I have only put about 3 hours into this game thus far and 1 of them doesn't count because I was really drunk and barely remember even playing - I like to party sometimes too!
I had been intrigued by this game in the past but not enough to actually pay for it. Lo' and behold it was part of the Playstation Plus games for October and well, there is no reason to not try it now that I don't have to pay for it.
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When you first begin the game is incredibly captivating and for me one of the major pluses of all of this was the really amazing and sombre music that was heavy on the strings and whose tempo changed based on what was going on. It created a very realistic ambiance of being in turn of the century London during World War 1.
You play as a Jonathan Reid, a doctor who didn't want to be a Vampire and at first doesn't even realize that he is one. He faces a very real conundrum because he MUST consume blood to survive but he still is on the side of the humans that he sides with very early on. The first person he consumes is actually his own sister who had been looking for him when he was presumed dead and thrown into a mass grave along with dozens of other corpses. It's a tragic start to a really involved and in-depth story and while that might appeal to some people, the game is so story driven that it almost seems like a book rather than a game.
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For some, especially those that are really into Vampire lore, this might be an advantage as the game doesn't really revolve around combat as much as it does talking to people and exposing secrets that lead to you figuring things out about individual members of the population, and in a way I am guessing this is so that you can determine who is a scoundrel and therefore you shouldn't feel bad about feeding on them.
You gain a LOT of XP by consuming a villager, much more so than what you gain from combat encounters and therefore there is some incentive created to encourage you to feed on them instead. You get more XP the more you know about the person that you consume but there is a big caveat because once you do kill them and drink their blood, they and every aspect of the story that they were attached to, disappear forever. Killing them also can create problems and have repercussions for you and the "district" that you happen to be in, and simply drinking everyone can have a disastrous outcome.
For me, this different style of gameplay was interesting at first but eventually just became a bit boring as I was spending 30 minutes running around talking to people and not really realizing what the hell I was meant to be doing.
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The graphics are pretty great for an older game and as far as I can tell so far it doesn't seem to have many hiccups as far as frame-rate is concerned even when there are a bunch of enemies on the screen.
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Combat is extremely simplistic and it seems to me as though the fighting aspect of the game was actually meant (or simply ended up being that way) a rather minor part of the game. It basically consists of locking on to an enemy and the dodging around until you get your chance to hit them a few times with your axe, club, or other melee weapon. You do at times face multiple enemies but I am yet to encounter a situation where this becomes overwhelming outside of an area that I was not supposed to be in yet (and the game did warn me about this.)
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I am not a difficult game mastery type person either, but I found combat to be a bit too simplistic and it became mundane pretty quickly because there doesn't seem to be anything terribly Vampire-like about how it is that you dispatch your enemies. You are given the opportunity to bite them at some points in battle in order to recharge your blood bar, but for some reason this doesn't kill them (like it does when you are out of combat) but rather kind of opens you up to being attacked by other enemies on the screen.
I suppose you should be happy that combat is a not around you all the time and there are massive dialogue breaks between the various fighting missions because unfortunately, combat is the weakest part of the game overall.
So, like I said I haven't played this game all the way through and considering the backlog of games that I have currently I believe it is pretty unlikely that I will do so. The game is very detailed and has a ton of story in there that might be very interesting for someone that really wants to immerse themselves in the huge amount of dialogue options that exist inside.
I think that for many the rather weak combat system is going to be kind a "game-breaker" though and I have already moved on to other things. Perhaps I will return another day but honestly, it seems unlikely.
I need to try this game. I think PS Plus users got it free for this month.
you are correct about that with the PS players.
yeah I was a bit disappointed with combat as well but trudged on for a think a few more hours than you did. Unfortunately, it doesn't evolve aside from some "super skills" that you later acquire but are incapable of using very often because they almost completely drain your "blood bar" or whatever it is called. I think this is why the game is free this month instead of some much better spooky games like Resident Evil or something like that. It also averages around 3 stars out of 5 on most sites and the main complaint is always the combat being so basic.
right. I've heard that about the blood skills and i would imagine that the game just consists of dodging and slashing over and over and over again. Lame.