Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 (2025)

I played this game in my 4 year old Dell G15 5515 which can run Cyberpunk 2077 reasonably well 50-60 at the lowest settings, but performance for this game was horrendous (barely 20-30fps in the lowest settings). That aside, I still pushed through the horrendous performance and potato graphics because I found the story quite interesting.

I should have said at the outset: this is not an heir to the original bloodlines; It is hardly an RPG, there is hardly the original satiric yet gritty atmosphere representing the cultural, economic and social moment of the era, and whenever they try to imitate aspects of Bloodlines 1 it feels rather pastiche (i.e. A work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist). An example of this would be the Bet of Night, which while enjoyable and satirizing modern culture at times (e.g. the ads mocking podcasts etc), at other times it felt like they were making variations of the original Deb; for me this was particularly annoying as I LOVED Deb of Night.

However, the game is redeemable: Fabien is a wonderfully written character despite the detective trope! Crucial to this, is his affliction as a Malkavian. It was with great sadness that I realised I could not play as my favourite clan in Bloodlines 1, but he somewhat makes up for it, despite the fact that he is way too composed to be a malkavian. Safia is charming (hehehe), Lou is haughty and very much the embodiment of clan Ventrue, Ryong is the veritable businesswoman (I was starting to like her too!), Tolly's schtick is charming, and Katsumi is interesting. Niko is interesting, Onda is charming in her own way, Mrs Thorn is whateves. I did not find myself much concerned with Patience and the two fellas at the Dutchman and the Makong. Gideon was interesting in the flashbacks, and so was Hector and the fellow prince. All the side missions were repetitive though, despite the small pieces of dialogue and few choices they offer - depending on the ending you want they might also be important to you.

As for the story itself it is a wonderful murder mystery, and I genuinely did not expect the ending - or at least half the ending. On two nights of the playthrough, when I was closer to the ending, I genuinely puzzled over who had left the mark! (Plus the final boss is super hot xD). I did sometimes find Fabien's memories tiring as the formula was the same: investigate three separate leads, do a favour for one of the characters, remember something - however, I didnt feel like they were too much because Fabian and Phyre would discuss the details in their head afterwards. I was kinda annoyed that the culmination of your victory (?) over the final boss is just a narration. Like I can understand that they had limited budget, but for my ending, you cant just say that Lou was thrown out the window and Katsumi is trying to make peace over a Tolly voice over... like c'mon.

Finally, many have praised the combat. Due to my performance issues, I can hardly be objective. I LOVED the low prowl despite starting as clan Tremere, I also loved the shadow world ability, and I enjoyed Phyre's hand to hand combat animation. I do like how you could unlock abilities from other clans, but always being on the hunt for specific blood types quickly became annoying, especially given how janky the masquerade breach system is in the game. I always had to stick to stealth, especially as enemy thin-blood abilities made my game brick itself. I also thought that the combat system was rather unsophisticated given that the only difficulty was the big guys that were bullet/ punch sponges and could not be flinched, as well as the unbirthed given how they can destroy you while breaking your posture and doing tons of damage while having TONS of health. If my performance was better I would really have enjoyed fighting the thin bloods and bosses with their unique vampiric abilities.

Overall, if you can be understanding of the game's troubled development cycle, their reduced budget and can ignore the marketing attempt to makes this bloodlines 2, this is a cool little story-driven game!

P.S. Unlike poor imitation, I loved the throwbacks to the first game be those novelty items (estrogen), the fact that you get involved with potions and thin blood alchemy is both games, Damsel's surprise appearance etc all bring back fond memories.... I really wish this game had the budget and the appropriate team from the start that would make it into a masterpiece; alas, I would welcome a return of Phyre's story (despite how unlikely that is), and any other VTMB game really.

Well, I really liked the first game, and the WoD franchise (it's some of the coolest and well written lore maybe, ever) I had little notion of what this was going to be like and played it blind and WHOA, this game is different. In many ways this game reminds me a lot of the Thief (2014) reboot, because the original game is also one that I just cannot see aging well with its many quirks and idiosyncrasies... VtM Bloodlines 2 is in a similar situation and dynamic where the original games would probably not be well received by either new or older players, so something new seemed like a pragmatic approach for keeping the franchise alive) I was also really curious to see what The Chinese Room had done here, because I've played amost of their games and it's hard to imagine... (And yes it's very different)

The game is actually a lot like Thief, Batman Arkham City or Assassin's Creed... (Well... it at least borrows a lot of the ideas and mechanics in them... or tries to) You do hop around a whole lot on the rooftops in a Sin City/Dark City like goth setting, and typically there are unruly vampire mobs hanging out in these as their haunts which you can either fight or ignore and run past. on the streets below, you have to basically behave your get a Grand Thef Auto-like stars system that can progress to kill you.

The game is a pseudo-stealth game, with brawling elements. I feel like it's a stretch to call it role-playing but it does have light RPG elements. I didn't like these stealth or combat mechanics (thought the animations of fighting actually does look cool, and it's tolerable) but the stealth just got on my nerves (so did the resource gathering from "vamping" which you LOSE on death if you break the masquerade...) if sneaking around in alleys and biting random people that stray to close or luring them back to a dark place, hoping you don't get caught is your thing, you might like this more than me (but I found that just got boring pretty fast.) But most of all (regarding the stealth system) I found it really tedious and VERY annoying when people see you jumping up a building or running too fast or something and 'report' you, and its leads to you getting staked, (doesn't really seem to suite the game well, why the heck can batman get away with it in Arkham City get away with it but an ancient vampire cant??? Surely Phyre qualifies as THE Bat Man???) Stealth in this sense felt stricter than it need be or I imagine most players would desire... But to each their own.

Also, the combat is actually kind of hard and tedious at times but to a lesser degree. It's a fumbly brawler system where you drink gothy potions before smashing fellow gothy looking rivetheads with your black-nail polish fists. At first it is fun, but it gets pretty repetitive. As the game progresses you end up fighting various kinds of different enemies though so it's okay... I installed some mods to make me stronger (honestly you really ought to be able to jump and move faster this guy is kind of a weaksauce vampire if he's such a badass elder...) another mod to make it so stealth was pretty much broken (unless you go out of your way to be a bastard,) and another mod to just make the fighting easier by giving extra health and damage. I felt like this pretty much fixed most of the stuff that was rubbing me wrong with the game.

The hardware requirements are pretty intense on this and i really am unsure why. If you find it's running sluggish try running it in a windowed mode from fullscreen and press ALT+Enter. Not sure why but this gave significant improvement in the choppy bits (running faster than the maps can load or lots of fighting can do this, I found)

Music is pretty good. Story is actually awesome. Character development or any kinda actual RPG-elements are pretty light (if not completely lacking) you unlock various augmentation like powers but I found myself not really liking a lot of them and stuck to a core few the whole playthrough (at times you'll switch them up to progress through certain parts of the game though, most likely)

Story, narration and generally the writing was all top notch for a game, though. Who you are and what is going on around you and the people you meet are all actually really fantastic, interesting characters, and the game makes you think and baits you with the occasional red herring or plays with the sense of mystery. The game does a great job spoon-feeding you slowly with a codex of hints, lore, character bios, etc. all of which slowly update and change.

There are some CNC (choice and consequences) but i wish there was a bit more to it than what is there. There is a rep system that is very basic (Alice Liked that, That made Bob mad, etc) it's fairly forgiving and pretty easy to overall wing it. The sex 'sounds' (not really scenes) are really comic and silly and also half the time quite gay.... (If you want serious romance or something more visually interesting like BG3, this will disappoint, but if you want silly weird dialogues, I encourage you to check that aspect of the game out... lol) Also the voice actors in this are good, especially those inanimate objects. (you play the game as two characters, one is based on a trope of a detective out of a dime novel or twin peaks and is incredibly eccentric and will have psychic projection interviews with various inanimate objects that have the most comical cartoony- sounding voice actors ... great writing here too)

Have some gripes with the direction the story takes, some dead ends and unanswered questions about minor characters, and in general a feeling of a lack of real agency, player-destiny, or a sense of resolution or satisfaction with any of the endings (they are too similar and don't really feel that emotionally rooted in CNC... I couldn't really care more about the outcome of one faction taking over Seattle versus another and I feel like you should not be able to feel that way!)

So, to sum it up, a fun guilty pleasure if you like vampire crap at all, and dont expect this to be too serious. Just know what the mechanics are like and decide if you want to fix it or play it off the shelf, enjoy the lore, the setting/music and the story. Props to Chinese Room for doing something new and different from previous more walking sims, that continue to have such strong narrative focuses like their previous games.

I think this game is outstanding. I've looked forward to playing this for a long, long time. Once way back I pawned a box full of metal cd's and wrestling tapes so I could afford a copy of the first Bloodlines for my PC. A dream come true, to play it's sequel.

So, here we go:

Graphics: 10/10

This game captures the aesthetic of VtM perfectly in its contemporary form. The atmosphere of this game is the V5 color palette come to life. The purples, pinks and dark blues saturate every corner of this game. The character models are perfect. The world is perfectly constructed. The atmosphere couldn't be more perfect.

Sound: 8/5/10

Rik Schaffer's score for VtM 1 is life defining. At least for me. This score is not. But ultimately, it is a very good score. There just isn't that much there. Every now and then you get that iconic feeling of Schaffer's guitar arpeggio's and underlying ambient dissonance.

And there are so certainly no moments where Chiasm completely takes the game over with her great single, "Isolated." Nothing like that at all. Not even a, "Fallen God," moment.

But for the most part the score in this game isn't designed to really take over. Which is fine. The score that's here is very good.

Mechanics: 6.5 / 10

I found three main bugs in this game playing on Xbox Series X.

A. In the underground, there is a section where when passing from one door to another, the game got caught in an in between space. It didn't freeze. I could turn on the night vision thing and still see and move the camera. But I couldn't really do anything. It took me a few minutes to realize this wasn't a puzzle but rather a bug. I restarted from the last checkpoint and that fixed it. Nothing like that happened before or after.

B. If I didn't actually close the game down from the main Xbox menu, eventually severe lag would start to set in as I roam the main map. Eventually the lag made the game unplayable until I went back to the main Xbox screen and closed the game down.

This would continue to happen if I didn't close the game down after every few sessions.

C. Dang. I honestly think I forgot the third bug. I know there were times when the secret's cursor wouldn't work correctly, especially after combat set in. But that's not the bug I was going to mention.

Anyway. Overall, the mechanics of this game are it's least glowing category. The combat mechanics never quite sink in as natural, no matter how much I played. I did grow to understand them in time. But even in the final boss fight, I found myself confused about which button pulls a weapon to me and which one fires it.

I do think the combat of this game makes sense. Like - I get why there is so much of it, plot wise. And I think making the character an elder adds for an interesting combat dynamic.

Movement is mostly fine. The Gotham Knights style building from building rooftop jumping is cool. Definitely from an aesthetic point of view. The control mechanics of it are a bit clunky. Sometimes its hard to climb a building without really understanding why it isn't working.

There are other times when the sprint / dash function sends the character into too much forward motion than seems anticipated when you finally get to the roof. It doesn't happen every time but sometimes you end up doing this dash attack that can send you right off the other end.

The masquerade breach mechanic is kind of clunky. It's basically the GTA wanted level but before Vampires. It's fine - and I guess ensures you don't break the masquerade? But in another sense, you can break the masquerade 5 million times as long as you get of the wanted zone and stay undetected until your wanted stars go down, so to speak.

But for an action game, it makes sense enough. It is what it is.

Plot: 9.5 out of 10

I think the plot of this game is masterful. The characters are some of the best from any VtM video game.

There are so many different elements to this plot and it makes it really quite wonderful. Everything really builds and develops to such a gorgeous crescendo. And then the ending kind of falls flat, at least in my opinion.

It kind of makes the same mistake the first Life is Strange game does in my opinion. You build up this vibrant world where choices really do seem like they're going to matter. And then the main crux of the ending comes down to one binary choice made late in the game.

I would have really preferred your character get to make some serious, multi layered choices like in the Mass Effect trilogy that all really effect how things go in the end game.

I will do a small spoiler section now:

More than anything, I just wish the character could have made a more direct defense against the Second Inquisition and also chosen who should be prince of the city. Either back Lou, Silky, themself, Ryong, Katsumi, join Safia, something like that.

Resolution with characters like Fabian's childe and all the other characters we meet would have been ideal. I kept assuming if you do all the side quests and develop good relationships with characters throughout the game, they will back you in the end game for whatever you end up deciding. And then ultimately nothing quite comes of any of that, at least in my playthrough.

Overall, I loved this game. It was worth the wait and then some. It made me fall in love with VtM all over again. An utter masterpiece. One of the best games of the decade, for sure.

*as a seemingly necessary note for every game these days I want to clarify I played on ps5 performance mode and had basically zero meaningful tech or performance issues, but I believe there are some PC performance concerns, so YMMV

This game is solid- its a story game with excellent music and voice acting, a compelling story, quality graphics, fun traversal and passable combat. It's a game with an edified, memorable cast of characters that manages to balance an intimate story with occasional triple-A adjacent spectacle.

The cyberpunk inspiration is unmissable with this title, in nearly all aspects of its production. It shamelessly copies cyberpunk in its general dismissal the core source materials tabletop elements in service of more cinematic action, its use of a hybrid dual protagonist, time period swaps with persistent characters, first person focused exposition and world design, dynamic traversal, melee combat, et. al.

With that said, copying one of the best games ever made is generally a wise decision and I can understand and appreciate how this style improves the bloodlines 2 experience. I'd argue the limited degree of appearance customization and the like, which adds little to a purely 1st person game, was a direct response to 2077's over-exertion in the same capacity.

The story is generally pretty linear with a few major exceptions, as you would expect of a noir style crime thriller. This naturally leaves less choice within the framework of the story but the linearity and focus works as the core elements of the narrative (pacing, exposition, etc.) are tighter as a result. The use of extended flashbacks and memories is brilliantly done. As a note the johnny silverhand-esque integration of the game is excellent, arguably better than its obvious inspirado in terms of story integration.

The combat in this game is a bizarre mix of cyberpunk and dishonored. First person melee games are always just conceptually rough and this one is no exception. The enemy variety is okay but backloaded... the first third of the game has you focused solely on one faction of enemies which feels like an unforced error, especially as the later game faction enemy types are more varied and interesting to fight. The prevalence of high powered guns, explosives, vampire powers, etc. especially makes the later stage combats deadlier and more chaotic and fun. There is a surprisingly good variety to the stages and set piece areas of the game in spite of lackluster combat, and good (but too few) boss fights.

The good news is that combat comprises a fairly small amount of the game. 1/3 of the game is played as a pure non-combat detective, and of the remaining game half if not more are dialogs and cutscenes.

As a warning the 'walk here and talk to person X, then walk here and search for Y, then walk here and talk to person Z' game design of the semi-frequent detective chunks was fun for me, but I can understand how people looking for a more ADHD gaming experience might be frustrated with consistent long cutscenes, dialogs AND additionally then long detective chunks between combat encounters/massacres. People looking to skip through cutscenes to get back to a servicable run-along-roof-tops-and-brutally-murder-simulator will likely be disappointed.

This game manages to capture the essence of the VTTM setting, with a narrow focus- its use of extended flashbacks and depiction of vampire individuals across time periods works exceptionally well. The clan vibes of the various characters match the depictions from the OG tabletop game. The infrequent moments of ultraviolence convey the feeling of playing as an elder vampire. The scheming, politics and drama generally deliver.

I want to warn that the side quests and collection efforts seem not worth the effort- if you enjoy near-radiant style quests for assassination, fetch or tracking to earn a near meaningless progression currency then have fun but I believe you can safely skip the repeateable sidequests without consequence, and your play experience will be improved from the faster mainstory pace.

Pretty solid.

I tend to think reviews should focus on an assessment of the game itself, but I do want to mention I think the public discourse about this game seems a bit bizarre. There seemed to be a tremendous negative reaction by traditional games media, and notable criticism overall, about the scope and style of the game that never seemed to codify or develop into a coherent narrative beyond the shallow and misleading 'not like a thing it explicitly claimed it wasn't'.

I think its not inherently problematic that in general the reviews and criticisms of this game haven't coalesced into a consistently refrained, easily identifiable or obvious thesis. It's surprising, but sometimes people can collectively rightfully reject something without being able to easily articulate why in a convincing manner that is consistent with others.

And I know asking game reviewers and players for ideological consistency is both cynical and unfair, even if justifiable, but I'd love to see this game's reviewers rationale's applied to other titles equally- about how you wanted to make your own character, not this 'shepherd' or 'joel' guy... or disappointment with BG3 because its actually a terrible continuation of the series, and should be called 'divinity original sin: forgotten realms' and dismissed by fans because of its lack of promised and delivered consistency with the previous title.

With that said, I'd just suggest you evaluate this game on its merits and not let 'no FOV slider, 0/10' style rhetoric, or the bizarre sudden rehabilitation and mythologization of a 20 year old jank OG game that few played, and comparisons thereto, to cause you to miss a pretty good game.

This is a story game, that was advertised as a story game, that is a pretty good story game. If you don't like story games, even with better than average aesthetics, then skip this one.