I was completely smitten with this game when I started playing it. The cool "cyberpunk meets gothic" look and feel of LA, the cynical humor, the turn-of-the-millennium goth sound of the soundtrack and most importantly the great side characters. Playing this game for the first time is a truly exciting experience since unlike a lot of comparable games this one actually manages to make you feel like a newcomer in dangerous social circles where everyone has their own agenda and you have no idea whom you can trust. So you listen closely, you try to figure people out, you hedge your bets and try not to commit to anything - it's realistic and fun. Unfortunately, I think the devs might have run out of interest in the second half. This is where you get a lot of repetitive hack-and-slay and the story doesn't feel as tight anymore as in the first half. If the second half had been half as long, it would have been a better game. The game is supposed to have a lot of replay value since you get a different experience based on which clan you join - in fact I know someone who has completed this game at least 5 times. But the truth is, I couldn't get through the game a second time because it became more clear that the game is a lot more linear than it first appears. In many cases the "most obvious choice" that most players will make on their first playthrough is indeed the only choice the game actually lets you make. Still, it's a memorable game that I would recommend to anyone who likes RPGs, vampires, or has nostalgia about being a goth in the early 2000s. This brings back the aesthetic, the sound, the feel - even though I first played this game only last year.
I had high hopes for this game, but only got a few hours into it. I knew going in that a lot of it would be hack&slay, which I don't care for, so I cheated up my physical stats and tried to play the game for the story. Well, first of all the cheating doesn't really make the fights less annoying since every random monster can block your path and you have to fight it anyway. And then they're not even one-hits since Christof, your protag, will miss. A lot. The useless companions will miss even more. And then they will die since they, for some reason, can't bite anyone and replenish their blood. And then you need to raise them. Again. So the cheats make the fights a little shorter, but they don't make a big difference. But the game isn't good apart from the fights either. I'm sorry, it's supposed to have good storytelling? I don't think so. The characters talk like in a bad romance novel and nothing makes any sense. The romance between Christof and Anezka is stereotypical and corny, she has no personality beyond "caring and loves him". The other characters live by simplistic black-and-white morality, which is curious for vampires. The sidequests are all fetchquests without creativity. Also, the environments are ugly. I know it's an old game, but come on. Neverwinter Nights came out just three years later and had a bustling city that felt alive. Thief 2 came out the same year and its medieval-inspired levels looked beautiful and intricate. This game's Prague looks sterile, the textures are made without any attention to detail and there are hardly any NPCs around. I got lost in the town a few times simply because everything looks exactly the same. It doesn't feel like a town when there are 5 NPCs in a quarter and you can't talk to any of them. In the Jewish quarter there was exactly 1 NPC outside. I can't comment on the "modern" part of the game since I decided life is too short to continue playing. In conclusion, skip this one and replay "Bloodlines" instead.
