Vampire: The Masquerade® - Bloodlines™ 2

This is no sequel to VTMB Maybe will buy it again for a dollar

I finished the main story once, and honestly, I'm completely fed up with the absurd amount of bugs. While I didn't get any hard crashes or freezes, I got stuck in the textures literally hundreds of times. To top it off, the ending was a massive disappointment — it felt incredibly rushed and lazy. The game is definitely not worth full price. Only grab it if it's on a major sale.

This is not the worst game in the world: it is mediocre in an all-too-familiar fashion. Namely, it suffers from 'open-world fever'. Let me explain: despite a number of loose ends, the main plot is great--complex without being byzantine, and in line with the setting without feeling like a guided tour. It even offers some interesting and unusual choices (i.e. Agent Baker). Unfortunately only the dialogues (rather than the storyline) branch out according to those decisions, which accordingly feel rather ornamental. The main missions are actually quite good (i.e. The Underground), with clever concepts, carefully crafted maps and decent environmental storytelling (the few attempts at puzzles are rather lacklustre.) Unfortunately all that is wrapped in an open-world that is bland, empty and--I'd argue--entirely unnecessary. Except for half a dozen bare-bones fetch quests and a couple of brainless collectathon, there is nothing. A few clichéd NPCs with little character and no import in the plot whatsoever. A few lifeless locations where nothing ever happens and no NPC can be interacted with. The rest is a dozen of city blocks which all look the same, with no traffic and aimless bystanders. There is so little love poured in this open world, and it has so little to do with the rest of the game, that either the devs built it as a playground for their (admittedly excellent) traversal mechanics, or because they needed it for continuity with the first Bloodlines. That's a shame, because had they kept to their main story, and spent their time instead polishing the rather rough gameplay and fleshing out their characters, this could have been a good game. As it stands the combat is repetitive and very ill balanced (I have no problem taking out a Camarilla primogene but I struggle against any thin-blood Anarch with a gun). The stealth is alright but rather one-dimensional, though the enemy AI is actually pretty alright. The dialogues are very uneven, some of them embarrassingly bad (i.e. no tormented artist made me cringe as hard as Ysabella since Stefano Valentini), while some characters (typically locked behind doors except in cutscenes) are actually fairly good. There are quite a few bugs, and I got stuck after clipping into a shelf *in the game's first corridor!* It also run like sh*t, with the sound regularly stuttering, the dynamic lighting going wild and the frame-rate dropping to single digits despite my very decent rig. I really wanted to like this game. In fact, I really wanted all the bad reviews to be wrong, to have been spewed by extremely-online teens with too much time on their hands and too little patience. I am sorry to report: the bad reviews are right. This at first infuriated me, but we shouldn't be too harsh on that game: it is precisely because some aspects shine quite bright, that the rest appear so dismal. As it stands this is not good, and will only interest V:TM completionists, or dreamers interested in what could have been. I've heard it said that this a decent game, if a bad sequel to Bloodlines 1. I have not played Bloodlines 1, but I can tell you this is not a good game, even on its own merit. I paid 30 bucks for it on sale, and I wouldn't pay a cent more if I were you.

Как отдельная игра , куча идиотизма ,нет списка заданий , всунута идиотская система резонанса и т.д. А по сравнению с первой частью вообще говно полное.

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That's a wrap on Bloodlines 2. As a "Bloodlines 2" it's dreadful, as a "video game" on its own merits its mediocre at best, but I cannot understate how invested and engaged I was with the narrative, and satisfied with its culmination. Wildly fun story here. There is no immersive sim, role playing (beyond dialogue), or adjacent vision you'd expect from a Bloodlines successor. The scope of world engagement is limited, and the relationship it forms with the player is rigid. It does not cultivate a robust experience of immersion, by design. But it does succeed in establishing a wildly intriguing VtM double mystery right from the start, meticulously develops it across multiple time periods, embraces long form character driven storytelling, and avoids haphazardly solving its plot threads to replace them with others or shift gears. Some narrative threads, characters, and fundamental ideas are disappointingly undercooked. I'd have preferred a tone a little less cartoonish and soft at times. While I came around on playing as an Elder, I would have preferred the game err from being a hero power fantasy. There's work to be done. But I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy it for what it was. Tightened up, embracing linearity, and called something else, I think this would have been more readily accepted. More robust and faithful Bloodlines in design, enriched and deeper character and plot development, freedom of role playing, total immersion in the world, and man you'd have had a hell of a successor. I've long made my peace that Bloodlines 2 as it should be doesn't exist. It may never have existed, honestly. This isn't even a woeful immitaiton. It's a completely different game with the branding seared on. It's not even particularly good to play. But there's a genuinely great story in here worth following, if you can stomach the framework in which it's told.

I... like this game. It's not really a Bloodlines game imo. I think it doesn't scratch the same itches that the first Bloodlines did. I think the original Bloodlines game really gave you a lot of choices as well as sinking you into the World of Darkness. My biggest gripe though. Is a simple one to fix. I am femme presenting, but I identify as non binary. And a problem I see with a lot of games/shows/etc is that when you want something to be "gender neutral," it really just means "masculine." There isn't a single dress or skirt or girlie thing I can wear in this game. I shouldn't have to rely on mods to give my character an outfit that I feel comfortable in. I just want to wear a skirt or a dress. It's why I loved Bloodlines (and the only way I would EVER play a Tremere); you had cutesy little outfits. Now that we've come a long way in game development, we can customize our characters to a lot fuller extent. I've played 6 hours of this, but I like RPGs because of the diversity in character customization. You have only masculine choices in this one, and it's disappointing.

This game had such great potential, I hope in 10 years there will be mods that fill the game up with colorful NPCs and intriguing plotlines. Currently it feels very empty and the gameplay is very repetitive, the quests, the combats, the dialogues and NPC interactions are limited and almost make no difference. Another really pretty walking simulator for the most part.

Не так плоха как пишут фанбои первой части, просто другая

Я прошёл Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 и, честно говоря, остался крайне разочарован. Скорее негативный отзыв, чем позитивный. История сама по себе местами неплохая, атмосфера иногда работает, но как игра — это далеко не то, чего я ждал от продолжения Bloodlines. Очень много багов. Очень много ощущения, что сцены просто вырезаны или недоделаны. Например, все “любовные” или интимные сцены не показываются вообще: просто тёмный экран, какие-то звуки, и всё. Такое чувство, будто разработчикам было лень нормально это ставить, анимировать и показывать. Персонажей мало, свободы действий мало, диалоги почти ни на что нормально не влияют. Очень часто создаётся ощущение, что ты выбираешь реплику, но игра всё равно ведёт тебя по одной и той же дороге. В итоге это не RPG с большим количеством последствий, а довольно линейная история с иллюзией выбора. Боевая система тоже очень простая. Ничего особенного. Анимации для игры 2025 года выглядят очень средне. Никакого “вау” вообще нет. Высасывание крови тоже сделано бедно: мало разнообразия, одни и те же анимации, всё повторяется. Такое ощущение, что на этом реально сэкономили. Отдельный огромный минус — баги со звуками при питании. Очень часто, когда высасываешь кровь у жертвы, мужчина может звучать женским голосом, а женщина — мужским. Это просто ломает всю атмосферу. Для игры про вампиров, где питание кровью — одна из основных механик, такой баг выглядит позорно. Я обожаю Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption и первую Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Redemption вышла ещё в 2000 году, Bloodlines — тоже очень старая игра, но в них было больше души, больше разнообразия, больше ощущения настоящей Vampire: The Masquerade. Там было что делать, были интересные персонажи, выборы, атмосфера, ролевая составляющая. Bloodlines 2, к сожалению, ощущается как третьесортная игра, которую почему-то готовили много лет, но в итоге выпустили крайне сырой, бедной и урезанной. Это не то, чего ждёшь от продолжения Bloodlines. Не стоит потраченного времени. Ценителям линейки я бы не советовал покупать эту игру.