Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

It's a janky mess, but it served to introduce me to WoD and it was an enjoyable hack & slash with great music.

Get this, then grab the unofficial patch (6.7 at the time of this writing) to fix a slew of bugs and optionally add some extra content the devs hadn't finished before the game's original release. It's amazing how long the community has supported this game and modded it, but if you give it a try you'll get an idea of why they have. I docked a star for the bugs in the officially patched version of the game. In my eyes, the unofficial patch adds the fifth star. On the game itself, the pluses: - Player choices affect quest outcomes and ending - Several "clan" options - RPG elements and clan choices support decent range of play styles - Good replayability - Good story - Satisfying melee combat Minuses: - Buggy without unofficial patch - Ranged combat feels weak and clumsy - RPG elements not very balanced (some abilities are much more powerful than others) - While most quests can be completed with more than one approach, some story junctures require a character be at least moderately competent in combat (so a purely social character is difficult at best)

I like it's atmospere much. But the biggest pleasure of playing it was at medieval times.

I had to give it four stars rather than 3 for just a good rating, the extra star is for the storyline. It makes you forgive the GRAND departure from the PnP version. I used this to intro my wife to the whole World of Darkness genre. She played this before Bloodlines and it was a good setup for it. She still chuckles at "Pissed off Christoph". All in all a good game that could have been better, but still appreciable on it's own. Plus the toolbox to create your own chronicle is handy. For the price, it's worth it. Now if you have not played Bloodlines, do yourself a favor and get that too. It's too bad that this world is now defunct. There was so much potential left.

I'd heard about the World of Darkness before buying this game from friends who played the pen and paper role-playing game. I'd even started up a game like that (rolled up a character) before it turned out noone really had time to play. I think that what got me to buy the game was the description of the story though... Dont want to spoil it for anyone, but any game featuring a pious templar falling for a nun and getting turned into a vampire has to be played... Whats not to like? For me, the story line is what made this game. Not the graphics, which were probably not the best even back when the game was new. There is supposed to be multi-player support, but I never really got it to work (as far as I can see, you need someone to take on the role as Game Master to really work with it). I must have played this game through four or five more times since the first playthrough, experimenting with character development. Most games I wouldnt bother with after the first playthrough (or even after a partial playthrough). I simply LOVE some of the other aspects of this game though. There are some ways to take advantage of the supernatural aspects of the life as a vampire... Get your manipulation skill way up and you can actually buy stuff from a vendor and sell it back to the same vendor at a profit. This is NOT a bug, simply a result of your supernatural manipulation skills ;) Also, you get exp for each kill, there are plenty of vampires to fight, and you can resurrect vampires (not only your own team). Put this together, and you can kill, res, kill, res (and so on) the same vampire for LOTS of exp. Maybe taking advantage of the game, but still clearly within your abilities as a vampire and certainly something a vampire would do. Clerly a game worth your time ;)