Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Reviews

Although in 2025 running this game is a bit arduous, it still holds up as an immersive and in depth vampire RPG. From the gritty world-building to excellently written dialogue and storytelling, not to mention the kick-ass soundtrack, the vibes of this game are immaculate (for lack of a better descriptor lol).

A vampire game which sucks in a good way, the perfect start for anyone looking to get into world of darkness. In terms of gameplay the game does show age but is serviceable besides a few situations you must prepare for or lose badly do NOT attempt play without unofficial patch it will not work.

This game has great storytelling, great voiceactor's, and had everything to be one of the greatest rpg's of all time. The problem is, after two third's of the game, the gameplay starts to feel uninspired and repetitive, dialogues lose space to bad combat mechanics and boring enemies in a somewhat unbalaced combat system. On other aspect's, has very inspired and memorable missions and dialogues and has good replayability for specific classes scenes. I would rate it 7 out of 10.

good game but there are some game braking bugs. an i had an issue where the game would boot me out on the first screen.

Unable to play this anymore on new hardware. Don't bother buying it here, buy it G somewhere O else G.

Install the unofficial patch. Playing without it is impossible. It's free, less than 1GB and pretty much installs itself so there's no fuss. My favourite part about this game is that the quickload button is also Steam's screenshot button, so I have a lovely gallery of me fucking up along my playthrough. You can manually change it but it's very innovative. It does atmosphere quite well. You really feel like this newborn vampire belonging to this secret society where fuck-ups are NOT tolerated. You have to follow people into alleyways to feed, you can covertly use your vampiric traits to guide conversations your way, among other really neat features that I can't think of right now. I really wish characters were expanded upon more. Jeanette (cover girl) shows up for the first few hours, then never comes up again. Same thing with multiple other characters throughout the game. I like these characters and want to interact with them more but the game just doesn't let me. Combat is average early game, and steadily gets worse as the game goes on. Knocking enemies over with melee weapons gives them i-frames while they stand up, pretty much negating your advantage and making this whole knock down system pointless. Melee also forces you to engage at close-range (obviously), which become a MAJOR disadvantage late-game as more and more enemies become ranged. Stealth also becomes worse as time goes on, as enemies just start being able to see through invisibility for some reason. So just walking up to enemies guarantees a fuckton of damage. Ranged is just as bad though. There is forced weapon spread, so you have to stand still and crouch to get a half-decent shot on target. Automatic weapons have too much recoil to use (both for the player's aim, and the weapon spread mechanic). Last but not least is your own health regen. It slowly goes up over time, but regens faster if you munch on somebody. But some enemies are completely immune to this (making some section of the game a slog as you have to frequently go afk to wait for health regen), and the hit detection is beyond broken while in combat. This makes it very inconsistent and a struggle to use. Maps are small, but somehow still too big in certain areas. Santa Monica and Chinatown were decent, but Hollywood and Downtown had far too much walking distance between objectives. Some dungeon segments are fucking horrible. The Nosferatu Sewer section in Hollywood, and the late-game Hotel section especially. Just wave after wave after wave of enemies copy-pasted everywhere. If I have to hear those Geodude-looking losers lunge at me one more time I'll cry. Also a lot of extremely tedious puzzles, like trial-and-error maze areas and that stupid vent room in the sewers. I have a lot of bad things to say, but it's a 9/10. Loved the world and characters. Level-design was usually fine. The story was just ok. The combat was meh.

It is one of the best old games out there, it is as good as fallout new vegas to give you an idea but be wary, without the unoficial patch the game will not run

Wonderful game. Don't forget to install the unofficial patch.

Once I've played through all the clans, I'll post a full review. For right now, I'll go with something simple. Due to me using a separate patch launcher for most of my playtime, the "44 Hours" is inaccurate. This game is jank as hell, and unplayable without the Unofficial Patch. But with that patch, you will find one of the greatest RPGs of all time. The combat is not what you're here for, but it can be enjoyable to test out your ridiculous vampiric abilities. I will say that, although it is important to have at least one dialogue skill, there are mandatory combat sections. Stealth is also a challenge, unless you roll a Nosferatu or Malkavian, and then it becomes a resources game. If vampires aren't really your thing, they aren't mine either. But I still love this game. Watch Sseth's review if you want to know more about the game, as I still want to gather more gameplay information before writing a full review. And if you do decide to get this gem, PLEASE don't play a Malkavian first. You'll get way more enjoyment out of them on a second playthrough due to a certain... feature. Same for Nosferatu, as you are the average Redditor, and people react violently to seeing you in public, making the whole game a stealth section, except for the sewers. The noise of sewer water has almost given me tinnitus, each low quality splash making me slip deeper and deeper into insanity. It's really good, 8/10.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is a difficult game to review in 2025. The game is very, very dated. It absolutely needs the Unofficial Patch to even be playable. Usually that's enough for me to apply the thumbs down for any game. But I'll make an exception here because where this game doesn't suck, it's incredible. Taking a leaf from contemporaries like Deus Ex, this action RPG grabs you with the excellent recreation of the tabletop vampire abilities you'll be used to if you played the pen and paper RPG, with the fan favourite clans from Ventrue to Brujah available for players. As well as all the crazy abilities, like domination and mind control all the way to making people's blood boil until they explode. It's also let down by the combat which comes across as unpolished, although in 2004, there wasn't a lot to compare to. TTK ranges from way too long to instakill and it's balanced rather poorly. However what drives this game is world class narrative combined with meaningful choices that impact all the way through the game, just like with Deus Ex, you get that whole vibe... what you do in this game and the way you do it has consequences, and it makes it all the more immersive and enjoyable. It's also something developers rarely manage to grasp... I can't think of many examples beyond Baldur's Gate 3 where such excellent game design philosophy has been so successfully applied. If you can pick this up for $5 or less, and you like retro gaming, and can handle the dated, rough edges, this is worth a play-through.