Fun game but requires patching
Played: April-May 2006.
System: AMD 2600+, 1 GB memory, geforce 5200 fx 256 MB card.
History:
Summary
I liked this fun game which captures the mood of being a vampire well and is fun to roleplay. I got the feeling the game somewhat adapts to the character you play. It's a pity it is still combat heavy and in this combat fireweapons and brawling are to weak in the end. The game has it's bug so patching is advisable.
Introduction
It's a funny thing that most RPG's I liked, I bought years after their release. I just overlook them. This also the case with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which I will call Bloodlines for short in this review. Bloodlines was released in 2004 and I bought it last April(2006). I was late in buying it because the game didn't appeal me at first. I haven't got anything special with vampires, the front cover of the box I found ugly and the screenshots on the backside don't entice me. I got the impression it was a sort of mindless action game like diablo II. How wrong I was. Bloodlines is a genuine roleplay game build around an action game engine(if I am correct it is the half-life 2 engine) and in this it has but a few companions.
The right stuff
Let's have a look at the rpg part first. When the game starts you create a fledgling vampire who's is a member of a vampire clan. This clan membership should be viewed in a loose way: it determines certain aspects of your character, specifically the kinds of power used and the way your character looks, but it doesn't determine you final loyalty. A nosferatu, for instance, is an ugly vampire, who needs to stay away from the public, but who is a good fighter. A toreador is a stylish vampire easily able to blend in with human society who more relies on social skills then on slugging it out. Each of the seven clans has it's own characteristics and during game play your clan membership plays a role, albeit not a crucial one. Skill selecting is up to you, because once the game has started you are allowed the spent earned experience points in any way you like. There are social skills, fighting skills, thieving skills and magic skills to choose from and, of course, never enough points to get them all.
The way to play
To me this is the way I like to play a rpg as I want be free in choosing which way to develop the character and follow the route of my own choosing. If I want to sneak, I spent a lot of points on sneaking. If I want to bluff my way through the game, I spent points on social skills. If I want to cut my way through heaps of foes, I want to spent points on melee skills. Bloodlines allows a lot in this respect.
However a very good aspect is the music combined with the mood and the story. You spent most of the time in an urban setting amongst normal people who go at their business in the night time. This part I like the most inteacting with the enviroment.
That bloody act
Combat in Bloodlines is well done for a RPG. It's smooth, easy, varied and takes into account things like cover and distance. Fighting skills can be assigned in hand-to-hand, melee or firearms. The AI is adeaquate and the bossbattles are reasonable, although still suffering from the typical it(some tremendous strong monster) and me in a enclosed space; and only one of us will get out alive.
However the game favors melee above the other forms. Melee weapons are by far the best choice in the game as they don't required you to spent money on ammunition(so you can spent it on something else like armor or blood) and you deal out damage equal to most guns. The only downside is that you need to close with your enemies and some enemies are hard hitters so you need to be carefull. However with a good melee skill and good defense you will hold you own.
I think it is really a pity firearms come out weak in this game. At the start of the game I you get the saturday nigh special, but both your starting skills in firearms and the damage this gun does are much to weak. A foe takes up to six hits to be killed from a distance and since guns have a tendency to attrack attention, you find yourself up against several enemies at a time. Even shotguns and the repeating shotgun are weak in this game as it takes sometime up to three upclose loads to down a common grunt. In most games a full load of buckshot upclose is enough to blow someone's head off, but not in this game.
Added to this is the fact that firearms and the ammo difficult to be had. I found that it was always to little and to late. This is a pity as some guns are really fun, like for instance the colt anaconda, which makes a sound like a cannon being fired, but is available only very late in the game and then used seldom because of the lack of suitable ammo. Of course you can buy the ammo, but it was quite expensive.
Paint me a story
What makes or breaks a rpg for me is it's storyline and mood. And with Bloodlines I was pleased. The game breath the mood of the vampire as we know it from Stoker (and King and Lovecraft) is for instance full of the anti-theses so common to vampire lore. Vampirism offers beauty, health, longlivity, attractiveness and eloquence but this really hides a ugly sick predatory infliction. The key to this seduction, but this seduction is double layered as it pretents to be aimed at the intercourse but the seduction is really needed to indulge in the drinking of blood: the red nectar is the only god a vampire refers.
The HL-2 engine offers stunning beautiful characters who look livelike and attractive and support much of the mood.
The story line has it's twists and turns and the setting is varied and the mood is fitting. Outstanding examples are a haunted hotel and a house filled with mad people. At one point the game makes you confront your human past and you are facing a difficult choice how to handle this.
The problems
Yet while Bloodlines has much atmosphere it stops short of driving the nail home. The vampires strenghts are in general balanced by some serious weaknesses. The first which springs to mind is the vulnerablility to daylight. Daylight, the cleansing of the sun, doesn't play any role in this game. This might be handy in term of gaming, because you don't want to force a player to sit around for hours waiting for the sun to go down, but somehow this remains a missed point. Another weakness is that the depencency on blood isn't played on more. While attacking a victim openly can be penalised when seen by others, it is easy to avoid because many 'humans' linger in dark alleys. Indeed in the game you can pay a hooker and then feed on her, but why should you do so when a few blocks down the street there is an victim wandering alone in a dark alley? What is more your supply of blood only seems to diminish when used for magic, so in theory a vampire in Bloodlines could live forever on one refill as long as no magic is used.
So you feel yourself quite strong in this game while not burdened by the vulnerabilities common to vampires. It somehow is a weak point to me.
As said before the game is fairly combat heavy and in this tends to favor melee.
But there is one more point I like to add. I liked the part where I had to interact with the human world. Less interesting are some of the almost dungeon crawling battles especially in the latter half of the game. It's a pity the game drops the ability to sneak or talk your way through and changes into a set of all out battles. At least that is how I experienced it.
These crawly little things
A last thing I like to mention is that the games has it's bugs. I would strongly recommend to install the official game patch 1.2 and even recommend the unofficial 2.2 version.
If you like this game you can download some mod's and reskins made by the gaming community. Some really are beautifull and since you spent most of your time looking at your own character it's nice to have something good to look at.
Evalution
So if you forget about some weak points and overlook the somewhat heavy combat orientation Bloodlines it is a fun game that I would recommend to any role play fan out there who can stand playing vampire.