Its a strange one, because there are some commitments to immersion that aren't fun, but it doesn't go far enough to be a tactical shooter or survival sim. So what you get is a game with arcadey call of duty like combat, but long boring drives everywhere in an open world that does not in any way feel alive. Getting anywhere is tedious due to having to fight the same outposts over and over again and nothing interesting along the way. The Malaria system is just pointless. You can forget about it for most of the game and then it randomly pops up and you need to use some pills or do quests to get more. The missions are incredibly samey... drive to a place, or get a bus, then drive to a place, blow something up or kill someone, drive back. And whats up with the voice acting? it feels like the voice actors are rushing through the lines.
I'm surprised I never heard of this game. Its a very fun boomer shooter with magic spells replacing guns. I usually fall off magic based FPS games (I love Amid Evil but never seem to be able to finish it...) but the story made me want to progress and see what happens next. Spells require single use artifacts for each use, which feels a bit odd for a fantasy game, but works as an FPS, and encourages exploration. I've always had enough artifacts to get by but never felt like I had an excess, so finding powerful spells was always rewarding. Combat itself is pretty good, but not perfect. Melee enemies can catch up to you really fast, which can make the many AoE spells dangerous to you, and once they are in range to hit you, it's near impossible to get out of their range without killing them. Fighting magic users is fun, playing much like a quake rocket launcher duel, though it can be annoying when they activate shields, forcing you to just wait it out for a bit. It is a bit strange that the tutorial covers tower defence elements that never actually get used in the single player campaign, might be a multiplayer feature, Overall, its a great game, with a decent enough story and pretty good cutscenes (if you can ignore those distracting hands). Makes me want to check out the Amazon series so the re-release might have done its job
The game starts out feeling like a bad Diablo clone, and is especially not helped by the first dungeon being an incredibly boring cave. But as the game goes on, and you finally get vampiric powers and a few levels under your belt, as well as some coterie members, it comes into its own. The dungeons become more visually interesting and intricate, combat becomes more dynamic and fun, and the story and characters get very interesting. That's not to say it becomes a game without flaws, in some ways it still feels like a bad Diablo clone, in that they took a lot of mechanics and ideas from Diablo without really understanding why they worked for that series. Enemies drop random loot but it never comes with random improvements, and some gear needs to be identified, but it identification always results in the same stats, so its just a barrier to equipping the item, and not actually an exciting "what will I get out of this". The coterie AI is also pretty bad, but it became less of an issue as I got further into the game and their stats got better. At first I was in a rush to get to the modern day part, but I did end up really enjoying the 1100s timeline as it showed an aspect of VTM history not often seen in video games (I'm not really familiar with the tabletop but I assume that's all modern day too). But I'm not going to lie, I definitely had the best time once I reached the modern day, as that's not a common setting in this sort of RPG. With all that said when the combat works it is genuinely fun, and the disciplines (spells) add a lot of variety to potential play styles. I'm not going to say "you have to play it for so many hours before it gets good" because that always makes my eyes roll, and if you can't stand the early snooze fest I don't blame you. But if you're willing to put up with a very slow start it does get rewarding the more you play.
