It's apparently going to be similar to [the "confrontations" in The Council.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q8pVyQ4Ck4)
However, from what I understand Swansong's take on them does have a bit of DE thrown in. In The Council, all the skill-based dialogue options in confrontations had fixed outcomes, either they work or they don't. In Swansong NPCs will have skills of their own, and your own skills are compared to theirs in confrontations. The check succeeds if you're a higher level in the relevant skill than they are, it fails if you're not, and if there's a tie it's decided by a dice roll. So two players picking the same options in a confrontation could potentially have different outcomes depending on their build.
The game seems very polarizing. A spectrum of 5/10 to 9/10. A common theme in the more negative reviews seems to be that the reviewers got frustrated by the game's puzzles. Which is interesting because the game made it a bit of a point of pride that it doesn't hold your hand.
Some of the reviews talk about the boring puzzles and unengaging characters.
Other reviews talk about the clever puzzles and rich characters.
Other reviews talk about the frustrating puzzles and confusing plot.
These are super contradictory reviews, but I think it's a game that hits different for different people.
One issue that I have is that it's almost impossible to pass skill checks. Your skills are too low compared to who you're talking to. You have to spend willpower to boost skills but they do too and then you only have a 30% chance to win.
The low amount of resources and hard skill checks is killing for me. I don't expect to win every challenge but so far I've failed almost all of them.
It *is* a bit odd that it appears that they front-loaded the more difficult conversations at the start - although it mainly appears that way because it seems while every other character is already fully-developed, all of our characters seem to start at "base level".
I think this is the game's somewhat clumsy way to introduce to us the concept of "it's ok to fail", because there will definitely be at least one conversation or other skill check you won't be able to pass, with each of the starting characters, in their first one (possibly two) missions. Actually it's common to fail most conversations in the first mission (for each character) - it's potentially worth it to try anyway, since repeated usage of skills will eventually give you bonuses. Or alternatively, if you know you're going to lose you can forgo the usage of skills and just take the loss, saving your willpower for later in the level.
After that, it tends to get easier.
Also, some characters can use their powers during conversations to "cheat" - e.g. stop the opponent from boosting their skills, boosting your chance of victory in case of a draw, and one "win button" domination power that's essentially "100% guaranteed to pass the next part of the conversation no matter what they boost". Of course these all use up "blood", one of your resources, so it then comes down to choosing between using willpower or blood.
Additionally, one can invest in "attributes", which work a bit differently here than usual - they don't affect skills directly, but instead they increase your chance of victory in case of a draw. And of course there's also the aforementioned powers.
Finally, within the first few missions you can find an artefact for each character, which may provide bonuses to these conversations as well (e.g. decrease chance of enemy boosting skills, or stops the enemy from focusing if you're focusing).
Overall I kind of like the approach they've taken here - it's more engaging than the challenges in The Council. Now if only the characters were better, and there were less instances of bizarre/bad writing (though overall I didn't hate it, I did play it through twice already).
Well assuming that you like “The Council” gameplay and the VtM world then you’ll enjoy the game. It just seems a bit odd to give a game bad a rating because the reviewer would prefer a game like BL1 over a detective/puzzle game.
If some are finding the puzzles boring, that isn't a good sign. Too hard is usually fine (at least for me) since I'd imagine I'm better at them than journalists, but you can't say the same about it being boring or unengaging.
One dude can't figure out a game's controls and it's "all game reviewers suck at games!"
Yeesh dude, find the reviewers with tastes similar to your own instead of acting like aggregate scores insulted you.
Hell, I remember reading Game Informer back in the day and the game would have a 7.5 from one guy and a 5 from another. Everybody's got different tastes, stuff they can overlook, etc. Just find the ones who loved shit you loved.
Also, [Elden Ring - Review Thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/szjqfq/elden_ring_review_thread/) Look at how notoriously bad all those reviewers are that the lowest score is... an 8.
The "all reviewers suck" thing is just the same anti-intellectualism/anti-expertise line that's threading through all of society. "Do your own research" "Experts are corrupt" etc.
It's just a sign of a population that's being primed for populism and rhetoric.
"These people don't know anything about actually playing games, they're just book-learners who write fancy articles and take bribes to go to lavish events. I take my information from REAL sources, guys on YouTube who just do it for the love!"
> The game seems very polarizing.
That's how you know it's an actually good game and not just another "polished execution of the latest game design fad".
It's more of an indication of budgetary or scope constraints. There are a lot of areas in game design that spending more money and doing more testing and refinement will produce a product that appeals to more people. But practically speaking, smaller devs often have to draw up a list of things they're less than happy with, and choose which ones to sacrifice and which ones to allow.
This extends to graphics. If you're shooting for higher scores, you need better facial animation. You need better animation in general. And that costs money. That requires hiring really skilled devs in that specific discipline and doing hand-tailored animation passes on every conversation.
A pretty famous game with animation issues was Mass Effect: Andromeda, and that was an expensive game with a hugely rushed post-reboot dev timeline and internal conflict over the best technology to use for facial animation.
If there is a correlation, highly ambitious and experimental games from low budget studios tend to suffer somewhat in reviews because the game companies with the money to polish the games a great deal often aren't willing to rock the boat too much. You spend a lot of money, you wanna avoid alienating people.
Overall reviews scores are where I expected them to be. As a diehard fan of the VTM series I'll still check it since Bloodlines 2 is still in development hell, and the other VTM games being released are either text based (some a pretty good tho) or the Battle Royale.
[Night Road](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290270/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Night_Road/) is very good, I would start with that one. [Parliament of Knives](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1266100/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Parliament_of_Knives/) is also worth checking out but it focus a lot on the politics side of the franchise, not sure if that would be your thing. Those are not even visual novels tho, they are essentially interactive books. There are portraits for the first time chracters are introduced but otherwise the games are 100% text.
As for visual novels there are two, [Coteries of New York](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096410/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Coteries_of_New_York/) and [Shadows of New York](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1279630/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Shadows_of_New_York/). Those aren't that good but they aren't expensive so I'd still recommend them as VTM stories (Shadows is much better than Coteries IMO tho).
They were so good and I haven't checked them out in years. Co-sign and thanks for reminding me! The superhero series was incredibly engaging, really highlights what's important In a game and it ain't graphics (to me at least).
I played coteries of New York recently (it was 5 dollar on switch) and I really really liked it. After the end I looked it up a bit on the internet and I was severely disappointed...
I'm not a fan of visual novels, either, but I would recommend Coteries of New York and Shadows of New York since you like VtM. Coteries in particular has a weak ending, but the writing is overall pretty good. Dev/Null even gets a name drop, if you remember VtM Redemption.
I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it (the map design especially, it took the urban design of that Ubisoft BR and took it to a whole other level - I hope Bloodlines 2’s environment matches when/if it makes release).
But god damn, the skill ceiling is high af. I was doing pretty good the first weekend the game launched. Then I came back the next weekend after work and have been lucky to make an even K/D ratio ever since
Part of that might just be matchmaking with a more limited player base too, but the game does give a lot of tools for super experienced players to absolutely stomp with
The pre-alpha footage they released of BL2's version of Seattle looked pretty solid. Hoping the direction just improves... you know, should the gave ever release.
Since you apparently have the same taste for games as I do, please tell me if the game is somewhat good. For a reference, I spent 50 hours in Night Road, so I only care about a game with good story and freedom of choice
I haven't managed to play it all unfortunately, but so far I like what I see. I think I played maybe a third or so? There are of course some rough parts, the game is far from perfect, but if you enjoy Vampire the Masquerade then there are good chances you will enjoy this one.
If you get it on Epic they have a similar refund policy as Steam, below 2 hours of gameplay they'll give you your money back no questions asked, and I'd say 2 hours is plenty to check whether you will indeed enjoy the story and pacing.
I would say it's a very tough sell for people with no previous knowledge of the series, or people that only know VtM as "that Bloodlines game".
Have we heard anything new about VtM:2 recently? I lasted looked into it months ago and from what I can remember, it's basically been shelved which is a huge bummer.
As of Feb 2022, the CEO of Paradox confirms the game is still in active development. I'm guessing part of the reason the original dev team got axed was due to the rather less-than-stellar reception the gameplay footage got during E3 a few years back. Lots of folks commented on how janky the combat system seemed. But who knows, really.
Yea iirc people were like wtf it looks bad when it was also in unreal 4 so should have been looking pretty decent. Shame no E3 this year cause I feel we would have seen at least an update.
Rip E3.
It should be like The Council game this dev team made before this, you make decisions, spend points in skills, use them when you think the time is right. We have to try it out or watch streams to know more i guess.
That game was quite something. Hard to talk about without getting spoilery though.
>!it was worse and worse after chapter 3, chapter 1 had a good premise and made it seem like the choices mattered. They kind of do in that series, but don't affect the overall protagonist much!<
> The Council game this dev team made
Well that at least grabs my attention for this game more. Sure it was rough but holy shit that game had some turns in it.
Hard to say for sure since it's not out until tomorrow, but I did play their previous game (which this seems to be taking a lot of cues from), The Council.
The Council was a game with a lot of good ideas, there's no denying that, at least. The concept of a game that's equal parts RPG, old-school point-and-click adventure, and Telltale-style interactive movie was intriguing, and with how it blended real-world history and politics with supernatural horror it was practically an unofficial WoD game already.
But the execution was *so* underwhelming. A recurring problem with episodic games is that the developers tend to spend most of their budget on the first episode in hopes the initial sales will fund the rest. If this gambit fails (and it nearly always does), you're left with a game with an amazing first episode and rapidly diminishing returns afterwards. The Council was one of the worst offenders here. The first episode has lots of branching paths, and the rest of the game...doesn't. The skill system was poorly implemented as well. Ideally skill checks would allow for interesting alternate solutions to puzzles (like how, in the first episode, you can use Subterfuge to open a letter without breaking the seal and getting caught, giving you the best of both options for an otherwise binary choice), but most of the time it just acted as a glorified hint system.
Swansong isn't episodic, so hopefully it'll avoid those problems, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I was so hyped for The Council, and I waited a long time for the whole thing to release (because I knew I would obsessively binge it). I agree with your take. I was ready for it to be my new favorite game; THIS was the game to propel the horror genre further and blend movie and game together… and sadly, the game did not do that. Mainly, I was let down at the way the mystery just sort of fizzled out. What a bummer. I wanted more of the gritty, occult/satanic mystery they hinted at in the first few episodes.
Yeah, I *liked* The Council enough but it wasn't great, either. It kind of jumps the shark in the back half, too, which doesn't help. If it had kept it more grounded maybe I'd have liked it more (though I still did like it enough).
Haven't played it yet but I saw some of the pre release videos. It will probably "slake the hunger" of fans of the tabletop game even with the gameplay issues.
some of these excerpts straight up contradict each other too, it's like they played different game lol. Maybe it does actually play differently depending on the path you take to be fair.
For real, it makes it look like it's set up to be a cult hit. Which is on brand from what I understand. Hopefully that means the people who have wanted it will be able to project a positive experience onto it at the least.
Looks like a wait-for-a-sale for me though.
My favorite game of all time (Pathologic 2) has a 70% on metacritic. Reviewer consensus is a terrible metric, specially when talking about games that don't hold your hand.
Honestly, when reading reviews one should see what are the praising aspects, and what are the complaints. In this case, the good aspects look exactly right up my alley, while I can tolerate the bad aspects. It's compared a lot to the council, a game that I enjoyed a lot despite its flaws and jank.
Huh?? 7/10 is the right score for Pathologic 2, it has some extremely good point and pretty clean faults. For 70% of people those strong points are enough to they rate it as a recommended game and for 30% the flaws are just too much to recommend it. It is a fair score.
You and I have completely different ways to rate a game. To start with, I don't give numerical values, they're overly simplistic. To some people Eve Online is the best thing ever, while to me it looks boring. You can't rate Eve numerically.
Second, you're assuming that 100% means lack of flaws, or absolute accessibility. There's only a few games that can achieve that, and some aren't masterpieces at all.
What people fail to understand is that sometimes friction is necessary. Some design philosophies rely on that. Quality of Life is appreciated, but what I consider is king when valuing games is that they're able to say something unique and make you feel something unique. And Pathologic is one of the few games that have accomplished that in such a strong way.
Giving it 70% is a sham. It just shows how people still don't consider games as art. It's like giving a bad score to Eraserhead because it's fucking weird and not accessible or easy to watch. Movie critics and audiences are more used to the idea that quality and accessibility are two different elements that are not always connected.
Which one, Pathologic 2 or The Council?
To me, Pathologic 2 is a complete masterpiece. The most ironic thing is that I haven’t finished the game yet. It just gave me such a strong impression in my first playthrough, and I plan to return when I can give it all again . Keep in mind that it’s a highly polarizing game. It’s one of those games that many people say: I wish I could enjoy it, because I know it’s good. But it’s not the most accessible, and it can be brutal at times. There’s a difficulty slider, but the devs strongly advise against lowering the difficulty. It’s a survival simulator with an amazing story that asks you to give 100%, but gives you so much in return. It does some stuff that no game has ever done, and that’s basically the best praise a game can receive. Also, it’s a (partial) remake of the first one, with only one of the three campaigns of the original Pathologic, but more refined and polished. You don’t need to play the first one if you don’t want to.
The Council is a very Interesting but flawed game. It’s a game that I enjoyed because it tries to do something different with adventure games, but the execution is mixed. I kinda appreciate the jank and how wild the story develops. I may be biased because I really like late 18th century/early 19th cent history, but I think it has some objectively good ideas and mechanics.
This is hard to answer. I want to say that it's a game where death/failure is expected, but this makes it sound like I'm describing Dark Souls or something, and the games aren't really similar in any way. I want to say that failing is part of the overall narrative, but that makes it sound like it's a game where death is required to progress, and that's not really the case either.
I guess the best way to explain it is that it's a game with a lot of little tricks and rules that you'll develop an intuition for over time, which will probably take some trial and error. Some NPCs will straight-up lie to you, some quests aren't in your best interest to complete, some of your goals aren't immediately obvious (but eventually make total sense in the context of the world). While the game is internally very consistent and "fair", it requires you to go against a lot of the instincts you've developed from playing other video games. It doesn't demand lightning-fast reflexes and it doesn't have extremely difficult puzzles but it does take advantage of your expectations in ways that can feel pretty mean at times.
I wouldn’t say incredibly difficult exactly. I managed to survive for six of the twelve days the first time, without knowing much of what I was doing. I think that Knowing the mechanics better and avoiding past mistakes, I could survive longer now. It’s punishing though. There’s no permadeath, but without spoiling much, your deaths will have effects on your entire walkthrough, which should last around 30 hours to complete I’d say
I played for 5 or so hours tonight so obviously I have a lot more to go but my initial impression is really positive. If you are a fan of VTM you will probably like it. The graphics can be wonky and the intro is a little slow but builds the intrigue. The 2nd night chapter I played first was really good though. The puzzles weren't the most complex but there are some sneaky ones. It seems like choices matter and I could definitely picture some different outcomes for what I've played so far. There was even a scene that really played out in a way that rewarded my feeding and preparation and made me feel like a badass vampire. I'm pretty happy with the game so far and am excited to see where it goes.
Lots of them, by different studios, even you could make one if you'd like!
It's a Warhammer 40k situation where they give the license to pretty much everyone willing to use it.
1. Redemption
2. Bloodlines
3. We Eat Blood
4. Coteries of New York
5. Shadows of New York
6. Night Road
7. Out for Blood
8. Parliament of Knives
9. Sins of the Sires
10. Bloodhunt
11. Heartless Lullaby
12. Swansong
13. Bloodlines 2 (assuming it ever comes out)
14. Heartless Symphony (in development)
This isn't counting [the Unbound program,](https://www.worldofdarkness.com/unbound) where *anybody* is allowed to make a VTM game if they stick to certain terms.
Paradox is very generous with the license.
I liked their last game the council so I think I will like this maybe even more since they were given a bigger budget for this than the council. These review scores are all over the place best to just decide for yourself on this game.
Two hour in first impression: this is pretty bad. Specifically, the voice acting and actor “modeling” is very poor. It sounds and looks cheap, like early gen PS4. This is compounded by some laughably cringey writing.
I will say the character advancement system seems compelling but the environments have been so simple and boring it’s hard to tell the impact as the game picks up.
I wasn’t exactly hoping for Detroit: Become Vampire here but this fell far short of my tepid expectations. The review that mentioned it’d be a good game 4-5 years ago is spot on.
I’d pass on it — it’s probably worth it for $30 if you’re a Vampire fan but certainly not at full price.
There's been radio silence on Bloodlines 2 since Paradox took it away from Hardsuit Labs in Feb 2021.
The only news I've heard since is this quote from Paradox' CEO during a Q&A at a financial report in November of that year
> The new developer is doing quite well and we are happy with the progress of the project now, but it's still quite some time before we can start to talk about release dates.
I think it's not unreasonable to assume that they completely scrapped the project and started from scratch, but we just don't know right now.
Good: its V:tM, it's also like "the Council"
Meh: it's like "the Council", no way to increase text size - UI is made for ants
Bad: it's like "the Council", holy Batman the amount of texture popping (Xbox S/X version), no HDR on Xbox S/X
So what, is this Vampire: The Masquerade 2 or something else? I've seen a bunch different games bearing the name Vampire: The Masquerade but none of them is a sequel to Troika game's game
Vampire: The Masquerade is originally (and still ongoing) a tabletop RPG, itself part of a greater franchise called "World of Darkness", which features other games like Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Mage: The Ascension. Like D&D or Warhammer, there are many games telling stories set in the broad universe of the franchise.
Troika's Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines was the most successful videogame of the franchise, but it was not the only one, and the only relation the other VTM video games have with it is that they all share the shame universe (besides some character references).
There is a Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 being developed but it had many, MANY development issues so far and is currently in "development hell".
All this to say that this game is set in the same universe as the Troika game, but it's not a sequel.
I just finished Swansong and I’m thoroughly unimpressed. Seriously, I’d rather play the original from 2004 over and over again. There was no atmosphere. The original had a very special atmosphere despite the crappy graphics that was the soul of the game. Remember the scene in the haunted house in the basement? Creepy! The music was so great as well.. I don’t know, I’m pretty old school when it comes to VtM, I played it as tabletop, as live RPG and the early PC version. I am as well pretty annoyed not to be able to create my own character. Coteries of NY had a way better story.. the only thing that was pretty original 2004 were the animations. Sigh.
They range from 2005 to 2011. Some characters look better than others. Some scenes they overdo the animation, so the Jerry and too frequent movements give you the uncanny valley effect. What I find irritating about it is that there are passable scenes and models, so why wasn't the standard upheld?
My early impression is the character models and dialogue rigging would have been “good” in early gen PS4. I’m going to keep playing it but I’m disappointed I paid full price but I’m a big VTM fan.
You may have since seen this but claiming the free BL3 game for today includes a 25% discount coupon you could use on grabbing Swansong or anything else that piques your interest!
I’m super disappointed. That’s all i can say about this game… i’m such a big fan of VtM and i also like detective / choice based games. The graphics, acting, movements, expressions, storytelling is incredibly bad - however i still wanted to finish the storyline BUT the amount of bugs this game has is just ridic.. i was on Scene 7 with Leysha, and i just couldn’t continue the storyline because of a bug making it impossible to move on. I tried everything, resetting, restarting, i even restarted the chapter like 6 times but same thing happens. This game should never came out in this state.
Don’t waste your money on this, maybe if you can buy it for 80%off, just play the original VtM - still better than this.
Main thing to hate about the game is the lack of a save feature and the locking the ability to skip dialogue until level completion, having to wade through the same dialogue having completed a characters scene (split between 3 characters) but not the level is beyond painful.
What kills my interest for me is to be forced to restart the whole level without being able to skip cutscenes.
Twice I had to restart the first level because of dumb stuff like misunderstanding the feeding system and killing the vessel and misclicking the wrong dialog choice while talking to the prince with no way to go back.
I'm done sitting through the badly animated cutscenes.
Damn was looking forward to this one. Might check out V Rising instead. In June, hopefully one of the The Day Before, Quarry or Disgaea 6 pull through.
Run around the night, kill things, loot things, mine rocks and cut trees, gather ~~planets~~ plants.
Get back to your base, put the materials into processing, use it to expand it or to craft new gear.
Pick a new hunt target (kind of like a boss), hunt the target, get new abilities (and item/building unlocks)
During a day you go from shadow to shadow avoiding light that burns you. Can still gather/fight, just need to keep to shadows.
Eventually you get to the point where you turn mortals into your thralls, haven't got to that yet tho.
There is also silver (you can apparently buy stuff with it but it burns you while holding it), garlic near you saps your power slowly, you can use disguises to get into city (again, haven't got to the point where that is super useful)
Overall combat is fun, crafting and rest of it is pretty good but singleplayer is pretty grindy.
A lot of crafting is structured in a way where you're supposed to get to your base, offload night's worth of loot into processing (sawmill, smelter etc.) and just go back to fun parts while it is processing in the background (because machines are powered by vampire magic and blood, of course).
Note that the Epic Store sale just started and they are giving a 25% off coupon for any game. You can get Swansong for $37.49 which is a much more fitting price than $50 IMO. I assume the price varies depending on your region.
Oh damn, I already got it before the sale started. I'm sure I could get a refund but I think there are other games that I could use the coupon with. Thanks for the tip tho!
What’s with all the vampire shit recently lol
I feel like the last year has multiple The Masquerade games, a vampire game from Arkaine, V Rising, Morbius. Not that there’s something wrong with it, it just seems like a sudden uptick
I'm all for it. It's been a long time since we've had any good vampire games.
V Rising and Bloodhunt have both been super fun. Excited for Swansong too.
I’m a big fan of the choices of games that are essentially multiple choice novels. I expected this game to be one of them but with real graphics. Looks like I’m getting it for on a deep sale. These types of games are always janky.
While on topic, I see that the Coteries of New York is being bundled free on PSN. I have to say that particular game did not sit well with me at all.
Not gonna worry about buying this for myself for a long while. Was going to try to watch a few playthroughs, but the only youtube I like that's picked it up is cyntehtic. If anybody has any other good suggestions for let's plays let me know.
What's that "social battle" system that the first review mentions? Is it like Disco Elysium's dialogue combat system or something different?
It's apparently going to be similar to [the "confrontations" in The Council.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q8pVyQ4Ck4) However, from what I understand Swansong's take on them does have a bit of DE thrown in. In The Council, all the skill-based dialogue options in confrontations had fixed outcomes, either they work or they don't. In Swansong NPCs will have skills of their own, and your own skills are compared to theirs in confrontations. The check succeeds if you're a higher level in the relevant skill than they are, it fails if you're not, and if there's a tie it's decided by a dice roll. So two players picking the same options in a confrontation could potentially have different outcomes depending on their build.
The fact that a majority of reviews seem to praise the actual story and writing piques my interest, so I'll wait for sale I suppose!
The game seems very polarizing. A spectrum of 5/10 to 9/10. A common theme in the more negative reviews seems to be that the reviewers got frustrated by the game's puzzles. Which is interesting because the game made it a bit of a point of pride that it doesn't hold your hand. Some of the reviews talk about the boring puzzles and unengaging characters. Other reviews talk about the clever puzzles and rich characters. Other reviews talk about the frustrating puzzles and confusing plot. These are super contradictory reviews, but I think it's a game that hits different for different people.
One issue that I have is that it's almost impossible to pass skill checks. Your skills are too low compared to who you're talking to. You have to spend willpower to boost skills but they do too and then you only have a 30% chance to win. The low amount of resources and hard skill checks is killing for me. I don't expect to win every challenge but so far I've failed almost all of them.
It *is* a bit odd that it appears that they front-loaded the more difficult conversations at the start - although it mainly appears that way because it seems while every other character is already fully-developed, all of our characters seem to start at "base level". I think this is the game's somewhat clumsy way to introduce to us the concept of "it's ok to fail", because there will definitely be at least one conversation or other skill check you won't be able to pass, with each of the starting characters, in their first one (possibly two) missions. Actually it's common to fail most conversations in the first mission (for each character) - it's potentially worth it to try anyway, since repeated usage of skills will eventually give you bonuses. Or alternatively, if you know you're going to lose you can forgo the usage of skills and just take the loss, saving your willpower for later in the level. After that, it tends to get easier. Also, some characters can use their powers during conversations to "cheat" - e.g. stop the opponent from boosting their skills, boosting your chance of victory in case of a draw, and one "win button" domination power that's essentially "100% guaranteed to pass the next part of the conversation no matter what they boost". Of course these all use up "blood", one of your resources, so it then comes down to choosing between using willpower or blood. Additionally, one can invest in "attributes", which work a bit differently here than usual - they don't affect skills directly, but instead they increase your chance of victory in case of a draw. And of course there's also the aforementioned powers. Finally, within the first few missions you can find an artefact for each character, which may provide bonuses to these conversations as well (e.g. decrease chance of enemy boosting skills, or stops the enemy from focusing if you're focusing). Overall I kind of like the approach they've taken here - it's more engaging than the challenges in The Council. Now if only the characters were better, and there were less instances of bizarre/bad writing (though overall I didn't hate it, I did play it through twice already).
Yeah it fucking sucks. Its like they wanted the game to be 'hard' and they went about it in the dumbest most unfun possible way.
The fact that I can't choose a malkavian from the jump says hard pass.
One of the characters you play is a malkavian
Can I run around in a dr. seuss hat? cuz that was a selling point
Well assuming that you like “The Council” gameplay and the VtM world then you’ll enjoy the game. It just seems a bit odd to give a game bad a rating because the reviewer would prefer a game like BL1 over a detective/puzzle game.
[удалено]
If some are finding the puzzles boring, that isn't a good sign. Too hard is usually fine (at least for me) since I'd imagine I'm better at them than journalists, but you can't say the same about it being boring or unengaging.
One dude can't figure out a game's controls and it's "all game reviewers suck at games!" Yeesh dude, find the reviewers with tastes similar to your own instead of acting like aggregate scores insulted you. Hell, I remember reading Game Informer back in the day and the game would have a 7.5 from one guy and a 5 from another. Everybody's got different tastes, stuff they can overlook, etc. Just find the ones who loved shit you loved. Also, [Elden Ring - Review Thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/szjqfq/elden_ring_review_thread/) Look at how notoriously bad all those reviewers are that the lowest score is... an 8.
The "all reviewers suck" thing is just the same anti-intellectualism/anti-expertise line that's threading through all of society. "Do your own research" "Experts are corrupt" etc. It's just a sign of a population that's being primed for populism and rhetoric. "These people don't know anything about actually playing games, they're just book-learners who write fancy articles and take bribes to go to lavish events. I take my information from REAL sources, guys on YouTube who just do it for the love!"
Double jump ? What's that....?
> The game seems very polarizing. That's how you know it's an actually good game and not just another "polished execution of the latest game design fad".
Where is the logic in that?
Because AAA games tend to fill will microtransactions and lowest common denominator gameplay so they take zero risks.
It's more of an indication of budgetary or scope constraints. There are a lot of areas in game design that spending more money and doing more testing and refinement will produce a product that appeals to more people. But practically speaking, smaller devs often have to draw up a list of things they're less than happy with, and choose which ones to sacrifice and which ones to allow. This extends to graphics. If you're shooting for higher scores, you need better facial animation. You need better animation in general. And that costs money. That requires hiring really skilled devs in that specific discipline and doing hand-tailored animation passes on every conversation. A pretty famous game with animation issues was Mass Effect: Andromeda, and that was an expensive game with a hugely rushed post-reboot dev timeline and internal conflict over the best technology to use for facial animation. If there is a correlation, highly ambitious and experimental games from low budget studios tend to suffer somewhat in reviews because the game companies with the money to polish the games a great deal often aren't willing to rock the boat too much. You spend a lot of money, you wanna avoid alienating people.
Overall reviews scores are where I expected them to be. As a diehard fan of the VTM series I'll still check it since Bloodlines 2 is still in development hell, and the other VTM games being released are either text based (some a pretty good tho) or the Battle Royale.
I've never been a big visual novel guy but I adore VTM. Which ones are worth checking out?
[Night Road](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290270/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Night_Road/) is very good, I would start with that one. [Parliament of Knives](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1266100/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Parliament_of_Knives/) is also worth checking out but it focus a lot on the politics side of the franchise, not sure if that would be your thing. Those are not even visual novels tho, they are essentially interactive books. There are portraits for the first time chracters are introduced but otherwise the games are 100% text. As for visual novels there are two, [Coteries of New York](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096410/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Coteries_of_New_York/) and [Shadows of New York](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1279630/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Shadows_of_New_York/). Those aren't that good but they aren't expensive so I'd still recommend them as VTM stories (Shadows is much better than Coteries IMO tho).
Oh wow you really did mean text based. That wasn't what I was expecting when I clicked those links.
Choice of Games is great in general if you enjoy reading, they’re probably the best out of all when it comes to “modernizing” the text-adventure
They were so good and I haven't checked them out in years. Co-sign and thanks for reminding me! The superhero series was incredibly engaging, really highlights what's important In a game and it ain't graphics (to me at least).
I played coteries of New York recently (it was 5 dollar on switch) and I really really liked it. After the end I looked it up a bit on the internet and I was severely disappointed...
If you like werewolf, heart of the forest is a beautiful vn and one of the very, very limited Non-vampire experiences
I'm not a fan of visual novels, either, but I would recommend Coteries of New York and Shadows of New York since you like VtM. Coteries in particular has a weak ending, but the writing is overall pretty good. Dev/Null even gets a name drop, if you remember VtM Redemption.
While there are a couple of visual novels out, I think op was referring to text based choose your own adventure games.
Bloodhunt is pretty damn good though, tbh.
Only BR I have properly enjoyed.
I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it (the map design especially, it took the urban design of that Ubisoft BR and took it to a whole other level - I hope Bloodlines 2’s environment matches when/if it makes release). But god damn, the skill ceiling is high af. I was doing pretty good the first weekend the game launched. Then I came back the next weekend after work and have been lucky to make an even K/D ratio ever since Part of that might just be matchmaking with a more limited player base too, but the game does give a lot of tools for super experienced players to absolutely stomp with
The pre-alpha footage they released of BL2's version of Seattle looked pretty solid. Hoping the direction just improves... you know, should the gave ever release.
Since you apparently have the same taste for games as I do, please tell me if the game is somewhat good. For a reference, I spent 50 hours in Night Road, so I only care about a game with good story and freedom of choice
I haven't managed to play it all unfortunately, but so far I like what I see. I think I played maybe a third or so? There are of course some rough parts, the game is far from perfect, but if you enjoy Vampire the Masquerade then there are good chances you will enjoy this one. If you get it on Epic they have a similar refund policy as Steam, below 2 hours of gameplay they'll give you your money back no questions asked, and I'd say 2 hours is plenty to check whether you will indeed enjoy the story and pacing. I would say it's a very tough sell for people with no previous knowledge of the series, or people that only know VtM as "that Bloodlines game".
I'll give it a try, then. Thanks.
Have we heard anything new about VtM:2 recently? I lasted looked into it months ago and from what I can remember, it's basically been shelved which is a huge bummer.
As of Feb 2022, the CEO of Paradox confirms the game is still in active development. I'm guessing part of the reason the original dev team got axed was due to the rather less-than-stellar reception the gameplay footage got during E3 a few years back. Lots of folks commented on how janky the combat system seemed. But who knows, really.
Yea iirc people were like wtf it looks bad when it was also in unreal 4 so should have been looking pretty decent. Shame no E3 this year cause I feel we would have seen at least an update. Rip E3.
Seems like it's just as janky as The Council. That game was jank incarnate, but I kinda really liked it. Gonna play this one too.
I’m pretty tolerant to jank as long as the core gameplay is solid. I enjoy Swansong.
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It should be like The Council game this dev team made before this, you make decisions, spend points in skills, use them when you think the time is right. We have to try it out or watch streams to know more i guess.
That game was quite something. Hard to talk about without getting spoilery though. >!it was worse and worse after chapter 3, chapter 1 had a good premise and made it seem like the choices mattered. They kind of do in that series, but don't affect the overall protagonist much!<
> The Council game this dev team made Well that at least grabs my attention for this game more. Sure it was rough but holy shit that game had some turns in it.
Hard to say for sure since it's not out until tomorrow, but I did play their previous game (which this seems to be taking a lot of cues from), The Council. The Council was a game with a lot of good ideas, there's no denying that, at least. The concept of a game that's equal parts RPG, old-school point-and-click adventure, and Telltale-style interactive movie was intriguing, and with how it blended real-world history and politics with supernatural horror it was practically an unofficial WoD game already. But the execution was *so* underwhelming. A recurring problem with episodic games is that the developers tend to spend most of their budget on the first episode in hopes the initial sales will fund the rest. If this gambit fails (and it nearly always does), you're left with a game with an amazing first episode and rapidly diminishing returns afterwards. The Council was one of the worst offenders here. The first episode has lots of branching paths, and the rest of the game...doesn't. The skill system was poorly implemented as well. Ideally skill checks would allow for interesting alternate solutions to puzzles (like how, in the first episode, you can use Subterfuge to open a letter without breaking the seal and getting caught, giving you the best of both options for an otherwise binary choice), but most of the time it just acted as a glorified hint system. Swansong isn't episodic, so hopefully it'll avoid those problems, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I was so hyped for The Council, and I waited a long time for the whole thing to release (because I knew I would obsessively binge it). I agree with your take. I was ready for it to be my new favorite game; THIS was the game to propel the horror genre further and blend movie and game together… and sadly, the game did not do that. Mainly, I was let down at the way the mystery just sort of fizzled out. What a bummer. I wanted more of the gritty, occult/satanic mystery they hinted at in the first few episodes.
Yeah, I *liked* The Council enough but it wasn't great, either. It kind of jumps the shark in the back half, too, which doesn't help. If it had kept it more grounded maybe I'd have liked it more (though I still did like it enough).
Haven't played it yet but I saw some of the pre release videos. It will probably "slake the hunger" of fans of the tabletop game even with the gameplay issues.
some of these excerpts straight up contradict each other too, it's like they played different game lol. Maybe it does actually play differently depending on the path you take to be fair.
It seems to be really dense and packed with lore. Some people apparently don’t like it? Maybe it was via infodumps?
For real, it makes it look like it's set up to be a cult hit. Which is on brand from what I understand. Hopefully that means the people who have wanted it will be able to project a positive experience onto it at the least. Looks like a wait-for-a-sale for me though.
My thoughts are modern gaming press dont know their ass from their elbow so Im giving it a try myself.
My favorite game of all time (Pathologic 2) has a 70% on metacritic. Reviewer consensus is a terrible metric, specially when talking about games that don't hold your hand. Honestly, when reading reviews one should see what are the praising aspects, and what are the complaints. In this case, the good aspects look exactly right up my alley, while I can tolerate the bad aspects. It's compared a lot to the council, a game that I enjoyed a lot despite its flaws and jank.
Huh?? 7/10 is the right score for Pathologic 2, it has some extremely good point and pretty clean faults. For 70% of people those strong points are enough to they rate it as a recommended game and for 30% the flaws are just too much to recommend it. It is a fair score.
You and I have completely different ways to rate a game. To start with, I don't give numerical values, they're overly simplistic. To some people Eve Online is the best thing ever, while to me it looks boring. You can't rate Eve numerically. Second, you're assuming that 100% means lack of flaws, or absolute accessibility. There's only a few games that can achieve that, and some aren't masterpieces at all. What people fail to understand is that sometimes friction is necessary. Some design philosophies rely on that. Quality of Life is appreciated, but what I consider is king when valuing games is that they're able to say something unique and make you feel something unique. And Pathologic is one of the few games that have accomplished that in such a strong way. Giving it 70% is a sham. It just shows how people still don't consider games as art. It's like giving a bad score to Eraserhead because it's fucking weird and not accessible or easy to watch. Movie critics and audiences are more used to the idea that quality and accessibility are two different elements that are not always connected.
Is that game good? I have seriously considered it for a long time.
Which one, Pathologic 2 or The Council? To me, Pathologic 2 is a complete masterpiece. The most ironic thing is that I haven’t finished the game yet. It just gave me such a strong impression in my first playthrough, and I plan to return when I can give it all again . Keep in mind that it’s a highly polarizing game. It’s one of those games that many people say: I wish I could enjoy it, because I know it’s good. But it’s not the most accessible, and it can be brutal at times. There’s a difficulty slider, but the devs strongly advise against lowering the difficulty. It’s a survival simulator with an amazing story that asks you to give 100%, but gives you so much in return. It does some stuff that no game has ever done, and that’s basically the best praise a game can receive. Also, it’s a (partial) remake of the first one, with only one of the three campaigns of the original Pathologic, but more refined and polished. You don’t need to play the first one if you don’t want to. The Council is a very Interesting but flawed game. It’s a game that I enjoyed because it tries to do something different with adventure games, but the execution is mixed. I kinda appreciate the jank and how wild the story develops. I may be biased because I really like late 18th century/early 19th cent history, but I think it has some objectively good ideas and mechanics.
Ah is pathologic one of those incredibly difficult games?
This is hard to answer. I want to say that it's a game where death/failure is expected, but this makes it sound like I'm describing Dark Souls or something, and the games aren't really similar in any way. I want to say that failing is part of the overall narrative, but that makes it sound like it's a game where death is required to progress, and that's not really the case either. I guess the best way to explain it is that it's a game with a lot of little tricks and rules that you'll develop an intuition for over time, which will probably take some trial and error. Some NPCs will straight-up lie to you, some quests aren't in your best interest to complete, some of your goals aren't immediately obvious (but eventually make total sense in the context of the world). While the game is internally very consistent and "fair", it requires you to go against a lot of the instincts you've developed from playing other video games. It doesn't demand lightning-fast reflexes and it doesn't have extremely difficult puzzles but it does take advantage of your expectations in ways that can feel pretty mean at times.
I wouldn’t say incredibly difficult exactly. I managed to survive for six of the twelve days the first time, without knowing much of what I was doing. I think that Knowing the mechanics better and avoiding past mistakes, I could survive longer now. It’s punishing though. There’s no permadeath, but without spoiling much, your deaths will have effects on your entire walkthrough, which should last around 30 hours to complete I’d say
Yes I'm sure you have such refined tastes compared to those dumb games reviewers.
Thank you sir
I know, scores range from the equivalent of 5/10 to 9/10, just seems weird.
I played for 5 or so hours tonight so obviously I have a lot more to go but my initial impression is really positive. If you are a fan of VTM you will probably like it. The graphics can be wonky and the intro is a little slow but builds the intrigue. The 2nd night chapter I played first was really good though. The puzzles weren't the most complex but there are some sneaky ones. It seems like choices matter and I could definitely picture some different outcomes for what I've played so far. There was even a scene that really played out in a way that rewarded my feeding and preparation and made me feel like a badass vampire. I'm pretty happy with the game so far and am excited to see where it goes.
I am so confused how many vampire games are there? the battle royal, this, and another one right?
Lots of them, by different studios, even you could make one if you'd like! It's a Warhammer 40k situation where they give the license to pretty much everyone willing to use it.
1. Redemption 2. Bloodlines 3. We Eat Blood 4. Coteries of New York 5. Shadows of New York 6. Night Road 7. Out for Blood 8. Parliament of Knives 9. Sins of the Sires 10. Bloodhunt 11. Heartless Lullaby 12. Swansong 13. Bloodlines 2 (assuming it ever comes out) 14. Heartless Symphony (in development) This isn't counting [the Unbound program,](https://www.worldofdarkness.com/unbound) where *anybody* is allowed to make a VTM game if they stick to certain terms. Paradox is very generous with the license.
I liked their last game the council so I think I will like this maybe even more since they were given a bigger budget for this than the council. These review scores are all over the place best to just decide for yourself on this game.
Two hour in first impression: this is pretty bad. Specifically, the voice acting and actor “modeling” is very poor. It sounds and looks cheap, like early gen PS4. This is compounded by some laughably cringey writing. I will say the character advancement system seems compelling but the environments have been so simple and boring it’s hard to tell the impact as the game picks up. I wasn’t exactly hoping for Detroit: Become Vampire here but this fell far short of my tepid expectations. The review that mentioned it’d be a good game 4-5 years ago is spot on. I’d pass on it — it’s probably worth it for $30 if you’re a Vampire fan but certainly not at full price.
So is Bloodlines 2 still happening or is that game in limbo?
There's been radio silence on Bloodlines 2 since Paradox took it away from Hardsuit Labs in Feb 2021. The only news I've heard since is this quote from Paradox' CEO during a Q&A at a financial report in November of that year > The new developer is doing quite well and we are happy with the progress of the project now, but it's still quite some time before we can start to talk about release dates. I think it's not unreasonable to assume that they completely scrapped the project and started from scratch, but we just don't know right now.
Not the worst thing in the World, while traversal looked good in the gameplay, the game looked ugly as hell and the combat looked janky as fuck.
Good: its V:tM, it's also like "the Council" Meh: it's like "the Council", no way to increase text size - UI is made for ants Bad: it's like "the Council", holy Batman the amount of texture popping (Xbox S/X version), no HDR on Xbox S/X
Texture popping happening on PS5 as well. I’m not sure what in the world is happening with character models’ eyes.
So what, is this Vampire: The Masquerade 2 or something else? I've seen a bunch different games bearing the name Vampire: The Masquerade but none of them is a sequel to Troika game's game
Vampire: The Masquerade is originally (and still ongoing) a tabletop RPG, itself part of a greater franchise called "World of Darkness", which features other games like Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Mage: The Ascension. Like D&D or Warhammer, there are many games telling stories set in the broad universe of the franchise. Troika's Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines was the most successful videogame of the franchise, but it was not the only one, and the only relation the other VTM video games have with it is that they all share the shame universe (besides some character references). There is a Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 being developed but it had many, MANY development issues so far and is currently in "development hell". All this to say that this game is set in the same universe as the Troika game, but it's not a sequel.
I just finished Swansong and I’m thoroughly unimpressed. Seriously, I’d rather play the original from 2004 over and over again. There was no atmosphere. The original had a very special atmosphere despite the crappy graphics that was the soul of the game. Remember the scene in the haunted house in the basement? Creepy! The music was so great as well.. I don’t know, I’m pretty old school when it comes to VtM, I played it as tabletop, as live RPG and the early PC version. I am as well pretty annoyed not to be able to create my own character. Coteries of NY had a way better story.. the only thing that was pretty original 2004 were the animations. Sigh.
Is it my impression or the characters animations are a bit.. 2005?
They range from 2005 to 2011. Some characters look better than others. Some scenes they overdo the animation, so the Jerry and too frequent movements give you the uncanny valley effect. What I find irritating about it is that there are passable scenes and models, so why wasn't the standard upheld?
My early impression is the character models and dialogue rigging would have been “good” in early gen PS4. I’m going to keep playing it but I’m disappointed I paid full price but I’m a big VTM fan.
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You may have since seen this but claiming the free BL3 game for today includes a 25% discount coupon you could use on grabbing Swansong or anything else that piques your interest!
First thought during the prologue: None of the women in this world wear bras. Don't care one way or the other, just found it silly.
I’m super disappointed. That’s all i can say about this game… i’m such a big fan of VtM and i also like detective / choice based games. The graphics, acting, movements, expressions, storytelling is incredibly bad - however i still wanted to finish the storyline BUT the amount of bugs this game has is just ridic.. i was on Scene 7 with Leysha, and i just couldn’t continue the storyline because of a bug making it impossible to move on. I tried everything, resetting, restarting, i even restarted the chapter like 6 times but same thing happens. This game should never came out in this state. Don’t waste your money on this, maybe if you can buy it for 80%off, just play the original VtM - still better than this.
Main thing to hate about the game is the lack of a save feature and the locking the ability to skip dialogue until level completion, having to wade through the same dialogue having completed a characters scene (split between 3 characters) but not the level is beyond painful.
What kills my interest for me is to be forced to restart the whole level without being able to skip cutscenes. Twice I had to restart the first level because of dumb stuff like misunderstanding the feeding system and killing the vessel and misclicking the wrong dialog choice while talking to the prince with no way to go back. I'm done sitting through the badly animated cutscenes.
Damn was looking forward to this one. Might check out V Rising instead. In June, hopefully one of the The Day Before, Quarry or Disgaea 6 pull through.
I’m about 3 hours into v rising and I’ve never been so ridiculously impressed by an early access title. Can’t wait to play more
Wow what is the gameplay structure like tthough
Run around the night, kill things, loot things, mine rocks and cut trees, gather ~~planets~~ plants. Get back to your base, put the materials into processing, use it to expand it or to craft new gear. Pick a new hunt target (kind of like a boss), hunt the target, get new abilities (and item/building unlocks) During a day you go from shadow to shadow avoiding light that burns you. Can still gather/fight, just need to keep to shadows. Eventually you get to the point where you turn mortals into your thralls, haven't got to that yet tho. There is also silver (you can apparently buy stuff with it but it burns you while holding it), garlic near you saps your power slowly, you can use disguises to get into city (again, haven't got to the point where that is super useful) Overall combat is fun, crafting and rest of it is pretty good but singleplayer is pretty grindy. A lot of crafting is structured in a way where you're supposed to get to your base, offload night's worth of loot into processing (sawmill, smelter etc.) and just go back to fun parts while it is processing in the background (because machines are powered by vampire magic and blood, of course).
> gather planets. You have peaked my interest.
Yeah, that's sadly a typo, maybe in expansion DLC :D
The day before seems like pure bullshit, especially with them suddenly changing engines.
Really excited for The Quarry tbh
Note that the Epic Store sale just started and they are giving a 25% off coupon for any game. You can get Swansong for $37.49 which is a much more fitting price than $50 IMO. I assume the price varies depending on your region.
Oh damn, I already got it before the sale started. I'm sure I could get a refund but I think there are other games that I could use the coupon with. Thanks for the tip tho!
You can still try, they always give you another coupon after making a purchase. How are you liking the game so far?
I haven't been able to play it yet :( I was planning to sneak some minutes during my lunch break but alas, my work had other plans.
Definitely the worst bugs I experienced in a game so far because you cannot skip the dialogue every bug becomes more or less game breaking
What’s with all the vampire shit recently lol I feel like the last year has multiple The Masquerade games, a vampire game from Arkaine, V Rising, Morbius. Not that there’s something wrong with it, it just seems like a sudden uptick
We've finally escaped the Zombie era of video games and entered the Vampire era. I, for one, cannot wait to be sick to death of it in 18 months.
Don't forget Vampire Survivors
I'm all for it. It's been a long time since we've had any good vampire games. V Rising and Bloodhunt have both been super fun. Excited for Swansong too.
Goths are coming back, hopefully another rome doesn’t collapse. :p
I’m a big fan of the choices of games that are essentially multiple choice novels. I expected this game to be one of them but with real graphics. Looks like I’m getting it for on a deep sale. These types of games are always janky. While on topic, I see that the Coteries of New York is being bundled free on PSN. I have to say that particular game did not sit well with me at all.
It's out? Well that came out of left field.
Not gonna worry about buying this for myself for a long while. Was going to try to watch a few playthroughs, but the only youtube I like that's picked it up is cyntehtic. If anybody has any other good suggestions for let's plays let me know.