I was slightly disappointed at first, when I identified the game as a 'very basic' visual novel. So it's all about reading and allowing sound and artwork to add to the atmosphere. But as soon as I got the hang of it, I've spend more and more time a day to learn more about my character and the world around her. The story is told in second person with the player immersed in the narrative as the protagonist. Every night the protagonist (a newly sired vampire) will be offered a map of New York with places or people to visit. The story unfolds depending on these choices which are further influenced by the choices made during the events. At the end of the night a vampire of course rests in a safe place to rise next sundown. The encounters are very dense, with good use of ambient music and sound effects. The art is beautiful, dark and animated. Smoke is raising from the city streets or from a single forgotten cigarette at an ashtray, lights from a passing car is illuminating Sophie's apartment from time to time and lightning filters through the heavy clouds of a thunderstorm. The writing reminds me a bit of the original vampire clan novels, although I'm using my dictionary not nearly as often as I did in the past. And of course the game is placed in the modern era of Vampire with NSA and CIA having joined with the Society of Leopold and destroyed the Vienna Chantry. The only thing that really bugged me was that the game would only allow a single save, which is really annoying with all the choices possible (WHY??!?!?!?). While I love the story, I really hate creators that are forcing players into a certain playstyle and I definitely will not replay the game from the start as often as it would be necessary to see and understand all choices. But if that's what the creators had in mind... I'll take two stars off because of the crappy single save.
If you think about to buy this game, be warned. You will have no control over your save game stages. You get an autosave feature and whenever you start a new game, your old savegames will be overwritten.... If this doesn't bother you, you get a funny game, but again with a couple of unnecessary funstopper. Not being able to have control over your savegames are making the bugs very annoying, so sometimes when you capture some people your minion will stop in the cell with his victim and just stand there... from that moment you have to live with that guy standing there or to get back to one of the older autosaves... if not all of them are overwritten already. If not, you can start the whole game again, because whenever you change anything in this room he is standing the game will abort. As all GoG Games the game installs itself with the need of admin rights... they don't do any difference in the bug section. The game bugs either with or without admin rights (Win7 Pro 64).
