Vampire: The Masquerade® - Bloodlines™ 2 - The Flower & the Flame DLC

How to describe in short: [list] [*]Short [*]Hollow [*]Emotional pressure [*]No arrival/fast speed [*]No clan feeling [*]Narzissmus [/list] Who came up with this obscenity, it is just to placeholder and alibi for the clan preorder debacle. There is no value, just writing the ends of the character that die anyway. One could do it, but with some atmosphere some feeling of the clan imagination and clan life. Underworld movie did it too, small but at least imaginable. There is no recommendation unless you are hardcore into this game, if not, this isn't even worth a sale. I bought it with preorder and trust and my investment into other paradox games. Paradox lost my trust (Achievement unlocked). Now CD Project RED of the two is left, but even there I worrying.

This is by far, the worst thing I've ever played. Dull story, nothing new, nothing to achieve, 2 hours of gameplay for nothing. It absolutely adds NOTHING

For the price, I could not possibly recommend this. I got it because I bought the Premium edition, and seeing this for $14.99 is painful. This DLC is short (2-3 hours) and is mostly reused locations. Do not buy until its cheaper. That said, I will give this a positive because I think it lands as "Neutral" as opposed to "Terrible," and I sense most people playing this will be giving a thumbs down. Ysabella at least has a whiff of an interesting story by the end. I would dare say I was even enjoying myself for the last hour. Still though, as with Benny, I question if her story really needed to be told. I think dev time adding the Nosferatu or Gangrel would have been a better use of time personally. Or maybe some new side quests or something. As with the other DLC, I think the biggest improvement is more quality of life updates to the game. I do appreciate the dev's adding holding guns. That should have been in the base game, but hey, at least they heard the complaint and did something about it. If the Chinese Room could have been allowed to just make "Vampire the Masquerade: Seattle," everyone would have been kinder to this game I think. There is some fun to be had here. The issue is what we got just really is not what Bloodlines 2 should have been.

I didn't mind VtM:B2. This... I couldn't care less about. Bought it as Mortismel gaming said the story was surprisingly good. If you quizzed me on the story I couldn't tell you a thing. The music in the boss fight was cool.

Much better than Loose Cannon. The Flower and the Flame is an enjoyable diversion into Ysabella's backstory with quite a lot of player choice and interesting combat. Fleshes out the motivations of the game's antagonists quite well.

Better than Benny's dlc if your going by how interesting it was but i still dont think either of them are worth the $15 price for it. Also for such a weak character why the h*ll are there so many anarchs on every single roof and alley. Ik the dlc jst came out but as of right now not recommended. Also game is still very choppy even with a decent pc.

The most disappointing DLC I ever bought I somehow told myself a short game would scratch that vampire itch and didn't mind that much the many flaws of the base game. It is what it is, overpriced and far from Bloodlines. Well, teasing a Toreador is the selling point for me even though I don't relish Ysabella as an obnoxious poser and fake artist. So I tried. At first it's okay. She has her own pretty cool move set, using a whip and cool sword. Not quite as fast as Diva Phyre with his bare hands but it's pretty enjoyable nonetheless. Some dialogues are nice and in tune with VtM's jaded and edgy tone in many characters. She has some rather creative lines. However she really often falls short as an egotistical ♥♥♥♥♥, and not quite the kindred vibe but just that unbearable loud and overbearing Karen (we all know one). The quests are (mostly) uninspired and it's almost entirely recycling assets from the base game. Not only assets but also situations, the gameplay alternates between the usual fast paced melee, unbearable linear stealth with all abilities blocked, and Fabien-esque mind trips into her psyche icluding talking with inanimate objects... I really asked myself if the devs even read the memo: no one wants mandatory stealth chapters with instafail when spotted in an action game. Guess they never heard of SW Outlaws... This DLC also has good intention trying to tell her origin story, from WW2 to 2024 Seattle but even that was finally uninspired, cookie cutter story about an ambitious artist who cheated her way into both the art world and the undead. Not much to learn aside from some lore about Seattle bands. This DLC is short. Not like "average DLC small side story short", non non. It's 2 hours short, maybe three if you really take it all in like casually strolling in a museum. You know the meme. Was expecting next to nothing, still managed to disappoint. Did it scratch that itch? Kind of, but not for long and not without certain frustration and a final taste of meh.

TL;DR: Much, much better than Loose Cannon. Is it worth $15? Honestly, no—but on a steep sale I can recommend picking this one up. Some context: I loved the base game. My opinion of Loose Cannon was that it was basically a collection of reused assets and chucked-together fight scenes wrapped around a laughably dumb and kind of self-contradictory narrative focused on the most boring character in the entire base game. The devs kind of put themselves into a box, narratively speaking, with both of these. Because the main game's story can't be allowed to change, nothing is really allowed to happen in these DLCs. But given the constraints, they actually did a pretty decent job with the writing in this one. It's a fun little deep-dive into one of the more interesting antagonists from the base game, and as a player you get to make some key decisions about who Ysabella was, and is, as a vampire and as a person. Unlike Loose Cannon, which had a boss fight with an absolutely laughable and pointless character, this DLC does have a pretty neat final confrontation. They nailed the navel-gazing Toreador vibe here, and though this DLC does reuse assets as Loose Cannon does, they at least put those assets toward something that feels original and like its own thing. I came out of Loose Cannon feeling like I'd wasted my time, even as short as it was. This one's equally short, but I came out of it feeling overall satisfied with the experience. The voice acting is inconsistent, sometimes falling flat, and the writing never reached the heights of the base game's story, but it's passable on both fronts. The gameplay is fine—there are a few eyerolling sections (such as one mandatory stealth bit) but nothing overstays its welcome. Ysabella also feels significantly different to play from Phyre and Benny, both in and out of combat. She gets to make some fun choices and have some neat interactions that go (very slightly) beyond "defeat all foes in the room". (Just slightly, mind you—temper your expectations...) While the price of this DLC is unconscionable for what you get, the content itself is not bad, and while I don't think the additions to the main game were at all necessary (honestly, I still don't get why so many people were upset that you couldn't pick up and carry guns as Phyre), they're not totally unwelcome either. If it's on sale and you don't mind dropping a few bucks on a couple of hours of VTMB2 story content, you could do worse than this.

Ok so I feel like a lot of the mechanics in the dlc should have been in the base game. Being able to use presence in dialogue was super fun. Also the combat is so rewarding. The rapier is a good fit for a toreondor. I feel that this dlc was a step in the right direction. Too bad it was the games last step and not its first.

Alright, the last section was surprisingly cool! For a second, I did catch a thought that I was really enjoying it, and it's certainly one of the better parts of VtMB 2. But... as with the first DLC, it barely adds any new info. Just a better view on what we've already seen. It still reuses (almost) all the locations from the base game and is too inconsequential to be really worth the- HOW MUCH MONEY???? Nevermind, it's trash. Can't recommend it. Also, why does it STILL run like garbage???