The Vampire Regent

For alle Vampire - The Masquarade Fans, if you ever wanted to play as a Prince, that's your game to go

After 13.1 hours and two endings i can safely say this game is fantastic! I wont go into spoilers but i will say i love the writing and the way the story shifts and changes with your decisions, and there is enough depth and uncertainty to make me want to play again, do things differently, and see how else the writers will surprise me. 10/10 strongly reccomended and im not just saying that because im a simp for Vampire stories! ....I am required to inform anyone reading this that I am in fact a simp for Vampire stories...but this is a really good one and has kept me up for the last two days just as sure as any novel! Also, the ending with all the twists? Chef's kiss. fun the whole time seriously, to the writers, thank you very much for this I am having so much frikkin fun.

The writing was only okay, which was surprising considering that Zaper’s War for the West was so well written (maybe it’s Newberry’s contribution I didn’t like?). Some of the dialogue came across as immature. There were also far more grammatical mistakes than I usually see in these games. The story was okay; it was nice playing as a powerful elder vampire prince (or regent as this game calls it) rather than a younger vampire being ordered around like in other games. However, all the twists were predictable and story lacked originality. The game’s format was a lot like War for the West, where each day you either improve a skill or hold court, which results in a random event. Some of these can be quite interesting, but it does create the issue that it feels like you should just be focusing on improving your skills instead of getting the court events. Also like War for the West, the game only has three skills (in this case, physique, perception, & manipulation), which doesn’t feel like enough to have unique character, especially in a second playthrough. At least there are four vampire bloodlines (clans) to choose from, which each have a unique ability. The game does tell you when a skill is increased, and if an option’s success depends on a skill, it tells you which skill you’ll need (though as is typical, not the required value). There are also three personality spectrums that are tracked, as well as your influence with certain characters and groups. The personality values don’t seem particularly important though. Your choices can have some significant effects, and this combined with the different clans and the random event system does allow for some replayability. On a positive note, the romances are pretty good. There’s four options, two male and two female. I was very disappointed with the length of the game. It only took me 7 hours to complete it. I was expecting at least 10 hours considering the word count. It ended far too abruptly, and overall I did not enjoy the second half of the game as much as the first half.

[h3]Intro[/h3] You're the boss vampire in a city called Mordhaven. If you're familiar with V:TM, then you're basically playing as a "Prince." This sounded like an interesting premise and I was looking forward to playing. I even streamed the game. [h3]Pros[/h3] I did enjoy some of the conversational response options you can choose. Several were hilariously perfect. [h3]Cons[/h3] [b]1)[/b] Broken save system. You get several save slots, but saving to one overwrites another so you really only have one save slot. [b]2)[/b] Despite being the leader of a city of vampires, you get your ass beat by every random level 0 you come across. Get used to choosing the "flee" option. And no, bulking up your stats seems to have no effect. Maybe if you use the in-game cheats? [b]3)[/b] Everyone else in the game (including mortals) gets to do cooler stuff than you, is stronger than you, has more contacts than you, and knows more than you do. In short, all the NPCs get to play the game while you get to be an NPC. Some examples below. --You get into a car crash and no matter what option you pick, you fail and have to wait until a woman comes and rescues you. --You're attacked by human gunmen, can't fend them off, and have to wait until a woman comes and rescues you. --And one of the most egregious examples that almost made me rage quit: Something important was happening in the city and all the vamps for miles around came to a meeting at a building I own. They wanted to know what happened and what was going on. As I was Regent of the vamps, they all looked to me for answers. This should've been one of the best scenes in the game, but do I get to speak? No, a woman gets up on stage and starts explaining what's going on. She literally gave the speech my character should've been giving. This was akin to the president of a country sitting with the crowd while a subordinate is on stage discussing an invasion by a foreign power. (You do eventually get the option to interrupt, but then you take an influence hit with the woman because you don't let her do your job. Yes, I'm serious.) [b]4)[/b] Plot lines and choices frequently made no sense. I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, but one example is when you are ordered by a woman to "figure out what happened" within a certain time frame or else something bad will happen. However, you know exactly what happened--not just you the reader, but also you the character. You know what, where, when, how, and who. So...what are you supposed to be "figuring out"? Not that it matters though, because all you have to do is play through a few more nights--just pick any option, it doesn't matter--and you'll succeed at this quest. [b]5)[/b] This story might be entertaining for younger audiences but for more mature readers it's just...mediocre. Great premise, poor execution. [b]6)[/b] You might have noticed I kept referencing "a woman" above, and there's a reason for that. The authors pushed political ideology via the story and it wasn't a light touch--it was ham-fisted and in your face. An example of this was that virtually every leader, virtually every important character, and virtually anyone of note was a woman. Men who were plot-related were consistently less intelligent, less powerful, less professional, and less everything. The one plot character who was male and on par with the women was off-screen for 99% of the game. I could go on, but I think you get the point. There are plenty of text-based games out there that are worth your time, but this isn't one.

Had a great time playing this, even though it's not the usual sort of CYOA game I tend to playEnjoyed my first playthrough quite a lot, and I can see myself playing again some other time. Really liked the story and the mechanics. I found the ending I got particularly fun, it actually put a smile in my face.

强推）就是啊万恶的随机事件（误）虽然基本都还是可以看到的但是我真的好想和大家一起跑团啊可恶（咦）龙龙雕像真的好香啊卖是不可能卖的我就要把它放在家里收藏谁来了我都不给 本游戏又名《沉迷德州扑克的我打牌打到酒吧拒收的这件事》《明明是牌桌高手却连规则都不会的我是不是有哪里不对（典型的player拖累rp角色 X）》《为什么你们都如此狂热地想和一个体格20的弱鸡（我）击剑》《美国女友（同好评价）、无辜路人和法国人走进一家酒吧》[spoiler]（说真的请原谅脑神经粗大的我无论如何也没想到明明是一起出去吃饭玩为什么为什么为什么为什么到最后就进了宾馆为什么为什么啊姐姐你的单人线我真滴走得一头雾水关键我感觉我RP的皮似乎理解了甚么然而我完全没有啊摔！家里已经有一只法国人了姐姐我们能不能当普通朋友（什[/spoiler] [spoiler][strike]摩根，我滴摩根[/strike]就是说狠狠脑起了Prince/Sheriff呜呜呜这就是捏OC的快乐吗[/spoiler] 最后让我们一起赞美[strike]Lunatic[/strike]万能滴预言之神！ [strike]所以就是说真的只有我一个坚持直感点满的大幕后开局吗（）[/strike] [strike]不要靠近战斗会变得不幸[/strike] 哦对了这个存档真的就只有结局收集意义，因为如果你死了它就会自动删掉··· ···除非你想走别的线就可以读档走或者刷随机事件，感觉意义都不是很大···

Excellent text-based gritty vampire novel before Hosted Games went full woke and set themselves on tainting subsequent releases with token manner that is distasteful. The game takes place in just around a month more or less and you're thrown into various intrigues that eventually cluminate in some brilliant plot twists. Another thing that sticks out in a positive light is the fact that you as the vampire leader of the city and start on top - the struggle lies instead in staying both there and alive. That kind of twist is unusual but very well executed with testing your own loyalties and those of your underlings to you. The most negative aspect is that the save system is fundamentally broken and with the game being abandoned it will never be fixed. As luck would have it that just affects the multiple saveslots, in other words you can still keep and complete your current game ongoing through PC reboots and whatnot without losing progress. The game also features a randomness to the events/scenes you get as you pick a location to spend your timeslot, meaning the save slot feature would be handy. All the more so since some of these events are disjointed in terms of time and choices, forcing you to replay the entire game just to get a small variety for full completion. Overall, the atmosphere of the game and the writing just feels right and is very engaging. The choices, while limited, do accompany a few different directions for your characters own style. I did not expect to enjoy the game as much as I did, even the romances were really cute and had some very nasty ways you could end them. In conclusion, grab it on a sale and go for getting all the endings - the twists are brilliant!

Do NOT trust the save states, I've never had them work in the years I've had this. A lot of funny and interesting scenarios, but can also get very redundant quickly. If you wanna play as a "good guy", play a different game