Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

As with Sim City 3000, as soon as I launch the game, it minimises itself and keeps doing so whenever I try to restore it.

So I loved Arcanum and thus Troika and I read some critics in the game magazins when it was released and I thought - wow that game will be pure awesomeness... But I got disappointed very early in the game. There is nearly nothing to explore. Yes the atmosphrere is great, it's dark and shabby but the levels are really restricted in every aspect. And there aren't many people to talk to and I think there weren't enough sidequests to gain experience from, so I had always a lack of abilities. The dialogue choices made no difference most of the time. Sometimes only a little. I had the feeling the different answers only existed to read them and they often lead to the same thing - quitting the dialogue, a simple goodbye would have done suffice. And the overall feeling of being a much feared mighty vampire, or at least a weak vampire struggling with his/her fate was completely missing. You felt like you had no identity and there was no identity to develop in the game. Then there were those levels... The ghost haunted hotel was really brilliant, I have to admit. It was spooky and exciting, I felt like trapped in a horror movie, Nightmare on Elm Street like running through narrow boiler rooms. (They should have made more levels like that in the game) The Brotherhood of the 9th Circle was pretty cool, too. But there also were the sewers and China Town.... and those last levels really ruined it for me. And the 'visit' at the Giovanni Family was very frustrating if you haven't gathered every single skillpoint you could and have failed in one or the other quest. I wonder how it is to play a Nosferatu, being mainly confined to the sewers must be a real fun killer since it is the worst part of it (like in most of the games I've played before). That to say, the stealth mechanism in this game is really a strange thing. If you have few skillpoints they will most likely directly see you no matter how much you try to hide and if you have some more they won't even see you when you are right in front of them, there wasn't really something between that. I can't really understand why so much people are raving about this game, it has so many flaws, the nice design of the very small levels won't justify all the anger you will experience if you are once more killed or once more running through ugly sewers or warehouses. Maybe the game would have been better if they hadn't made it 3D source engine based. Well tastes are different....I will keep playing Arcanum instead and being sad about the demise of Troika games, maybe they could have released another more polished game if they had the time. And : I think the price is to steep considering that you get a boxed version for about 4 euros...

Bought it years ago around the time it came out at an EB or Gamestop. Probably one of the best vampire games out at the time. Today, the game doesn't hold up and the graphics aren't all that great either. On a 5 star scale I can only give it a 2, on a more accurate 10 point scale I'd give it maybe a 7 or 7.5 yo be fair. I'm surprised GoG is still trying to sell this OLD game decades later for $20, total rip-off. Not worth more than $4 to $9 at most.

This game is only fun until you leave the Downtown area. The very second you reach Hollywood it turns to crap. Suddenly the characters suck, level design is terrible, story turns stupid and everything just gets worse. Then you get to Chinatown and it all somehow gets even more terrible. Finally, the ending of the game. The ending ruins whatever slight chance of making this game again. If you buy this (save your money and don't) only play until you leave Downtown.

Despite being an RPG fan and avid gamer for over 35 years, VtM: Bloodlines is a game I never got around to playing. As I'm on a vintage game binge at the moment, I thought it was time to give it a try and see what all the fuss is about. After a couple of hours playing I can safely say... I don't see what the fuss is about. So far nothing about this game has stood out to me as being exceptional, particularly good, or even particularly interesting. Graphically, there are games from the same era that look far better. The audio is also pretty poor by the standards of the time... I just finished playing a game from 1996 that sounds way better than Bloodlines. The voice acting of nearly every character so far has been incredibly poor too, which is never a good thing in a voiced RPG... I'd rather have text than bad actors. The game begins with no character customisation beyond choosing a clan and gender. The attributes and skills on offer are also pretty limited, but also linked meaning it's pointless having one without the another... so why not just combine them into one for simplicity? Presumably to give the illusion of choice. Then we get to the actual gameplay. Vampires across the board are generally depicted as strong, agile, graceful creatures, yet your character in Bloodlines is slow, can barely jump two metres, and has just a few arbitrary "vampiric" abilities that didn't really feel useful at all... at least with the clan I chose. The game constantly jumps between first and third person depending on what you're doing, which is bloody horrible. And as for the combat, it is by far the absolute worst part of the entire game. Melee is just a three-hit-combo button mash, and the gunplay is worse than the original Wolfenstein 3D from 1992. Beyond awful. Given all of the above, I can only assume that it is the storytelling of Bloodlines that has created it's cult following. However, I simply can't root through the garbage to find the prize in this one. Uninstalled.