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I love vampire media, I love the stories, I love the differentiating styles and tones, and I absolutely love different types of Vampires, and most of all I love the potential vampires have as a monster. Depending on what kind of story youā€™re writing you can have vampires be mindless beasts, or a group of mindless beasts with a head vampire who rules over them like Dracula. You could have an overly melodramatic and possibly dangerous teen drama with them like Twilight, you can make stupid over the top fun with them like Blade, or you can make shit like Mordius; Vampires as a movie monster have no real limit to their use; which is why Iā€™m so disappointed with the lack of good vampire representation in gaming. I mean donā€™t get me wrong Iā€™m sure there's loads of good vampire games out there like Legacy of Kain games or Darkwatch, Castlevania kinda, and umā€¦ā€¦ā€¦..ā€¦..vampyrā€¦.umā€¦.r..redfall?.....ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ffffffuck this is sad. Regardless of that really depressing statement Iā€™m here to stake (haha) my claim that Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is the probably best vampire game Iā€™ve played in recent memory.

Knowing the backstory behind this game honestly makes this one of the more unfortunate underdog stories. Like outside of the horrid crunch the team was put through near the end of the development is one thing but then legally not being able to even patch the game is just the most evil thing a company could do to its own project. (although itā€™s fitting knowing activision) Regardless of the state the game was released in that was 19 years ago and now the game has been patched by modders so how's the actual gameā€¦..yeah itā€™s damn good, dare I say ā€œa classicā€.

I donā€™t wanna say much about the story since its narrative is basically its strongest aspect and I feel the best way to approach it is completely blind so Iā€™m mostly gonna talk about its world building and its characters. First thing I wanna get out of the way are the hub maps you explore in the city of LA. The world building is honestly one of the best aspects of the overall game; which is honestly something Iā€™d expect from a game based on a tabletop game but to be far Iā€™ve been burned before. (cough cough Cyberpunk 2077 cough cough) I love this thorough organize the system the vampires have made for themselves; filled with just as much bureaucracy and backstabbing power struggles really being a vampire is no more different then being a human in this world, well you know besides the whole undead thing; drinking human blood and turning to ash in sunlight, but besides those yeah itā€™s pretty much the same, kind of a crappy deal if you think about it. All the different and unique factions that intertwine with each other really adds a lot to the roleplay element which I feel a lot of RPGs donā€™t really grasp all that way, the only other game I can honestly think of is New Vegas but thatā€™s kinda a cop out since New Vegas is basically good at everything an RPG should be. Sometimes the game can be kinda blatant when it comes to how the different factions are written and how youā€™re meant to feel about them. Yes faction A and faction B are the obvious bad ones with a little bit of reason behind them although not so much for faction 8 then faction A, but besides them all other factions have their own pros and cons that do help flesh out not only the city of LA but the different characters of said faction. (this is a little side thing but I just love how early 2000's this game feels, from both a writing and aesthetic angle. althought maybe the game can sometimes be a little too horny for it's own good but I don't mind it that much.)
Now let me make this 100% clear, this gameā€™s characters are one of a kind. Not only are they written to perfection by Brian Mitsoda and the rest of the stupidly talented writers of Troika, with each individual character just written in a way where they feel less like NPCs and more like real people living in this virtual world, but I think their writing is heightened by the cast they got for this, not a single voice sounds out of place or doesn't fit the character every just fits perfectly. It also helps that they got an absolute staked cast; just to name a few they got have John DiMaggio (Jake the Dog, Bender), Grey Griffin (Mandy from Billy and Mandy and problem half your childhood), James Arnold Taylor, (Ratchet and Obi Wan-Clone Wars) Courtenay Taylor ( Jack-Mass Effect 2/3), Phil LaMarr (Samurai Jack and John Stewart-Green lantern), and Steve Blum just to name a few (fuckin Spike Spiegel man) Not only are these VAā€™s venters of their industry but they giving 101 percent of their voice acting chops to really sell this character as a real living person, the performances in this can honestly that rival the highest paid VAs in current AAA gaming. (Iā€™m looking at you Troy Baker, you NFT selling prick) I honestly think this is probably some of the best voice acting Iā€™ve seen in a video game, the way the VAs just melt into their characters is just amazing and a impressive testament to not only the VAā€™s but the voice directors as well.

The four hubs this game offer are possibly some of the best hub maps in any rpg Iā€™ve play (besides one but well get to that soonish), not only are they pretty sprawling for their sizes, but regardless of how lost you might feel at times the map always give you enough to identify visual indications on where you are and after a while itā€™ll just become musial memory on where to go and what you need to do. Santa Monica is probably one of the most well put together tutorial hub maps on par with stuff like The Great Plateau from BOTW or GoodSprings in New Vegas. The whole area perfectly teaches you how youā€™ll be traversing the hubs and how they can subtly tell you where to go through lighting and amazing map design. A hub map at itā€™s best when you donā€™t need to look at a map to see where to go, instead youā€™ll just know where it is from just learning from your surrounding because thatā€™s what the game taught you, I like it when games actually trust their player to understand their surrounding rather then the whole checkmark open world horse shit weā€™ve been dealing with for years. Granted now all the hub world is greatā€¦wellā€¦ itā€™s only oneā€¦.but we havenā€™t gotten there yet.
Since this game has multiple different types of vampire factions you can choose what kind of vampire you wanna play as. I canā€™t really comment on all of them since I only played as one out of 7 different clans you could play as. I guess for my own personal experience I went with Gangrel which is basically the furry clan. Itā€™s more melee focus with being able to tank more hits while also being able to tap into natureā€™s animale spires, also you can turn into a wolf which is honestly pretty badass.
I donā€™t really know what to say about the gameplay since honestly itā€™s kinda basic for an rpg. It has your traditional rpg systems but since this series is based off of a table top game all of the up stats are handed like a spreadsheet. Itā€™s not super deed with its mechanics but what it lacks in depth it doesn't really make up for in combat. Melee combat is super simple and as long as youā€™re a high enough level with a high level weapon and properly divvy out your xp to the stats you wanna build your character with then youā€™ll be fine; it still wonā€™t help you with the weird difficulty spikes the game can throw at you but as long as you save scum like me youā€™ll be alright. The gun play on the other hand, is pure shit. If you donā€™t level up for firearms perks by at least 3 or 4 then donā€™t bother using a gun because you wonā€™t be able to hit anything unless you were right up a vampire's nose; and even then thatā€™s being generous. It also doesn't help that all the guns feel like shit to use and donā€™t have any real impact on them, they feel and sound like airsoft guns and are ultimately useless until the last few hours of the game where they feel borderline necessary if you want to get past them. The combat is nothing to really write home about but to be fair when has an rpg really had combat to write home about, all the classic Fallout games have combat that was never anything to write home about and those games are still considered classics to this day because of their fantastic writing and world building. So besides the rpg systems feeling really simple and the gunplay being shit I can look past them and still enjoy the game. Ok I think itā€™s time to discuss the later half of the game.

So as the game goes on it starts becoming very apparent when the money dried up and the rush and crunch started. You can tell it started around the time of the finale hub Chinatown. Not only is Chinatown just generally less interesting than the previous hubs but there's also less interesting side missions and the main missions are pretty bland as well. None of the new characters introduced in Chinatown are all that interesting and even now, only finishing the game like a few days ago Iā€™m struggling to even remember most of the new characters. It also doesn't help that even before Chinatown started the second to last level in Hollywood where you plunder the sewers for the secret Nosferatu lair is way too long for its own good and a huge pain in the ass if you didnā€™t already plan ahead for it. After all of the Chinatown missions are finished you then move on to the last 3 or so hours of the game, which are all combat oriented with a strictly linear design with no deviation and having gunplay being a major focus in all of them. Like I said before, the gunplay in this game is pretty bad; so having it be the main focus for the last few hours honestly tested my patience a lot, and then we got to Werewolf Park. I hate Werewolf Park almost as much as I hate the sewer part. I genuinely donā€™t know if it was just a me thing but I struggled with that part for like 45 minutes, the werewolf kills you so quickly you donā€™t really have a good enough time to react to whatā€™s happening, or what you need to do. The game tells you that you need to survive for roughly 5 minutes but those 5 minutes can feel like a fucking eternity when how ruthless the werewolfā€™s AI is, that ting is out for blood and it will not stop for anything. I genuinely didnā€™t know what I was supposed to do so eventually I just harkened back to a classic rpg strategy ā€œfuck around and find outā€. I did find the way you were supposed to kill the werewolf but the game does such a bad job at communicating it to the player I honestly donā€™t blame people if they looked it up. After all that bullshit with the crappy liner levels with crappy gunplay and shitty sewer levels and annoying werewolf I got to the second to last boss, and man; itā€™s fucking dreadful. I spent well up to an hour on Ming Xiaoā€™s fight, mostly because it was stupidly hard and it wasnā€™t hard in the same a souls boss is hard, more in a horribly balanced and spongy sort of way, top it off with that shitty gunplay and stupidly simple melee combat it makes for one awful fight. I was really tempted to turn on god mode and finish off but I really didnā€™t wanna cheat on my first playthrough of this so by the end I somehow beat her (I honestly canā€™t tell you how I did it Iā€™m 97% sure it was just luck) and then I got to the last portion which is just a glorified shooting gallery with a piss easy final boss.

Making it to the end was a challenge in frustration. I didnā€™t really like anything after Chinatown and even the general writing started to feel rushed at some points; then the ending happened, and everything was great again. For real the ending of this game pretty much saves the game from throwing a flawed 8 out of 10 at it.

As the game stand for me I absolutely adore a lot about this game from the outstanding game design, to the fantastic writing and voice acting; this is one of those very special video games where all the pieces fall together in place to make a magical time, and then big fat bully Kotick stomps over and knocks down the building boxes and tells them ā€œrebuilding it in 5 hours or else you're blacklistedā€. Itā€™s not a perfect game as much as I feel like Iā€™m making it out to be, itā€™s still jank as fuck even with all the bugs ironed out in the unofficial patch and maybe the combat is too simple for itā€™s own good, but dammit I love the soul dammit. Games like these donā€™t come out nearly as much anymore, games that have fantastic sections like the Ocean Hotel or the side mission in the crackout in downtown where you fight all the plaguebearers. This game was made by people who genuinely love the medium of video games and dammit I think thereā€™s some merit in that.

Reviewed on Jun 01, 2023


2 Comments


9 months ago

We got another one, boys

9 months ago

I'm not reading allat