Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

I played through this game when I was 14. I loved it back then. I tried to play it again in 2018. I managed 14 hours before I just gave up 80 or 90 % through the game. There are games that would really benefit from a remake and this is definitely one of them. The story itself is good. Personally I find the underlying theme and its exploration excellent. The main characters are interesting and believable, considering the "fantasy" setting of vampires. The game controls are incredibly clunky. You click to attack. However, if something is in the way or you have small enemies, misclicking occurs often. And that leads to death regularly (full party wipe that is). The companion AI is pretty horrible, not least of which are pathing issues. In a game that is not super easy, it is incredibly annoying to rush into a room with 4 enemies and get hacked to pieces while your 3 companions squabble at the door about who goes in next. Mission design is simplistic. Each room contains a set number of enemies, mostly 3-4. Once you enter the room, the fight is on. So you attack the nearest enemy and your companions stand behind you and pathing issues mean that you are fighting at the head of a conga line of imbeciles who can get around you. If you give them ranged weapons, they'll pump the expensive ammo into walls and corners mostly. Each floor has a number of rooms and most dungeons (yes, this is mainly a dungeon crawler) have 4 levels, conveniently number Dungeon 1, Dungeon 2, etc.. This mission layout doesn't change. Each dungeon contains variations of 2 or 3 monster types. A dungeon takes about 1+ hours to clear. The mission design would be bearable but the brain-dead companions, pathing issues and incredibly clunky interface suck the fun out of something as simple as dungeon crawling. And it is a shame, because the game offers a story that, IMHO, is really worth telling. But it is not worth the incredibly frustrating grind. Better watch it on youtube.

was really surprised to see a lot of negative reviews of the game. this game has great writing and an awesome premise for showing 2 different time periods of being a vampire. once you understand the combat works off table top rules, similar to how Baldurs Gate uses D&D rules in the background, then its a lot of fun to traverse dungeons with vampire powers and the weapons of the era. although a lot of negative reviews were written before this was entered into the Game Preservation Program. it used to require a directx wrapper to be able to play properly, and you had to get that from a mod site. now the game works straight from GOG. if you tried the game years ago and couldnt see anything because it was so dark, try it again now that the graphics are fixed.

I've played this game from start to finish at least 5 times now, and probably will again. Redemption is a great into to the World of Darkness for anyone who hasn't played (or less familiar with) the Pen and Paper, Live Action Role Play, or Vampire the Eternal Struggle CCG. This game was truly created a head of its time and still holds a very strong Storytelling engine for yourself and 3 friends to connect to. By using Hamachi (a small downloadable virtual network) you can still create a private network to host your Storytelling games with. This game was such a success that so many custom characters, maps, chronicles, MODS (such as WodMod, Six Mod, Wodal, Cotd, Darkpath etc), and effects were created for it. Some of these can be found at "http://www.planetvampire.com", or by searching "http://www.fileplanet.com" plus a good number of other sites. Age of Redemption 2010 was just released allowing gameplay of the entire game in multiplayer. I highly recommend this game to anyone. And this game still holds a lot of potential to future developers. Heck, I'd love to see a squeal. The graphics look older by todays standards since the games release but put that aside and enjoy it for the storyline, character development, and hosting of your own games!!

VTM Redemption - the elder brother of VTM Bloodlines and often in its shadow. While there are many who will claim that Bloodlines is a raw gem and is a mongst the best rpgs of all time when it comes to atmosphere and writing, only few will say the same for Redemption. But this is not justified, not at all: the writing of Redemption is at least on par with the writing of its younger brother, the atmosphere nearly as good (but only because of the older tech) and it mirrows perfectly the world of the pen&paper VTM an which it is based. Yet, it has its flaws: redemption gives the player the control over a whole coterie (=group) of vampires and the controls are often flawed and frustrating. The difficulty can become either far too easy (if you know what to do) or insanely hard (if you are inexperienced) the UI is, to say it nicely, sub-optimal and if you are not made for long dialogues in "old"-English then this game is definitly not made for you. You also have to enjoy older games - the optics and the gameplay are very dated, but if you can live with that, Redemption will become a great experience for you. There is even a game-master mode you can use to play with your friends in coop or to create new scenarios and adventures. Many of those are available for free in the net, so the game has the potential to give you hundreds of hours of gameplay. But, here is a word of warning: many a mod that seems to be great at first glance and during the first hours of playing, ends in a balance mess that can take away any fun from the game in the second half of the game.If a mere human with a pistol is a hundred times deadlier than an ancient Tremere Lord, something is amiss!

Let me start with the things I liked, or at least that I thought were okay. The music was pretty okay. I actually still have some themes in mind after finishing the game. For example, I find Anezka’s theme to be pretty beautiful. I kinda enjoyed Christoff as a protagonist. The story, while not particularly groundbreaking was okay. I enjoyed the themes of damnation, Christof’s ruminations on the fate of his soul. There were also interesting themes of sacrificing innocence to save something else, or of commiting sin to stop someone else from commiting a sin. But the biggest problem I had with Redemption is that it was, easily, like 80% combat. Non-stop combat, through multiple level „dungeons”. With nothing to do in them, no books to read, no magical experiments to inspect, no puzzles. Just dozens upon dozens of enemies. I would say that if you’re making a crpg and create multiple-level dungeons with nothing but dozens of enemies in them, you’re doing something wrong. There’s zero exploration in the game – each location must be visited during the main plot, and in precise order to boot. There are also no additional sidequests or activities. Overall, though, the game was just dreadfully boring to me on account of being filled with endless combat. It is in my opinion exemplified by the Tremere Chantry. Here you have this headquarters of a magical clan of vampires, descendent from human mages. There’s so much potential for lore, for magic puzzles, for blood-curdling experiments, for tomes of lore and amazement. And there is nothing. Literally, you just go through 4 levels of the „dungeon” fighting all the time. I was majorly disappointed by Redemption, but if you want to see how I came to that conclusion, you can see me playing it blind on my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaYseRpjAjA&list=PLp4TpsJ7HUWXFDI46P0Jr0C34g1qhXDma&index=1