Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is an interesting game. It is praised universally for its character writing, acting, interesting setting, lore and story. However, I did not think these points were enough to make up for other issues the game has, like horrible combat, subpar stealth mechanics and overall jank, lack of polish and amount of bugs.
The characters and dialogue are indeed the best part about this game. There are tons of NPCs, all voice acted, and they are all at least interesting. The interactions you have with them also changes depending on your “class”, which can make for unique and funny interactions. The Original Soundtrack slaps.
The story I thought was fine, for the most part. It starts interesting enough, and then gets kinda lame, and finishes very abruptly. The pay-off for the biggest mystery was also kinda of a let-down, at least for me. I never really became invested in the story.
Combat is super rough. It is very clunky and janky, your movement and attacks don’t feel good at all, melee weapons have very bad animations, that cause your attacks to whiff constantly while guns are very underpowered and your accuracy sucks, even with high levels of skill investment. Most enemies do little to no damage and others can kill you like you’re not even a vampire, but all of them are damage sponges. Bosses are particularly horrible to fight, as they have massive HP bars and, contrary to most enemies, can’t be stunlocked by your melee attacks.
Stealth is also super unreliable if you don’t have at least 4 points or more in it. Half the times, enemies can hear you easily when you get within 5 meters or less of them, even if they’re facing another way or through walls and floors, and the other half, enemies are literally blind. The prompt for stealth killing someone is also finicky, easily making you break your stealth because your characters simply attacked the enemy instead of assassinating them.
The “humanity” counter is really arbitrary. What defines humanity? I would guess the game treats it as being empathic, but that question could have a ton of answers. And it has basically no impact on the actual gameplay or story. Noncombat skills are useless for most of the main quest. Persuasion and seduction, specially, are pretty much useless.
Overall, this game doesn’t make me feel like I’m a vampire. While there are some positive aspects, the combat ruined the experience for me, and I think the game has aged very poorly. I have read that playing as the Malkavian class is the way to go, so I might actually revisit the game by doing that and also using the Plus version of the Unofficial Patch, which adds a little more content and supposedly balances some things.
The characters and dialogue are indeed the best part about this game. There are tons of NPCs, all voice acted, and they are all at least interesting. The interactions you have with them also changes depending on your “class”, which can make for unique and funny interactions. The Original Soundtrack slaps.
The story I thought was fine, for the most part. It starts interesting enough, and then gets kinda lame, and finishes very abruptly. The pay-off for the biggest mystery was also kinda of a let-down, at least for me. I never really became invested in the story.
Combat is super rough. It is very clunky and janky, your movement and attacks don’t feel good at all, melee weapons have very bad animations, that cause your attacks to whiff constantly while guns are very underpowered and your accuracy sucks, even with high levels of skill investment. Most enemies do little to no damage and others can kill you like you’re not even a vampire, but all of them are damage sponges. Bosses are particularly horrible to fight, as they have massive HP bars and, contrary to most enemies, can’t be stunlocked by your melee attacks.
Stealth is also super unreliable if you don’t have at least 4 points or more in it. Half the times, enemies can hear you easily when you get within 5 meters or less of them, even if they’re facing another way or through walls and floors, and the other half, enemies are literally blind. The prompt for stealth killing someone is also finicky, easily making you break your stealth because your characters simply attacked the enemy instead of assassinating them.
The “humanity” counter is really arbitrary. What defines humanity? I would guess the game treats it as being empathic, but that question could have a ton of answers. And it has basically no impact on the actual gameplay or story. Noncombat skills are useless for most of the main quest. Persuasion and seduction, specially, are pretty much useless.
Overall, this game doesn’t make me feel like I’m a vampire. While there are some positive aspects, the combat ruined the experience for me, and I think the game has aged very poorly. I have read that playing as the Malkavian class is the way to go, so I might actually revisit the game by doing that and also using the Plus version of the Unofficial Patch, which adds a little more content and supposedly balances some things.