Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong

Worst "Vampire: The Masquerade" game ever made. Visuals are laughable. Voice acting is terrible. Gameplay is a joke. The writing is boring. The characters are dull and ugly. Here I might provide a huge text about what they did wrong - but it would be easier to say they did nothing right. This "game" is a disaster - and a disgrace to the World of Darkness franchise. Take it from a man who loves the setting and actually runs VtM tabletop campaigns as a Storyteller (aka Dungeon Master): you don't want to touch this one. Ever. The developers should consider changing their profession and never trying to make games ever again. In all seriousness, if you still consider buying this - you've been warned. NOT RECOMMENDED

I love this game. I know this game is not really popular, but I think it's a perfectly solid AA game and definitely a fascinating VtM game. It's largely a walk-around game with lots of interactions, puzzles, and dialogue to go through. You play as three main vampires, Leysha, Emem, and Galeb. They are all incredibly different and have different themes and narratives that weave together to gain the full picture of what is going on in this court. Everything centers around the party, and how the human hunters managed to invade it, striking at the core of this court and leading to everyone involve feeling an intense danger. This game expects you to be patient with it. You are supposed to explore, talk to characters, and think. There is a lot to consider every chapter, and you get to make interesting and dynamic choices throughout the narrative. The characters all have depth and history to them, and you can feel this when you're talking to them. There is also an indepth codex and the attached pdf sourcebook also helps you gain insight into the world, and there's just so much behind the motivations of every character you meet (and even of characters you don't meet). The puzzles can be hit or miss, but something I really appreciate is that this game respects your intelligence. Things are not easy, and there are workarounds if you can't solve a puzzle. (I will say the second Emem chapter is probably the weakest puzzle-wise--I feel that chapter does not communicate itself well, especially not on a first playthough). Most of the puzzles are not like that though, and depend on you either putting pieces together yourself as a player, or having your character levelled a specific way. This game inspires replays, to see different outcomes and different solutions to the issues and puzzles you face. My game time isn't fully accurate here, as I bought this game on the Epic store for my initial playthrough, so I've played it for around 50 hours. I highly recommend it, as long as you are in for a complex story and puzzle game that is not a AAA game.

One thing I’ve started realizing with developers like Big Bad Wolf is that I keep getting drawn into their games because of the premise and potential rather than the actual consistency of the final product. I tend to support a lot of mid-tier AA developers because some of the best studios in gaming originally started there before eventually breaking through. Early CD Projekt Red, older BioWare, and other now-established studios all had periods where they were working with more limited budgets or production quality, but still managed to deliver compelling and emotionally engaging experiences despite technical limitations. What I’m starting to notice, though, is that there’s a category of developer that consistently produces fascinating ideas without ever really evolving past the same execution problems. I’ve started seeing that pattern repeatedly with studios like Spiders, Piranha Bytes, Cyanide, and now Big Bad Wolf. The Council and Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong both pulled me in immediately because the concepts are exactly the kinds of games I want to exist: occult themes, political tension, mystery, branching dialogue, psychologically driven storytelling, and narrative-heavy roleplaying. On paper, these games sound perfect for me. But after playing them, I keep running into the same problems: - weak facial animations - poor lip syncing - uneven voice delivery - rough gameplay systems - awkward presentation - production quality that constantly undermines immersion At a certain point, it starts feeling like more than just a budget issue. Plenty of smaller studios with limited resources have still managed to create emotionally compelling experiences through strong direction, presentation, writing cohesion, or polished execution in key areas. With some of these AA studios, the issue starts to feel more structural: they are excellent idea generators, but consistently struggle to transform those ideas into fully realized experiences. What makes this frustrating is that they often get just enough right to keep pulling me back in. The atmosphere, premise, and narrative concepts continue to create the sense that the next game might finally be the breakthrough title. But after multiple releases, I’m starting to feel like I may be repeatedly buying into potential rather than proven execution. That doesn’t mean these games are without value. In fact, some of their ideas are genuinely more interesting than what many AAA studios attempt. But compelling concepts alone can only carry a game so far when the presentation, gameplay feel, and overall polish repeatedly fail to support the emotional and narrative weight the games are aiming for.

Picked this up at a 90% discount. After playing for a few minutes...It feels like a fair price.

I enjoyed Detroit so I gave it a shot. No way dude. Everything is low quality and the characters are not believable or even remotely likeable.

Cringe inducing, nails on chalkboard experience! One of the contenders for the worst game ever made. Just don't try it like I did and learn the hard way.

Я редко бросаю игры, но осилить прохождение Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong я не смогла. Игра не интересная от слова совсем! Я люблю вампирский сеттинг, люблю интерактивное кино, но эта игра совсем не понравилась. Тут много багов, странная система прокачки, скучные диалоги, скучные персонажи. Обычно в таких играх ты пытаешься обыскать каждый уголочек, чтобы что-то найти, но в Swansong мне хотелось как можно быстрее закончить сцену. У меня было две попытки пройти эту игру, не могу! The Council от этих же разработчиков я прошла с большим удовольствием два раза и собрала все ачивки. Забыла упомянуть, что я люблю Vampire: The Masquerade, но Swansong откровенный кал!

Welcome to Vampire The Masquerade: HR Edition! One of the most uninspired, boring, janky, ugly and miserable story experiences I've ever had in a game. Dustborn has better writing, pacing, storytelling and gameplay than this. The game has DEI and characters that would make Sweet Baby Inc blush, and that was my favorite part. Every time another fat weird looking freak of nature character walked in I would smile and think "Finally! I get to enjoy some cringe!" Then they started talking. And boy. It's bad. Really really bad. Every dialog feels AI generated. It's boring. None of the characters really have any motivation to do anything. It's like they're all on antidepressants or something. The story is held together by hopes and dreams. Every time you start to question the narrative it just falls apart. Here's an example: [spoiler] at one point Emem gets trapped by Tremere vampires in a dream magic realm, when she gets out she gets confronted by them and they tell her that they lost 3/4ths of all their members (that's a lot!) because 3/4ths of all of their members went to a party where they got killed. Now I don't know about you guys but I thought tremere guys had magic powers and stuff but whatever, that's not the point. The tremere guys are pissed and tell Emem that they want to reneg on the original deal they had made with the prince of Boston to purify blood and that they want more now. Keep in mind, these doofuses just admitted that they lost THREE QUARTERS OF THEIR MEMBERS. So King Doofus Tremere demands that Emem renegotiate the deal with them. Without the prince or anyone else present. So Emem of course offers them A NEIGHBORHOOD IN BOSTON. ON BEHALF OF THE PRINCE. Emem isn't even high ranking at this point. It's baffling how insane the logic of the Tremere and Emem is in the scene. How does the Tremere think the prince would even hold up the bargain that they made with a lesser underling? Well, whatever, once Emem made the deal they IMMEDIATELY START PACKING UP THEIR THINGS AND MOVING INTO BOSTON. Screw logic and common sense. [/spoiler] The gameplay is non-existent and involves you jankily walking around the world and interacting with business documents (yes, really! It is exactly as exciting as it sounds), keycards and objects while your avatar is making comments. At one point you walk into a child's bedroom and find a camera laying suspiciously next to the bed and the character just goes "wow I didn't know she was so interested in photography! :)" It's a 3/10 game. The only reason why it's not 1/10 is because it takes about 16 hours to beat. So if you want to go through an extremely painful experience this is the perfect game for you. Think of it like a challenge akin to dragging your nuts through broken glass.

Objectives can be pretty buggy and can't be completed at times. Sometimes getting a second chance in dialogue options is meaningless because the remaining options result in failure. The dialogue audio during "cut scenes" is directional and pretty offputting. - There's times where the camera stays on your character when someone else is talking and you can't hear them very well because of the distance between the two (lot of times where I'm just trying to listen out of my right ear) - No sound option to fix that. There's no real emotion whether the characters are expressing something heartfelt, angry or depressing. - At all times, the characters just have blank expressions on their faces. Some of the achievements are pretty touchy. - There's a few that you need to complete the requirements for then complete the game from that point on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I love vampire games and couldn't believe the reviews could be true but that might've been a mistake. It can still be a bit of fun, you just need to see through the flaws but definitely wouldn't recommend buying at full price.

I should have 'listened' to the comments.. but I took a chance.. and should have played it sooner (in order to get a refund!).. this game is an absolute DEI ♥♥♥♥ show.. real cringe! and as much as it annoys me even this early in the game, I will force myself to play it a little longer, just to see how bad it gets to start, the graphics are poor.. animation is trash, and so far the dialog is atrocious.. how anyone could think this is a 'good game' is beyond me.. but then there is the fact that it has no save, and the skills are RNG heavy and it feels like the game is on rails.. you 'automatically' fail conversations and you've only just started! I have no doubt I wont be able to finish this trash.. it feels absolutely pathetic. do NOT buy it