Disapprove: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2

Now… Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is technically a sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines from 2004, the last game by Troika Games, the first commercially released Source Engine title, a cult classic, a mess and one of my personal favorite games. And when I write on games with such lineage, I tend to start with some history, some context. Bloodlines 2 is also a title that went through development hell – another topic that I like to explore a bit, before going into the final product. But in this case it would be a waste of everyone’s time. Because V:tM – Bloodlines 2 is a waste of everyone’s time.

This is an action adventure game with some light RPG mechanics and narrative roleplaying. It’s a cross between Ghostwire: Tokyo and a Telltale-style adventure game. So, there is no equipment or inventory, the skill system is handled more like a collection of special attacks, the starting “character creation” is just character selection and the starting clan does not affect that much. There is some potential for stealth, but not much and most of the time the doors to the next section of a map are locked until all nearby enemies are dead. And when the game attempts to do full stealth, it fails so unbelievably I had to pause the game and have a moment to recover. The way you play the game at the start is, more or less, the same you will be playing it by the end or in the terrible DLCs, where you’re supposed to be playing different characters.

The first impressions with the title were, in general, just terrible. For a title that is supposed to be as big as it is marketed as, the UI experience is horrendous, the controls are garbage, the choice of one auto-save and no proper manual saves puzzling (though, it is a bit more robust than what you might think at first). The game looks both great and horrible depending on what you’re looking at. The performance ranges from perfectly fine, to unstable and almost all sections where they try to seamlessly transition between interiors and exteriors do not run smoothly. At least the developers realized that they’re not good at it, so many of the bigger quest-related locations have a loading screen instead of trying to seamlessly transition. The music, that is quite enjoyable on its own when it plays, is mixed terribly…

I was seriously considering refunding the game at first. But some of the more positive opinions on the game mention the writing and the story. And at that point the game was focusing on the initial intrigue and better characters, so I gave it a chance to win me over and for a time it was working. The main dynamic of the playable character and the noir detective in their head is great. Some of the key characters are fun and enjoyable, whenever you like them or like to hate them. The several big mysteries the game establishes are curious enough. Then the gameplay starts clicking in and, at its best, it is quite fun. The movement abilities, as long as you’re smart not to use them in front of humans, are solid and allow you to explore the relatively small area of Seattle in a fun and quick way. And in combat, as you use different abilities on enemies, use telekinesis to grab weapons or enemies from afar and do cool dodges and slides all around, it can become really exciting. Heck, even the sections where you get to see the past and play detective, despite their severe limitations in terms of movement, are interesting.

But then the honeymoon is over, and the game starts dragging on. And you start noticing how flat and pointless most characters are. How painfully slow the plot moves and how most of it is not very interesting. How formulaic and predictable in their structure most quests are. And then the game goes into a completely uninteresting finale and ends on a wet fart, with utterly bizarre choices made.

So when I went into the DLCs, I expected they would have anything that excuses their existence, but no – nothing. Both DLCs are about sub two hour long explorations of unlikeable characters and events that you already know everything you need to know about from the main game. Given that these are set from a different perspective and during the events of the main game, you’d think they would have some unique hooks of their own or try to explore some of the less explained elements of the main game. But no, you either see things that you already know about and do the same levels from the main game, just with a slightly tweaked context. Or they tell more backstory on the characters that you probably won’t like in the least, so who cares. At least both can be completed in under two hours each.

At the end of the day, I long has stopped expecting a proper sequel to the original Bloodlines. I didn’t even expect Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 to be a good World of Darkness game. And I was still disappointed, because it’s not good as a game in general. And few cool ideas and cool music tracks used in this game are completely wasted on such a terribly misguided project.