Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

"A bloody mess"

Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption is an Action\RPG developed by Nihilistic. I haven't played the Pen & Paper RPG so I'm not a fun of the franchise, therefore my opinion is unaffected by some sort of fanboy-craze! The thing that caught my eye though from friends of mine that play the P&P version is the diverse mythology that includes a good cosmogony\genealogy, many different and unique vampire clans, etc. Since I prefer gaming from P&P, (only because I'm too lazy to get organized into playing the P&P RPG), I've tried my luck with this game and immediately regretted it!

Story: 5/10
Presentation: 3/10

After some gameplay time my only hope of enjoying this thing was its plot. I can't say that I liked the way all started but I said too myself to not rush into conclusions and just wait how things will turn out, but frankly, after a while boredom stroke again. You are a crusader of the medieval ages and you are sent to help the people of Prague against some new menace. There, you'll fall in forbidden love with a –too-sexy-to-believe nun and this love will be the core of the game. After killing an evil witch or something in your first mission, something will happen and you will turn into a vampire, (that's not a spoiler). From then on things start to get a bit more interesting, since you will find out that our world isn't exactly what it seems to be, with powerful vampires secretly ruling the lives of men, fighting with each other, etc. But it soon gets boring and very predictable, since it turns out to be a typical, evil lord is coming, kill him, game over.

The characters don't help either. Our hero is talking as if he is a bad actor auditioning for a Shakespeare play, our nun is a bit to weird for me and non-believable and the rest of the crew are just a bunch of typical to cheesy folk that follow you around and add nothing to the story. Generally the game doesn't have any “feeling”, you won't hate the evil guys, you won't sympathize with the crusaders troubles, you won't even care about what the hell is going on.

Gameplay: 2/10
Replay Value: 0/10

If you have played any other hack n' slash action\RPG that there is out there then you will feel at home in VTMR. Like all this games you have a hero and move him around with mouse clicks and click on enemies to hit them. Simple concept that games like Diablo have made popular and very, very fun, but that alone doesn't mean that a game is any fun at all. In Diablo 2, your character moves fast, kills enemies with his simple attacks or special skills like magic, the same thing is going on here but there are something that make me wonder about the sanity of some developers. First of all, the hit rate in this game is awful, no matter how skilled your character is! You hit a simple mob 10 times? 3 hits will fall into his head and the other 7 hit air! This doesn't actually make the game more strategically and challenging, it makes it boring, since each fight takes a long time and the characters move so slow that you will fall asleep in no time! There is a nice variety in weaponry but they are completely unbalanced and have no special attributes, save for some of them. For example when you use ranged weapons like bows and guns you expect them to be less powerful but have more accuracy, but not only they aren't powerful, (I used a sword instead of a gun in the modern times section), but the accuracy pretty much remains the same and since you need to buy ammunition all the time it gets very frustrating using a ranged weapon. One thing that I liked was the variety in skills. As a vampire you have many skills and after some time you'll learn even more. But before I tell you about skills I gotta mention the blood part. Since you are a vampire you'll need blood to live and blood here is what Mana is to other games. In order to gain more Mana you either feed on enemies, something that is a bit hard because you'll miss grabbing them a lot, or just use an item like blood packs, or small mice. When you use a spell you use some of that blood… skills that make you faster\stronger\accurate, fireballs, summoning spells, spells that cause confusion and many, many more.

While VTMR could be a good game is crippled by many flaws, apart from the fighting part which is boring, moving around is boring too, since your characters are very slow and the distances quite long and since you can only save in your haven prepare for long walks. Along your quest you'll add up to 3 more characters in your party, but do they make the game any better? No, in fact they make the game even worse due to one of the worst AI in gaming history! The one YOU control does what he's told too, but all the other characters are simply stupid!!! They use skills, TOO FREAKING MUCH, for no reason, so they die! The don't move strategically, they block your way and generally make the game a total mess, as if it weren't already that way. There is a level editor that could make the game a bit better, but is hard to use and since the game mechanics are already bad

Graphics: 8/10
Design: 6.5/10

If there is something good in this game is probably its graphic quality. Nice, high-poly characters and enemies, with very good texturing, very good lighting quality and shadows, (not just a dark circle under you), and generally although a bit too dark at times the game looks good, BUT, (yes I gotta complain even in this section), the overall design leaves something to be desired. Why use high quality graphics to make something so dull, I mean yes, the characters are high polygonal, SO WHAT?!? Do they have something distinctive? No, their designs are simply to average, a gothic vampire babe, a macho crusader, a Nordic vampire and typical enemies like guys in black capes, small ghouls and various other bad guys. The level design has the same problem, with all areas look very boring and not having something special to stand out… a cave, dungeon, a town, etc, etc…

Sound: 5.8/10
Music: 6/10

Nothing really special to say here, sound effects are ok I guess, not something to die for though, something that applies to the games music too. The voice acting is a bit bad I think, a bit too forced to sound like people from the medieval times talking if you know what I mean, with dialogues like
“-My lady!”
“-Yes milord?”
“-Oh my lady thy bosom makes me thank the almighty God”
“-Oh thank you milord, thy kind words worm my heart”
And more stuff like that…

Positives:
-A good variety of available vampire skills
-Good graphics

Negatives:
-The worst AI!!!
-Extremely low hit rate, making battles very long and boring
-Very bad ranged weaponry
-Badly presented, boring story
-Despite the high graphic quality looks very dull
-A bit bad voice acting

Also Play:
Baldur's Gate (PC)
Baldur's Gate 2 (PC)
Diablo (Series)(PC)
Dungeon Siege (PC)
Fallout (PC)
Fallout 2 (PC)
Planescape: Torment (PC)

Overall: 4.5/10

I though being a vampire ought to be cool… I was wrong…

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/17/09

Game Release: Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption (US, 06/07/00)