Vampyr is a game that’s all about the atmosphere and the storytelling. Dark, lonely and cold are the first three descriptors that come to mind for me. It’s no coincidence that all of those descriptors are ones I would apply to well told vampire stories. Early 20th century London is the perfect setting for the story of a Doctor turned creature of the night, and I must say the developers really hit the nail on the head when crafting the overall feel of this game.

Now then, why is it that I only awarded Vampyr 3 stars out of 5?

Well, simply put, once one gets past the well executed story and atmospheric elements of this game, it becomes rather obvious that almost everything else about it is either mediocre or in some cases not so good. The graphics are woefully dated, the combat repetitive, the role playing elements lacking in depth and the user interface and sometimes staggering loading times are almost inexcusable in this generation.

As I write this, I realize that may come off fairly harsh, but I can’t stress enough that I still think the game is worth your time; this is also why I made sure to make note of the story and atmosphere of the game first, as it is undoubtedly the most important part of the overall package. A western rpg like Vampyr can only get away with all the negatives it does because of how genuinely interesting it’s concept, setting and characters are. It does so in spades. My initial reaction to this game was an odd and nagging feeling of nostalgia for early Bioware titles. That might seem out of the blue, but the narrative driven focus of this game to me harkens back to KOTOR or even the first Mass Effect. The combat and graphics aren’t the best, but the story sucks the player in (no pun intended).

The moment I fell in love with this marred gem was when I began to understand the core struggle of the main protagonist. Dr Reid must choose whether or not to save his patients or give in to his undying thirst for blood. It’s an interesting dynamic that I feel makes the game stand out on its own. A doctor sworn to help cure the illnesses of his patients, but also doomed to forever live with an incurable ailment that causes the death of those around him.

I look at Vampyr as a prime example of “graphics don’t make a better game”, and I’m already excited to see whether or not the developers choose to make more games in a similar vein. If you’re a gamer that cares more for how polished a game is than how well it tells a story, you may want to steer clear, but if you care more for atmosphere and lore like myself, you shouldn’t hesitate to give this game a chance.

I'm paraphrasing Austin Walker here, but I'm a firm believer in the idea that 7/10 games can be some of the best games ever made, it's just that they are only that good for certain people, and often simply lack the polish mainstream review outlets and mainstream consumers demand in exchange for critical praise.

Vampyr is a 7/10 game, and also one of the best games ever made. Yes, it's not the best looking game of 2018. Putting it against other sixty dollar releases it looks downright bad in spots. Yes, the combat feels floaty and looks kind of janky. The animation quality clearly isn't up to the standard set by Bloodborne and Souls.

However, it is one of the most fascinating, unique, engaging experiences I've ever had playing a game. It's a game that touts living with your choices and their consequences from minute one, and I of course thought nothing of it, because how many games have said the same to me in the past? Been there, done that, none of it will actually matter. And I kept thinking nothing of it until one of my districts turned hostile, all the NPCs died, and I lost out on a sidequest and the opportunity to feed on several people that I spent a lot of time talking to in order to max out their "blood quality" (how much XP you get when you feed on them). An icy panic blossomed in my gut, spreading out to tingling limbs. There are no saves to load, the game autosaves all the time. There was no going back from this. I put my head in my hands, muttering "what the fuck did I just do?" for about five minutes.

Once I regained composure all I could think about was how glad I was not to have seen that coming, because no game had ever made me feel that way before. Actual consequences for your actions! Not just an uncanny valley video game character trying to manipulate feelings from the player over what they'd said and done, not just an "X will remember that" in the corner of the screen, but real gameplay consequences, missing out on future XP you worked hard to set up for your future self, missing out on unique weapons, never seeing the end to a bunch of story-lines you were likely invested in. And the game won't tell you what you missed, either. It won't tease you with it, shove it in your face to show you how naughty you were. These people are just...gone. Unexpectedly, instantly, gone. It's haunting, especially so considering I'm playing this during the coronavirus pandemic.

Alright, now that I've laid out in broad terms what it feels like to play Vampyr, let's talk about the actual systems at work that led to my experience, because the game is incredibly systems-heavy and punishes the hell out of you for not understanding and engaging with them. There are two basic types of gameplay: combat and dialogue/management.

The combat is stamina-based and souls-inspired, with a couple of twists. Enemies also have a stamina bar. Deplete it and you can bite them to fill your blood meter, which is your resource for vampiric abilities such as healing, shields, crowd control, and various types of deliciously good damage. As someone who has probably over a thousand hours in souls games and beat Sekiro with the demon bell on my first time through, I did not find it very challenging (I don't think I actually died until I was 20 hours in), at least on the default difficulty (there's a harder one, and also a "story mode" that disables a lot of the harsher penalties and also some achievements), but I've heard many people did find it quite challenging, which I think is the intent.

The game wants you to want to level up and get powerful abilities to make combat easier. However, your only real source of XP comes from feeding on innocent civilians. Skills can cost in the thousands. Enemies give like 5 or 10 XP, civilians give thousands, depending on their level. Unfortunately you can't just murder everyone right away, you have a "mesmerize level," that must be equal to or greater than the civilian you wish to feed on, and that simply rises as you progress the story. Higher XP civilians, naturally, have higher mesmerize levels.

Each civilian also has 2-6 "hints" which will increase how much XP you get when you murder them. You unlock these by talking to them, other NPCs, completing sidequests, finding items in the world, and eavesdropping. So even if you plan to feed on everyone you can for the XP, the game gives you a reason to talk to everyone and hear out their whole story.

Diseases are a whole other thing that can drastically impact how much XP you get when you feed. Most diseases will cut XP by at least 40%. You'll be crafting a lot of cures for fatigue, anemia, cold, bronchitis, neuralgia, etc. Feeding on someone while they're sick is a stupid move. Don't do it. Cure them first.

You cash in this XP by sleeping in a bed. However, it will also move time forward to the next night, which is very, very bad. Not only will people develop new diseases, but anyone who already had a disease will see that disease progress to the next level (headache to migraine to neuralgia, for instance) which takes rarer materials to craft a cure for. Even worse, that's when the district shows the impact of your activities. The more sick people, the lower the health of the district. If you killed a bunch of people, the district health is going to drop drastically, which means tougher enemies will spawn in the district. If it drops all the way, everyone dies. Suffice to say, leveling up has drastic costs associated with it. Don't do it lightly.

The game seems to want you to earn a bunch of XP and sit on it for a long time, only leveling up maybe four or five times throughout the whole game when you really need a boost. I can't think of any other game that does this. You want to set up a bunch of people to be fed on and then do them all one after the other, do any sidequests you care about, and then sleep when you can't take all the XP burning a hole in your pocket and accept whatever happens. The rush of setting up a bunch of full XP kills and running around with tons of XP, constantly asking yourself if you can/should cash it in yet. Ungh. So goooooood.

This game may be rough around the edges. It may wear its low budget on its sleeve. But the intelligence of the design, the strength, clarity, and singular nature of their vision make it, for me, one of the best games I've ever played.

When I heard of Vampyr I was intrigued. It had a neat premise, sort of Masquerade: Bloodline vibes, and it was published by Focus. I’ve noticed they’ve published a lot of the games I’ve played lately, mostly because they seem to have a thing for historical games. So, Vampyr is very much a AA game and it has all the issues that comes with it. Still, I wanted to like this game, but it makes it hard.

First up is the gameplay. Vampyr is an RPG, so the game is part talky bits, part combat. It’s probably not new news, but the combat in this game is awful. All but the 2 lowest level enemies could wreck you if you are a little off your game. The enemies don’t always get knocked back by your attacks, sometimes they just keep swinging through them… and wreck you. Sometimes your attack knocks back the enemy out of swinging range for your second attack, and they have lighting fast reflexes… and they wreck you. Sometimes your character can successfully do a three hit combo, sometimes he just does the first hit of the three hit combo three times, which gives the enemy time to wreck you. Your dodge ability comes up just a little short. There were plenty of times I dodged back only to still be caught by the enemies attack. Luckily, the bevy of vampire powers you unlock does help with combat and keep you from being owned by all the regular minions. Boss fights are a whole other can of worms. Depending on how you play, you go through most the game underleveled, which can be offset by having a good weapon (get the cudgel & use nothing else). Fighting the bosses that are several levels above you, it can be frustrating because again, a few hits and you’re done. What aggravated me the most though is you have med-kits to get a hit of instant health like most games. Unlike most every other game, if you use them during a boss fight & die, they don’t respawn when you respawn at the start of the fight. Your ammo & health respawns, your blood doesn’t but that’s easy to refill, those med-kits aren’t. In later fights, you need to be necking those med-kits to stay alive. The whole combat feels like it was just on the cusp of being okay. It had lots of issues, but they were many little cuts that were its undoing, just a little tweaking and the combat would’ve been manageable. Maybe they were going for a challenging, Dark Soul type of combat? I don’t know, I avoid the Souls games.

The other half of the game is conversing with people. This has its own issues as well and these issues can’t be written off as “it’s a AA game”. When you enter a conversation you control the camera most the times. It’s an interesting choice, but I think a fixed camera would be the better choice. You usually never get to see your character’s face, not that you’re missing much. Something as simple as the Fallout 4 dialogue camera of “shot, reverse shot” would do this game good. The few big conversations that have a fixed camera have some “interesting” angles, usually zooming in on whoever you’re talking with’s face. And the even fewer important story moments have a more cinematic cutscene look. Another problem is every character has a bad case of early BioWare face. All conversations are had standing stock still, with little body language and no facial expressions. You are very aware you are talking with NPCs in a game, not real people, which is a death nail in this game about talking, then again New Vegas did the same thing.

The actual meat of the conversations are very meh at best. The voice actors run the gamut of bland to decent. Luckily, your player character, Dr. Reid has a decent voice actor & I liked Dr. Swansea and his sort of giddy British man stereotype. However, Lady Ashbury is very dull and some of the citizens you meet don’t leave much of an impact. It doesn’t help that the script they have to work with isn’t great. As this game is set in 1900’s London, the highbrow characters talk with that very proper old English, which I appreciate the attempt to be accurate, but it is very boring to listen to for hours on end. Also, the developers never learned “show, don’t tell”. It may be because the character models can’t show expressions, but there were several lines, usually Lady Ashbury’s, that read like, “I am angry now.” “That makes me happy”. Heck, halfway through the game, she becomes your love interest. You know that not through any on-screen chemistry or how she starts to warm up to you. No, you both just randomly decide to be in love, but that doesn’t stop her from being monotone.

As for the guy you spend most the time controlling, Dr. Reid? While he is acted decent, the character can’t escape the iffy writing. He suffers a bit from the ‘chosen one’ cliché. He’s a prominent doctor who’s discovered blood transfusions, most the common folk recognize him as a great mind. When he becomes a vampire, he’s bitten by an old powerful vampire, which means Dr. Reid is a special, elder blood vampire. So, Dr. Reid doesn’t face a whole lot of adversity in his game, outside the vampire hunters, because “he’s the best”. He’s also guilty of another cliché I hate, “the historic character with way too modern ideas”. Sure, you can’t have him dropping offensive slurs the whole time, but these developers swang too far the other way, letting their biases show. Reid has a bad habit of virtue signaling anytime a political issue comes up. One that stuck out to me is I chose to have Reid say he is okay with the death penalty, which the game sort of scolded me for and made me lose out on a citizen hint. So you don’t really roleplay, unless you want to roleplay as someone who just tells people what they want to hear. On the topic of politics in this game, Vampyr was released in 2018, but I don’t know how long it was in development. I say this cause it could just be an unfortunate coincidence, but when Dr. Reid is in the rich part of town, he meets the business tycoon, Mr. Dawson, who wants to build a wall to separate the sick and poor from the rich. Yeah, there’s some Trump allegories there, with some Scrooge added in, and the more I played the less it seemed like a coincidence. The rest of the citizens in London usually feel more like people in that they seem like good people trying to live through the epidemic, but they usually have some dark secrets they’re hiding, but not Dawson. Good writing could have explored the pros & cons of his plan & what would drive him to that idea while still making us realize it’s not a good idea. Instead, he’s a purely evil strawman that’s there to, I dunno, be developer wish fulfillment.

Okay, now that’ve probably upset half the readers, let’s talk about the story. The game takes place in London 1918, though it could’ve passed off as the Victorian era. I was expecting more jazz and flappers gearing up for the Roaring 20s, but maybe that was exclusively American. Also, going off what I know from other London set games, the Thames seems really narrow in this game. Dr. Reid comes home from WWI to deal with the Spanish Flu. And I will give this game props, they did a decent job incorporating the history into the story, better than some Assassin’s Creed games. I actually went and looked up info about the Spanish Flu and learned something. Reid gets turned into a vampire and uses his immortality to research a cure for the epidemic & his vampirism. The story gets kinda muddled early though, because you’re both trying to cure the flu, discover who made you a vampire, and learn the ropes of vampirism. You learn this Spanish Flu is actually a new case of an old vampire disease. One of the more pointless plot points of this game is your sister Mary, ugh this character. I believe she is what a feminist would refer to as a “woman in the fridge”. When Reid first becomes a vampire the first person he comes across just happens to be his sister who he kills, thus inspiring him to cure or kill himself. She then shows up at the half way point as an accidental vampire and commits the “show, don’t tell” sin. We know nothing about her character or the relationship she has with her brother, so she monologues about how their parents always liked him more and that she was tired of losing everything in her life. She is not given enough time to be a good character. This whole game feels a bit rushed. There’s a few story bits that are set up like big arcs, only to be resolved in the next hour, like Fergal or the Ascalon Club. I also think this game would’ve been better as an episodic game, it has that layout already sort of and it could have given them more time to stretch out certain story beats that needed more time.

You get XP by drinking the blood of citizens, which unlike Bloodlines, you can’t just drink a little bit of their blood, you got to drink them dry. Course you get to know these citizens and the theory is you don’t want to kill the nice people, which yes, I just drank the blood of the dickish characters, but really once you finish an NPC’s quest they are just there, taking up space. All of your upgrades are related to your combat powers and health, so more action RPG than straight RPG. And there’s no fast travel, I can understand why they might avoid it, but there’s a lot of back tracking in this game and trying to navigate the clogged, winding streets of London gets old. Dr. Reid is too proper an Englishman to go around climbing over fences or railings, so you are funneled into certain paths. Maybe unlocking a vampire skill to turn into a bat to travel between the hubs would help in those quests that involve lots of talking. Honestly, the game is not clear on how their vampire powers work. You don’t die in the sun, you can cross running water, must be invited into houses, don’t turn people by a bite, and crosses only sorta work some of the times, I think it’s something to do with how much faith the cross wielder has.

All in all, I wanted to like this game, it had a neat premise and setting. Maybe if this game went more of a Quantic Dream route of a narrative experience that has the occasional combat, but is more about the talking and giving those conversations a more movie feel in that characters move around and emote like humans. If this game’s dialogue was given a rewrite, maybe tone down the politics, it could’ve been a good AA game, maybe a cult classic. Instead, this is probably a game that will be forgotten after a few years.

Playtime: 36h20m (3,5 hours on Normal, 33 hours Story Mode playthrough)

Intro

Vampyr is a RPG in which the vast majority of your time is spent talking to people. It also involves looking for various objects and interactions. The game also has some fairly difficult Soulslike combat, but this is vastly easier when playing in Story Mode (basically Easy difficulty).

TL;DR: A really good but deeply flawed "listen to people talk" game that is almost unplayable without following my tips.

Tips

• Delete the unskippable intro movies.
• Play on Story Mode.
• Use Neoseeker's excellent Vampyr Guide (when in doubt).
• Feel free to kill a few people (i killed 9, perhaps a bit much).
• Don't kill Clay Cox.

The Good

• You can freely respec your character when you level up. Every RPG should allow this.
• The story is mostly decent, though the mystical aspect kinda sucks (no pun intended).
• You don't have to use your special vision mode too much.
• Most of the dialogue is engaging, there's tons of it and it's all voiced.
• The NPCs feel more real and have more depth than in most games.
• There are some interesting choices to be made.
• Balancing XP gain from killing people with district stability is a clever idea.
• The lore of the game is quite neat.
• While the combat is unbalanced and too hard, it's fairly well done.
• You can murder everyone from thugs to grannies to kids.

The Bad

• Non-combat sprinting drains stamina. Thankfully it regenerates quickly.
• The subtitles are sometimes wrong, as is some of the dialogue.
• I had two CTDs and several other bugs.
• There's no main menu outside of saves, and no way to quit from the Load screen.
• Long loading times, sometimes even when starting a conversation (really weird).
• Everything is done through dialogue, including entering homes, trading and healing.
• Sometimes you get punished for roleplaying for no real reason.
• Some doors you can never open are marked as interactable objects.
• The "spying" aspect is neat but there's no way to know who you can spy on and can take several minutes of waiting before it's triggered.
• The lack of reaction to some thing is disappointing. I found your special sword that was lost for centuries and you don't comment on this at all?

The Ugly

• The game is almost unplayable without guides. You can easily screw things up or miss stuff without them. Which is especially bad because...
• There is only one autosave. After dozens of hours you might have to start over because you missed out on XP needed to beat enemies (on Normal/Hard).
• Soulslike combat is a very poor choice to put into a dialogue-heavy game.
• There is no way to change the difficulty during the game. I had to start over after 3,5 hours.
• This is a huge flaw combined with "Normal" difficulty basically being "Hard".
• No fast travel and this game has a huge amount of backtracking.
• Seriously, three quests require you to walk all the way back to the starting area.
• There are doors and gates everywhere, the game plays an animation when opening them and they close almost immediately. It also disables Vamp Vision and sprinting.
• You can easily miss out on the "special" weapon by pressing Tab at some point.
• Getting the weapon requires noticing symbols on pictures of collectibles. But there is text displayed next to them, so you probably won't look. There is basically no in-game indication that you have to look at the pictures.
• Generally speaking it is extremely hard to find all collectibles. I missed some even when carefully checking rooms. This is because Vampire Vision doesn't highlight them, the only indication is a glimmer in a game full of glimmering and some items require certain angles to be interactable.
• One main story choice really screws you. Pick one option and miss out on 12-14K XP (you get ~50K without killing people). Pick another and you might suddenly lose an entire district despite only killing one person that the game invites you to kill right at the start.
• You can't skip lines in dialogue, only skip to the other speaker's reaction.
• Four unskippable intro movies (you can delete them, thank god).
• Not one, not two but three messages that have to be manually closed each time you boot... and only Enter works...
• Dialogue options aren't bound to hotkeys but have to be clicked with the mouse... in a game that's 80% dialogue.

Conclusion

Obviously you might be a bit confused to see 4 stars followed by a huge list of flaws. Vampyr is a deeply, deeply flawed game. But like Endless Legend and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Vampyr is a bad game that i loved. The core gameplay, talking to people, is just really really good. I played this for hours and hours at a time, i just wanted to know more about the world and its people.

Vampyr is the kind of game that could have gotten 5 stars with just a few tweaks. Manual saves, fast travel, more balanced combat, dialogue hotkeys and better in-game info. That's it. If the game was easier to mod i'm sure people would've implemented that.

For now, here's more specific ratings:

• Normal mode: 2 stars
• Story mode: 4 stars
• No guide used: -1 star

I find it absolutely bizarre that this game came from Don’t Nod, the studio behind the Life is Strange series, Tell Me Why and Twin Mirror. Vampyr, released after the first Life is Strange, is a complete departure from everything that has come before and (so far) after within that studio, though perhaps a bit more similar to Remember Me, their debut release. Vampyr is an action RPG set in a gritty, filthy, disease-ridden turn-of-the-century London, a lot more akin to something Spiders (Bound by Flame, Greedfall) would release. But regardless of why Don’t Nod decided to go there, I’m really glad they did.

Vampyr is one of those games I really wish had garnered more attention and recognition. It does several things so well that makes it easy to look past its AA nature and Eurojank hurdles. And that starts with atmosphere. From its gothic visuals to its brilliant soundtrack (which sounded bizarrely similar to A Plague Tale’s until I found out they were created by the same composer), everything oozes a dark, depressing, eery tone that I was immediately captured by. In a way, this game offers the quintessential vampiric presentation, at least in the way vampires capture that classic gothic imagination, and I’m all here for it. All of this is also enhanced by impeccable voice acting and by the fact that it always takes place at night, which constantly gives your playthrough a somber, heavier feel.

Another highlight for me was the story. I honestly wasn’t expecting much here, but the way they interweave vampirism, disease, despair and social status in such a grounded way caught me off guard. Despite a couple of pacing issues, the tone is set right from the start (in quite a surprisingly brutal way, narratively speaking), with the rest of the game delivering a more layered, complex and enjoyable story than I had anticipated, topped with different endings that give your decisions emotional flavour. The main issue with this aspect of Vampyr is the very obvious clash between player agency and characterisation. I love when RPGs give you enough autonomy to play as you see fit within the constraints of its systems and make you live with its resulting consequences. Here, you get a really interesting option between the temptation to kill innocents, with the obvious advantages that brings, and the moral need to resist. In other words, there is a real different playthrough waiting for you depending on your choices. But when games allow for this, character arcs need to follow suit, and that doesn’t happen in Vampyr. Reid is simply too rigid a character to support a coherent ‘evil playthrough’, and that puts a serious damper on the roleplaying side of things.

Combat wise, this game also surprised me. I was genuinely expecting a very janky affair due both Vampyr’s AA nature and what I had read about it, but instead I got a decently fluid, deeper, more enjoyable experience from it. In-combat movement feels pretty good, there are a ton of great abilities to experiment with, and you can tactically use the engagements between factions to your advantage. I almost always enjoyed the fights, never felt they were drawn-out or dull, but regardless, you can even avoid most of them if you prefer.

On the other mechanical aspects, however, Vampyr’s limited nature comes through: outside combat, character movement when turning feels quite clunky; not being able to jump or vault over obstacles was a bit of a nuisance at times (though you do have a very short-distance teleporting ability to get to higher ground); system implementation sometimes feels like it could do with more polish (an example of this is being unable to interact with some situations/NPCs until you reach a certain point in the story, yet the game gives you no indication of that); navigation feels confusing now and then on the count of some heavy asset recycling (the map doesn’t help either), which made this one of the few times I actually longed for a fast travel system of any kind. Add to this things like random loading times mid-game, or having to restart for certain button prompts to show up, it’s easy to feel frustrated by this game on occasion, especially before the whole experience starts to sink in.

And that’s actually one of Vampy’s biggest challenges. Due to how it gets in the way of itself, it might take quite a while to get its hooks on the player, which will undoubtedly lead some to quit the game at an early stage. There’s nothing major hampering the enjoyment here, rather it’s the combination of small things and annoyances with mapping, navigation and lack of mechanical or menu polish that may frustrate you. But if you manage to get past all this, there’s a really cool game waiting for you on the other side. Vampyr does more than enough to stand out in tone, story and impact. Unless I played some very improved version compared to release, my personal feeling is that it was unfairly panned, and I for one would love to see a sequel at some point. 8/10

If you ever wanted to vacation in Victorian Era London, you can now slip into the boots of Jonathan Reid, famous surgeon, and recently awakened vampire. First thing to mention is the amazing environmental design. The color palette with its grays and browns and only the occasional splash of crimson oozes atmosphere. The mood and sense of place that the environment evokes are second to none.

Gameplay-wise, the game has two modes: Walking simulator and combat. There is a stamina meter governing the amount of attacking and dodging you can do, there are a bunch of vampiric talents, even the most exotic of these have a grounded feeling that fits well with the established grounded and realistic mood. There is crafting in this game, It’s not just weapons you can tape together.

The main plot, meanwhile, does a good job structuring the traversal of the open world. When it comes to story, I would describe it as uneven. Some scenes are greatly engaging. Other times the script does a disservice to the plot, with uninspired dialogue. Some of the most interesting parts of the tale get too short a shrift, other times mistimed exposition dumps deflate the tension but it held together well enough to keep me engaged to the end. All in all, I recommend this game.

It seems like the received wisdom around this game is you either do an all-kill run to make combat easier, or you do a no-kill run to get the most story. But I don't think those are the only the options, and I don't think the game actually wants you to pick either of those options. The decision to kill or not to kill citizens is, after all, the primary narrative mechanic in the game, so to use it thoughtlessly or to not use it all seem like equally inadequate ways to engage with Vampyr's themes. The endings are also designed to accommodate a mixed play-style, with 4 different endings depending on how many citizens you embrace.

The blood quality system, likewise, isn't just a convoluted way to make you earn more xp, but a system that invites you to judge those around you, as the closer you get to maximizing their blood quality (and thus getting the most bang for your bite) the more you learn about them—be it redemptive or damning. You're forced to judge people at various junctures during the main storyline, so why not all the time? Who better than an immortal to shape the world (since there also don't seem to be any other legal authorities or social services in all of London; I mean, I get there's an epidemic happening but, for example, even when you're asked if your going to report someone's wrongdoing, implying the ability to do so, the game doesn't actually give you that option. Just kill or don't, that's your only power.)

Of course, what the game cleverly does is pit your moral judgement against your own morality, in the form of your relationship with Lady Ashbury. Mete out justice too liberally and no matter how just a world you've created, Lady Ashbury will die along with your conscience. What price are you willing to pay to see the guilty punished? Or, put another way, what price are you willing to pay to maintain your own innocence? (Which would be a more effective question if you weren't stabbing, bashing, and biting your way through dozens of Guards of Priwen all the time.)(I guess you could also ask the question "What do I need to do make sure I still get the 'chaste Edwardian romance' ending?" But that's a less interesting question.)

Unfortunately, while this is by far the most interesting aspect of the game, it isn't super well-developed. Outside of the main storyline your decisions don't have huge consequences for the city, and you don't really get to follow any of the characters beyond the one side-mission you do for them. Perhaps they felt limited by their historical setting—we know there was no communist takeover of London in 1918, so giving you the option of instigating one would I guess be going too far, even though I REALLY WANTED TO (you do get to kill some Lords, though). Or maybe they felt, not unjustifiably, that it was more effective to show the small-scale consequences, the grief of a lover or a sibling, the happiness of a widow given new purpose or of a victim of abuse given freedom from their abuser.

Either way, I was much more interested in the individual stories of London's citizens than I was in the main storyline, and I wish there'd been a bit more focus there. As it is, the game is enjoyable enough, with a handful of interesting mechanic/thematic (mechanothematic? thematomechanical? thematicanical?) ideas that would be cool to see in a more well-developed form, preferably not tied to a fairly boring environment, a kind of lazy historicism, and a somewhat clunky combat system. Also I'm not actually that interested in vampires.

Additional notes:

— The game also tries to do the "no good deed goes unpunished" thing, but there's really only one good deed that has major negative consequences so it doesn't really work, especially given several obvious missed opportunities to really flesh this theme out.

— Likewise, the only-autosave idea would be interesting if they really committed to letting you make major changes (and major mistakes) that you'd then have to deal with. It would be hard to do that in a way that didn't feel needlessly cruel, but as it is it just feels needless.

— Turns out all you need to do to make me use your stupid consumables is make it restrictively difficult to grind for xp. Of course, you could just balance your game properly.

— Not to shill for a corporation, but this game really highlighted for me the value of the PS+ subscription. It's not that I saved $20 or whatever, it's that I never would've even looked at this game if it hadn't been free—likewise with Nioh and Darksiders III.

The biggest complaint I've seen with the game from other reviews is that the combat is bad. It's true that combat feels a little clunky and awkward, and the hitboxes could use some work, but it's not as bad as many people say. You get used to it pretty quickly. It's also a good bit harder than you expect from such a story-centric game. It seems like the sort of story that's usually told in a walking simulator, but it's surprisingly challenging at times.

The story is...well, it's really good. My only problem with it is that it seems more stretched out than it needs to be. There are long spans of the game where you feel like you don't really learn anything; like you're just running in circles, chasing shadows, not making any progress. Then, near the end, chapters of lore are dumped on you all at once. I understand that the feeling of hopelessness, the idea that you're never gonna figure out what's going on, is meant to add to the atmosphere. And oh boy, does it. But having just a little bit more to go on would've been an improvement, I think.

A small, spoiler-free warning for people considering playing this game: if you get attached to characters and have a hard time with gray moral choices, you're gonna struggle with this game. No choice is easy and it's never clear which is the "best" option. You'll probably screw up if you're not following a guide. The game warns you in the beginning that you have to live with the choices you make, and it's not kidding. It's not a simple black-and-white "Adopt all the children or burn down the orphanage" choice - looking at you, Fable - and you might have the best intentions and still make the wrong decision. That is, to me, the best (and most frustrating) part of this game.

Overall, if you want a despondent and oppressive atmosphere, a likable but realistic protagonist, and a captivating story, try out Vampyr.

The story takes us back to when the infamous influenza pandemic of 1918, dubbed the Spanish flu, ravaged Europe and the streets of London were filled with violence and fear. We take on the role of a man named Jonathan Reid, a respected military surgeon who returns from the front lines of the first world war on a personal mission to help those affected by the disease and find a way to stop the deadly epidemic. But during the journey home, our hero is unexpectedly bitten by a vampire. From then on he has to deal not only with the outbreak, but also with his new nature and his growing lust for blood, which leads him to make many difficult moral choices that can significantly affect the course of the story.

In terms of game mechanics, we can say that it's a pretty typical action RPG. During the game we wander through the dark streets of London, complete many main and side quests and talk to the NPCs we encounter. Most of the time, however, we'll encounter mortal enemies, which can prove to be different types of vampires or other mutants, as well as hunters who can use a wider variety of weapons and even traps. The combat takes place in real time and we can use both physical strength and firearms, as well as the typical "vampire" skills that we develop throughout the story. Of course, as expected from a game about bloodsuckers, there's also an important requirement to regain our dwindling strength by drinking the blood of our victims. Anyone can be our prey, whether in a fight or during exploration.

Throughout the game, we often have to make difficult decisions about which NPC will be our next victim, as once killed a character disappears completely and their absence can prevent us from completing certain missions and affect the ending of the game. We also have to be extremely careful not to arouse suspicion about our second nature among the civilian population, meaning it is not enough to simply bite the first person we encounter. Often, we may have to do time-consuming research about our potential victim, their habits and relationships with other characters. When it comes to graphics, Vampyr is developed by Unreal Engine 4, which offers high-quality visuals. The developers from the Dontnod studio have managed to combine typical action RPG mechanics with the distinctive character of the dark times of a Spanish Flu pandemic and the unique atmosphere of classic vampire movies. The game has an average of 30-40 hours of gameplay. It also has four different endings that change according to the choices made.

Vampyr could have been a really good game. It should have been at least mediocre. But ends up really bad despite having some positives to it. And I do say it after almost completing the game and wishing I had quit it way sooner than on the final boss.

So what’s Vampyr like? It’s a little 3rd person adventure/rpg with some souls like combat, somewhat interesting story and way too many unnecessary mechanics. And I can’t stop feeling that the game would have been so much better if they’d just stick to one or two core mechanics.

I’ll start with the good. The story is probably the best part of the game. Sure it goes in a weird direction towards the end but generally it’s not bad. You play as Dr Reid, a renowned doctor returning from war that wakes up on a pile of dead bodies, as a vampire. Not knowing what happened or how he got there he more or less tries to find his maker getting dragged into other vampire plots along the way in the middle of the spanish influenza outbreak in London (just after WWI).

And since this is a game about vampires - suddenly it’s vampire flu and everyone’s turning vampire or skal - a lower tier vampire creature.

Visually it’s not bad. Level design is rather poor and everything looks pretty similar to each other. It tries to depict certain districts of London but the levels are so small that it makes you feel quite claustrophobic. It does try to introduce shortcuts between different districts once you get through them but they’re so much alike that without a map it would be impossible to navigate.

Combat is passable. A little bit souls like with health and stamina and added blood bar for “special” attacks. However it doesn’t feel well balanced. The lock-on mechanism can be annoying at times and while one on one combat is ok - I found that most fights were just frustrating and provided little to no fun. Bosses are ridiculously annoying with progressively harder phases and they’re just not fun. After beating them I had a sense of relief more than any form of accomplishment. Their attacks were sometimes impossible to avoid and they always felt overpowered, and not in a good way.

So let’s get to the bad, and there’s a lot of that.

First of traveling. Each district has a safe area where people live and between them are areas where enemies live. Enemies respawn each time you get to the safe zone. But there is no incentive to fight them. Although varied - the vampire hunters, skals or vampires - they give you absolutely no xp. They’ll drop something from time to time but it’s not worth fighting them - so if you’re smart you’ll just run past them after realising - why have I been fighting them at all - really disappointing.

Secondly - people. There are 5 or 6 districts - each of them has up to 10 I think people. Each person has its own backstory and definitely too big of conversation tree. What’s worse - they all have it’s own story/problem you need to or can at least solve. But in order to do that you need to talk with a lot of people and cross reference them against each other and then use the unlocked hints to unlock other hints… to much talking.

Why would you do that - well unlocking hints give you XP, and also raises the blood quality of the person should you choose to suck it dry - thus giving more XP.

And here’s another lie of the game. Morality. The game hints at you from the start that you will have a difficult choice - either quench your thirst for blood by killing or suffer the hunger like no other. It also basically throws the first victim at your hands - and from the conversation it hints that this person has questionable morals so it wouldn’t be so bad to eat the poor lad. And the games almost tries to hard to tell you that most of the people living there have both good and bad sides which in theory should make that decision not so obvious but...

There’s another mechanic in the game. District health. Depending on it there are tougher or weaker enemies along your way. The health depends on how healthy are its citizens (remember around 10 per district) so sucking people's blood - which also kills them - makes the district health go down quite a bit. So you don’t kill too many people as you fear what will happen if the health goes critical. How to counter it - well you’re a doctor is that not. So what you will do is ransack every drawer, trash can and closet in order to gather thrash you can convert into medicine and apply it to the citizens suffering from headaches and exhaustion and other minor illness. If you don’t the sicknesses get more and more severe which affects the district health status - again. And it’s just soooo annoying and unnecessary.

It actually made me angry for wasting my time. For tricking me into thinking it mattered.

But it doesn’t. As the farmed XP you turn into vampire powers - upgrade them and add new ones. But they’re not very impactful. You can’t up your DPS other than upgrading your weapons which has nothing to do with XP. And the powers - not really that great. Even if you update your health bar all the way - bosses get you in two or three hits anyway.

And the need to feed? Not really there. You could essentially almost play the entire game during a single night and there would be no repercussions. In fact that would be better as to level up you need to sleep. When you sleep the districts health get worse.

The morality of the game is completely meaningless. I wanted to embrace being a vampire and kill as many people as possible. But it just wasn’t practical.

In the end I felt like running around, avoiding fights. Clicking through conversation just to get it over with, collecting trash and cursing at too hard bosses I felt no satisfaction after beating. The only thing keeping me going was the story. But the time spent with the game I consider wasted and that’s never a good thing.

Vampyr, from a strictly gameplay perspective, has a unique quality that I wish other games would emulate: the “best” way to play is to not get stronger. In a game where you’re supposed to be playing a character that grapples with the infernal, who is himself a doctor who now must feed on human blood to survive, the game could have been completely undone (indeed, been completely passable) if the best way to level up was to give into that edge. Most games would have you do that, but then, most games will sell itself on this quality (shades of Fallout 3’s release, where half of the marketing was “be as evil as you can” was all the rage).

Vampyr does something unique in that it asks if you’re able to play the game without wonton murder, and it rewards you by doing so. It’s certainly far more difficult, and a few times I was shocked at the problems I was having with it as a result. But ultimately it felt deeply rewarding to maintain my humanity while being the vampire (or vampyr, I guess?) so it gets points there.

The Victorian-era setting, with shades of Dracula; the actual shout outs to the romantic gothic genre rising in popularity at that time; the haunting cello-infused music. The game has a wonderful setting, and it deserves a play through for that.

However, ultimately, this was clearly a labor of love that was rushed through. I’ve read of game-breaking bugs. Indeed, I hit a few bugs and had to reset a few times. The gameplay concept is excellent; in practice, there was a lot of padding and back and forth, and I found myself wishing sometimes that the pacing was a bit different. And while the ending was interesting, it was ultimately sprung on you, and didn't feel like an organic development of the plot.

If you have a deep love for vampire lore, or gothic horror from the 19th century, or just want to see what the fuss was about, this game is worth a play. I personally love it. But it’s my review, so I can vote as arbitrarily as I wish. And I hope that if ever a Vampyre II comes out (you know they’d have to rock those Roman numerals), the creators take to heart the criticisms levied at the first. Because this game series does deserve a revisit, or a rebalancing, or a remake. But ultimately, if none of those things piqued your fancy, you probably want to skip it.