Vampire: Bloodlines Review

Journalist Richard Cobbett is offering up a lengthy review of Troika’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines on his personal website. Although he does mention the game’s many bugs, he goes on to call it “perfect” and even puts it at the same lofty heights as Fallout and Planescape: Torment. His conclusion:

More pressingly, as with Troika’s last two games – and please don’t blame the publishers again, guys, you’ve had three of them and every single one of your games has needed an urgent patch – it clearly needed more time in the QA labs. While superbly written, the in-game text is riddled with typos, while the scripting contains several showstopper bugs that you have to open up a cheat console to get past – including, on occasion, the tutorial! Unacceptable. This isn’t just the best RPG of the year, it’s one of the few capable of reaching Planescape and Fallout levels – and jaw-droppingly sloppy glitches like this smack of an ill-advised rush to make an end of the year deadline. Be warned: these get more and more serious, and seriously annoying, as you progress through the game.

This latest Vampire is as mixed a cocktail as a Type O and AB- chaser, with a fancy umbrella of unspeakable malevolence. It succeeds not because it’s perfect, but because the atmosphere, the character and the many sparks of brilliance from start to finish are enough to outshine at least most of its problems. You growl at them when they appear – and snap your fangs with frustration as another bad fight drops you unceremoniously back to the loading screen – but never do they truly get in the way of your drive to see just what comes next, what dark deeds you’ll perform, and just what all those bloody goths are so miserable about anyway.