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Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2

MC_Lovecraft said:
To be clear, Night Road isn't really a "visual" novel; it is entirely text-based (which is not a comment on its quality, I haven't played it yet, just a clarification). There exist two VtM visual novels that do have art and whatnot, and those are the ones I was referring to: Coteries of New York and Shadows of New York.
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Ah yeah been a while since I've played it. I guess Text Adventure? I forgot what the exact type is.
 
Mizu said:
I admittedly only skimmed the video but it seems fine enough so far, as games go? Pretty vanilla rpg, I guess, so it isn't quite matching up to Bloodlines 1, but as a game it seems fine?

But then I guess folks were after Bloodlines 1 in feel, so I can understand the disappointment.
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This is exactly the problem. If it was just a new VtM game then it would be fine (but no more then that- the gameplay isn't bad but it's not exactly wowing me) but it's Bloodlines 2, supposedly the sequel to a game that is a flawed masterpiece and in many ways the gold standard for immersive sim design. This is a crippling flaw for 2 because it means it has to be compared to a game that's not just infinitely better but also a completely different type of RPG.

So you're right that it's fine in terms of averages but that isn't enough, if it is to the devs then they should've chosen a different title (I realize they couldn't but that's not something fans have any reason to be concerned about).
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
and in many ways the gold standard for immersive sim design
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What? Like, I love Bloodlines, don't get me wrong, but it's hardly the pinnacle of ImSims - I see debate as to whether it even counts as an ImSim. It certainly has ImSim elements, but your ability to actually interact with the physical world in bloodlines is much less than what I'd claim is the gold standard, that being Deus Ex, and your ability to tackle things from whatever direction you care for is also much more limited. It's got a great degree of player freedom, and an expansive and fairly meaningful set of choices but that's not all that makes an ImSim.

It's just what makes it a great game. except for all the parts where it's a shit game because it's famously not great in a lot of regards
 
Estro said:
What? Like, I love Bloodlines, don't get me wrong, but it's hardly the pinnacle of ImSims - I see debate as to whether it even counts as an ImSim. It certainly has ImSim elements, but your ability to actually interact with the physical world in bloodlines is much less than what I'd claim is the gold standard, that being Deus Ex, and your ability to tackle things from whatever direction you care for is also much more limited. It's got a great degree of player freedom, and an expansive and fairly meaningful set of choices but that's not all that makes an ImSim.

It's just what makes it a great game. except for all the parts where it's a shit game because it's famously not great in a lot of regards
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I tried to pick up the original bloodline and it was just too jank mechanically for me.
 
Estro said:
What? Like, I love Bloodlines, don't get me wrong, but it's hardly the pinnacle of ImSims - I see debate as to whether it even counts as an ImSim. It certainly has ImSim elements, but your ability to actually interact with the physical world in bloodlines is much less than what I'd claim is the gold standard, that being Deus Ex, and your ability to tackle things from whatever direction you care for is also much more limited. It's got a great degree of player freedom, and an expansive and fairly meaningful set of choices but that's not all that makes an ImSim.

It's just what makes it a great game. except for all the parts where it's a shit game because it's famously not great in a lot of regards
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I would very strongly disagree with anyone who thinks BL1 wasn't an immersive sim. It had a degree of focus on player freedom and immersion-enhancing mechanics that non-immersive sims simply don't have. The term doesn't mean anything if it doesn't include Bloodlines 1, whatever purists might think.

However I agree that my wording was imprecise, I didn't mean to suggest that it was the gold standard. I intended to state that it was on the upper end of the genre. In hindsight that was on me.
 
Ultrackius said:
Anyone have any other VtM games they reccomened? Or vampire ones in general ig
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Vampyr is a genuinely great action RPG in my opinion, with enough VtM influence. VtM Swansong is a Telltale style adventure game with RPG-lite elements that does choice and consequence quite well.

As for Bloodlines 2, I'm liking the look of it. What made the (overrated) first game good was its narrative elements (story, characters, dialogue); the gameplay elements (combat, stealth, progression) ranged from fine to not very good. I also think its naive to expect a decades-later sequel developed by a different team to be the same as the original game; Baldur's Gate 3 is an exception and even that has significant differences from its predecessors.
 
Teutonic_Thrash said:
I also think its naive to expect a decades-later sequel developed by a different team to be the same as the original game; Baldur's Gate 3 is an exception and even that has significant differences from its predecessors.
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Well, that returns to the question of 'then why name it Bloodlines ?'

We all understand that games are named as sequels for deeply cynical advertisement reasons frequently, but at the same time I feel that it's then more than fair to judge the game as the sequel it masquerades as, and in that regard this one's a massive failure in a similar way to Human Revolution.

Though I am on some level anticipating a hbomberguy three hour short about how Bloodlines 2 was 'fine'. Solid C+
 
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Teutonic_Thrash said:
Vampyr is a genuinely great action RPG in my opinion
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You have a very strange way of spelling 'narrative dialogue-based puzzle game with action half-heartedly tacked on'.

But yeah VtM:B came out at the exactly right point to be very impactful on my opinions of gaming, and there were certainly a bunch of strong points, but the jank was real and there were enormous chunks of it that were just, like... trash? A refined sequel with all the lessons from the original brought forwards would be excellent, but, well, we were never actually going to get that? We were always going to get a fairly generic RPG with the name slapped on.
 
The shitty oraoraora pummel rush animation was the funniest thing I've seen in recent memory, I shrieked to the high heavens when that particular jumpscare hit. They genuinely should not bother releasing this.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
The shitty oraoraora pummel rush animation was the funniest thing I've seen in recent memory, I shrieked to the high heavens when that particular jumpscare hit. They genuinely should not bother releasing this.
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It was impressive in the worst way. The Flash-moment made me lean back from the screen at how shockingly goofy it was. If that's how Celerity is supposed to come across, I ain't ever picking that shit for any character ever again!
 
hghwolf said:
Well, that returns to the question of 'then why name it Bloodlines ?'

We all understand that games are named as sequels for deeply cynical advertisement reasons frequently,
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You just answered your own question. Brand recognition is something the game industry cares about, likely to the detriment of everything else.
Would I have preferred this sequel to be a better, modern-looking version of the original? Probably, but I don't think that was ever a likely prospect in the circumstances.
 
TBH I kind of liked the Jojo punching.

Was it stupid in a bad way? Yes. But it was also stupid in good way. It's like someone looked at the gunslinging mechanic in Red Red Redemption and decided they wanted a punchy version for their vampire badass. It was absurd and dumb but in a way that almost worked. If the rest of the game we've seen was that variety of chaotic stupid I would be 150% more interested.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
TBH I kind of liked the Jojo punching.

Was it stupid in a bad way? Yes. But it was also stupid in good way. It's like someone looked at the gunslinging mechanic in Red Red Redemption and decided they wanted a punchy version for their vampire badass. It was absurd and dumb but in a way that almost worked. If the rest of the game we've seen was that variety of chaotic stupid I would be 150% more interested.
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Yeah, honestly it stuck out so much because it was the only moment that had any kind of stylistic flair to it. The rest of the trailer, with the identical ghouls wandering around on set paths, looks like one of those first-gen VR games where you just kill skeletons in a nondescript tomb. There's nothing that indicates that this is a WoD game until the Flash punching, and it sticks out like a sore thumb as a result. If this is the best they could come up with to drum up excitement about the game I am deeply pessimistic about what the end result looks like.
 
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