Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York

I WAS RIVETED. This was a delight. If you have never experienced Vampire the Masquerade, this is required reading. It honestly should be the starting point for anyone intrigued into the world. The drama, the powerplays, the twists, the characters, the choices. It's all excellently done. It'll never reach the pure customization of Bloodlines, and it'll never hit the highs of actually being a kindred in the tabletop. But damn, this is great all around. What is there not to compliment? The art is fantastic, the backgrounds are fantastic, the music is fantastic. The characters! The characters are a big crux of this game, as a CYOA visual novel. I would say the majority are great. So many memorable figures. Sophie is obviously captivating, but Arturo, Kaiser, Qadir, there are so many characters that are so well realized. It's like walking into a room of celebrities: everyone has gravitas, and you're instantly intrigued as to why. The game's MO is pretty simple. Every night, you must make choices on which route you'd like to go down. As the name suggests, you are building a coterie, as is Vampire the Masquerade tradition. You get to choose two partners to befriend, in individualized questlines. Some are better than others admittedly, but make friends with who feels right. You meet and mingle, then have a few side-quests, all while aiding your adopted sire's machinations on the broader court and city. The game is great at letting you branch out and choose what you want, and then narrowing you in back to the ongoing narrative. This is Game of Thrones with fangs and blood. You can bumble, or if you are spry with the lore, can mastermind. It always makes you feel like a nobody, because that's your character's place. But it's fun. You feel like a cog in a machine, a pawn on the chess board, but that's the whole appeal; this world is bigger and older than you'll ever know, and this game is your tiny glimpse into it. You have one chance, so make it count. Be a fool or be Machiavellian; you only have one (un)life to live, and your decisions dictate how long that is. I think the only real blemish on this is some of the choices. It's hard to tell what is an impactful choice and what was just a random choice; there's no real feedback. Feeding is also complicated as a Ventrue. I know that going in, but only by the end of the game did I even have a guess on what my preferred feeding type was; other clans likely have an easier time of that, but that's also the whole point of the different clans, so that's hardly something to complain about. It's like complaining that's there's cheese on a cheeseburger. If it was anything to make me glaze this, it's the twists near the end. The last 2 hours of this plot was an absolute treat. It's so fun when as all the threads draw tighter, and the pace ramps up, and you see the silly journeys you were put through actually are all connected, and all of this whole thing was a masterful gambit and powerplay but unfathomably powers beyond your comprehension. It was such a treat, all propped up by these larger-than-life figures. It's truly the coolest and most stylish VTM experience.