- Is it a good game? -- Yes, it's fun to play. The fighting mechanics rock, The power fantasy is amazing: you are an elder vampire who jumps, glides and climbs from roof to roof - yeah, it's truly amazing! It seems that you can be a fangbanger - hell yeah! But you need to work for it. >:D Feels pretty close to the source material, it's a good Vampire the Masquerade game and probably the most polished and pretty VtM game up to date (fanpatches aside). It runs smoothly. Sometimes it stutters when you open a door or something, typical traversal stutter, but nothing serious. My grafics card does approve it. The grafics rock, the game looks amazing, holy moly, the game even looks like a neon fever dream sometimes and the characters have a personaility and really good voice acting. And my my, the lip sync is mesmerizing sometimes. Makes me stare at their mouths. ;-) The atmosphere is dense and you can feel the scenery a lot if you want to. Diving into it, playing immersed. - Being a vampire on the hunt for pray. Yeah, I am gonna play the fook out of this game. Could be my GOTY, beacuase it is a good VtM game. But I wanna finish it first. The game has got problems though, see below. Choices in conversations seem to matter. You can be a brute or a diplomat. I am not sure yet, if it's just an illusion of choice though. The dude, the voice in your in your head, Fabien, is actually a nice addition. I do enjoy his parts. I wonder what the mystery is going to be here. It's got detective parts to solve and these are fun and different. The devs put all the playable clans in the base game, after fans complained about the 20€ DLC to unlock Lasombra and Toreador, that is included now, thank you very much! <3 - Ok, what sucks? (no bloodsucking jokes below! haha) -- It's NOT a Bloodlines game. What a bummer! I wanted that. They should have called it differently. "VtM Nomad" maybe? I don't know. Just a different cool name. This game is is like a package of jelly candies with a chocolate logo on it. Both sweet but different. There are some easter eggs, pointing to Bloodlines 1 and they are fun, but feel a bit out of place. This is a different game. It's also not an RPG. Bloodlines 1 was based strongly on the tabletop game, but this game is rather an Immersive Sim genre with fighting perks to unlock and with NPC relationships. Maybe like Dishonored with a bit Batman Arkham City and a bit of Telltale adventures, plus this and that? Some sidequests are boring after a while and repetetive. Like: "collect enough of the specific bloodtype, to learn get a new vampire disciple", this is basically rinse and repeat all over again. Can be fun, if you are playing a bit immersive, but it's like the same to do everytime. The city is crowded with Anarch thinblood thugs. And they look like exzessively colorful dressed punks. These are not the Anarchs I remember. Feels a bit weird. Did the Anarchs change that much in from old VtM to V5? It's a very cold season with snow everywhere, but a huge crows of people are literally living on the streets during the cold nights. Not very realistic. There are no moving cars, trains or any other vehicles. They are there, but just as immovable assets. Also no underround train - dude, what a missed oppotunity! Well, maybe in a later part of the game? I am still in snowy Seattle, the starting area, after like 14 hours or so. -- So what? "Buy or die"??? -- (pun intended) Soooo, yeah. It's a good VtM action adventure game and actually I love it, but not a Bloodlines game. And that is very disappointing because it's got the branding to be a sequel. The name Blooodlines comes with certain expectations and these aren't fulfilled. I guess thats why people are review bombing the game. It's actually a pretty, solid, modern action adventure though. If you want a new VtM game to slam your fangs into: go for it. If you expect a new original Bloodlines CRPG with lots of black humor, multiple talents and all that jazz. then you will be disappointed. I wished Paradox released both games. This here AND the Brian Mitsoda sequel. that got dropped during development unfortunately. There can never be enough dedicated Vampire The Masquerade videogames, if you ask me.
If you did enjoy Bloodlines, you are going to install this patch sooner or later. It's like a New Game Plus DLC, switching things here and there, adding content. Made with love, from vampires for vampires. Enjoy!
Imagine turnbased Final Fantasy with french people, HQ cinematic cutscenes, a dark fantasy/sci-fi setting with a bittersweet story to make you cry, character design influences of Miyasaki/Ghibli animes and inspirations of Dark Souls. Highly addictive good game, an instant classic.
Just dropping my two cents to add some sugar to the salt here. Really good, modern adaptation of the classic Larry games. It's hasn't got exactly the same spirit, but is really well done. If you are missing these classic raunchy Sierra titles in the modern times, you should love this game. If you don't know Larry Laffer: It's suposed to be more funny than sexy. But it has got that slippery dirty humor you probably know from somewhere.
Another amazing survival game with intriguing story and amazing atmosphere from 11bit Studios. If you like This War Of Mine and Frostpunk, you will love this one as well. It's very different, especially the presentation, but you will realize familiar elements of desperate choices, lost places, harsh environment ... I love it. I am going to play a second playthrough and I am lookinh forward to the future DLC the did announce. - I just hope it's more of story, surval and new possible Alters to clone, not some lazy cosmetics. But 11bit did not disappoint me yet with their work. :-)
The presentation is fantastic, but the game is lacking depth. Every battle feels the same. Your daughters are lacking abilities to chose from. There are even some abilities that only might help you a bit (or not), but will damage the executing daughter forever - whats the fun in that? These abilities aren't really options, imho. So, you are like playing only with Moving, Attack, Alternate Attack or Escape mechanic and then the self damage. That's it. There are only like 3-4 different enemy types. Are there more later? Bosses are always blatantly overpowered and going to make you lose all your progress and force you to redo everything again and again. Boooooring, seriously. I am playing games to have fun, not to feel stuck in my place. Can you actually advance past the bosses?? It's been a while since I played before today but it seems I am still at boss 1 or 2 and I am not interested to play the boring, repetetive last 20 battles again. Thats why I stopped playing back then and is going to make me uninstall this software today and to write this bad review about it. In the game is no real way to advance or to evolve except grinding your way through all the suffering from the losses and then leave you to count what you might still have in the end. ... With a tear in your eye. Meh. Sorry. - It's a cool looking game but there isn't much more to it. Except pain and suffering. I wanna give the game this though: with depth as like XCOM1+2 or Invisible Inc. and a bit more color, enemy type and level variation, this game could be a smash hit. Theres this glimpse on the horizon, you can easily imagine that.
This game got obvious technical flaws that includes crash to desktop ("CTD") from time to time again, FPS stuttering** by the engine (although running on modern computer) or some logical plot holes (for example the protagonist might be looking like the personification of the walking dead, but everyone doesn't seem to care or even to be able to see it, they are like: "Hello, Dr Reid! Lovely to see you."). Seems the devs ran out of time to complete the game during crunch before release. :-( A final patch or definitive edition would be very welcome, but unfortunately highly unlikely after all this time. But, the game behind the problems is a lovely victorian vampire action title in a postapocalyptic version of London. The combat is fun and the story, conversations and characters sophisticated. Well, it's obviously not a Vampire The Masquerade title but it shares similiarities. I like the setting and power fantasy very much at the end of the day. And I would buy a sequel for sure. At least if it is playable after all. **By the way, there is a fix for the stuttering. It's tedious but works: Play a bit with the grafic settings, disable Vsync ingame and enable it via your card driver. Restart the game. Sooner or later you should get stable FPS at max settings. The stuttering can't be fixed by turning all settings down, that won't do anything. It's a problem caused by the engine/game. (Unreal Engine though, lol.)
Imagine weird, strange art with melancholic, dark tones. During dark ages, themed with heaven & hell, almost post-apocalyptic. And it would not take itself very serious, although it is looking like it most of the time. If this sound like your cup of tea - play this game. :-)
