Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

"A truly great RPG (...and finally playable after the patches...)"

Vampire the Masquerade is surely one of the best RPG's I've played. The game has everything , great story , fun gameplay , beautiful graphics... so why isn't everyone talking about this game? Well at the time it was released, the game suffered from numerous crippling bugs and bad performance. Finally now ( a few months after the initial release of the game ) an official v1.2 patch has been released that resolves most of the issues , and you can put on top of it the unofficial v1.4 patch that makes everything as it should be.

If you that want a brief description of the game let me just say that it's something between Deus Ex and Blood Net ( for those who remember this great adventure/RPG of the past )

STORY: 10/10
Well in this department the game excels. Your main character starts as an unsuspected human who spends the night with a Vampire. The Vampire gives you the "Embrace" , and thus turns you also into a Vampire. Unfortunately the Vampire laws are against "Embracing" without proper permission so your "Sire" is executed for exampling. Thankfully your life is spared and from that time you enter the dark and deadly world of the Vampire society. It seems that some important events are in motion and you are caught in the middle of the Vampire's Sects power struggle. I wont give away any more of the story just let me say that it's delivered beautifully an that all the game characters are very interesting , each with his own personality and motives.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10
In my opinion RPG's are all about story and gameplay and this game does really good in both. From the beginning your character can move freely in a city and interact with it's inhabitants. Of course you have a main quest that you have to follow ,but you will also find many other interesting sub-quests to do from the humans and vampires you'll meet in the city. You have a house set as your base of operations and a computer where you will receive mails with information or quests. You can level up your character using the XP point you'll receive from the completion of quests by improving certain attributes. This system may look a bit complicated at first but you'll see in a while that it works perfectly.Every quest you get can be competed with many different ways and you'll use many different skills in order to do it. You can be a sneaky character that picks locks and hides in the shadows , you can hack into computers and recieve information, you can persuade / seduce / intimidate someone into doing your biding . The conversation lines are very good written and ofter hilarious.
Of course you can simply walk in an enemy area and hack everyone with your melee weapons or shoot your way through with your guns , or just use your claws. Fighting is simple and well balanced and your character also has certain vampire abilities. These "disciplines" ,as they are called, differ from clan to clan and each time you use them you loose some blood points. How can you regain them you ask? , of course by feeding from other humans. You can seduce humans into freely give you their blood , you can attack pedestrians from behind or you can simply feed of your enemies during a fight. Of course feeding and using you supernatural abilities must be done with caution in the city since you don't want to show your true nature to the world and harm the "Masquerade".

GRAPHICS: 9/10
The game uses the HalfLife2 engine so the graphics are superb. Half life 2 was a bit more detailed and polished in the visuals but that doesn't mean that VTMB graphics are not some of the best you've seen. The visuals have an artistic feel in them especially in the faces and this gives VTMB a special look . You can see the game from a first or third person perspective , if you use melee weapons the 3rd person is better while with ranged weapons you should use 1st person. The only reason I don't give the graphics a 10 is the fact that the game is heavier than Half Life 2 and the developers should have worked harder do deliver a game with better performance.

SOUND/ATMOSPHERE : 10/10
This game has one of the best voice acting I've heard in ages. Each character sounds great and let me tell you there are many NPC's in the game with whom you'll interact. Music is great also , with many goth-rock and electronica songs from well-known bans like : Lacuna Coil , Ministry and Tiamat . Music blends beautifully with the atmosphere and also the main theme creates the appropriate mood. Sound effects are pretty good and there are certain times when you'll really feel the creepy atmosphere in your skin. Just one of the best - sounding games I've played.

OVERALL : 9/10
If the developers took a couple of months to playtest the game and to improve the performance the game should deserve a 10 ,since in every other department it really excels. The fact is that now with the patches you can play the game almost bug-less so if you are an RPG-fan you should not miss this game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/27/05