在《Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2》中，您将在现代夜晚西雅图一触即发的超自然战争杀出一条血路，吸血鬼血淋淋的动作战斗与新黑色电影风格的谋杀推理剧交织在一起。在这款由荣获 BAFTA 奖项肯定的工作室 The Chinese Room 制作的动作角色扮演游戏中，探索西雅图的吸血鬼宫廷及其黑暗角落。
《Vampire: The Masquerade® - Bloodlines™ 2 - Santa Monica Memories》
Before the actual review. Dear the Chinese Room, please, I beg you, just switch to making visual novels for a few years and work your way up to games with gameplay beyond just walking around.
Bloodlines 1 had a Masquerade system and a Criminality system.
Bloodlines 2 doesn’t distinguish between a supernatural act and a criminal act, so whether you’re just punching the police or using disciplines to dispatch them you’ll eventually fill the “masquerade meter” and a vampire will instantly put a stake through your chest in the middle of town for everyone to see, in order to “protect the masquerade.”
BL2 is a story-driven game, whose story is about 90% filler content. The intrigue, the mystery of the game is spoiled quickly by the “hints” the story gives you, which makes the moment of reveal fall flat and have no impact on you as a player. And the narrative content between the plot points that get the story moving along are just moments of boring filler content, like the first time you had to talk to an inanimate object might’ve been a bit amusing but by the time you talk to your 3rd or 4th object you get a feeling that dialog lines are there just to fill up the runtime of the game.
And if you’re not a fan of the constantly chatting companion, Fabien will drive you mad. Not only does he keep, and keep on talking when you play as Phyre, he talks even more in the other 2 timelines when you play as him.
The Chinese Room made some music for BL2, they also had the music by Rik Schaffer that was made for Hard Suit Labs’ Bloodlines 2 and somehow the game makes little use of music overall, there are a lot of moments in the game where there’s no music at all or it just stops for no apparent reason.
BL2 also has a lot of references (easter eggs) to BL1 and at first it was cute, but the shortcomings of BL2 made it feel like BL2 just kept referencing a game whose greatness it could never even hope to reach.
Because they removed weapons from the player character, the combat is basically “first-person close combat” with the occasional throwing of things and firing of a gun until the magazine empties.
There’s no replay-ability around the different clans as you can unlock almost all disciplines in one playthrough if you are willing to waste enough time to do so.
This game is not worth playing even if you got it for free.
To summarise, it is an action-adventure, there is little roleplay, most of the meaningful choices lie at the end, the level design is atrocious, the combat and the performance are terrible (nonetheless, I am delighted that the game takes only 25GB), the saving system has no place in modern games, and it was a pain to get this to launch (the launcher and telemetry were starting up just fine, though). Also, the post-effects may trigger motion sickness and the only camera option is the first person.
The story is passable and the mystery is somewhat compelling. Both protagonists are fine and generally not unpleasant to play as (unless one notices some peculiarities with the Malkavian). The controls are rebindable, but it was not possible to make them comfortable. The small things that I genuinely liked are that the avatar's body is visible and the attires remain the same for both body types.
The protagonists are mostly predetermined, Fabien is a Malkavian detective whose face is never shown and the Nomad is an Elder of your clan of choice. This choice does not affect the combat (it determines only the starting ability stick) and has very little influence on the story, with some options making no sense for some clans. There are a few opportunities to roleplay, but they are few and far between. I cannot tell with certainty what determines the ending, but there are several.
There are options for visual customisation for the MC (who is unambiguously non-binary), but they affect only the difficulty of harvesting the blood to unlock other clans' abilities, which can be done much easier after you are able to trigger the blood types at will with abilities.
In general, there are the main missions which consist of going through a corridor and murdering rooms of enemies (who are almost exclusively humanoids with guns), Fabien's main missions that do not include combat or climbing at all, and 3 types of side quests that are slightly jollier for the only reason that it is possible to minimise the combat and actually use strategy. The said types are following a trail and killing a human NPC, going to a location and killing a ghoul/vampire NPC, and picking up a package. There are also 3 types of collectibles. The developers really liked the number and most of the main mission objectives that are not "clear the room" come in sets of 3 as well.
Fabien's missions consist only of talking, occasionally to inanimate objects. While it is possible to use the Malkavian abilities in dialogues, there is only 1 path to progress the story and it is not possible to make a wrong lasting meaningful choice. The abilities recharge if a wrong dialogue option was chosen, so there is no penalty for retrying. Fabien can jog faster (the screen becomes covered in an unholy pile of post-effects), but cannot fight or jump, so every knee-high fence is an insurmountable obstacle.
The main avatar, however, is Phyre who has 1 combat style (melee) and can toss guns. To reiterate, the combat is atrocious, partially due to the incredibly poor performance, partially due to the combination of it being melee, the opponents dodging out of view easily and frequently, and the lack of target lock. In the main missions, it is almost always required to kill everyone in the room to progress, otherwise, the suspicious chain locks have the "ENEMIES NEARBY" message on them. There are a few (3?) somewhat original setpiece locations and a whole 1 "puzzle" (to get into the position where a certain symbol is visible). The abilities make the encounters slightly shorter, but they must be recharged by feeding. The traversal is functional, though it is inconvenient that the movement type can switch automatically (walking, running, vampire-running) and feels somewhat off.
In terms of world-building, the Beast does not come out unless the story demands it, the Masquerade breaches can be mended by sitting on a rooftop for 2 minutes, there is no Humanity rating at all. Naturally, no one minds all the bodies the protagonist leaves on those rooftops, which become battlegrounds by mid-game.
While the missions are linear, there are some variables that determine the ending. Unfortunately, there are long combat sequences between the few meaningful dialogues and I am not anyhow inclined to replay them.
As for the performance, the sound was getting consistently interrupted when I ran across the city. The FPS dropped frequently as well. The above-mentioned Paradox launcher can be disabled by creating a *.bat file, binding it to the game's exe, and adding %command% at the end. If the game crashes, adding -dx11 after the exe and before %command% allowed me to run it. Unfortunately, the only way to disable the telemetry is to block it with a firewall.
The saving system uses auto-saving in one slot and very rare "hard" saves at the start of the night, so one would need to manually move the files to reload safely.
The character design and UI are generally fine, while the level and location design seems to rely on lighting heavily and the areas look both hard to navigate, generic, and occasionally plainly ugly. The sound design is present and it is passable, but enemy combat barks grow old quickly.
Overall, while this is not the worst action game I've played (I did finish The Witcher 3 and that was worse), I would not recommend it in the current state nor if one adored the original Bloodlines.
It is ok as a game but is limited in controlability and the map is limited and small.
It is not a shadow of the first game and those waiting years like me for a decent sequel will be dissapointed.
The game is a hideous mess. First, the bugs already make it a pain to play at all, further compounded by the fact that they stripped out anything unique or interesting from the original
edit 1 day later the dlc isue is fixed +1 star
(I bought the now-called Premium version six years ago and the first DLC isn't included. It shows up as available for purchase, but not in the library. But this page says I own the Premium version...
Is this a scam?)
The game itself is like a walking simulator with a story, which I can say after about 2.5 hours of playing.
