I'm a sucker for a flawed RPG and Vampyr has all the makings of a pre-GreedFall Spiders game, many of which have stolen my heart. Like most double-A productions you'll notice things like dated graphics and some technical issues that stem from having been made on a middling budget. However, developer DONTNOD Entertainment shows once again that they are one of the most creative names working in the industry today, and the unique ideas and compelling world they've crafted here make this title worth playing in spite of its faults.

Set in a plague-ridden London during the 1900s, this is a vampiric power fantasy mixed with a detective simulator (quests are even called "investigations") that lets you play doctor on the side. As you search for a cure for the epidemic that's sweeping the continent you'll be faced with a lot of morally gray decisions that will have serious impacts on the world around you. For example, a choice I made relatively early on in the story that seemed solid inadvertently led to an entire district descending into chaos, with a portion of its inhabitants either going missing, joining a gang, or turning into hideous monsters.

By far the most intriguing decisions you'll grapple with though are directly tied to the game's main hook. Every non-hostile NPC you come across can be fed on for a massive boost in experience points at the cost of their lives. While uncovering their secrets, healing them when they're sick, and completing side-quests for them offers a meager amount of EXP on its own, it also serves the purpose of enriching their blood and making it more profitable for you turn them into your next meal later on down the line. This mechanic creates an interesting dynamic where you can either help people out of the goodness of your own heart or raise them like cattle for the slaughter in order to get more powerful.

This is a significant feature because it essentially allows you to pick your own difficulty level. Choosing not to feed on people will ensure the world remains stable, but will make the overall game harder as enemies will always be at higher levels than you. Meanwhile, taking the alternative path and killing the locals for their blood will cause the city's status to deteriorate, but will allow you to unlock the most powerful abilities and can make combat a breeze. You can also strike a balance between the two options and only devour a portion of the population you deem unworthy of life.

In an impressive move DONTNOD put a lot of work into ensuring each character you encounter has a fully fleshed out backstory and set of motives. I met everyone from heartless serial killers to selfless hospital workers and plenty of types in-between. You can decide if the city would be better off without someone or not if you want to and that's a really cool feature. My one issue with it is that I never found talking to any of them to be all that interesting as your relationships with them never really go anywhere unless they are significant to the main story. So the only reason I ever bothered interacting with and learning about anyone was to get stronger, and even then I found myself skipping through most of the dialogue.

As far as issues go, this is far from the prettiest title on the market, but even the plastic looking character models can't rob this moody, gothic version of London of its personality and atmosphere. Load screens are long and you can even run into some random ones while exploring. I also experienced a few crashes. The biggest problems though are the lack of a fast travel system which leads to a lot of backtracking to and fro across the city and some trouble with the balancing at the very beginning and tail end of the game that are the result of enemies being too highly scaled above you. Part of this is intentional though to goad you into draining the NPCs of life as a means of somewhat simulating for you the protagonist's struggle with his constant thirst for blood. Which is creative, but frustrating nonetheless. There is a "story mode" where you won't have to worry about difficulty at all and can solely focus on the narrative, but playing that way locks you out of being able to get a certain trophy.

While known more today for their episodic, Telltale style adventure games, Vampyr like Remember Me before it makes a strong case for why DONTNOD should break out of their comfort zone more often. While they still weren't able to find the same level of critical acclaim here as they were with their Life is Strange series, they still created an exciting RPG based on original concepts that's worth looking at. Especially since its faults this time are more technical in nature rather than inherent to the actual design itself.

8/10

It's a game you'll either love or hate. It has some serious gameplay issues and gets very repetitive and boring very quickly. Also, the game becomes unfairly difficult if you refuse to drink blood. Even when given the choice, the game constantly pushes you to be evil and feed on people. Traveling from one place to another is also tiring. Also, the fact that we have to keep everyone alive in the towns gets annoying after a while. There aren't enough games about vampires, so if you like the concept, Vampyr is worth a chance, but even if you don't play it, you won't lose much. It could have been a good game and it definitely has potential but they didn't work hard enough.

It's tempting to open this review by saying 'this game sucks' but it actually didn't so I won't.

Vampyr is Don't Nod's post-Life is Strange project that takes a decidedly different approach gameplay-wise while still keeping their trademark decisions-and-consequences narrative framework. Although I acknowledge that the limitations and norms that are consistent across vampire literature—no sunlight, burned by crosses, etc.—make them thematically interesting, I've never personally been a fan.

Despite that, though, I cannot deny that Vampyr is a well-told tale with some interesting takes on vampire mythos, complimented by truly stellar voice-acting work across the board (in particular from Anthony Howell as the lead).

Jonathan Reid has just woken up in the backstreets of London as a newly-born vampire with a fresh thirst for blood. As the Spanish Flu rips through the city and indeed the world at large, he must now grapple with his work as a doctor and his new life as a vampire to find a solution that benefits both of his worlds.

The narrative then takes the form of a detective mystery of sorts as you visit the boroughs of London and assist its various denizens in this crisis. Of course, along the way, you will be expected to make decisions and take actions that will decide the fate of both London and vampirekind. It's familiar territory for fans of Life is Strange and much like it, your choices have tangible, visible effects on the world around you that decide the outcome of both the main quest and side quests.

It's enthralling stuff, and the scope and size of the game feel reasonable along with it, although it could definitely do with a fast travel system. When you're cleaning up side quests or even travelling between boroughs in the back half of the game, it can become tedious running between them, especially when you keep running into enemies.

Speaking of which, combat is maybe the most controversial aspect of Vampyr's gameplay. Generally, the consensus surrounding Vampyr's combat is that it's a mixed bag, and I can see why that's the case. For the most part, I found it decent. It does its job well enough with some appropriate skills and a few different options for dealing with enemies; however, I'd say it's somewhat in abundance. It can be tiring to get caught by a cheap hit from an enemy that takes a few seconds to recover and react to and given that there's at least 3 enemies (with one strong enemy type) around literally every corner, the combat can seem as though it's overstaying its welcome the more you play Vampyr.

Some of the time, it's as though Vampyr's combat is there mostly to fill a quota or pad out playtime rather than an exciting detour from the core dialogue and investigation-focused gameplay. It's decent enough but it does serve to trip the game up when it's getting where it needs to go in the narrative.

Regardless, Vampyr is a good AA B-game adventure with a good narrative, a great soundtrack, excellent voice acting, and decent characters across the board. In the age of AAA games that take several years to produce, it'd be great to see other studios tackle smaller, focused titles with tangible passion behind it such as this one.

7/10

Uma obra de arte escondida na biblioteca da Dontnod.

Mais uma bela e ótima história contada por esta desenvolvedora que é a mestre no ofício, provando não ser o tipo de desenvolvedora de uma franquia só, pois esta trata também os de mais jogos com o mesmo carinho e mantêm tamanha competência.

Não estava esperando tanto deste jogo além de uma historinha de vampiros, o que fora suficiente para me atrair, pois gosto bastante dessas criaturas noturnas e demoníacas (desconheço criatura sobrenatural mais rica e interessante), porém vi que é muito mais.

Um jogo ambientado num cenário real, mais especificamente, em Londres durante a pandemia da gripe espanhola, com elementos fictícios que enriquecem de certo modo os fatos reais, como várias obras ambientadas em eventos históricos costumam fazer, e que as vezes fazem muito bem (é o caso de Vampyr).

Uma gameplay básica até, mas com uma árvore de habilidades bem legais, obviamente relacionadas a sangue, que deixam o combate mais divertido, além de outros ataques que você pode performar durante a batalha, como simplesmente morder os inimigos.

Este também possui um sistema de consequencias. Sendo um jogo da Dontnod, não é surpresa ver uma mensagem do tipo "Sua escolha trará consequências" após tomar uma decisão importante, e as decisões aqui, como os de mais jogos desta desenvolvedora, lhe deixam na dúvida, pois você está agindo numa cidade sob o caos de uma epidemia, e o que você escolher pode impactar, de forma boa ou ruim, no destino dos distritos.

Outro bom fator de gameplay é como o jogo lhe permite descobrir sobre os personagens através de diálogos e arquivos, ouvindo ou lendo sobre o seu passado, quem tal personagem era, quem tal personagem é agora... Um ótimo jeito de enriquecer suas personalidades e tornar as missões secundárias mais interessantes.
Cada personagem com o seu background, contando como lidam com as situações da vida.
Todos os pontos envolvendo lore nesse jogo são ótimos.
E falando em personagens, é difícil não ficar encantado com a cordialidade do nosso protagonista, Dr. Reid, e também com o carisma de alguns outros personagens ao decorrer da história.

A trilha sonora é perfeitamente composta para combinar com esse tema gótico e vampiresco e a atmosfera misteriosa e intrigante, com ótimos diálogos e batalhas ao som de violinos no fundo.

Mais uma perfeição vinda da Dontnod, com uma ótima historia, ótimos personagens, bela ambientação, trilha sonora e o devido carinho que se deve ter com uma obra.

Um deleite para fãs de vampiros, e de História. Eu mesmo, que não sou um apreciador da disciplina, gostei de como certos pontos históricos foram adaptados.

Uma das melhores obras que consumi em 2023.

I like the general premise and the setting is a really interesting idea, but a lot of it is bogged down from very boring combat, and a story requires me to REALLY care about the characters, which sucks since all of them are either very unmemorable or annoying.

Side note: Can we stop trying to give individual interpretations of classic monster names. In this game they have both Vampires and Ghoules but they use these really stupid sounding names for them, for "classic" vampires they call them "Ekons", and for Ghouls, they call them "Skals"; which is literally the same thing as a Ghoul right down to how you create one so why not just call it a Ghoul.
I know it's just a nitpick and I don't want people to take this critique as some damming smoking gun, but I find stuff like that to generally be hallow world building and needless changes to stand out. They did the same things with zombies only that made more sense since zombies can be so many types of zombies since the idea of a zombie is so flexible, Vampires and Ghouls are not.

When I think of this game, I think of one thing above all: wasted potential. In the first few hours of the game, Vampyr certainly knows how to delight players with its dense and dark atmosphere. I was quite interested in the fate of the protagonist and wanted to find out more about this world of vampires in early 20th century England. Unfortunately, my initial enthusiasm was dampened after just a few hours.

There are several reasons for this. The most important point of criticism for me is clearly the combat system. Combat in this game is neither well thought out, nor interesting or challenging, but at best unintentionally amusing and at worst simply frustrating due to the absolutely disastrous AI of the enemies. The developers have failed on several fronts here. Firstly, it doesn't make much sense in terms of internal coherence why humanoid enemies simply shrug off attacks with an axe (or a fucking two-handed scythe) as if it were nothing. Sure, for enemies with supernatural abilities this can make sense but with human enemies I find it very questionable when they flinch slightly after I've shot them in the face with a shotgun.
Furthermore, the game fails completely as soon as more than 1 opponent wants to take part in the combat. Here you are constantly attacked from behind, above, from the side or simply from the shadows and struck down without being able to react adequately. What I find "best", however, is how you can dodge enemy attacks and still get hit, as the hitboxes in this game are either too large or are not updated often enough.
It was very common for an opponent to attack me with a flamethrower or something, which I dodged and still got hit while standing far away from any fire that could have hit me. I also really "enjoyed" the various jump attacks from enemies. While the aggressive jumpers simply became invulnerable, I usually got the short end of the stick despite dodging them in time.

Overall, I also felt very underleveled in most of the fights, even though I completed every single side quest. How can that be? Well, some players would say that you can suck the townspeople dry to get experience points. But what happens if the player (as in my case) has decided to take a more pacifist approach, meaning not to make a single NPC the victim of my own bloodlust throughout the game? Well, the game is not prepared for this.
Although the game constantly tells you that you can decide for yourself if you want to sacrifice characters in the town for the sake of your own level advancement, it actively punishes you if you decide against it. So it happened to me that in later sections of the game I had a whole 10 levels less than my opponents and therefore bit the dust quite quickly. A good game would have found an elegant solution to this, so that if players choose not to sacrifice the NPCs, they have an alternative way of gaining experience. Here, however, the player's decision actively hinders the character's development. How such a system made it into the final version of the game is beyond me.

Unfortunately, the game is not convincing outside of the battles either. Things happen all the time in the game's plot that had me shaking my head constantly. I don't want to go into detail here for spoiler reasons, but it should be said that logical connections in the quests and storylines are sometimes difficult to recognize. This is also where the serious decisions that the player can make in the course of the story come into play. It is sometimes impossible to deduce the consequences of a decision from the UI commands alone. I don't mean that the long-term effects of some decisions are unpredictable (that could be considered a strength of the game), but that the direct consequences of the decision are not always clear. This reminded me of the worst dialogues from Fallout 4, where you could only give a rough type of answer and the character would say something completely inappropriate or undesirable, which is roughly how it feels here with the main character's decisions.

So what is left to say? Vampyr remains a disappointment on many levels. What the game does really well is to capture the dark and oppressive atmosphere of the early 20th century. The Spanish Flu and the consequences of the First World War are reflected very well in the design of the world, the characters and the plot. The music can also contribute to this, although it too quickly becomes very monotonous. Some of the dialogue with the inhabitants of the town is also very well written and impressively convey who these people are, what their backgrounds are, what they believe in, etc.
However, the absolutely lousy combat system and the plot full of holes make it really hard to like the game. I had been looking forward to a dark role-playing game with a vampire twist, of which we have unfortunately seen far too little (or none at all) since Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, and unfortunately all I got was a mediocrely written narrative game with a frustrating combat system and non-functional balancing, which is a shame.

An interesting setup that gets bogged down by poor fighting mechanics and some quality of life features that are noticeably missing.

Vampyr is a game where your decisions matter. This is nothing new or novel but the overall setting and the setup to the game do make these types of mechanics feel a bit different.

You play as a newly turned Vampire at the height of the flu outbreak that moonlights as a world famous doctor. As a doctor vampire, you'll be making decisions throughout the game about who lives and who dies.

Want to kill a character to gain a huge amount of XP? Well that can effect side quests or even the morale of the neighborhood you're in. Decisions you make will also effect the literal lives of people in some of these neighborhoods. Though I never discovered the problems that can occur if the wellbeing of a neighborhood drops below a certain threshold, the game makes your decisions feel weighty.

One decision involved a nurse that left the hospital to start treating people in a more underground fashion in one neighborhood of the city. You can choose to help her, you can choose to shut her down or you can threaten her, all have a different outcome that leads to that part of the neighborhood shifting.

These neighborhoods and their morale changes happens whenever you rest, which is the only way to get stronger in the game, so these shifts are more forced since getting stronger and more skilled is very important in this game. This setup never feels unfair or difficult per se, but some key quality of life functions are missing that make this an absolute chore.

Like I said, the only way to level up in this game and get stronger is to rest. But resting causes the neighborhoods to shift. So whenever you rest, these neighborhoods can drop in quality unless you're keeping tabs on all of these sections.

The only problem though is, you can't fast travel. So if you want to make sure the neighborhoods aren't getting worse, you'll need to travel around to each one which takes time away from the actual gameplay missions.

Want to level up before a boss? Well, better slog through more bad guys that you've already killed a whole lot (they respawn each time you're going through areas of the city). Everything takes so much time and effort and because the combat isn't fun and is a slog, it just puts the games issues right up front constantly.

A lot of the nuance in the storylines and side quests gets completely lost underneath the weight of the crappy gameplay pressing down on you at practically every part of the game. I would've dropped this game a long time ago if it wasn't for the interesting storylines (obviously this eventually broke in the wrong direction).

The game uses a stamina bar that's tied into your attacks and dodging. If the stamina is completely depleted, you won't be able to dodge or attack until you have enough stamina to do either, so you'll have to not only time your attacks and dodges, but make sure you leave space in between at times to make sure you're not completely empty and a sitting duck for anything and everything.

As a personal preference, these types of stamina meters have always bugged me. Throw in a poor targeting system and poor camera don't help either. Since you'll have to be learning attack patterns on the fly too, death will occur and unfortunately, restarting after dying is also pretty unforgiving.

If you use any items or blood attacks (your special vampire powers which are all pretty dope) during a fight in which you've died, you lose these items upon restart. Since many of these boss fights are not near work benches (the place necessary for creating more health potions or other items) and since there is no fast travel, slogging back to find these things to get back to a good level of preparation prior to a fight after every death is just so tiresome after a while. Luckily refilling your blood meter isn't too tough (you can snack on some rats which are usually nearby boss areas) but also having to do that every. single. time. on top of the items leaving, it just adds to the annoyances.

Overall, if you can connect to the gameplay, you may like Vampyr. It was just a large deterrent from an overall enjoyable story that eventually was not good enough to make up for the playing frustrations I was encountering frequently.

So... I've been hyped for this ever since I saw the trailer back in 2018. I always wanted a good vampire game and I thought this was going to be one, even though people were already saying it was bad. And yeah, unfortunately it really isn't a very amazing game, but I don't think it's terrible either.
Bad things first: this is an RPG where the most important choices are not even choices. The story wants to go in one direction and it will MAKE YOU go, so you get things like:
- Option A: Kill
- Option B: Let it die
Which is, honestly, hilarious. Also, I think I got the bad ending in this thing, and I have no idea why. Sure, maybe is because I killed some NPCs and the game didn't want me to do that, but that was literally the ONLY WAY to get true XP for the upgrades, cause if you depend only on missions and fighting thugs on the street to get XP, you're simply not gonna finish the campaign because it will be impossible or extremely time-consuming.
And talking about the upgrades, the combat is quite frustrating. You can be on maximum level with a lot of special skills and a powerful weapon, but your stamina still sucks and you're still not strong enough for most fights. By the end you should be passing the thugs with one hit, but you're still getting beaten.
Another frustrating thing is that almost every single door in this game is locked. And the character will tell you that every time you try to open one. The game is also full of bugs. They never ruined anything for me, but were a bit inconvenient. Like, there's one where the map would just create mark points in random places, and I had to remove them manually to follow the one I actually should.

I talked about all these bad things, but I still said I don't think the game is terrible. That's because I loved the atmosphere, the music is great, and the vampire mechanics are a lot of fun, even with the frustrations. Graphics are nice and the story is cool, although it drags more than it should.

A cruel observation about DONTNOD, a studio whose skills have never matched their over-ambitiousness. The core of the title revolves around Dr Reid's – and therefore the player's – ability to resist the beast. This ability is directly related to the amount of experience the player has, so that being charitable and restraining his impulses leads to more complicated battles, simply by the difference in levels. As the combat system is already very poor – notably because it is very free-floating and has no real feedback – progressing in a pacifist game reveals masochism and appears to be a very artificial way to build difficulty and guilt. On the other hand, the fact that there are no real mechanics for being stealthy creates a narrative dissonance, in that a phenomenal amount of Priwen's guards are murdered each night. As such, the weakness of the bestiary adds frustration to the title. Beyond that, the game feels like a clumsy mishmash of references and story arcs. The characters never manage to be really interesting, despite promising premises, and the clue mechanics are a source of frustration, with the amount of back and forth to be done, without any teleportation options. It doesn't help that the art direction is objectively good, but misses the mark in terms of level design and communication. Similarly, the soundtrack is too repetitive to allow for greater immersion, with a slightly too easy use of dissonance to hide the low number of tracks. The accumulation of all these flaws makes Vampyr unpleasant: they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This may be true, but when a studio lacks as much finesse as DONTNOD – Life is Strange had the same problems –, it is appropriate to question their relevance to narrative games and the medium in general.

Playtime: 24 Hours
Score: 7/10

Very solid RPG game! I have been a fan of Dontnod ever since I played the original Life is Strange, as that game meant a lot to me during my teenage years. So I was surprised to see that they made a vampire RPG of all things. This game has been sitting in my library for a while and I'm glad I finally sat down to play it.

This game in many ways feels like a spiritual sequel to Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines and since that games sequel isn't coming for another million years, this is the next best thing. To start with the good, I enjoyed the story a lot, as Dontnod have always been great storytellers to me. It had a lot of twists and turns, and the characters were all very well done. Its helped also by some very good voice acting that really helps sell the dialogue. I also love the amount of choice and consequence you get in this game, that a lot of RPGs nowadays tend to lack. They also do a lot of interesting things with the vampire lore and I found it all very interesting to read through and discover.

The upgrade system for the weapons is also pretty cool. I'm not super picky when it comes to presentation and overall I enjoyed it. The vampire powers you get also are very cool with some I used constantly. My favorite being the power where you can boil an enemies blood and make them explode which is ripped straight out of Bloodlines which I appreciated.

The combat is okay overall. It can feel very clunky in the beginning but does get better as you upgrade your weapons and level up. Only thing I didn't like was the lock on mechanic which can get really annoying to deal with as it will sometimes switch targets while your still fighting the enemy you originally locked onto which I hated.

Some of the things I didn't like was the lack of fast travel. The open world map isn't too big (which I liked), but it can get really frustrating when you have to back track to previous districts and have to fight the same annoying enemies over and over. I'm also not a fan of the autosave system, as everything you do is tied to one save slot. I get that the devs wanted you to have to live with your decisions throughout the story which makes sense for a narrative focused game like Life is Strange, but I would have preferred a manual save system as that's typically how I like my RPGs. I'm not as big of a fan of the hint system where you need to find out more about a character through either questioning them, finding out from other characters or finding notes around the world. Its fine with side characters, but it can be very frustrating with some of the major NPCs for each district where you need to make a crucial choice with them and the best option, is locked behind you having all the hints for them unlocked. I just didn't like this system at all, and it lead to me having to make crappy choices. And finally I just wished there was more to the games ending. I got what I believe is the good ending, and it was satisfying, but you don't get any ending slides for any of the main NPCs or districts which was disappointing. Especially since some characters fates were kind of left hanging in my playthrough.

Overall though this was a solid game and I can recommend it to anyone looking for a shorter RPG.

All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/

Entendi porque esse jogo foi DADO de graça na Epic ahhaah. A atmosfera do jogo é bacana, mas nada mais além disso chama atenção. O combate é estranho, a movimentação também e algumas das orientações paras as missões são confusas.

Parece um jogo que tenta colocar tudo o que já foi colocado em outros jogos num mesmo. Eu queria ao menos conseguir ter zerado, mas o jogo simplesmente bugou uma parte de uma missão, e com o autosalvamente ficou impossível eu conseguir dar sequência da onde parei, que troço ridículo.
Ai eu teria que tentar começar denovo, ler todos os diálogos e ter todas as conversas, com risco do bug acontecer denovo.

É triste, mas não tive tempo nem de querer gostar e já tive de abandonar.

Vampyr is an intriguing if unpolished vampire RPG where the primary draw is building relationships with the many citizens (there are over 60) of London, before deciding whether you want to murder them and drink their blood for XP. All against the backdrop of the flu-ridden England of 1918 (a very cool setting that unfortunately gets a bit fatiguing, considering 3 out of 4 regions in the game are slums with few distinguishing characteristics).

Alas, it’s a cool concept that doesn’t really mesh with the storyline. In fact, the story ended up being my main problem with this game - it’s a clunky and generic tale of ancient evil and tainted blood (vampire story staples) that features a romance subplot which is very tacked-on and out of left field. Interacting with the citizens almost seems like it is part of a different game, so little does it have to do with overarching plot. Which is too bad, because interacting with the citizens is a lot of fun. You can use a variety of means to find out their backstories, which are occasionally rote but more frequently are pleasantly surprising. Almost all of the quality storytelling in this game is in the character work, not the main storyline. And the mechanic of having to choose whether you will get more powerful by killing off citizens or try to help stabilize the city by healing the sick is a fantastic role playing concept.

The last major element of the gameplay is the combat, a very light take on the standard Souls style that has a rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I actually rather liked the way it felt, however. The main issue for me ended up being fatigue due to a lack of enemy variety. You spend most of the game fighting feral quasi-vampires called Skals or standard human guards. They are a few variants of each, but I felt like I had seen all the game had to offer enemy-wise from a very early point.

On the whole, this is a very flawed game that is built on some very interesting ideas. A more refined follow-up would have the potential for greatness.

I thought this game looked cool, and I'd heard good things about it, but I honestly went into this game more or less blind. Given how that could very much be setting myself up for failure, I enjoyed the hell outta this game. I played the game on a PS4 Slim, and I beat it without killing any NPC characters and it took me about 35-40 hours.

Vampyr follows the story of Doctor Johnathan Reid, a combat medic just returning to London from the French front in the final days of the first World War. He wakes up after being thrown in a mass grave with an unquenchable thirst for blood, and ends up feasting on the first human he sees, which is unfortunately his sister Mary. With barely any time to grieve for the sister he just unwittingly murdered, he is chased from the scene by vicious vampire hunters. This begins his quest to not only learn about who made him a vampire and why, but also how to bring relief to London from the horrible plague of the Spanish Flu. Vampyr really goes out of its way to take its own twist on the concept of a secret society of vampires, and I really enjoyed the world building and overall narrative. The guilt Dr. Reid feels for murdering his sister gives him a very good grounding point as a character, and is a very clever narrative conceit for why he isn't just some mass-murdering maniac now that he has such powers of unlife.

The main narrative/gameplay gimmick that sets Vampyr apart from something like Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (other than the better performance and combat) is how you gain XP. While, like VtMB, you only really gain XP from doing quests (you do gain XP from combat in this, but barely any at all), the other main way to gain XP is by drinking blood from (and killing) NPC characters. As you go through the game, your "mesmerize" level goes up, and once it hits the level of a certain NPC, you can mesmerize them, take them into a shadowy corner, and drain them like a juice can for a BIG boost of extra XP.

You also get far more XP from them if you take time to talk to them and learn about them through dialogue choices, eavesdropping, and asking other characters about them. You can honestly spend a good few hours JUST talking to people once you hit a new area if you're so inclined, as there are plenty of people to talk to, and it's all voice acted quite well. You don't have to if you don't want to (you can just mash square to skip the dialogue if you so please), but the amount of XP you get for learning the extra facts about characters really starts to add up, as does the XP you get from their quests, so interacting with them on some level, while optional, is highly recommended even if you're just gonna eat 'em all eventually XD. The game's combat isn't the most difficult thing in the world, and you can make up for low levels by upgrading your weapons a bunch, but the combat is certainly involved enough that it can be veeery tempting to take out a few NPC's to get your levels up to a point where they perhaps should be. The game also has a Bloodborne-style auto-saving system, so you only have one save file and you cannot go back on any decisions you make.

And letting NPC's live for story reasons (like because you don't wanna kill anyone, like I did) isn't the only reason to let them live. Districts have an overall health rating that goes off of how many people in it are still alive as well as how well they are (characters can get sick and you can give them medicines you make to make them well again). The higher the rating, the lower prices are in that region's stores. However, should a district get below 50% health, that district is fallen to the plague. A fallen district loses ALL it's remaining NPC's (they go "missing"), so their quests effectively disappear if you haven't done them yet, and the district gets filled with lots of more dangerous enemies as well. A district can also fall if no one is killed but everyone gets too sick with serious illnesses. Illnesses develop every time you go to bed, and you need to go to bed to level up (think of it like leveling at a bonfire in Dark Souls), and an illness will slowly get worse over several days until it reaches level 3. If a lot of characters in a district have level 3 illnesses, the district can also fall, but it takes quite a while to get to this point, so you don't actually NEED to be constantly going back and forth, playing doctor and delivering medicine every time you go to sleep. You have time to wait until it gets bad-bad-bad if you really care that much.

The combat is like if Yakuza borrowed Bloodborne's combat (but not the difficulty) and aesthetic but swapped the Victorian Lovecraft for 1918 London Vampires. The combat is far more like Bloodborne in the sense that you have a primary melee weapon, an offhand weapon you can use for stabbing to collect blood (mana) or stun enemies that can also be a firearm, and a dodge move all connected to a stamina bar that you gotta let refill before doing tons of stuff again. The enemy variety is more like Yakuza in the sense that there aren't a ton of really crazy and outlandish bosses like Bloodborne has. A lot of the enemies you're fighting have fairly recognizable abilities and while they are usually quite a danger to you, there isn't a ton of enemy variety. More or less all of the sub-bosses are just very strong versions of existing enemies, but the big bosses thankfully do have more unique elements to them that make them stand out a bit more.

I played this game on a normal PS4, and it REALLY shows. The game is quite a bit like Bloodborne again (at least how it originally was) in that this game has some feckin' LONG load times. There aren't that many, thankfully, but when you're going into a new map (i.e. inside a building) or going back outside a building, the loading times can approach like 20 or 30 seconds. Also, if you're running from area to area without really stopping, the game will stop to load in the new area. The framerate also has some problems, especially when lots of NPC's are on screen, but it honestly never really affects the gameplay. I would normally totally expect a game like this to have the combat really suffer from the framerate, but the combat sections were always really well optimized for me and I never had any problems. It's more-so when you're running around crowded safe-NPC areas that it will jump and hiccup a bit, but even then it's never to a really annoying effect, just a noticeable one.

The presentation is good, but a bit affected by the hardware. This is definitely more of a "AA game" compared to a AAA game. Like, if this were a higher budget title, it'd probably have several outfits for Dr. Reid to wear, the character animations during dialogue would probably be a bit more extensive, there'd probably be more voice actors. That said, what's here is still very well done. It's far from something like Red Dead 2 as far as production value is concerned, but it's still a game that looks and sounds nice.

EDIT: Bogus reminded me of something very important: the difficulty modes! I played through the game on normal mode, but the game got patched a few months after its Summer launch to add in two new modes: story mode and hard mode. Hard mode REALLY emphasizes the sacrificing NPC's for XP mechanic. Enemies gave barely any XP before, and now they give even less as well as hit far harder, so you really need to carefully consider whom you're going to eat and when, because you're almost certainly going to need to. On the other hand, Story mode takes a very Nintendo approach of letting you basically turn off the combat (and make story fights super easy), letting you enjoy the story and decision making even if you don't like action games. I love it when games do stuff like this <3

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is probably one of my favorite games I've played this year. It's almost certainly my favorite game I've played that released this year (granted I've played like, 5 of them including this XD ). The combat is super fun, the story is well told and engaging, the world is familiar but new. It's all around an excellent game, and it's left me super excited for the next project this team will take on ^w^

Going to put this first because fuck it.
TL;DR - Game brimming with potential that just doesn't quite capture me like the games it emulates does.

I probably played about half of this game before I just felt burnt out on it. To be honest, I was kind of excited and interested in this before it came out; and I'm still super into the idea of the game in general. I just couldn't find the motivation to finish the game - I guess I'm glad I got it for "free" from PS+ for that reason. Maybe I'll come back to this at a later date, but the combat felt like it wanted to be Bloodborne but was too lacking and the RPG elements felt like they want to be New Vegas but were too shallow. If it had committed more fully to one side of the game, I think this could have been great. Maybe it deserves a 2 star for that reason to be honest, but I love the atmosphere and would love to see more games of this nature; so I guess I'll settle on calling this game mediocre. Hope the studio continues to do something similar; because even with my qualms with this game, I enjoy what I see so I plan to support any future endeavors - which is funny to say because I said the same thing after Remember Me too so here's to hoping Tell Me Why and Twin Mirror are better since I couldn't give less of a shit about Life is Strange after watching a friend play through the first one.
Side-Note: Setting an arbitrary date of completion for my own records even though I never actually beat the game.

super underrated! brilliant artstyle, music, and story. you’ll never guess where this one goes.

i've yet to see a game's cinematic direction achieve anything even remotely similar in quality to this one's aside from maybe RDR2. every cutscene will have you tensely at the edge of your seat, employing an incredibly effective use of long takes and music to shock you to your core and truly immerse yourself in the game's story and world.

the worldbuilding and map design is also absolutely spectacular, with lots of hidden nooks and secrets that house interesting sights and lore. in conjunction with the top tier NPC writing for all side character's and their individual quests and narratives i'd argue that this is one of the most immersive story games of all time, with an incredible atmosphere to seal the deal.

the combat is quite good as well. it's simple, yet fun and maintains a constant challenge while also being incredibly rewarding. there are a multitude of different upgrades and abilities to seamlessly use and enhance your combat experience and the game doesn't force you to use any one of them if you don't want to.

thematically the game is also very memorable. with very profound quotes and an absurd amount of moments that elicit feelings of despair or hope. all of it is directly tied to your actions in game, and the meaning of the story changes with the different endings you get.

i'm shocked to see this has an average of 2.9. this is legitimately one of my favorite games of all time.

Sempre ouvi dizerem que Vampyr era um clone ruim de Bloodborne. Se fosse isso, provavelmente seria menos pior do que é.

O jogo entrega em atmosfera, visuais e trilha (apesar dessa última ser meio limitada) mas em todo o resto é um completo terror. Parte principal do core dele é personagens com suas próprias histórias e personalidades. Supostamente, todo mundo tem sua verdade oculta e você tem que descobrir para saber como ajudar ou quem eliminar. Parece super interessante de cara, mas jogando por 30 minutos fica rapidamente óbvio o quão limitado e inconsequente tudo é. Num momento você está confrontando uma pessoa por uma mentira descarada ou um segredo terrível que você descobriu, no outro ela está falando com você como se nada tivesse acontecido.

A dificuldade do jogo é outra aberração sem sentido. Inimigos rapidamente se tornam esponjas de dano, os upgrades para as armas demoram muito mais do que a velocidade com que a dificuldade escala. Você tem que optar por matar civis e tornar o jogo muito mais difícil e hostíl ou não matar civis e não ter xp pra upar de nível, já que inimigos dão quantidades patéticas de xp e curar as pessoas da pouco mais que isso.

No geral, minha experiência foi péssima e eu só não larguei o jogo porque eu detesto abandonar as coisas no meio. No fim das contas eu optei por usar um mod que dá todas as armas e itens pra eu poder rushar e ir direto pro fim. Qual minha surpresa quando eu descubro que mesmo a arma mais forte do jogo com todos os upgrades ainda causa uma quantidade risível de dano em qualquer inimigo do meio de jogo pra frente. Tudo que esse jogo "copiou" de Bloodborne além dos visuais foi a """dificuldade""" e assim como a maioria dos desenvolvedores que adoram sair copiando Souls, eles não entendem absolutamente nada de como dificuldade funciona de um jeito divertido.

Não recomendo. Por mais interessante que ele possa parecer, Vampyr é um jogo muito cheio de boas intenções mas que erra tanto em coisas tão básicas que o saldo é negativo.