A bloody masterpiece.
Why is Bloodlines one of the best games I've ever played? Because it pretty much has everything you could ask from a game. It has a brilliant and engrossing story that goes way beyond a typical vampire tale to focus on subjects like politics, respect of traditionalism, anarchism and rebellion, greed and corruption, and moral consequences to one's actions. It has an amazing cast of characters that go from loony rave girls, to mysterious scholars, to rebel loners, to retired hitmen now working as fortune tellers, and so on. It provides a staggering amount of high quality quests that make even the simplest of tasks memorable and challenging. And it allows you to tackle those quests in several different ways, all of which have a profound impact on how the story evolves and how the world reacts to you. A deeply immersive gameworld, stellar graphics and facial animations, and a killer soundtrack are the icing on the cake. Save for a relatively lackluster combat model (particularly when it comes to the way you handle guns) and some technical issues (that have been fixed with patches), Bloodlines is virtually flawless. It's also a perfect game for people who are new to the roleplaying genre to get started on such a fascinating genre.
Bloodlines is set in the World of Darkness universe, where vampires live amongst humans but don't necessarily reveal their identity for fear of violating The Masquerade, a code of sorts that dictates the way vampires must behave themselves or else they'll have to respond to the Camarilla, a group lead by a Prince who is hellbent on imposing his own agenda as well as punishing anyone who dares violate the Masquerade. As the game starts, your character, a human up till that point, is "embraced" by another vampire after a wild night of passion. What this means is that you're now a vampire too, but because the embrace you were a part of is a violation of the Masquerade your Sire (the vampire who embraced you) and your character find thmselves in the middle of a trial to determine their fate. Your Sire suffers the death penalty and it looks like you're headed the same way, but thanks to the protests of an anarch vampire (Nines Rodriguez) your life is spared.
However you must now prove yourself worthy to the Prince which means that you'll have to carry on with several quests he'll assign you. But as you undertake on said quests you'll meet other vampires that have either formed other sects or refuse to label themselves and are fighting for freedom. From here one you take part on a fascinating adventure that sees you in the middle of a political struggle between all these factions and it'll be your task to figure out who are your true friends and what really motivates all these groups. You'll also make acquaintance with other vampires and humans unrelated to the political struggle, who you'll be able to help or exploit to your benefits. The story is delightful, intriguing, and sucks you in like few stories can. What role you ultimately have is entirely up to you.
The first thing you'll do is obviously create a character and you have to choose between seven different clans, as well as the gender of your character. The clan you choose has a deep impact on the experience you'll have since each clan is better suited for a particular style of gameplay. For instance the Nosferatu are sneaky characters who excel in stealth, while clans like the Gangrel and Brujah are much better suited towards hand to hand combat. Other clans like the Toreador are better at getting out of sticky situations with their smooth talking, while the Malkavian clan is certifiably insane, which means their dialogue options are bizarre to say the least. Each clan also has three distinct disciplines, which are essentially powerups that give you special abilities.
You also have to allocate your initial experience points in certain attributes that will affect how high your rating in certain feats is. Attributes are specific characteristics of your character such as strength, stealth, intelligence, firearms, etc., while feats are more generalized abilities that your character has developed. Feat ratings are usually determined by a combination of two attributes; for example the ranged feat, which determines how good you're are with guns, is a combination of the firearms and perception attributes. Your seduction feat on the other hand is determined by your appearance and subterfuge ratings.
How you distribute the experience points is a decision you have to make based mostly on your style of play. Experience points are only gained by completing quests, not by killing enemies, so killing sprees aren't necessary at all (though they're great fun anyway). This system makes Bloodlines a very accessible RPG since it's not hard to understand how to improve your character's traits or what effects such improvements will have.
Since you only gain experience from completing quests, you'll want to do as many side quests as possible. And unlike in other games were side quests are usually filler material, virtually every side quest in Bloodlines is a rich and rewarding experience. Even simple fetch quests are given a twist, be it infiltrating a place undetected, using your abilities to persuade or seduce your way past an obstacle, or finding yourself stuck in a wacky situation.
For example there's a certain quest given to you by a fortune teller in Chinatown that simply consists of killing a man who can usually be found drinking in a bar and relieving him of a key to a safe holding a large sum of money. If you kill the man on sight you'll succeed, but if you choose to talk to him, he'll try to persuade to kill the fortune teller instead. Should you decide to go back to the fortune teller he'll offer a bigger cut of the reward and try to convince you that the other guy is a backstabber. You can reach a point where both guys will offer you nearly all of the money they were out to get in the first place and all the while you'll enjoy some hilarious dialogue. You even have the option to persuade both guys to become friends and split the reward. This is just a small example of the amount of variety and freedom you have in most of the quests in the game.
While the most rewarding solutions to the quests are those that avoid combat, there are situations were bloodshed will be inevitable. Here you have the option to use your melee weapons, shoot everyone in sight, or make use of your disciplines. Early on however, gunplay is not a viable option, the reason being that unless you've invested heavily on the attributes that increase your ranged feat, your aim will be totally out of control. Once your ranged feat reaches a high level, guns are much more effective but even then the gunplay isn't as smooth as it should be. While this is slightly disappointing, the melee combat is satisfying enough to make up for it. There's no great science to it, since melee combat consists mostly of smashing the left mouse button until your enemies are down, but the visceral nature of it, plus the alternatives offered by your disciplines, make it a lot of fun.
The game can be played from either a first or third person perspective, with the third person perspective being the preferred one for melee combat and exploration, while the first person perspective is better suited for gunplay. During conversations though you'll switch automatically to a first person perspective, and it's here where you'll notice how great the facial animations are. In fact I'll make a very bold claim here by saying that Bloodlines makes a better use of the Source engine than Half Life 2 when it comes to facial animations. This isn't surprising really when you consider how much dialogue there is in the game, but it's worth the praise nonetheless. Watching Damsel (a fiery redhead that's pissed at the world in general) scream and writhe as you give her bad news is a delight.
Another aspect that doesn't fail to impress are the overall graphics, which still look great regardless of the game's age. While the game doesn't sport a realistic feel like Half Life 2, it's packed with intricate detail in every single area. Better yet is the sheer variety of places you'll visit, like graveyards, museums, aristocratic parties, cargo ships, warehouses, dance clubs, and so on. In every single area the game's great art direction shines through.
The great visuals and meticulous detail make the gameworld a very immersive one, though there are a few small quirks. For instance there are no cars in L.A.; well, there are a lot of parked cars, but you'll never see one on the streets (aside from the taxi that takes you around the districts). Also, the pedestrian behavior is odd to say the least, since you'll see sights such as attractive women all dressed up wandering around back and forth in dark alleys with no real sense of direction or people answering their cell phones but never actually say a word. You can't talk to most pedestrians either, so their purpose is mostly cosmetic. Granted this is better than having dumb pedestrians repeat lines ad-nauseum, but I still wish the pedestrians did a better job at bringing the city to life.
One are that is absolutely flawless is the game's audio. The voice acting is simply perfect. Every character is masterfully voiced, something that encourages you to explore the dialogue to the fullest. There's also a great radio show as well as a TV news section (that get constantly updated as you progress) that are hilarious and well worth listening. The sound effects are also amazing, especially the creepy noises that play in some of the more obscure sections of the game. And while it's not necessarily extensive, the game's soundtrack is off the charts, with some great songs playing at the different clubs or bars scattered through the city. Each song manages to capture the feel of the location and the game in general perfectly.
If there's one real flaw in Bloodlines is the fact that the game shipped in an unfinished state. Numerous bugs, glitches, and random crashes marred the experience for most people shortly after the game's release. But a subsequent patch fixed most of the game's biggest problems and there are even dozens of unofficial patches developed by the community that fix the remaining issues and tweak some of the content in the game.
For the record though, I personally can only endorse the official patch. Speaking strictly from my experience, the 1.2 patch brought the game to a entirely stable and playable state, as I never experienced a major bug of any kind. There were still a few glitches but none of them could not be solved by simply reloading a previous save. On the other hand the unofficial patches caused a strange glitch were my character would get stuck while exiting a room and prevented me from finishing a certain quest, something I couldn't fix no matter what I tried (reloading, restarting, reinstalling, etc.). From what I could gather online, I was the only one who experienced such issue, so I'm not slamming the unofficial patches or whatsoever, but I do recommend you try playing the game with the 1.2 patch first and only try the unofficial patches if you're still experiencing problems.
But really, technical issues are the last thing I'm gonna let get in the way of experiencing a great game, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines isn't just any great game, it's one of the best (as well as one of my absolute favorite) games I've ever played. Deep, open-ended, mature, thrilling, hilarious, and memorable, are all terms I could use to describe the overall experience. A bloody masterpiece indeed.