisce for players to rampage through whereas Bloodlines had one Tzimisce mage named Andrei. Nevertheless, I would play Bloodlines 9 times out of 10 over Redemption as its gameplay is light years ahead. You aren't shackled to being a nice guy. Well, the game practically forced me to dump a ton of exp points into hacking, security aka lockpicking and persuasion and some other utility feats just to progress in the game, which is silly considering that the player is supposed to be a powerful 8th generation vampire. Only at the very end did I have spare points to dump into the stuff I actually wanted to have. I played UP 10.0 and there was only one gamebreaker bug: trying to melee an unkillable teleporter vamp (Hallowbrook Hotel) with a katana always made my game hang if that enemy scored a glitchy counter-hit right before teleporting. The voice acting is nothing special despite the big name casts, especially when compared to the situational hilarity of the character dialogue in messed up situations. For example, a totally-not-a-demon flesh-eater moralizing the player about the necessity of death. You see, that broad never wipes the blood juices off her face when he says that stuff. I digged the hammed-up acting e.g. the bum. The side quests are fun and at times the game rewards you for being a total d--k e.g. the cover girl quest. Act failed to kill the game.

Perfect game about the vampires. One of the best RPGs I played. Even after so many years still very fresh. And bloody :). Thank you GOG for this wonderful title!

This game surprised me. It's semi-open world, first/third person adventure game, with an occassional fourth wall breaking dialog line and a lot of player choice. If you've played the first Deus Ex, it's a lot like that, but instead of being about nanites, it is about vampirism. Not the cheesy kind of vampirism either; instead it focuses on the concept of what would the modern world be like if there were vampires about. The Masquerade is fundamentally about preventing humanity from declaring all out war on vampires. It makes sense and I like it. Wish I played this game a decade ago.

I played the crap out of it back in the day just to see all the options and try all the characters. It was also a step up in graphics for the time with the eyes, hands and mouth movements. There was/is nothing else like it especially at the time, and the way things are looking, according to the news, there will never be another that won't be soiled. I wish it had the large community that Morrowind has when it comes to the expansion and mod department so we could have whole new adventures and play the game the way it was meant to be before current year insanity. I would love it even with the old graphics.