MrPopo wrote:106. Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption - PC
Of the two VtM games available on the PC, this is the less good one. It ends up being too much Diablo, not enough VtM. The setting isn't really explored the way it is in Bloodlines which is a real misuse of the property. It's a shame, too, because having the game being set in both the Dark Ages and the Modern Ages has promise. The devs just failed to deliver.
You are a wounded Crusader who is left behind in the care of a convent. You immediately get a hard on for one of the nuns and she reciprocates, leading to the overarching goals of the game. Shortly thereafter you are introduced to the world of the vampires when you try to defend the town against nearby monsters and you get turned by clan Brujah. Here we see the game's biggest strength; they take a look at clan Brujah in the olden days, which is different from how they are in the modern setting. You also get to interact with the Cappadocians and gain one as a party member. Then you do some jobs for your sire, and during this time the hot nun gets kidnapped and sold into vampiric slavery. This becomes the main plot; you spend the rest of the game trying to get back your virginal squeeze. Midway through the game you fall into torpor and are only awakened in the modern era.
The game is incredibly combat focused, with the minimal town areas being little better than the original Diablo's. You traverse from one dungeon to the next killing tons of dudes. This would be ok if the combat was interesting, but again, it falls short. You have a party of up to four members and melee combat is straight Diablo. You do gain a selection of powers, but until late game they are all too costly in blood to be useful as a primary means of attack. So you're left swinging away and usually missing in the early game and overall it's very unsatisfying.
Then you get the best sword in the game that steals blood on hit and your strength and dex get high enough to regularly hit and you instantly morph into a death god. Unless you were trying to build a caster. Then you're just gimped. The game throws a ton of disciplines at you but most are worthless. I found the ones I needed were healing, celerity, fortitude, potence, and prison of ice, the last of which turns all bosses into ez mode. As it turns out, bosses don't resist disabling spells, so you can just keep them perma frozen while your party beats on them.
Speaking of disabling spells, there are far too many of them that enemies like to use on you, which makes things incredibly frustrating. You end up having to do a lot of drawing enemies out with your expendable party members before you swoop in and trash the joint. It doesn't really feel like proper difficulty, just fake difficulty.
You came into the game at a point where it was patched a gazillion times to make it even playable. I got the game at launch and, for the first month and a half, your party AI was so bad that they would spam spells to the point where they went into frenzy and would attack you... AT ALL TIMES! Whenever combat was engaged, they would immediately run out of blood and frenzy attack you. It was really really bad.
The level creation toolset was also a bust, as it required you to do some hardcore modding to add custom maps. You were left with a handful of premade garbage maps from the game. Outside of that though, the actually Dungeon Master tools they gave you were awesome and it was fun to mess around with, but was very under utilized.
As for the game itself, it was a great concept that fell horribly flat on its face. I never picked it up again after the launch fiasco. I will stick to my FPS/RPG alternative thank you very much!