Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines was ahead of it's time. The facial expressions of the npcs are one of the bests to this day. The dialogs are incredible, although the story itself is not that great, most because of the endgame that needed to be rushed thanks to the pression made by Activion on Troika. The game have its flaws, but with the Unnoficial Patch to solve most of its bugs and add new content, the game have a new life. The way Bloodlines survived all this time and became a cult game is hard to overcome, even if the incoming Bloodlines 2 happens to be a better game, it will be difficult to take this game out of its throne.

Having completed my first playthrough ever as a Brujah, melee-focused vampire using no mods but Wesp5's Unofficial Patch I can say this: The game is fun, but I believe it's vastly overrated. I was pleased I was given lots of options to customize my character however I wanted, even if during character creation, each clan has preferences in XP distribution. This is crucial for an RPG and I see myself playing again as a different clan to experiment with new playstyles. There aren't actually many characters to really talk to, but that only makes it easier to remember most of them. They are all different from each other, with their own personalities, stories, allegiances and motivations. The facial animations were surprisingly good and really helped these people be believable. KOTOR came out only a year prior and it's facial animations aren't even close to the level of VtM:B. Where the game really shines is in the myriad side quests that you can undertake. They're varied and well crafted, with a healthy mix of combat, stealth, persuasion/intimidation/seduction and a plethora of goals beyond just "go to point A, fight some enemies and return with an item". Some are funny, others are more serious and some well and truly reminded me this is primarily a horror game. Maybe when people talk about how great this game is, they are really talking about the sidequests. I also have to commend the excellent taste in music displayed here. Not gonna lie, I spent a lot of time just dancing to the music inside the Asp Hole listening to Tiamat's "Cain" and the themes for Downtown, Hollywood and Chinatown are a joy to listen to. Unfortunately, the rushed nature of the game becomes evident as the main story progresses beyond the first hub. The very first mission to retrieve some explosives can be completed in several ways, but the following missions favor stealth greatly and the rest after that are uninspired combat focused dungeon crawls. I had fun, but I wasn't blown away.

I don't know what took me so long to pick up this game. One of the best games I've played in a long time. If you like exploration games with good writing I recommend it. It's story driven, but still manages to be surprisingly open world. I'm about 9 hours in and still haven't come close to finding all the content. The main thing I dislike is the combat which is a bit clunky, but usually still manageable to get through. The patch seems to have gotten most of the bugs out, although there's still one in there that seems to sometimes make certain elevator buttons impossible to press locking you out of a few areas.

This game... this game is like the embodiment of when publishers screw with devs too much. I played this game without the patch initially and haven't completed my patched playthrough yet but don't see it changing my opinion significantly. I feel like the races are a bit eh... Like, after playthrough one who is going to play anything other than Malkavian or Nosferatu? Those are the only interesting ones. I tried playing a bit as Brujah and Ventrue and they literally had the same dialogue as my initial playthrough as Toreador except with Ventrue, they *spoiler* throw up when you feed on poor people. So yeah, there are only really two fun races to play as. Gameplay wise the game is fine, I enjoy it. It doesn't have any real lock-on system and spamming bloodbuff is all you need to do to win any fight but whatever, it's fun enough. That horror segment, HOLY S**T that was the scariest shit my first time through, oh my god I am terrified of it, it gets me every time honestly. But yeah, it's a good game, and as for people giving one stars complaining about price, wait for a sale dude.

Note: game is not for young kids. This game is not a favorite of mine because it has Vampires. I like it because it has personality. So, the naysayers who were on Mars or not born when Vampire The Masquerade came out must realize it was unwisely rushed out the door with barely enough time to fix bugs and have a meaningful ending. But the devs tried their hardest. Modders thankfully kept fixing the game to where it is playable and looks good for it's age. I am not sure why people don't have a game that looks good. You can play it at 4k with the resolution patch. If you're not happy with the base game then mod it. You'll enjoy it one way or another. Enjoy.