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5 STARS

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: February 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'll make this short and sweet. Most of the bad reviews here were from game issues and low computer specs. Since the bugginess was addressed in the 1.2 patch and the rig I have it running on easily does 1600 x 1200, all I can say is what an amazing RPG. Uzis, blood sucking, sex, katanas... all in L.A. Sweet game. If you like edgy RPGs and have a hefty computer to run it, dowload the 1.2 patch and have a blast.

Flawed Masterpiece

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: September 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I picked this game up at a reissued bargain price of $20 AUD and it's well worth the money.

I first had some technical problems with this game and had to return the discs for new ones. Second time round there was no problem and having read up on technical issues that this game is reputed for, I had already downloaded the official patch.

So having jumped through a couple of hoops to even get to play the game, I really wanted to find out what it was like.

There is both good and bad here.

The good:

Playing the role of a vampire with the ability to feed on the living, seduce, intimidate, persuade. Just being able to play this role is a kick in itself.

Good graphics, great atmosphere with soundtracks from industrial bands. There are some brilliant touches and details that make this an enjoyable gaming experience and quite an absorbing one.

The not so good:

There are waiting times to load between different locations on the same map. This was fine a few years ago, but as another reviewer has observed, this is the era of open free-roaming game maps with few loading screens, as with GTA series.
This game reminds me alot of Deus Ex, which I greatly enjoyed, but which is now quite old. Similarly Vampire Bloodlines seems to be a little dated in having so many loading screens.

While the graphics are great, they are a little limited in the number of character skins and NPC skins, too.

The quests, missions, etc, are a bit too linear and although you can wander and explore you are restricted in what you can do until you complete certain quests.

Technical issues - once I had swapped my first discs with the original retailer, there was no problem, although I still had to adjust the display resolution to actually play the game.
That's okay, but I'd definitely check your PC's technical specs against the system reqs before buying. It runs fine on mine.

----

Overall, I'd recommend this to any adult gamer who just fancies the fun experience of being a vampire.

Shame that a sequel to this game looks unlikely because there is plenty more potential here.

Serious fun game but recommend patching before playing

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: May 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Statistics
Played: April-May 2006.
System: AMD 2600+, 1 GB memory, geforce 5200 fx 256 MB card.
History:
First Version: 24 April 2006
Revised: 30 May 2006(added summary, history and statistics, removed some reptitive text, made it more personal(using I more)

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 with combat fireweapons and brawling is to weak. 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 magic 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.

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 I think the game favors melee. Melee weapons are 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 as good as 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.
Unarmed fighting will quickly become to weak, although from time to time I used it just for the fun of it and it helps in acquiring blood.
But I think it is really a pity firearms come out weak. At the start of the game I was be able to get my hands on a small hand gun, but both my starting skills in firearms and the damage the gun weren't very helpfull. A foe took maybe up to six hits to be killed and guns have a tendency to attrack attention, so you need to outgun several enemies at a time. Even shotguns are weak as it takes maybe up to three upclose blasts to down a common foe. In most games a full face of buckshot upclose is enough the 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. Indeed I found that with the firearms it is 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 I didn't use it much because of the lack of ammo. Granted I Was able to buy the ammo, but it was quite expensive considering the fact that I needed a lot of bullets to kill someone and the ammo was so hard to find.

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.

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. Save yourself the annoyance boys and girsl.
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. But patch it before you play the game!!!

Made for the "gamers" in us, but not the average joe

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: January 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'll agree, yes, the music is good, the graphics are mildly good, but the gameplay is what really irritates me, as well as the speed. It's a bad sign when you're frustrated before the game even -starts-. The box says 512 MB recommended, but only 382 is required. Wrong. This thing takes probably around 1GB to run smoothly, if not more. Great if you're a gaming junkie with a computer built for that. Bad if you don't use your computer for gaming, and therefore don't have it equipped for such. I think that if they had made the game run better, or at least said that the game takes a crapload of RAM, that I'd be able to excuse the controls.

But, since they haven't, that's my second beef. The controls are typical, for the most part, but I think they should have made smaller tasks like entering doors a little bit easier, or rather, a lot easier. Personally, the graphics aren't all that hot, either. Reminds me of a dark version of Sims2 with better maps. Could be my video card, but still.

I might comeback someday and redeem the game when I can play it without bashing my head on my desk, waiting for it to load, or the cutscenes to play without stuttering.

Amazing.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: January 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'll keep this short and simple. This game goes on the shelf along with the best games I've ever played. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 10. Yes, they could have done some things better...but that's true of every game.

The graphics are amazing. The combat system is the best of any RPG to date. The story is excellent. The atmosphere is awesome. Most importantly, the game is addictive and fun and you won't want to stop playing until it's over, and maybe not even then.

If you like RPGs, this will make your year.

For reference purposes, prior to this game, my favorite games were: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate (1 and 2), Gabriel Knight (2 and 3),

A truly great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: July 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I had never played a vampire game, computer or otherwise before tI played this game. I do like vampires though. When I got this game I just thought it looked interesting and didn't quite know what to expect. I hoped it was good and that it would not be a waste of my money. It was in fact very good and I got more than my money's worth out of it.

I started playing this game and I just messed around and tried to figure it out, enjoying the little things. It is set up well, very good gameplay. I found it very helpful to save the game a lot, but that's really my method of playing almost any game. As I got going I decided my brujah character wasn't quite what I wanted and thinking of him as my test game, I just went back and started over with a new character now knowing what to do to start off(I hadn't gotten too far and was still on the firt part in Santa Monica). Then I played the whole game through as a toreador character, male. As you go through the game it is fun to collect different items and develop your characters skills through the many quests they give you. I liked the freedom in this game. It had a general path you had to follow in the story but you could do things a lot of different ways. Often I could talk my way through something and not have to take a bullet, whereas sometimes late in the game I just wanted to hack and slash or shoot some people, and that could also work. There were multiple endings which I thought was cool. I would often just save my game and go on killing sprees because it was so fun sometimes, I'm not gonna lie, but the police will come after you, you can fight them as long as you want then hide when you are hurt to badly and while you heal they look for a little while then just stop entirely and forget about you. This was funny at times, but its true. The whole vamp thing was fairly well done and easy to get into, so was the story. I personally reeally liked the story, but I did feel like I wanted more out of it later on. They left me hanging on so many things. It almost cries out for a sequel or a movie or something, just something more to fill the emptiness it left when the game just ended. I kid you a bit here though because I should mention that after some time I came back to this game and played it through again. I played the game maybe halfway through again as a ventrue male,(slight cheating used in character creation here, nice little trick I learned), then I went back to the beginning and got a tremere female and played it from start to finish. I thought the tremere sounded mysterious and interesting so I figured I'd give it a try. The tremere I want to say, is great. Their special discipline is really cool and very handy. Plus the tremere chick was hot. I was pleasantly amused later in the game when you come to the point with VV, if you're playing a girl, she still comes on to you, not that I minded at all, it was fun, but the lesbian implications here were an amusing thought. There are a few points in the game that were quite hard and I had to play numerous times to get through, but all in all I was very pleased with this game. This game although a bit strange with the whole vamp thing, was absolutely terrific, and if you like that kind of thing, even better. I really enjoyed this game a lot and I hope you do too. I could say a lot more but I want to be sure not to get too in depth or bore anyone. Overall, I'll admit it's not perfect and it has it's faults, but it is well worth your time and money. I have played a lot of games in my day and this ranks among the best. I don't want to say too much, but go ahead and try it for yourself if you are at all interested.

Great gift for those vampire fanatics

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this gift for my boyfriend a few weeks ago and he adores it, I've sat in on a few sessions of him playing mainly because I was curious to what it was all about, I've played a bit for myself it has the basic controls (wasd) but of course there is room to customize it. It's rated M and I must say it has some raunchy themes and blood but the story line from what I've seen and from what he's told me is really interesting, not a bore and the graphics are really nice even if you don't have a high end video card it looks quite decent. I would recommend this game for no one under 16, it just seems to harsh in all aspects but for the vampire lovers it's an A+.

best rpg in years

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you want to play an involving, creepy, filled with eye-candy rpg, this is it.
GOOD:
1. Chracter choice really affects gameplay.
2. Amazing graphics ( really--the surf rolling in, downtown L.A. at night, clubs where your character can dance etc etc.. )
3. Creepy and gruesome as hell ( like the Haunted Hotel--made me jump ha ha ).
4. Fast moving! ( after slogging through Morrowind, which I liked, this was a relief..)
5. Good, involving storyline.
6. Spectacular spells. I am playing a Tremere, one of my spells is blood-purge. Yuck!
BAD:
1. I don't like the switch to third-person for combat, but it's not really done badly, just a personal preference. But I'll take off a star because you have no choice.
Sum up..
Now I hear the game shipped with all sorts of bugs and loose-ends but the fan community has released some excellent patches and I've yet to experience any game-stopping bugs. It runs flawlessly on my less-than stellar system: AMD XP, 1 gig of RAM and 128mb Nvidia card.
If you liked System Shock, Ultima Underworld or other story driven ( as opposed to hack and slash ) RPG's you will love this.

the best rpg i have ever played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

i have so much fun with this game. i really can't get enough of it. the characters are so awesoem. the quests are neat. the haunted house is sooooo creepy. i played with the lights out in surround sound and i almost wet my pants. the story is so cool too. being jockeyed around by all the vampires with power. can't wait until i finally get some revenge on them all. i hope they do let you by the end. i finally got some cool vampire disciplines too. omg it's just so sweet! i am going to play this so much over and over on the holidays.

A must for any WOD fan, but others will still enjoy it

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you're into the World of Darkness (the world created by White Wolf roleplaying games) you will absolutely love every minute of this game. I loved role playing the White Wolf vampire games, and I was immediately sucked in by a computer game set in their universe. The characters are realistic and the plot is very fun and detailed.

However, there are certain things lacking in this game... the graphics are not on the par with other comparable games that are out now like Half-Life 2. The opponents in battle sequences are not very intelligent and will sometimes not pursue you if you try to get away, and there is an extreme incentive to use melee combat instead of guns. Melee does much more damage to other vampires, and your toughest combat situations will be with (you guessed it) other vampires.

So if you are a WOD fan already, this game is five stars and a must have. If you are not, then this game is four stars and still very enjoyable.

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