Where Bloodlines stumbles is in its combat system, which simply feels clumsy and unsatisfactory. The combat mechanics are a blend of twitch-based action and role-playing stats, and it's an awkward compromise. You can battle it out from a first-person perspective using firearms, or you can switch to a third-person viewpoint to use melee weapons, such as knives and swords. However, while Bloodlines is built on a first-person shooter engine, the gunplay is nowhere near as smooth and natural as it should be. Your firearm abilities depend heavily on your characters stats; it's not as simple as placing the cursor over a target. Unless you invest heavily in improving your firearm skills, your aim will veer wildly. Meanwhile, melee weapons are simply overpowering, and combat is skewed heavily toward knife and swordplay. To give you some perspective, we attempted a certain boss battle with a character specializing in firearms and lost repeatedly, but we beat it on the first time that we used a knife instead of a gun.​