Playing through Swansong encouraged me to play through Bloodlines again. My original review on here could use some updating. Calling Bloodlines a “hidden gem” or “cult classic” at this point seems a bit disingenuous. Anyone with an interest in RPGs has played this game, or at the very least, heard of it. It's low-key mainstream.

I consider this game created by Troika Games, developed by the fans. The vanilla game upon release was a mess. You need the Unofficial Patch to have a decent time. This playthrough I used the Patch Plus addon, which added in a few bits of cut content. The Unofficial Patch is a living mod with it’s most recent update coming out in 2022. There’s also a selection of other mods available that update textures, fix the tinny audio, add new weapons, and customize the player character.

The one game I always find myself comping Bloodlines to is Fallout: New Vegas. How the game handles dialogue and combat feels very New Vegasy. The RPG skill systems are the only thing not Fallout in nature. You don’t level up and there’s no perks to unlock. You have your character sheet that has a smattering of skills, some are universal, some are class specific. As you complete missions, you gain xp points that you can spend in one of your skill categories, with each level costing more points. You won’t gain enough points to upgrade all of your skills, so you have to decide how you want to spec your character. Each class has 3 vampire skills unique to them. These are powered by your blood meter, which you have to fill by feeding on the living. Of course, you have to be subtle about feeding. Biting a homeless man out in the open is frowned upon, you have to stalk alleys or seduce someone for a "kiss".

Dialogue is also handled like Fallout. The writing goes for a humorous bend with some 2000s flippant irreverence tossed in there. Your responses don’t always matter. I would choose a sarcastic answer only for the character to ignore it and simply carry on their conversation. Characters are very expressive and animated; a feat Swansong couldn’t accomplish. It makes every interaction engaging because you aren’t just talking to a stock-still cardboard cutout.

One thing the Unofficial Patch can’t fix is the combat system in this game. It’s by no means unbearable, but it’s like an early attempt at Fallout combat. The beginning favors melee combat as you only have a snub-nosed revolver to your name and most enemies are melee focused. Melee combat is in 3rd person only and there’s a basic system of doing a different attack based on what direction you move and blocking, but it mostly devolves into whacking each other. Towards the endgame you get access to an array of firearms as well encountering more armed goons. Trying to melee an enemy with an automatic weapon will see you bleeding out a lot. In my first playthrough, it was a sharp difficulty curve when gun goons showed up, but this time around I played a class that had super speed, which once that’s upgraded a few levels you can move quick enough to dodge bullets.

There’s also a stealth mechanic as well that is a sign of the time before every game had an agreed upon, Assassin’s Creed style, stealth system. There is a detection meter that measures how likely you are to be noticed and I think it measures how well-lit you are. If you are in the dark, you can get right up to a enemy most time before they finally spot you. If you can get up behind them with a melee weapon or bare hands, you can execute a stealth takedown. The takedowns got a little more hit and miss towards the end of the game. And I assume this is a Patch addon, but when you get a stealth kill with a sword it plays this rock sting.

Bloodlines is set during the nights of early 2000s LA. It’s broken down into 4 main world hubs. The open world suffered the most from the rushed development. Santa Monica, the tutorial area, is a dense little city block with a lot of accessible buildings and a hefty amount of quests and side quests. The main questline even has several different outcomes depending on how you act that isn’t seen in any other quests. Next is Downtown, it’s the largest location and a pain to navigate, but it’s where all the major factions hang out. There’s a good smattering of side quests and locations to explore. The Chantry is a fun building to get lost in the hallways of. Hollywood, the third hub, is where the world design starts to decline. It’s only one street you run up and down. There’s still plenty of locations along the stretch to explore at least, but the side quests are dwindling, and they aren’t as complex as those in Santa Monica. The final hub is Chinatown. It’s the most visually distinct hub world due to the Oriental aesthetic, but you spend little time in there. I can count the side quests there on one hand. It’s got a few locations to explore but doesn’t have the staying power of the other hubs. The levels also become more maze like as the game goes on. There’s the infamous Warrens sewer level, that Patch Plus lets you skip. Places like the Giovanni’s vault and Chinatown temple are also not fun to hack through, not compared to the Oceanview Hotel or the museum.

The world building is an enjoyable mix of vampire lore and early 2000s angst. For my second playthrough, I chose a “big tiddy goth girl” from the Toreador clan, who are the most social vampires, relying on talking their way out of issues. And holy cow, is this game horny. Every male character I encountered hit on me, it got exhausting. Like I’m not a guy who openly hits on women, but I feel like I need to apologize. While there is some sexiness thrown in to appeal to that teenage boy audience, sexuality has always been a staple of vampire mythos. Mix that with LA, the seedy city of the silver screen and you can’t avoid addressing the sexuality. But besides one occasion in the game, both vampires & Hollywood are more about selling you the idea & allure of sex more than the actual act.

LA is as much of a character as anyone else. As a vampire doomed to stalk the night, you get to see the city’s underbelly where the glitz of tinsel town gives away to the raunchy sex shops and gaudy strip bars. The kind of people awake at 3am are not usually pinnacles of the community. Most of my interactions with humans was giving them a wink and a smile to get my way. LA is also a city of big personalities, and you get some of that 2000s edge in there with characters like Pisha, Nines and most the Anarchs. Then there’s characters like Fat Larry, Yukie, Gary, and Chunk. Looking back at them now, they’re all kinda campy and fun.

What makes Bloodlines the standout RPG game it is, is the story. Playing through it again. The story isn’t as deep as I remember it being. You are a new vampire begrudgingly working for the vampire prince, but you can join the rebel Anarchs or the foreign Kuei-Jin during your nightly adventures. You are on the search for a sarcophagus of an ancient vampire that everyone is worried will bring the end of the world. Throughout the game you are constantly beat over the head “DON’T OPEN IT”. The Prince is obviously a bad guy. They try to flirt with the notion of “heavy is the head…” that he’s got the best interest of vampire society in mind, but he’s willing to break a few eggs. Everyone else despises him, but everyone hates the guy in charge, even if he’s doing the right thing. But it turns out everyone was right and he’s just a selfish brat.

A good dose of subtlety would’ve helped the story. Almost everything the Prince tells you is a lie, maybe have one of his statements be true to sow some intrigue. Instead of constant reminders to not open the sarcophagus, maybe have one or two. And being able to call in favors from all of the people you’ve helped through the night, ala New Vegas style, would’ve made the ending more impactful. If the story had time for one more pass, I think it would really sing.

All in all, this game is always a blast to start up. I’m surprised this game hasn’t gotten a fan remake yet. There’s a few quests, especially late game that are a bit annoying to replay through, but the wild characters you meet, the world you explore, and the writing helps this game stand the test of time, while also making it an endearing time capsule. At the risk of sounding like a Boomer, if Bloodlines 2 ever does come out, I feel like a lot of the campy charm will be sacrificed at the altar of political correctness, leading to a duller experience overall. There may be a few things that haven’t aged well in Bloodlines, but the over-the-top characters and crass sexuality is part of that charm. Though Bloodlines 2 is set to be in Seattle, which isn’t as seedy as LA.

Someone recently posted that they were about to begin this game for the first time. Oddly enough, I had recently planned to review this old classic which is another game that would be among my all time favorites

It was initially released with many bugs, but an unofficial patch has made it run very smoothly, at least when I replayed it about 7 years ago

It's an action roleplaying game and you play as a fledging Vampire. Naturally, you've got lots to learn

At the very beginning of the game, you have to choose which clan of Vampire that you wish to belong to. Your choice affects your abilities, powers and even dialogue options. Also, other characters will treat you differently depending on what clan you belong to. Each clan has it's advantages and disadvantages. This allows the player so many different paths to choose from depending on their clan and adds for great replayability

Even upon it's initial release, which was unfinished and had many bugs, you could tell that there was something special here. The writing and degree of choice available to the gamer was exceptional.

As you move through the game, you gain points by completing quests, which can be put, at your discretion, into 3 distinct categories:

Attributes, Abilities, Powers

You can build the character you want. You want to be good with firearms, combat, computer hacking, lock picking, or seduce your way through the game and you can. It's all your choice

You can be bad...up to a point. If you just walk around chomping down on every human you find, you will be penalized

The game developed a huge cult following that developed patches, which fixed many of the bugs and restored content that had been cut. Even in the late 2010's, fans were still at work to improve the game

It was just a fantastic ambitious game. Maybe too ambitious for it's own good.

The writing is VERY well done and the game has many memorable characters

This is a game that deserves a remake. I feel certain the present generation would eat it up (pun intended) and that it would elevate the games status as one of the great CRPG's

Before anything else - play this with the Unofficial Patch (Plus). I'd go so far as to say it's a necessity. Additionally, the consensus is to avoid playing Clan Malkavian or Clan Nosferatu for your first playthrough. These two clans offer completely different experiences; Malkavians have visions of the future and are considered to be insane, which is reflected in their dialogue, and you're often given hints/story spoilers throughout your own options along the game because your character is seeing/sensing things that haven't happened yet. Nosferatu vampires are forced to basically stealth the whole game as they can't be seen by humans without violating the Masquerade, which means you won't be getting most dialogue and you'll be confined to the sewers for most of your run.

Now that that's out of the way...

Fuck, I love this game. The graphics have aged terribly (the opening cutscene made me giggle when I first saw it because the movement of someone pouncing on another character was so bad), the combat is clunky, and it's undeniably a game from 2004 - but hell if I care. I can't even put into words how special this game is. It's brimming with character, with this thick, deep Gothic atmosphere, and it's one of the most immersive, path-varying RPGs I've ever experienced.

VTM:B genuinely could have been made for me.

My only slight complaint is that I wish there was a character creator, but you're playing most of it in first-person anyway, so I could ignore the preset appearances for each Clan. The fact that every Clan offers such a different experience offers so much replayability, I love the political intrigue and machinations of it all, the soundtrack is gorgeous, the quests are genuinely interesting, the characters are all fascinating, just... ugh. God. I love it, man.

I came across this game in an RPG codex interview with Leon Boyarsky http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10425 renknown artist of Fallout 1. He mentions Vampire Bloodlines and i got interested. I had actually never heard of this game! I saw screens and looked at a video and thought 'this looks almost like a mix between Deus Ex and Fallout 3' In some ways that's an overstated exaggeration. the game is a bit like Arx Fatalis sense that it is a rather 'big' but still 'closed' world game that gives one the illusion of being in an open world type game. It's the talking heads through an FPS type interaction with VERY good and memorable characters with distinct personalities and voice acting as well as the dialogue tree that is slightly bent to the PC traits (such as race) or skills. A very true fallout feel comes from the talking heads and a focus on RPG over anything else in the game. I knew I wouild enjoy this game. I had read a bit of lore before playing and remmember some of the houses for the World of Darkness tabletop game. It's a perfect setting for a RPG game. (I should make a list or shelf of RPG games based on RPG tabletops...) It's a very interesting world. And this game does a pretty good job at tying the major metas of that RPG table top together, and providing a good single player experience that feels like a campaign..

The game itself has been described as 'gothic punk' and that is maybe a good way to describe it. Some aspects of the gothic punk i find a little bit cheesy, but this is a minor issue and shouldnt really hamper anyone's enjoyment of this game too much. This game is very different. Vampire Bloodlines is one hell of a game in many ways. There is a lot here and it's different. It is technically a third person shooter (or first person shooter) but plays more like an Action RPG. however, this is mostly just a kind of guise for the game and it is at it's core an RPG. The heart of this game is The City. Ever since I played Cybermage Darklight awakening, Arx Fatalis, Thief 3 Deadly Shadows, Deus Ex, Dishonored, etc, I began to understand how The City, can work in a game that is a FPS/RPG, to provide atmosphere, a context through lore and maybe even in some cases act as a kind of character through it's denizens . This game plays a lot like those in many ways in respect to The City in the background and how you interact and engage with the setting. You can't lay traps or do lots of things like in Thief or DX, and it's not even a stealth game (well not really) or a combat oriented game. You build your character and resolve quests and sidequests. The character sheet is really nice, and works fairly well but i have some mixd feelings about it. You can build skill pools/attributes and two skill pools are combined to accumulate into a score for your actually ability such as melee combat or melee defense. you also have a magic powers section which is Race/House determined. You dont seem to get XP and gain lvls like tradional. But are simply awarded XP points for quest completion or doing things in certain ways, and in some cases you can even get 'extra' points for completion of special ways (but this is very rare). This is very much like a true tabletop RPG setting... It offers a great balance and very nice way to strategically plan your points, but the game is very hard. It's hard to balance a character for combat (the combat in the game is at times a very ramped up difficulty curve, especially if you must fight certain 'special' characters/bosses who have certain fighting techniques, etc you cant contend with) a lack of stealth is also.... annoying and a bit of a slow down as you often find yourself backtracking the game later to loot doors and chests you missed. this seems to make the game take longer. and the game is fairly darn long despite it's relatively seemingly small size of a few areas.

The city hub area is decent enough. There are actually 4 main areas but several 'special' areas (the 4 main areas show up on your quest log screen so it's not a spoiler really.) Each of these areas is fairly small but there is a lot to do in each, and they all have a nice atmopshere. It's not very big at all (i'm kind of glad because i dont want to walk too much back and forth between sidewquests) but there is enough there. My favorite is the first City Hub. I like the feel of it and it makes me think of a David Lynch film with some weird goth vibe (There needs to be a painting of Ed hopper's nighthawks somewhere.) It's a fun place to just wander around in and it really has a Deus Ex Hell's Kitchen type feel... I love games with cities like this. This city really has atmosphere. NPCs will walk around and you can talk to several of them. You can seduce them lure them into alleys to 'kiss' them etc. This effect lets you build your mana pool and also heals you (But you generally can just heal over time and wait out damage done to you) One of the really cool things is the dialogue options and how the different responses are 'flavored' and colored with different text fonts/typefaces. Agressive responses are bold strong and blood looking text, and Seduction response are pink/purply curisve text. Good grief why is this not a standard idea executed in every game since then? It just works too well.

PC's and computers have monitors with DOS type terminal look that display text, you walk up to them and just start typeing. There is a limited command set you can use but it's authentic enough to feel like a legit computer. (nicely done enough and functional imo anyway) There are no lockpicking/hacking minigames, its all skill/roll based. pure RPG... This i like a lot.

There are little notes, loots and sometimes other things hidden around in different places (Thief/DX feel) (having a passive auspex skill helps here.) theres a lot in the levels to hint you to a computer password (poster in he room, something the person likes sitting on a desk) but a lot of times you just can't guess 'em and have to hack. there are multiple solutions or at least hints to things if you are observant. There are also a lot of funny things hidden in emails, and inside jokes among the developers. These guys really have a sense of humor. My favorite place in the game was Gimble's Prosthetics. What a Brilliantly designed area and idea. There is also a very nice Shalebridge cradle like area (a few actually) The game builds great atmosphere ambiance and NPC interaction and you feel like you are very involved in the game world. There are some fun minor areas outside the hubs you will go to on sidequests.

lots of easter eggs and fun and funny things. i found myself spending too much time just exploring and looking for things.

combat in this game is not so great. It seems to be the weakest aspect of the game. The controls are a bit clunky and selecting your magic powers (augmentations) is difficult. I've played with keybinds a bit but just dont quite get it or can't get used to it. I also am having a hard time seeing the benefits of ranged combat. ammo procurment and weapon switching is a problem. hitting your target is hard, and reloading is a good way to just get killed. most enemies rush at you are fast, and can stun you.

It's a really nice game. It seems to have taken me way too long to play but i feel it was worth the time i spent wandering around in it. I would reccomend anyone play this if they like a lot of the games i mention, if you are a RPG fan you might have heard of it. It's more fun if you know the background of VtM, and like lore .Good lore, a big environment to wander around in with atmosphere, and lots of interesting people in it to talk to. There are some drawbacks. It's a bit buggy (well more than a bit, but the latest unofficial patch makes it a smooth ride mostly once you get it running) the combat is rather wonky. sometimes the walking back and forth with quests justs gets old. some characters you more or less meet and then forget and dont interact anymore (and at times some of the dialogue options are a bit limited and it's certainly not an in depth talking head system like say ToEE, but it works well enough) you feel like a part of the world but you also feel like a victim of fate both due to the story line and your bound nature to the story and where you can take things.

How to get it working: a Guide worth posting for myself (and i guess others)

First, this has to be one of the hardest games i've ever had to get running on a modern PC... It is without a doubt in my top 10 or even top 5.

First, here is how I got it working in windows 7...

1. mount in alcohol 120% run setup/autoplay. install one disc at a time. change to next disc in alcohol 120% when installer prompts to do so.

2. install unofficial update. ran it using 'admin priviledges' (supposed to do this for EVERYTHING apparently...) did not run res patch (YET)

3. applied crack. now checked to make sure admin settings are ticked for the unofficial patch created desktop shortcut. setting compatibility mode for xp SP3 will allow the intro videos (will know it's working if seeing the grey text boxes and a 'loading...' screen before intro start after clicing the shortcut to start the game)

4. apply the res patch and other mods/goodies. make sure the res patch is ran with admin (not sure if neccessary) also some argue to place it directly in the root/base directory so it is along side the vampire.exe and can automatically easily find it (rather than point and tell the respatch.exe where the vampire.exe is)

other notes: I read on if crash on new game run the VTMup94.exe (or later?) OR just using the "vampire.dll" and "vampire.dll.12" files from C://Program Files/Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines/Vampire/dlls/

(not sure if this is compatible with all cracks. or if cracks are even necessary with the latest update) I did not play this game through steam. Steam users have their own plethora of problems.

By and large WESP5 has singlehandedly taken it upon himself to make this game playable throughout each generation of windows release it would seem. I must say that is saying a lot. People would spend a lot of time with this game to figure out how toget it working. getting the latest patch on scrolls is the first step.

people giving their clan a shout out on youtube:

First playthrough: Toreador. Camarilla (unwillingly/unknowingly?) Some odd dialogue choices in reference to art here and there, but nothing that seemed like a new path or special quest that i could detect.

Ending: lots of little things are sublte different it seems based on clan but not sure how major it is. there are a few paths. From the wiki it sounds like the Malkavians have some interesting bits thrown in. Some things seem to be made a bit more interesting at times for the Malkavian. I did the independent ending (which is the same as the anarch ending according to youtube)

Other thoughts on the story: The whole time i became very fascinated with the Gehenna event, the anteluvian/sarcophagus drama but especially the deeper nature of the camarilla beyond that of laCroix. I did not interact with the Tremere REgent that much. I was very much hoping the storyline would take a Deus Ex like turn where you uncover some large plot related to the elders in the Camarilla, their anteluvian disinfo campaign, and the fact they themselves are ancients seeking diablerie and with a grand aim to direct the gehenna event in some fashion. (all things they publicly disavow knowledge of and discourage among their own outer society) It really would have fit the game setting well. LaCroix is predicatable and wasnt a very interesting character for such a major character. You know he's an untrustworthy twerp. he is essentially a bit like Manderly in DX but Manderly was not the real antagonist.

This game is probably still one of the most buggy games since its release. It's been a long time since the developers forgot about their game, but despite thousands of unofficial updates, the game is still full of bugs that make it unplayable today.

But it's actually good that the game is too broken to play, because I wouldn't want you to have the horrible experiences I had...

It doesn't matter how interesting and good the story and universe is. I'm not going to give a high score to a game that is so broken and annoying to play. When the gameplay is this buggy, the whole game, and all the good aspects that go with it, becomes a complete waste of time.

Sooner or later, while playing, you will get stuck at some point in the game and your save will be irrevocably broken. Aside from the mediocrity of the technical side of the game, the gameplay itself is already very bad and dated.

It's a game I've always wanted to play and finish for years. For different reasons, I hadn't had the chance to play it or I had been putting it off. I started playing it even though it was late.

It was only after I started playing that I realized I had overestimated this game and I was very disappointed. Here was a mediocre, time wasting and frustrating game that didn't meet my expectations in the slightest...

Today, the fans of this game are just as annoying as the games themselves. Only someone brainwashed by nostalgia and with nothing else to do in life can enjoy this game.

It's a game that should have been forgotten long ago, but fans have persistently updated it to keep this abomination alive to this day.

Неоднозначная игра с неоднозначной судьбой. Ее можно бесконечно любить за многие вещи: за большой выбор рас, которые кардинально меняют прохождение; революционная лицевая анимация для своего времени (над Жанетт и Виви постарались особенно); диалоги, сюжет, квесты и (как я ненавижу это слово) атмосферу. Прозвучу банально, но это именно одна из тех игр, атмосферу в которых можно черпать ложкой. Застывший во времени памятник духу конца девяностых и начала нулевых, технологический бум, интернет и мрачный сеттинг мира в котором реальная жизнь и потусторонняя переплетены в одно целое. В этой игре чувствуются нотки таких сериалов как "Баффи" и "Клан Сопрано", какие впитали в себя этот дух времени, какой уже не вернуть. Только за возможность вернуться туда и прочуствовать это все снова я люблю ее и по сей день и стабильно перепрохожу каждые 2-3 года.

Но в этой бочке атмосферы есть ведро дегтя. Игра вышла сырой и все ради того, чтобы утереть нос Valve и успеть выпустить ее до выхода Half-Life 2, чтобы именно детище Troika Games гордо носило титул "первая игра на Source" (спойлер: у них ничего не получилось). Геймплей далек от идеала; стелс довольно сомнителен; анимации ударов, питания кровью и все что заставляет нашего персонажа двигаться выглядят дергано, хаотично; убогий рагдолл; элементы одежды проклипываются сквозь тело персонажей и конечно же мои любимые баги любой сорс игры - любой предмет в игре имеет свою гравитацию и любит эпилептично летать по комнате, когда ты слегка заденешь его. Некоторые квесты в игре вырезаны и конечно же существуют фанатские патчи, которые обновляют и по сей день (тот что я качал был за апрель 2019, а игре мать его 15 лет), но я не советую проходить вырезанные квесты, востановленные фанатскими патчами. Они ужасно проработаны, нестабильны и кроме экспы светят только раздражением и потраченным временем на попытки найти неподсвеченный предмет, переключатель или код в абсолютно мертвых и пустых локациях и подпортили конечное впечатление больше чем я ожидал.

Тем не менее, VtM:B - одна из моих самых любимых игр, вопреки своей непростой судьбе сумевшая стать культовой, чем обрела верную фанатскую базу, которая и по сей день поддерживает свою любимую игру. Я крайне сомневаюсь, что вторая часть подойдет и близко к такому же статусу и будет ли вообще достойна стоять в тени своей предшественницы, но к сожалению времена изменились, прошло 15 лет, индустрия уже не та и я уже не тот, как бы мне не было обидно видеть как пляшут на костях такой важной для моей жизни и моего детства игры, но флаг им в руки, наверное.

Bloodlines has its fair share of technical issues it's pushed through over the years with patch after patch, but playing it now provides an engrossing (if not edgy) take on the secret society of vampires where your tongue is as important as your blade.

Presented from the option of either first or third perspectives, you have the option of a variety of vampire clans this time, giving more open-ended methods to handle each quest. Experience is more discrete, with specific points being given out per quest objectives. The thing that really separates it from Redemption, though, is the added options of conversation (including persuasion, intimidation, and seduction) to open up new options and possibly end quests with nonviolent methods and additional benefits.

Combat still takes a large part of the game though, with a variety of guns and more action-oriented melee that has players thinking of different weapons, strategies, and builds. Health heals over time (thankfully) so the player can play with more limited but useful blood Disciplines depending on clan.

Maneuvering through the city of Los Angeles, you lurk through four main areas with a variety of side quests, people to harvest blood from (including willing options of varying sex and orientation, if you're seductive enough), and different locales to discover. The player can crouch and move around objects, but it can be a bit janky and players can get stuck in places that may require reloads.

Regardless of the technical flaws in the past, the current state of Bloodlines is quite playable, with unused content being added and a much more stable experience that matches an ambitious and engaging vision.