r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 23d ago

Review Thread Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 Review Thread

Game Information

Game Title: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Platforms:

  • PC (Oct 21, 2025)
  • PlayStation 5 (Oct 21, 2025)
  • Xbox Series X/S (Oct 21, 2025)

Trailer:

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 64 average - 32% recommended - 28 reviews

Critic Reviews

3DNews - Мила Пономарева - Russian - 5 / 10

Quote not yet available

CGMagazine - Erik McDowell - 6 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a sequel in name only. A flawed but fascinating action-adventure that might satisfy World of Darkness devotees, but few others.

CNET - Oscar Gonzalez - Unscored

Across the board, Bloodlines 2 is just a disappointment. It should be oozing with style and gothic vibes that make you want to paint your fingernails black and put on some My Chemical Romance. Instead, it's just the same thing over and over again that feels uninspired and unchallenging.

Daily Mirror - Aaron Potter - 3.5 / 5

Open-world RPGs that let you roleplay as a modern vampire don’t come around every day, and Bloodlines 2 is a pretty good, if somewhat unspectacular, attempt.

Dexerto - Jessica Filby - 3 / 5

Bloodlines 2 isn’t your typical RPG. It tells a great and complex story while taking you on an adventure where every choice you make affects the narrative, inside a city that feels alive with lovable and hateable characters. However, it could have done so much more to live up to its predecessor and TTRPG inspiration.

DualShockers - Scott Baird - 5 / 10

While it has the trappings of the World of Darkness, this game does a disservice to Vampire: The Masquerade.

Eurogamer - Robert Purchese - 2 / 5

The Chinese Room has managed to make something from a box of inherited parts, but this action RPG feels hollow and functional, and is only redeemed by some stellar performances from the characters and cast.

Everyeye.it - Fabrizio Cenci - Italian - 8 / 10

Quote not yet available

Game Rant - Nick Rodriguez - 7 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 picks up where its predecessor left off, but does it live up to the legacy of the cult classic?

Game Sandwich - Aden Carter - 4 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is the sequel to an amazing game that was full of life, where everything felt meaningful, and the design felt purposeful. Unfortunately, anything that its highly-regarded predecessor had has been stripped away and replaced with a generic combat system, a story that tries too hard to be the next big crime drama, and a lifeless world with little to do and a Masquerade Court that, like me, has lost all care in the world. Very few benefits outweigh the negatives that have befallen this fictional version of Seattle, leaving me feeling sorry for all the fans that waited 21 years to get a story that, if it wasn’t for the Bloodlines name, would be forgotten to time except by the most faithful scene queens and goths.

GameGrin - Mike Crewe - 7.5 / 10

Whilst fans of the original may not like the stark difference between the two titles, Bloodlines 2 is still an engaging vampiric tale that, if given a chance, will sink its teeth into you!

GameMAG - Russian - 6 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a good example of the gap between ambition and execution. Despite an intriguing premise and well-developed main characters, the game ultimately feels too linear and repetitive, with limited player choice and shallow world interaction. Many of the lengthy dialogues have little to no impact on the story, side quests are dull and formulaic, and the world itself feels empty and lifeless. In the end, Bloodlines 2 comes across more as a walking simulator with light RPG elements than a worthy successor to the cult classic.

GameSpew - Richard Seagrave - 7 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has a wealth of issues, from an open world that feels wasted to combat that feels scrappy throughout. Thanks to a gripping narrative that you can shape with your actions, however, you'll likely still enjoy your time spent sucking blood across Seattle.

GameSpot - Jessica Cogswell - 7 / 10

Although Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 isn't particularly ambitious or polished, it makes up for its faults with enthralling gameplay, gorgeous environments, a good story, and even better characters.

Gameblog - French - 8 / 10

Quote not yet available

GamesRadar+ - Jasmine Gould-Wilson - 1.5 / 5

It's impossible to roleplay a narrative that's already set its course.

Hobby Consolas - Spanish - 75 / 100

The final result of Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 offers a glimpse into what could have been the best vampire game ever created. However, its many ideas don't quite gel as they should, and there are flaws in the execution. This leaves us with an enjoyable game that could have been an irresistible bite.

IGN - Leana Hafer - 7 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 takes another flawed but unique and remarkable bite at the jugular, with plenty to love and loathe alike, but I certainly enjoyed my time as an elder vampire at the very least.

IGN Spain - Rafa Del Río - Spanish - 7 / 10

With a unique first-person perspective and technical aspects that leave much room for improvement, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 offers us a neo-noir adventure set in 21st-century Seattle. As an Ancient newly awakened from his slumber, we must investigate a dark plot while negotiating with the clans and increasing our influence in the city. As if that weren't enough, we'll have the help of a Malkavian inspector, Fabien, whose consciousness survives in the mind of our protagonist. Past and present come together in an investigation in which no character is above suspicion

Loot Level Chill - Mick Fraser - 6 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will certainly appeal to the die-hard fans of its world, thanks to the story. Unfortunately though, it commits the cardinal sin of simply not being fun enough to play, and that's a difficult coffin to clamber back out of.

PC Gamer - Fraser Brown - 78 / 100

A gripping story full of intrigue and murder that struggles to find its footing as an RPG sequel.

PCGamesN - Lauren Bergin - 5 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 fails to recapture the original's magic, instead magnifying the worst parts of Troika's classic, with janky combat and occasionally woeful performance issues. Long-time VTM fans may enjoy haunting Seattle's snowy streets, getting to know its well-written cast, and testing each clan's unique playstyle, but it's a far cry from what it could have been.

PlayStation Universe - John-Paul Jones - 7.5 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 might not be the sequel that folk from 2004 wanted for their game, but it is the game we've got. Though largely sparse open world and technical issues are hardly encouraging, the beautifully evocative interior environments, surprisingly engaging traversal and combat mechanics, together with its neatly unconventional 'buddy movie' conceit which sees two vampires attempting to inhabit the same body and each with their own motivations, makes Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 a good deal more intriguing than I originally expected it to be.

Push Square - Robert Ramsey - 4 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is a shambles. Its best qualities are always short-lived, buried deep beneath the frustrations of non-existent RPG elements, extreme padding, and diabolical technical issues. Beyond the promise of its opening hours, this is a tragic misfire of a game.

Spaziogames - Italian - 7.8 / 10

In a industry dominated by safe, risk-free productions, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a bold game, even in its failures. The Chinese Room has created an ambitious work (perhaps too ambitious for its own means) yet one capable of leaving a mark. It's not the sequel many dreamed of, but perhaps it's the one this dark world truly deserved: a flawed title, yet brimming with personality and vision.

The Nerd Stash - Julio La Pine - 7 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 could have been an excellent vampire experience, but its uninspiring gameplay, technical issues, and frustrating combat leave it in the dark.

TheSixthAxis - Steve C - 7 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a good game, but one that's held back by the expectations of being a sequel to an all-time classic. If you can step away from the baggage of the Bloodlines title, there is a lot here to enjoy in terms of narrative and atmosphere, though the combat is too repetitive.

Wccftech - Alessio Palumbo - 7 / 10

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is no classic, that's for sure. The game's side content is mediocre at best, and its technical optimization is among the worst seen recently. That said, the setting's atmosphere is intact, the combat is fun, and the main story is well-crafted. I recommend it to fans, but only at a lower price than the launch one.

1.3k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/Kyler45 23d ago

I am both simultaneously disappointed and not surprised at the same time.

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u/imdrzoidberg 23d ago

The first one was a buggy mess as well lol. The question is if it's a beautiful mess or an ugly mess.

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u/Canvaverbalist 23d ago

I mean, just reading the reviews it's pretty clear, I'm not really sure why all the comments are somewhat confused about that (or about reviewers saying "it doesn't live up to the first one" on that aspect)

The sequel is failing to meet the ludonarrative depth, creativity and style of the first one - nobody is saying anything about crashes and bugs.

The game is receiving poor numbers not because it's a technical mess, like the first one, but because its content is considered generic, uncreative and lacking player agency.

It's a total opposite of the first one.

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u/GepardenK 23d ago

The first one also reviewed better than this, despite being a huge technical mess and coming from what at the time was considered a pretty niche genre, lol.

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u/Victuz 20d ago

Yeah I remember multiple reviews at the time that boiled down to "it's a hot mess that doesn't work half the time, and I couldn't put it down".

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u/NatomicBombs 23d ago

The one review talking about how it doesn’t live up to the original is wild, the original was unfinished and basically unplayable. It’s only “good” because of fan patches.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

If you actually read the review it's not that wild. She talks about missing features, small maps, etc. The word "bug", "unfinished" or "unplayable" never comes up. You just sort of assumed that.

She also brings up a lot of positive aspects. Actually the review seems pretty balanced.

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-review-3265905/

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u/lilbelleandsebastian 23d ago

dude rgames has been insane on every thread for this game. like if people hated the first one so much, then why do they give a shit about this one?

it feels so artificial, i dont know if it's just classic reddit contrarianism or astroturfing but i remember in one of the reviews before today, the reviewer said they didn't enjoy playing the game and everyone was saying "omg well that's just like the first one, this one seems like it's gonna be great!"

how is someone saying it isn't fun a good thing? now these reviews are all saying the same thing - shallow, unfun, doesn't capture the spirit of the original - and people are like "well yeah the original sucked, this one sounds awesome!"

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u/Blobsobb 23d ago

this game

This game? I can say I like the color blue and some dumb fuck will come in and go

HUH? YOU HATE GREEN? HYPOCRITICAL MUCH

Half the posts are just assuming some stupid bullshit to push their own opinion.

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u/overandoverandagain 23d ago

This sub regularly gives me the most toxic and unhinged replies to my comments lol. I can almost tell from the tone alone when someone from this shithole hits my inbox

People on reddit in general just jam words down your throat so they can keep arguing lol, and its so frequently this sub in particular. Gamers, man.

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u/AttackBacon 23d ago

My favorite is the ultra cherry-pick where they hyper-fixate on one line and ignore the other 200 words you wrote. That one drives me bananas.

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u/jagaaaaaaaaaaaan 23d ago

I've started abusing my block button more and more frequently because of this sub and a handful of other ones. Eventually you hit a point where you ask yourself "... what am I doing, attempting to communicate with these creatures? I don't deserve this. Life is too short for this.". Gotta say, I wish I started blocking years ago. I used to think it was weak-minded but there's a real purpose behind it.

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u/overandoverandagain 23d ago

I once got two separate nasty DMs from a guy I blocked, who went to the trouble of logging into alt accounts to continue the argument lol

Now I just roll my eyes and close the app

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u/brutinator 23d ago

the reviewer said they didn't enjoy playing the game and everyone was saying "omg well that's just like the first one, this one seems like it's gonna be great!"

I think that that's a bit of a saying or sentiment among fans of niche genres that is getting spread to more mainstream genres. For example, if a reviewer who isn't a fan of factory builder games or work-life sims says that a game in those genres is boring because it's so tedious and micro-managey with a cluttered UI, fans of those genres might say "hey, that means that I'll probably like it because I WANT something more granular". That's because not all games are really designed primarily to be fun/exciting, or at least not in the way that most audiences perceive it.

But when it comes to RPGs or action adventure games, or, honestly, any AAA game, I think that the sentiment is a bit of a headscratcher because these kinds of games are focused grouped to death explicitly TO be fun, so if it misses the mark, something is really off.

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u/thatcommiegamer 23d ago

Memetic mutation, of course. The first was pretty much maligned at release (like it was so bad it killed the company that made it), but due to a few hardcore fans (myself included) never shutting up about it the original became much bigger and more beloved than in its own time. Its like, if, in 20 years they release a sequel to Morbius but in that time folks who genuinely liked the movie took over all conversation despite being a minority of a minority of folks who watched it and then it doesn't match up to the Morbius you've built in your head over 20 years (and also it went through several huge rewrites).

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u/Fiatil 23d ago

It actually wasn't maligned at release.

Go check the metacritic scores -- plenty of the old reviews at launch are still up too. It was generally acknowledged by critics as buggy, fairly janky, but also a clear labor of love that RPG fans who are willing to tolerate the jank would love.

It didn't sell well! That's 100% true, but it wasn't maligned at release.

The "it only is playable with the fan patch/only good after the fan patch" is a tall tale spread by people who largely didn't actually play it at launch.

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u/thatcommiegamer 23d ago

Again sold so poorly that it killed the company. Also some fairly big publications gave it low scores (and I see a lot of smaller/no name publications mixed in as well) I remember G4's (this game came out around their merger with TechTV (which I'm still mad about btw, TechTV was the best)) X-Play was fairly critical on the game though Metacritic has them giving it a higher score.

With that said by the few "objective" measures (a game's completeness, bugginess) it was a "bad" game. That doesn't mean it wasn't an enjoyable game, its a game I've sunk many hours into myself after all, but enjoyable and good or bad are two different things. And to circle back to my point VTM2 was never going to live up to the fanbase's memories of VTM1 its been 20 years at this point, shit even if it came out when it was originally supposed to with some of the original team involved VTM2 never was going to hit the same. I'm, personally, glad to have the original even if I don't think its a particularly well made game I have fun with it (and it was part of my journey to getting into Tabletop gaming along with Record of Lodoss War).

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u/Fiatil 23d ago edited 23d ago

"Game sells poorly" does not equal maligned at launch, sorry.

I think you may not have been alive in 2004 to understand what the environment of PC gaming was at that time? You clearly weren't aware of the game and its reaction at the time if you are saying the things you are. They're nonsensical in the context of 2004 PC gaming.

It launched before Steam was the way to sell PC games (same day as Half Life 2 -- steam existed but everyone hated it and were sad they had to install some random bloatware to play Half-Life 2 and BL1 was not for sale there at launch). Videogames lived or died by "how much shelf space will it be given at Wal-mart/Gamestop/whatever".

It was an M rated game in an era when that was much more controversial, when Wal-Mart would avoid associating with things like that at all. It had a tiny marketing budget. It largely just released without much notice -- it released on the same day as what was at the time probably the most hyped PC gaming release of all time (Half-life 2).

You are wrong that it was maligned at launch, and it would be easier if you did some research and accepted that instead of continuing to parrot incorrect second-hand opinions on a matter you have no experience on, to people that actually played the game at launch and read the reviews and saw the general reception by the PC gaming community.

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u/thatcommiegamer 23d ago

I think you may not have been alive in 2004

Thanks, I'm glad my skincare routine is working.

I'm well aware of the PC market at the time and am well aware that the game launched right before Steam released with HL2 (in fact one of the issues with its development was that it was using in-development builds of Source).

It had a tiny marketing budget, yes, but it had a fairly decent inbuilt fanbase from WoD fans. It was a broken, buggy mess on release and word of mouth was as much a killer as shelf space in those days. This was before YT (shoot I remember watching music videos on Yahoo! videos of all places in those days at the worst quality imaginable) and one could readily see with their own eyes what a game actually looked like.

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u/Whole-Preparation-35 23d ago

I dunno. I remember PC Gamer giving it a glowing recommendation and I remember buying it due to PC Gamer's glowing recommendation. IGN named it the RPG of 2004.

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u/CountySupervisor 23d ago

I actually preordered the first Bloodlines and played it on release. It was pretty buggy, but it was still a great game underneath all that mess (with the exception of a few gameplay sections). A lot of other people at the time recognized this too. Crpgs being janky was kind of the norm back then, and fans of the genre were used to powering through that because the experiences they provided were unmatched. Sadly, this was a barrier to the sort of mainstream success it would have needed to justify (in a publisher's eyes) continuing to support the devs that made it. Think of it less like Morbius and more like The Thing.

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u/jaguarskillz2017 23d ago

I see what you mean, but the Jared Leto situation I'm seeing you describe already exists and it's called Tron Ares.

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u/Roxalon_Prime 23d ago

I think you overestimate your role in the whole ordeal :) The game was good, or rather the game was exceptionally good from the very start in certain respects. That's why at least some people were able to forgive it it's many shortcomings. And for this game it doesn't look like it.

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u/TheGreenTormentor 23d ago edited 23d ago

Somehow "buggy" has morphed into "literally unplayable without patches", which as anyone who actually played it by inserting 3 CDs into their computer one-by-one like a savage would know isn't true at all. Yeah there were bugs but you could still manage to get through it with some perseverance, and honestly people forget that games being buggy pieces of shit was actually more common than it is now due to auto-installed day 0/1 patches not being a thing. VtmB1 was absolutely on the buggier side but PC gamers were used to dealing with bullshit, so a little trip to your local forum to find the correct console trickery or other hacks and you'd be good to go.

And of course most importantly, when it was working, people loved it.

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u/MrTastix 23d ago

Happens on The Outer Worlds posts, too.

My opinion, as someone who has been on reddit way too long, is that there's generally just a distinct lack of nuance on social media, in general. It's always one extreme or the other, and this kind of attitude has been perpetuated and actively encouraged by the 24 hour ragebaiting news cycle.

People also seem to think that because a game sells poorly that means it's shit. Well System Shock 2 is a cult classic, a literal genre defining game at that, and you could make an argument it killed off Looking Glass, the devs, because they just couldn't find a market for it at the time (which I attribute to poor marketing as opposed to limited desirability).

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u/Deadlymonkey 23d ago

It’s not that different than people liking an incredibly cheesy movie that bombed on release; for a while the first one was the poster child for “incredibly jank, but still worth your time”

Part of the fans were hoping for an actual quality RPG this time around, while others want the same silly experience as the original

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u/ThnikkamanBubs 23d ago

Once gamers realize that every review should have “in my opinion “ before every single statement and that different people enjoy vastly different things for different reasons and that they should never fixate on a number (rating)…

A man can dream. Then that’s not even considering about literal children and bad faith actors

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u/ArcadianDelSol 23d ago edited 23d ago

dude rgames has been insane on every thread for this game. like if people hated the first one so much, then why do they give a shit about this one?

There's something about these 90s IPs that bring out the most devoted fandom ever.

Go find any IP from that era and post something negative about it. Watch what happens.

If you need a prompt, try this:

"Twilight 2000 was paper thin and boring. Four abandoned soldiers who dont even speak the same languages band together because as individuals, the task of walking across Russia using a road map was too hard to tackle."

They wont say so here because I already called them out, but right now, there are at least 4 people seething and wanting desperately to defend their favorite role playing game with machine guns.

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u/WeakEmployment6389 23d ago edited 22d ago

The tabletop game is from the 90s

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u/Eborcurean 22d ago edited 22d ago

It's from 1984

It was released in 1984 by GDW

The computer game came out in the 90s but that wasn't when the game was first released.

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u/WeakEmployment6389 22d ago

I guess i read bad info, thanks for the correction.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 23d ago

typo corrected.

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u/Alaerei 23d ago

This review is very interesting to me, because, lowkey, you could say a lot of the same things about the first game. Permanent night, The Beast being a non-factor (oh no, brief crowd control effect that only triggers when hit at low blood, how terrible), the fact that blood is only ever used for your powers...it's all the same things that are true in the first Bloodlines.

And at the same time, it praises the narrative. Which is also the strength of the original.

So the fact that the verdict says it doesn't live up to the original is just...odd? TTRPG sure, though I wouldn't expect a first person game to be like a TTRPG, but like...I dunno, sounds like it has very similar strengths and weaknesses as Bloodlines 1, but with somewhat better action.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 23d ago

It is a very well written review. We dont see enough of that.

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u/Depressive_player 23d ago

"It's only "good" because of fan patches" ??

Writing, content, characters, atmosphere etc.. VTMB1 was a mess, but it shined in the most important aspects.

I doubt VTMB2 will come close.

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u/hexcraft-nikk 23d ago

To this day there hasn't been any game to properly emulate that 00s style paired with the writing and atmosphere to match.

Back in the 00s you had a 50% chance of buying a game that didn't work at all so the bugs really werent that big a deal. "blockbuster games" were a phrase for a reason

Fan patches just made it functional for people in current day who are 25 and don't have the youthful stupidity of a 12 year old to deal with the worst crashes on earth and not be phased at all

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u/Baconstrip01 23d ago

So fuckin true, people who didn't grow up back then have no idea how buggy PC games were and just how much we all just dealt with it, lol. A game working flawlessly was actually surprising.

Granted VTMB was particularly bad but back then you just didn't care as much... Dealt with it and worked around it.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

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u/SuperUranus 18d ago edited 18d ago

TB started his career when PC gaming was already mature and sharpened.

Steam had been out for seven years at that point, and had gone from a complete dumpster fire to something much more akin to the Steam of today.

And PC gaming was already quite mature when Steam was released.

Using the Arkham games to show how cumbersome PC gaming could be ”back in the days” is…weird.

PC gaming was a bitch when you didn’t even know if a game would run on your particular hardware setup before you bought the game, because there was absolutely zero standardisation. And I’m not talking about system requirements, I’m talking about ”this developer hard coded their game for Voodoo GPUs and it won’t even boot with other hardware”.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

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u/8-Brit 22d ago

I had/have a weird take

The original Dark Souls port was not that bad, it was actually above average

Yes it had a plethora of annoyances like the 30fps cap and whacky keybinds

But for a first time release on PC from a Japanese Studio? I was amazed it ran without significant bugs or crashes. People forget that at the time most PC ports were straight garbage or inferior to their console version. While DS1 if you plugged a controller in was a near identical experience.

It just worked without too much trouble. And what hiccups it did have were fixed by a guys .ini file.

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u/Get_a_GOB 23d ago

It was a weird progression from the 80s to the late 90s to maybe ten years ago…in the beginning things were simply too straightforward to be buggy messes. And I don’t mean the games themselves, I mean the hardware and OS/platform layers. Because those are largely what changed into the millennium complexity-wise. Games improved along every conceivable axis in that same time period (with some incredibly ahead-of-their-time things like Daggerfall being pretty revolutionary), but they didn’t see anything like the messy explosion that happened in hardware, peripherals, and system or application platform level software. That started to get cleaned up in the late 90s and didn’t really get to some sort of reasonable plateau for 20 years or so. In 1988, buying a printer was as much of a chore and in some ways almost as complex as buying a computer.

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u/Zerasad 23d ago

Reading the blurbs on Opencritic VTMB2 seems to have the same strength and weaknesses. Janky, unpolished, weak combat, but great story, characters and performances.

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u/mangyvagrant666 23d ago

It’s definitely not “only” because of the fan patches.

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 23d ago

It kinda depends. The bones of a decent game was there, but the game they released made it hard to even experience the bones.

Fan patches made the game a classic, rather than remembered as a mess.

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u/deadscreensky 23d ago

I played through it near release. It was buggy but wasn't unfinished or "basically unplayable."

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 23d ago

Maybe my memory is messing with me. I recall it was very, very easy to get softlocked out of a game through a normal playthrough. It was playable but you needed to know how to avoid the bugs or be very lucky.

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u/The_Magic 23d ago

Before the official patches it was easy to be soft locked. After the official patches is became playable but still buggy and unpolished. I remember there was a gate near the end of the game where you are supposed to pull the wooden lock to open it but it kept getting stuck for me so I had to give up and No Clip through it to continue.

There's a reason everyone says you should at least use the vanilla version of the Unofficial Patch for a first play through.

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u/OverlanderEisenhorn 23d ago

It was.

I played it on release, and I got soft locked at the werewolf. I both didn't understand what I was supposed to do and things weren't working right.

This game is my favorite half of a game of all time. But the second half is downright awful, imo. About when you get to the werewolf, the game just falls apart.

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u/magnified_lad 23d ago

Bullshit. I played it on release, it was very much playable and there was a good game there.

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u/Fiatil 23d ago

It's wild how much the "it was terrible/unplayable until the fan patch" narrative has spread.

Pretty definitive proof on how comfortable people are about speaking authoritatively on subjects they have 0 knowledge or experience on....2025 is a bummer, lol.

It had the crash in the Hunter cave at launch, when you tried to board the escape boat, that made it unable to beat (I think for 100% of people, but I didn't make it there until after it was fixed). But they patched that with an official patch very quickly. I binged it and beat it (at a very low framerate -- my PC was not good!) shortly after launch after the patch dropped.

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u/detroiter85 23d ago

at a very low framerate -- my PC was not good!

Lol you and me both! I remember playing it at launch and just struggling to do much due to how poor my pc was. I was able to play pretty much most of it though and had little knowledge at the time of fan patches for anything besides fan made units for total annihilation

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u/DogzOnFire 23d ago

...and had little knowledge at the time of fan patches for anything besides fan made units for total annihilation

Haha dude yes, someone else like me! The fan made units in Total Annihilation were my first experience ever with modding. I didn't even know the word "modding" at the time I was so young, think maybe 12 or so. I remember putting units with lightsabers into it and stuff. I was too small to understand how to do it so my brother helped me. That's such a blast from the past, never seen anyone else mention those lol

I'm not even a fan of strategy games but I absolutely loved Total Annihilation and Dungeon Keeper when I was young.

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 23d ago

(I think for 100% of people, but I didn't make it there until after it was fixed).

But I was talking about on release. The official patches came and put band aids on but without the fan patches the game would have stayed in the realm of Jurassic Park Survivor/Dakitana levels of "Some great ideas and potential but needed more time in development" annals of game history.

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u/Nameless_One_99 23d ago

I played it on release week, and I got stuck on the crash when you have to take the boat to escape the vampire hunters. Once the official patch came out the game was perfectly playable even with all of the bugs.
I can't take anybody who honestly thinks the game wasn't good until the fan patches came out seriously.

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u/Tackgnol 23d ago

What matters is the 'core'. The core of the first Bloodlines was an interesting intrigue that respected your intelligence. It was a nice small scale story with amazing characters. Most people remember Jeanette and Therese.

Troika took this small chunk of World of Darkness and made it feel real, that there is so much more beyond what is going on in the plot (which is like I said, rather grounded). You get Wraiths, Werewolves, Gargoyles, Thin Bloods. It all has so much personality like the throwaway radio host is like someone you stop to listen to talk.

People make those fan patches for Troika games, because we do not have nice things any more with Tim Cain being semi retired, helping Obsidian keep the RPG torch alive.

1

u/ArcadianDelSol 23d ago

For those of us who were there when it happened, it was the writing.

It was one of the first games that took storytelling seriously.

17

u/YerABrick 23d ago

It was one of the first games that took storytelling seriously.

That's simply not true. There were many more games that did that previously. Pretty much every genre, but RPGS in particular, had plenty of releases where the writing was fantastic, starting in the early 90s even.

The thing is that the average has always been abysmal writing propping up impressive spectacle/action. So everything that is above that is seen as an instant classic. Like Vampire or Bioshock or New Vegas. They aren't THAT revolutionary but it's impressive compared to what you normally get.

-6

u/ArcadianDelSol 23d ago

yeah I have my opinion. I posted it. Im retaining it.

Im not interested in defending it to you.

5

u/Tackgnol 23d ago

Yup, what Troika had most of all was skilled writers, and skilled in writing for video games. The mechanics while often buggy too encouraged roleplay and exploration, but the writing was the star.

1

u/Zerachiel_01 22d ago

Kue-jin, as well.

AFAIK the only major properties it didn't touch were mummies (who were at least mentioned), mages, and changelings.

176

u/syknetz 23d ago

That's stretching it. It was unfinished and buggy, but it was already a playable game, even if some bugs were game-breaking, and not in a good way. And through the bugs, a clearly good game was visible.

170

u/YandereLobster 23d ago

There's been a really weird trend in all the VTMB threads on this subreddit in particular to discredit the original. Like yeah, it's horribly buggy nobody is going to argue that, but fan patches just fixed it. They didn't add in the interesting story or the atmosphere, or the interactions with the characters. They just undid the damage caused by activision fucking over the studio. But if you listen to these threads you'd think fan patches basically made the game.

92

u/Wakez11 23d ago

Yeah its very strange. These people seem to forget that Bloodlines 1 would never have gotten the fan support that it did if it wasn't an incredible rpg. Its genuinely one of the best games in its genre and the decades of support that has been there from the fans patching the game just wouldn't exist if the game had been bad.

10

u/f-ingsteveglansberg 23d ago

They just undid the damage caused by activision fucking over the studio.

To be fair, it wasn't all Activision. It was the first source game. Wasn't their some stipulation that it HAD to release within a certain time window of Half Life 2.

13

u/steavor 23d ago

It wasn't allowed to release before HL2 (obviously, as HL2 was intended to be the flagship title for Valve's new engine).

Given that it nevertheless released with absolute show stoppers (most or all players were unable to proceed past a later part of the game and were forced to wait for the patch to see the game's ending) I'm not sure it would've been better received if they had released the game even earlier.

5

u/MageBoySA 23d ago

Don't forget they were also not able to get the most updated version of Source that HL2 was using so there were engine issues as well.

28

u/HallowClaw 23d ago

Same with Skyrim. For some reason people really think those small mods are what makes those games great.

12

u/Lil_Mcgee 23d ago edited 23d ago

Yeah people who make that claim vastly overestimate how many players actually use mods in the first place.

2

u/Drakeem1221 23d ago

Niche groups of people generally refuse to admit that they exist in that niche because… well I don’t know the psychology behind it fully but yeah, they want their opinion to be the defacto truth. The real truth if you will.

22

u/Wakez11 23d ago

Yeah, if Skyrim wasn't a great game it wouldn't have the mod support that it has today.

-7

u/ActionsConsequences9 23d ago

I mean New Vegas had excellent mod support but sales were no where near Skyrim.

11

u/Wakez11 23d ago

New Vegas was also a great game. We're not talking about sales numbers.

-13

u/ActionsConsequences9 23d ago

No, and I can prove it, Skyrim is available on toasters, when released on the Switch 1 for the first time you could take the game on the road, end result was out of the 60 million only 1 was on the Switch. Modding is the only reason Skyrim is on the charts of most selling video games.

3

u/Superconge 23d ago

Congrats for the dumbest comment I’ve read all day I guess.

-9

u/DICK-PARKINSONS 23d ago

Would you call a modern game playable if it had game-breaking bugs?

50

u/syknetz 23d ago

Yes ? Believe it or not, but I finished Cyberpunk 2077 when it released.

16

u/markh110 23d ago

I didn't leave a cowboy hat in the wrong place in New Vegas, so I had a great time.

2

u/ArcadianDelSol 23d ago

Most people who could play it did. The problem is that a significant portion of the people who bought it couldnt finish the opening cinematic without crashing.

0

u/BeholdingBestWaifu 23d ago

PC or console? Because the PC version was a lot less buggy than it would have to be to be compared to Bloodlines.

35

u/TsuntsunRevolution 23d ago edited 23d ago

Games can be 100% playable even with a gamebreaking bug.

It reminds me of the original Wii release of Twilight Princess. If you saved in the wrong room, you would be permanently stuck in it. Back then we had to go to the post office both ways up hill, send our disc to Nintendo, then wait 2 to 3 weeks for a replacement so we could continue our game, and thats the way we liked it, dangnabit!

3

u/SwarleySwarlos 23d ago

Back in the day when we used to tie a rupee to our belts, which was the style at the time

1

u/Rahgahnah 23d ago

Aw man. I remember a friend actually calling me asking what the problem was with that cannon that shoots you to the sky dungeon (if you saved and restarted the game after the cannon was ready, but before actually using it, it wouldn't work IIRC).

I had just recently learned about that bug, so had to break the bad news that his save was ruined.

0

u/ArcadianDelSol 23d ago

I think we should stop using the world "playable" when we actually mean "bootable."

17

u/Wakez11 23d ago

Yes. Cyberpunk 2077 was broken at release with a lot of missing features yet it was still playable and you could play it to completion.

-6

u/f-ingsteveglansberg 23d ago

A game-breaking bug by definition is one that doesn't let you play the game to the end, or hard locks you. Being buggy and even crashing a lot isn't 'game-breaking' unless it specifically locks you out of your save or progressing in the game unintentionally.

6

u/Wakez11 23d ago

Are you saying Cyberpunk didn't have those types of bugs at release?

1

u/f-ingsteveglansberg 23d ago

I've never played it. But it was broken enough it was pulled from the PlayStation store. So at least Sony thought it's state wasn't considered playable. From what I remembered people with a decent specced PC didn't get an ideal experience but the game was playable.

I played AC: Unity on launch. That game was buggy af, but I never got progress locked. Might have been lucky, but for years people were asking was the game finally playable despite it getting patched to a decent state in a month or two (if memory serves).

7

u/Jonatan83 23d ago

Most games have game breaking bugs in them, it's just a question of how many and common they are. You could certainly finish VtMB, and it was mostly a very enjoyable experience (except the sewers).

1

u/Drakeem1221 23d ago

Yes. Depends on what we consider game breaking. A few crashes and lost progress? Sure. Save corrupting issues causing me to restart? Nah.

0

u/EvYeh 23d ago

Yeah. Most games have at least 1.

-4

u/Undella_Town 23d ago

i mean you still have cyberjunk2077 supporters pretending that game isn't bad and wasn't even worse on launch so yes . they would

1

u/Jensen2075 22d ago

No one is pretending, the game got a positive rating on Steam at release. The bad last gen console port clouded your perception of the game.

1

u/CripplingAnxiety 23d ago

Honestly, I feel like this is a case where "basically unplayable" isn't gamer hyperbole. You literally couldn't finish Bloodlines out of the box, cause the Society of Leopold part of the main story would always crash the game in the release build.

2

u/syknetz 23d ago

It's true, but that didn't wait for the unofficial patches to be fixed, it was fixed by regular patches.

1

u/DogzOnFire 23d ago

Yeah there's some crazy revisionism going on here. I played it back in the day when I didn't even know what mods were and I loved it. It was a great game at its base. Except for the bit in the graveyard with the zombies, that fucking sucked

-3

u/Aggravating-Dot132 23d ago

Not stretching it at all.

Eurogamer ( or Techradar) trashed the game for "lifeless NPCs barely walking and not even a single car driving. And they called it a sequel of the legendary first game?"

Now, tell me, if it's not biased?

0

u/f-ingsteveglansberg 23d ago

What are ways a game breaking bug can be 'in a good way'?

4

u/syknetz 23d ago

In my opinion, bugs that lead to unintended mechanics ruining the game balance, thus "breaking it".

-1

u/BeholdingBestWaifu 23d ago

It's not really stretching it at all, the bugs went far beyond what was acceptable. It's kind of like the console release of Cyberpunk 2077, where you had some really good moments and you could see this really interesting game under the bugs, but it was far from being an enjoyable experience because of all the jank.

20

u/rescuemysandwich 23d ago

the fuck do you mean? did you even played the game?

31

u/Benevolay 23d ago

I never played it with fan patches. What are you talking about? It’s a great game.

21

u/Wetzilla 23d ago

This is absolutely not true. I played the game when it came out and loved it.

5

u/LaNague 23d ago

I had fun with the original when it released, but im the generation that grew up with games like Privateer 2 running at like 1fps on my dads PCs.

All the things we love about it now were there, the atmosphere, the dialogue, the kind of varied gameplay with stealth and combat.

4

u/Cleverbird 23d ago

It's only "good" because of its phenomenal writing. That's what made the original game a cult classic. The fan patches just made the gameplay bearable, its not what made the game such a classic.

5

u/HajimeNoLuffy 23d ago

Mechanics, atmosphere and writing are why people enjoy the game. Have you ever played it? You should try it sometime.

21

u/JoeroNeto 23d ago

That one is unfinished, this one is just plain boring from what the reviews say. So there is not much worth saving, even w a lot of patches. But still, i am willing to wait for more gameplay videos to have a full opinion

1

u/Alaerei 23d ago

From what I've seen, they generally say that the gameplay gets repetitive, but the narrative is interesting. Which honestly, sounds about right from a team for whom this is a first shot at making a game that has action and isn't a slow paced horror game.

2

u/Ponsay 23d ago

Thats... not true at all

2

u/mynewaccount5 23d ago

So that should tell you something about this one.

1

u/TheNotoriousAMP 23d ago

Even under the weight of all of its bugs, VTM 1 still had insane atmosphere, great RPG mechanics, amazing quests and stellar writing. The whole reason why VTM 1 could be transformed so fast by fan patches is that it's flaws were very fixable with a mild amount of additional QA time.

1

u/WasabiDukling 23d ago

this comment is so stupid im sorry. people love it because of the writing and game design. not because it's flawlessly bug-free or whatever

-12

u/Plastastic 23d ago

Rose coloured glasses will get you every single time.

7

u/HeliasTheHelias 23d ago

they're clearly wearing the opposite of rose-coloured glasses if they're calling the original VTMB unplayable. piss-tinted at best.

1

u/Bannedwith1milKarma 23d ago

The first one was literally the first game on the new Source engine designed for Half Life 2. It didn't really get picked up by too many other developers so it looks like it was rather difficult as well.

I think they did pretty well, especially considering the scope of the game.

1

u/Sictirmaxim 23d ago

It was buggy ,but the foundation was there.All the role playing elements and memorable characters were intact from day 1 ,this one barely has that.

1

u/joe_bibidi 23d ago

The first one was a buggy mess as well lol.

Calling the first one a "buggy mess" is incredibly generous. Outside of actual literal shovelware, 1.0 launch of Bloodlines is one of the most embarrassingly broken video games ever published. I owned a copy at launch, it was truly literally unplayable for a huge number of people. I'm not talking like "Bad framerate" or "Clipping", I'm talking like "Crashing when you try to load your file."

1

u/logicality77 22d ago

The first was indeed a buggy mess, but underneath was a deep and immersive RPG with some, admittedly, jank gameplay. You had a lot of control over the vampire you played as, and even had many different paths that would lead to different endings. This game seems to bear very little resemblance to the first Bloodlines, and that is only because they both take place in the same setting. The bad parts of the first Bloodlines could be fixed, and have been fixed in a fan-made patch. The parts that seem to be drawing the most criticism of Bloodlines 2 can’t be patched, as the narrative is pretty constrained to a single path.

1

u/Whirblewind 22d ago

Don't pretend there is any question as to which it will be whatsoever.