Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

With unofficial patch 11.5, but without restored content.

Don't understand why it's so highly regarded? It was ok. Good voice acting and RPG good stuff, nice story. But frustrating at times... controls not great, often it's very obscure where to go next (especially if one isn't introduced to the concept that something in the environent " is a thing". Yes, there is not supposed to be handholding in classic RPG's but really?... Also so much running around, could have done without the load screens to be honest.

I bought Vampire: Bloodlines because...I love vampires. Also, it has a great rating on GOG. But I ended up feeling disappointed. This game basically consists of running errands for more powerful vampires. "Go here and do this," say the powerful vampires, and you run around like their pet, fetching items and killing people for them. Your character doesn't have an independent agenda - at least not for the entire beginning of the game - and you have little freedom to do anything but run the errands. It's tedious. Another problem is that the vampires essentially function as gangsters, engaged in lame turf wars. For example, your first assigned task is to blow up a rival vampire gang's warehouse. How petty is that? Not exactly what I would choose to do, if I became one of the immortal Lords of the Undead. Really, this is just Grand Theft Auto with fangs - the vampire stuff is almost irrelevant. While the game has nice graphics and atmosphere, I don't like its aesthetic (goth, rather than gothic; also, relentlessly bleak). Most of the characters are ugly, annoying or both. And while the dialogue has been praised in some reviews, I found most of it to be purely functional ("go fetch me this thing"). On the rare occasions when the script attempts characterization, it's cliched and trite. Two other big problems: the clunky combat system consists of randomly flailing around, and the 3D engine is buggy. Sometimes, a character will get frozen in mid-air while moving, or start doing a weird jig for no reason. Even when things aren't glitching, characters seem to float through the 3D environment rather than actually inhabit it. In spite of these problems, I had a few laughs with the game, and was just engaged enough to complete several dozen mini-missions and tasks. Then I got bored and watched the end on YouTube (and it was bad). Bloodlines has its good points, but seems quite overrated on GOG. But if goth vampires are your thing, you may have a better time with this one.

I can see why people love the game: great story, good voice actors, fascinating characters... yet it's not enough for me to enjoy it that much. There is just too much walking in between the quests, too little to do in the streets and no interesting loot to be found. You wander between dozens of empty rooms with nothing interesting to find or see, a few NPCs here and there to bit when you are thirsty and then you'll get lost in some pointlessly huge dungeon. The quests are a chore to endure just to see how the story develops. I can't find the motivation to keep playing it.

Even with the Unofficial Patch, this game feels like an amateur early alpha. I know it's from another time, but this isn't worth it unless you have some sort of nostalgia or a retro-gaming fetish.