I don't know, maybe I'm the weird one, but my expectations seem to be pretty different than most people here. I got my PC back in 2013 for video editing, and at the time it was maybe slightly above average. It has an i7 CPU, I upgraded the RAM and installed a hand-me-down Radeon RX 550 so I could play this game. I'm running it on high with some adjusted settings (1600x1900, no cloud/fog effects, 70 FOV) and it runs really well. I'm sure experiences vary here, but my dinky little machine is able to handle it. Maybe your problem is that you've never bought a game that was better than your rig? Welcome to my world. It has glitches, but my experience has been that games always have glitches, especially the ambitious ones. At the end of the day it's a product made by people, human error is part of the deal, if you are expecting an immersive mind-altering adventure, maybe try some hallucinogens. So far the atmosphere, the style, the cityscape, all the things I was hoping for, live up to their expectations. I've finished Act 1, and the story seems good so far. Each side gig I've tried has its own little story, and there seems to be countless side gigs. It's crammed with content. People complaining that it's not perfect right out the gate after ten years of development (and being pressured for release) should stop and think about the amount of production involved with each mission, and how long that would take. Is the gameplay itself mind-blowing? No. Could they have done more with the gameplay? Yes. Everyone could do more, if it wasn't for time, space, money, the limitations of subjective experience and knowledge. My life has not fundamentally changed. Right now I'm having fun. But eventually the game will become repetitive, and I will be compelled to wrap it up, finish the story and uninstall it, thinking back on it fondly. Then I'm going to move on with my life, maybe read a book, or watch a movie or something. Maybe continue to develop relationships with real people.
Just finished the first game, looking forward to the second. Y'all are crazy with these bad reviews. Amazing atmosphere, perfectly reasonable and logical puzzles, having to backtrack through an area you're terrified of getting through is part of the deal. If you're not terrified and are annoyed by the combat, you chickened out and played it on Normal when you should have played it on Hard- on Hard it's not even worth trying to fight, you will die.
The brutality of this game is less from it's difficulty, and more from it's relentless vision of the cost of survival. Offer to talk to the stranger? That's just enough time for them to blow your head off with a shotgun and eat your remains. You should have ducked for cover and beaten them to death with your crowbar once they ran out of ammo. What's it mean to be "good" in a world like that? Interesting question. The core gameplay is very hard, but death is mostly preventable. Over time you will learn what you need to look out for to survive. It's reasonable, in a real life scenario, that you might not find those things and you will die, which is sometimes what happens here. That may not sound fun to some, but if you like the idea of learning the system, and beating it, the game is mostly fair. Went to sleep without a noise trap and someone slit your throat? Whose fault is it but yours? The more you learn, the higher your chances, until you can get pretty far into the game on a consistent basis. The biggest flaw that drove me nuts was the story encounters. No matter how much you may master the rest of the game, choosing the wrong option in the narrative will kill you and throw away your progress. You can get good enough to where it doesn't take too long to get back to where you left off, but it's a design decision that mostly leads to frustration and resentment, the only reason it's not 5 stars for me. Hopefully they go in a different direction for future games. The game has its issues, another one is the UI. But the ambition on display is really inspiring, primarily the work of just one designer, Daniel Fedor. It's worth looking past the problems and recognizing the level of achievement. It can be a grind, but once you get into a rhythm of success, it's a lot of fun.
I finished this game a few months ago on Steam and feel like it definitely deserves some love and attention in the GOG community. It's a hard game to describe because it defies convention to a certain extent. The combat seems to be the primary focus in other reviews, which makes sense because for a lot of the game you will be fighting- the areas without combat are few and far between (though you spend a lot of time in there as well.) I enjoyed the combat, but it is very action focused, and can be difficult, and could be a turn-off for some gamers. It is tied to a very interesting game-play concept- the more citizens you kill, the more experience you gain, the easier the combat will be. So it's a difficulty scale that's not only built into the game-play, but into your approach to the character's morality as well, and a comment on the nature of evil characters- evil is easier. The one weakness here is that the more characters you kill, the more guarantee you have of a negative ending, which is an unfair restriction on the player's enjoyment of the game, if you ask me (you can get away with a few kills, especially if they really deserve it...) But what should be the focus here is the atmosphere. The shadowy streets of Victorian London, the music, the great voice-acting, the great character design, the thoughtful pacing and conversation will all pull you in and make you feel like you're in the world of Dracula. Vampyr uses every element of its game-play and design not as an end in itself, but as another tool used to immerse you in another world. It takes the functions of the RPG, the adventure game, the action game, and brings them together to pull you into the perspective of your character, in a way that few games are able to do this successfully. It's not perfect, it has moments of clunkiness, and the ending is bit unfair, but its close to perfect!
There are a lot of interesting ideas, and one of them is that the same story is being told from different angles, so in one playthrough you're a drifter who witnesses the aftermath of an assassination, another playthrough you're the assassin, and another you're the bodyguard, etc. The combat is pretty good, but a lot of the time it's teetering on the edge from hard and fun to tedious and unfair. The skill checks are out of hand- the system for getting through a campaign is basically trying out a sequence and reloading so that you can upgrade the skills you need. You can skip missions if you dared to upgrade a skill that won't get you through, and eventually end up at the mandatory ending that is the same for everyone, which gives you about four choices, two of them only possible with maxed out skills, and not necessarily skills that have anything to do with your class. But a lot of that has been covered by other reviewers- the real offender that hasn't been mentioned much is the writing. The setting is okay, I would say it's greatest strength is its atmosphere, but a lot of that is pulled directly out of Fallout (with references throughout.) The characters, dialogue, and descriptive writing are bland and juvenile. A lot of swearing and cruelty is used to cover up the lack of creativity. We get it, everyone is awful, that doesn't really replace characterization. Not to mention that there are about 2 or 3 women characters that I can think of: one is a prostitute, one killed all her husbands. Come on. Also, for a world based on ancient Rome, it's pretty ridiculous that almost everyone is white (Feng and a couple "Ordu" characters are the exception.) You can make a bad argument for Northern European fantasy lacking diversity (something that doesn't stop D&D, or most settings) but Ancient Rome was a central hub in the Mediterranean and North African region, so it's just lazy and adds to the bland boring nature of the world presented here.
I'm going to throw in my opinion b/c dear lord that's a lot of bad reviews. When gamers get it in their heads that something absolutely must be a certain way, god help anyone who dares to try something new. I'm not sure what got everyone's proverbial panties in a bunch, but I really enjoyed the game. It has plenty of flaws... but so did Planescape. There is no such thing as the perfect game if you look close enough, and for something that was made by a small indie studio, Tides plays very smoothly. This is not a tactical combat game. This is barely an RPG. It's a game where you run around talking to people and learning about them, solving puzzles, making choices about what you feel is right and wrong, occasionally getting into fights over those choices. If that's not your idea of fun gameplay, then no you won't like it (why would you be surprised.) If that is what you want, then why are you crying about the combat? I guarantee that half of the people who gave this one star are the same people calling the ambitious but broken Arcanum a masterpiece, which failed in as many ways as Tides succeeded. And the combat is fine, it serves its purpose and there are some good moments with it that serve the story. Which is what it's all about, the story, the world, the characters. The writing can be occasionally pretentious but for the most part I was engaged and had a lot of fun. Don't listen to the haters, go with the flow of what the game is trying to do instead of bringing your own expectations of what it's supposed to be, and don't bring expectations for a AAA title to a game made by an indie studio. If you're a blue tide dominant person you'll enjoy the game.
Ah, gamers- not all of us are sad little boys with castration complexes, really. Most of us are grown men over thirty with castration complexes. Situations like this make me wonder if the gaming community will EVER improve... Part of growing up is learning how to share. And by grow up, I mean past age six or seven. I know it's hard to accept stories not tailor-made specifically just for you, but that's what porn is for. When it comes to the rest, we respect stories about other people. For those of you who think this should be "only about the game/writing, not the politics," take a look at your comrades who are so quick to make disturbing comments about transgendered people and women and ask yourself what you're really trying to say, and who you want to associate yourself with.
