Nonsense. Levelling system was simplistic and convoluted at the same time. If it were released 2010+ by "AAA developer", it would be ridiculed as prime example of "dumbing down".
Nonsense. The system on Bloodlines is simple when compared to others at their time but it does it job to force hard choices on character progression, the major reason we call a game popamole is when it has pretending mechanics, when the game goes out of its way to make its own mechanics irrelevant.
Skyrim for example, offer alot of options on skill trees but none of those choices are hard choices and eventually you will be the Badass master of everything with ease and grand master of all factions, this was made by design from Bethesda and this decision is one of the major reasons why Skyrim sucks. This doesn't happen on Bloodlines. Skyrim doesn't have attibutes too and you don't apply attribute points on the start of the game, meaning that the game doesn't force you to make a character with hard strengths and weaknesses. Sure you can larp as much as you want on Skyrim but it isn't a RPG, it is as RPG as Assassins Creed Odyssey is an RPG.
You only had a few basic stats ( with straightforward passive +),
Nonsense. You have 12 skills to choose and 9 attributes not counting the disciplines, and yeah, they offer mostly passive bonus... like every RPG ever.
while skills&talents overlapped one another, giving exactly same bonuses.
The reason it is because on character creation, a Toreador has a lower pool of physical attributes, for example, yeah, you can make a Toreador brawler but that will be harder than to make a Brujah brawler and you will waste more precious points at it. Depending of the clan choice, you will have a easier time with social interaction or combat. It is convoluted if you are of the Todd Howard Wizard School of Popamole.
Some were completely useless ( Inspection, Hacking, etc),
Please name me an RPG that doesn't have underutilized skills and hacking is pretty important, unless you have meta knowledge from a walkthrough.
others game breaking ( like Celerity).Like everything done by Troika, no effort was even put into "balancing".
Yeah... I remember raping everything with an overpowered cypher build I made on Pillows of Eternity... I guess game developers talking alot about balance magically makes games actually balanced... Sure, even after alot of patches, there are obvious better choices on Pillows of Eternity, that same is truth on all RPGs made to this day, especially on games where the developer gone bankrupt right afterwards and it was a miracle it delivered it half finished.
And stat/book system practically required metagaming/online guide.
Practically required if you are min maxing, if you are just enjoying the game and aren't OCD about it, it is hardly required. This is valid to Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Baldurs Gate and the list goes on and on...
On top of this, you could easily max nearly everything by the end of the game, making "character building" virtually pointless. Skyrim was more "hardcore", in comparison.
The disciplines are clan exclusive, so you cant do this, if you don't read a guide with the location of every single free skill point and what skills can be ignored, you can't do it either, Bloodlines flaws were design flaws and you had to go out of your way to exploit them while Skyrim was retarded since the very intro. If Bloodlines were like Skyrim, you would be able to align with all the clans and don't being forced to choose a clan but being able to use all the cool powers... wait... this sounds suspiciously familiar to what I heard about Bloodlines 2.
Entire game, as a whole, is a prime example of Codexian: muh precioussss game of muh youth!
This is an argument from people that have nothing to say, it is just fucking empty rhetoric and shit social media psychology, you might feel an smart ass saying this but it is just an illusion, don't be a tard.
Hell, it even has the dumbest resolution in any rpg: in the final act, vampires are running around the streets and casting superpowers, while the whole point of the game is Masquerade (of Vampires secretly living in human society). While the main story is retarded fetch quest to find a sarcophagus so you don't open sarcophagus, so we might as well open the sarcophagus, so nothing really happens if we open ( or not) the sarcophagus.
This is the only point I agree with you, the ending could be better but I enjoyed the rest of the game... so...
