Vampire: a bite to the Past
Beat in 55 days 14 hrs with prestige prince. I found 51% of secrets, had 2058 kills, 606 feedings and 753 mutilations. I almost had max health and mana but saw no need to scour the world for secrets. I did not like how some places could only be passed during the full moon, …
Vampire: a bite to the Past
Beat in 55 days 14 hrs with prestige prince. I found 51% of secrets, had 2058 kills, 606 feedings and 753 mutilations. I almost had max health and mana but saw no need to scour the world for secrets. I did not like how some places could only be passed during the full moon, and how that concept was not mentioned at all in game. I had no idea what to expect when I started this game and was surprised to die at the beginning. I managed to kill 1 enemy and thought I was missing a defensive move or something. It was easy enough to avoid enemy attacks by moving in and out between their swings, and I absolutely loved the mechanic of draining enemy blood for healing. I also loved the different kinds of blood; blue from undead to restore mana, green from nasty monsters that was poisonous, and I don't know what black blood did. It was cool how in many dungeons enemies would respawn as ghosts, making the world a bit more grounded and offering some strategy around keeping healing sources alive. I had trouble with the orange mage enemies because of their ranged attacks. Even shooting them from range was not perfectly safe. I got stuck right after getting that magic missile spell because I missed a switch, and had to check a walkthrough. I played the entire game zoomed out and likely would have seen that switch if I was zoomed in. I had trouble sneaking around in human form because I did not realize it used mana. Later on I made sure to keep my mana high by letting the game run while I did something else. I most often found it better to avoid enemies and hazards using the alternate forms. The biggest trouble I had was defeating the spear knight boss because I could not figure out how to damage him. I had to check the walkthrough to find out that weapons had a special attack from tapping the attack button twice. I had been just pressing once or holding the button down. Would have been nice to be told that in game. The rest of the game was not too much trouble, and I watched both the good and bad endings.
I used mostly the iron sword for early to mid game for its quick hit and run attacks, and the decent area effect. Later on I paired it with the flesh armor to maximize healing, but the sword was nearly useless against the strongest enemies. I thought the mace sucked until I learned about the double tap special. Then the stun was great for human enemies, whether I wanted health or not. It was not so good against multiple enemies. I did not like the axes at all because they were too slow to do hit and run attacks. The special whirlwind attack was powerful and good for taking out multiple enemies, or I could just avoid the enemies or use repel magic to avoid damage. The flame sword was the overall best weapon and I combined it with chaos armor and repel; this combo was efficient for killing all enemies and most bosses. It was good for destroying enemies that revived, but had to be balanced against not being able to drain burnt blood. The soul reaver was fun with 1 hit kills, but the mana cost made it less efficient than repel + flame sword. I never used the wraith armor because why allow damage to directly drain mana when I could spend that mana to be immune to all damage? That was redundant and I think the wraith armor should have increased damage taken while boosting mana regen for a mage style. I did not bother to use the bone armor much because it also seemed a bit redundant with the alternate forms and just killing everything. I preferred the basic iron armor until the late game because it supposedly had the best protection. The equipment really needed numerical stats to tell exactly what was different, though I did like how everything was useful in its own way. The worst part of the game was the menus; the loading time to access them and how awkward they were to navigate. They strongly discouraged switching gear and broke up the gameplay far too much. The quick menus for spells and items were a little better but I still had to deal with the menus when I wanted something other than the 4 slots. The game really needed a full size quick menu with access to every spell, item and equipment. It boggles my mind how they created and kept such an unhandy interface. The spells were cool and I liked the puzzles around controlling enemies. It was weird though how taking over the spirit of skeletons would allow the body to get back up and attack its own spirit. I mostly used repel, followed by the occasional nuke. The blood healing nuke was useful to convert mana into health. I did not use the big nukes much and did not get the lightning spell. Whenever I needed health I would teleport to home and drain the first gravedigger until I was full. I used light magic quite a bit early on to see better, though later on it was not needed. This game was quite dark. I barely used any items at all; a few healing and poison cures, and some shurikens just to get rid of them so I could pick up more. I used energy banks to keep repel going during the final boss. The offensive items were redundant and I saw zero need to use them. I used mist form to avoid enemies and traps, but a few times I was cornered by multiple enemies and had to revert to normal to fight my way out. I used werewolf form to get around faster and jump over traps, though the speed made it difficult to control and the dark fur made it difficult to tell where I was. The speed helped during combat though I only found it better than other weapons during the full moon. The werewolf was needed for a teleporting boss to keep up with her.
The music and voice acting were excellent and really helped with the grim atmosphere. The story was hard to follow with all the weird names and lack of text to read. Kain himself was great and it was fun playing a villain/anti hero. The gameplay was worse than Zelda games, with serviceable combat, a good variety of appropriately themed abilities, some metroidvania style backtracking, simple puzzles, and that very awkward interface. Despite the flaws, I would have loved this game back in the day and it is definitely still worth playing.
7.8/10
