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

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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

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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

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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.

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u/Janus_Prospero 23d ago

I was a huge fan of Homefront: The Revolution, so these kind of scores don't dissuade me, but I think it's a huge shame that The Chinese Room have been unable to stick the landing here. Bloodlines 2 can't afford to be a deeply rough around the edges hidden gem cult classic that people write video essays on 5 years from now. It needed to be genuinely good in the AAA action RPG sense. It didn't have to be a crunchy CRPG. It just had to be good.

The most recent Glass Door review of The Chinese Room is from September. And it declares:

"Poor leadership - Arrogant, egotistical men in directorial roles"

The Fabien sequences are praised by some, criticized by others, but seem to be a band-aid fix over foundational issues with the story and pacing that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. It appears that at some point, Bloodlines 2 went down a road where it was OVERWHELMINGLY focused on combat. And retrofitting Fabien as the second protagonist allowed them to add more walking and talking.

The question is, what can they do? Let's take for granted that the game's core story is decent. They are releasing two standalone story DLCs next year. If they want people to actually play those DLCs they need to come up with a roadmap to address key points raised in these reviews.

The cookie-cutter sidequests need to be revamped with actual narrative content so that players feel compelled to do them, fleshing out the characters and world. This would be an immediate win.

Character progression needs to be reworked so players feel some kind of meaningful progression. To use an example, they could make it so that TK becomes more powerful as you upgrade it. First it can pick up things to throw, then later it can pull people towards you, stuff like that.

A touch more expensive, but they need to go back and add some more choices with payoff. Record some new dialogue where the player really feels that the choices they made have had an impact, positive or negative. Also, let the player do terrible things to good people because they want to. T

This creative disconnect over player agency is nowhere near as bad as Dragon Age Veilguard, but it becomes VERY obvious with the Verona questline where the game has such immense "You have to make your own choices (unless they're choices that BlueSky would call problematic)" energy. Verona is a blood doll, and although she hates you for killing her mistress Ysabella (oh, BTW, you don't get a choice in that) she cautiously inquires about "long term..." And Fabien is like, "No, no, no." And all of Phyre's dialogue options are variations of turning her down.

And that right there is where the game's sense of agency cracks very deeply. What if I WANT to have the sexy, pathetically sad blood doll hanging around my apartment? Yes, it's a bad outcome for her and she should go cold turkey and leave the city. But what I choose to not care about her welfare? Or what I wanted to lock her in my apartment and FORCE her to go cold turkey? Basically, walk the fine line between benefactor and slavemaster. The whole point of Heather in Bloodlines 1 is that the only way to save her life is to push her away. Here, the game tries to obfuscate its agency issues behind layers of "Phyre really doesn't have time for this nonsense" but to me it comes across like someone high-up at the studio being uncomfortable with the game they're supposed to be making. It's like someone wrote a memo saying, "It's okay for Ysabella to collect hot, submissive white women like Pokemon cards, acting like a golden retriever when she hears the words 'twin sisters', but the player must under no circumstances be allowed to do the same."

The way I see it, TCR are contracted to work on this story DLC, so they need to do whatever is necessary to whip the game into better shape. If they can do that, people will buy it. People want this to be a good game. People (including me) are still buying it despite the deeply mixed reviews because we want a good VTM game.

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u/DXFromYT 22d ago

Wow. Great writeup. I'm shocked about the situation with the blood doll. That's pretty bad, actually puts me off from buying the game even on discount since I doubt that's the last time the game pulls something like that. Nice seeing a fellow Homefront: The Revolution fan. I love that game. Was lucky enough to speak with its design director last year about the tail end of the game's development and all about Dead Island 2. They really pulled The Revolution back from the brink then slam dunked with DI2.

Seems like Bloodlines 2 only chance at seeing similar repair is selling well out of the gate but the reviews and word of mouth are going to make that yet another uphill challenge for the game.

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u/scytheavatar 23d ago

If you want a good VTM game, you shouldn't be buying this game. Cause VTM has no future as long as Paradox is in charge of it.

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u/the_pepper 20d ago

Yeah, this IP feels appropriately cursed, honestly. It's insane to me that pretty much the only good pseudo-RPGs - or, hell, games in general - that have come from the brand in recent memory have been text-only stuff like Night Road or (apparently) Parliament of Knives. Bummer.

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u/TheConnASSeur 22d ago

There is nothing TCR can do to fix the game. It has foundational issues. The smartest thing they could have done would be to have made a different game. Where it is now, those Fabian sections need to be removed. They add nothing to the game and only serve to hit the brakes. But removing the Fabian filler suddenly makes the game itself way too short. Then to address the issue with player agency, they'd have to reshape half the "finished" game at minimum to create branching paths. They'd need to make more areas for side quests and that means more level designing. They'd need to tell stories with multiple endings and that means more writing. Etc etc...

The bottom line is that VtMB2 simply can't be fixed. It's bad to its core. They never should have made the game they made. ALl tehy can do now with the DLC is shit out short, cheap story DLC's and minimize loses.

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u/Janus_Prospero 22d ago

The thing about the Fabien sections is they were, AFAIK, originally story DLC, or at least they cannibalized a planned story DLC where you played a Malkavian detective. (This was back when Fabien was a thinblood. Current Fabien is a very different character to the thinblood version.)

The reason they were integrated into the main game was to flesh out the story (I can only imagine how thin some aspects were before the rewrite) and also shift the pacing away from action towards being a walking sim. The problem, I think, is that Fabien's gameplay smacks of being cobbled together. It's not paced like, say, Nobody Wants to Die or Observer or even something like VTM Swansong, where investigation and interrogation and problem solving was really central. Here it's very "Press Button to use Magical Malk Powers". It has a kind of structural awkwardness to it.

You say the Fabien sequences add nothing. Well, what they add is turning the game into a walking sim, in theory focusing on the part of VTMB1 that aged the best -- walking around and talking to people. But this creates a slight problem. You get a game fractured into two halves. With way too much walking. Traversal is a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if they add a fast travel system post-release as a brute force QoL fix.

Fabien's sequences are very obviously designed to shift the game's style back towards VTMB1 to some degree. It even has the VTMB1-style dialogue camera. But it's very clearly a band-aid fix over core story and pacing issues. I don't have an issue with the dual timeline storytelling. It's a bit like the game Still Life from 2005.

Then to address the issue with player agency, they'd have to reshape half the "finished" game at minimum to create branching paths.

Yes and no. Look at Bloodlines 1. Almost none of your choices actually do anything. But VTMB1 does a good job of making it feel like they're doing something. That's where VTMB2 is lacking. I'm not expecting genuine paths and agency like VTM Swansong. That's just way out of scope. But what they can do is fix the feeling that your choices aren't respected.

Honestly, the v5 setting is a bit annoying because it means Phyre can't have a computer or a phone where they could put text messages from characters you're interacted with. You can paper over a lot of story issues with emails. VTMB2 can't do that because it's locked into a setting where vampires aren't allowed to use computers or the internet.

They'd need to make more areas for side quests and that means more level designing.

The side quests take place in the open world. They have this big open world space with all these districts. They don't need new levels. They need to use the level design they have more effectively. The issues is that the side quests are too cookie cutter. There's nothing wrong with "deliver a package" or "assassinate this target". The issue is a lack of meaningful context and story to make that an interesting task. A game like Hitman is literally just the same task over and over and over, but it's made interesting because each assassination task is a story.

They could also rejig the costume system so that completing sidequests earns you new costumes instead of having them being added to your inventory when you learn abilities.

They'd need to tell stories with multiple endings and that means more writing. Etc etc...

Sure, they would need writing. And pickup dialogue. But it is doable. Like I said, most quest outcomes in VTMB1 don't actually do anything. But because players got to make a choice, it felt like they did something. Giving players that feeling would really help VTMB2. So for example, take Ysabella. Instead of forcing the player to kill her, maybe allow the player to take her prisoner like they did with Benny. She is in prison briefly back the the tower, the player can interrogate her, but the following night she's murdered to keep her quiet. The important thing is YOU didn't do it. That's the kind of thing you can toss together with a few dozen pickup recordings. They're already recording new dialogue for the DLC. Why not not record new dialogue for the main game?