Prime Junta
Guest
So I noticed that VtM: Bloodlines was 75% off on Steam, and ended up re-buying it, installing Wesp's patch (with the restorations), and firing it up again. I played it when it came out but don't recall revisiting it since; I'm not even sure where the DVD is anymore. This thread has on-the-fly impressions of it. It's not a let's-play; it's a good deal more general than that.
I will try to mark spoilers with spoiler tags, apologies in advance if I forget.
"Wow this character creation is... streamlined"
I roll up a Tremere, put a few pips in random places, and do a test run. Notice when levelling up it costs more XP to buy higher ranks. Realise it was dumb to distribute my pips between things rather than put them all in one thing, and also I decide I don't want to be a Tremere after all, so I try again with a Brujah. Decide I'm gonna play as a good rebellious anarchist -- kind to the oppressed, giving the finger to the powerful. Give her the Academic background, pump Intimidation and Persuasion, put a pip into Potence figuring that since I don't intend to pump Strength much that'll come in handy. And set off again.
"Wow this looks and sounds pretty good"
The opening cinematic sequence is really good. Voice acting is top notch, there's great narrative tension, and it's filmed and cut like somebody actually knows what they're doing. The graphics have aged well -- it looks more stylised than outdated, the occasional low-res texture and all. The lighting and colour palette help a lot.
Tutorial is pretty cool too. Jack's a hoot. Lot of reactivity in the tutorial -- there were material differences between my first autistic Tremere and my second socially-gifted intimidating Brujah.
(But, the second time around -- yeah I like to restart -- I notice I can't skip it. Bleh.)
"Wow is this floaty"
Movement feels terrible and (in third-person view) looks awful too. It's like I'm driving a hovercraft. Combat is just about as bad as I remembered it; fire up Potence and click madly to see the enemies go down. In fact it's so bad that for a bit I feel like I just can't put up with this. Then I figure out I can just run up to people, hit FFFFFFF and drink them dry, or sneak up on them to stealth-kill them, and decide I'm gonna focus on brawling and stealth so I can do that and avoid the whiffing/popamoling as much as possible.
"Holy shit this writing is fantastic"
No really it is. I can't think of any cRPG with dialog that flows as beautifully as this. Even bit players are fully characterised, have loads of personality, and talk ... naturally. There's no typical "let me tell you about my mother" RPG-ey bullshit. There are also lovely little twists that almost, but not quite, break the fourth wall -- like the one guy named "E", which is also the key you press to talk to people, and that piece of advice from the spaced-out thin-blood with the accent. (That voice and accent though. Where have I heard it before?)
The lore-dumping in the intro was a bit heavy but it was comparatively well-executed and now that it's out of the way, things are going even better.
Also, Deb of Night is rad.
Just hit a minor lore inconsistency (unless I'm missing something):
All of it is really nicely voice-acted. The facial animations are great too, they've aged extremely well, and in fact I find the somewhat low-fi facial animations easier to relate to than newer, more realistic ones which are deeper in Uncanny Valley.
"Why are all these ladies walking around in their underwear?"
Yeah, that's a bit jarring. It also lessens the impact from where it counts: nothing is as un-sexy as a nudist colony, and VtM:B is a bit too far in that direction. Jeanette for example would make a much stronger impression if there weren't all those other ladies walking around wearing next to nothing.
"Is this really going to be this easy all the way through?"
So far, it's been... really easy. I've done a bunch of stuff in the first hub and am about to head off on a mission for Therese. There have been a few closed doors but nothing to stop me from easily reaching my objectives. Lots of dialog checks for Intimidate and Persuade with pretty neat results, some hacking. The only combat I've encountered so far was really really easy, and I haven't built up my combat skills much at all (picked the Academic background which dilutes some of the Brujah's built-in combat skills.)
We'll see how it goes later on. I notice a tendency to hoard XP just in case, trying to fight that actually.
So far... it's really good actually. The character development is a bit too streamlined for my taste and the moment-to-moment gameplay is frankly bad, but I find that easy to forgive because of the great writing, numerous skill checks (skill checks everywhere!), and sound and visual design that's aged surprisingly well.
To be continued...
I will try to mark spoilers with spoiler tags, apologies in advance if I forget.
"Wow this character creation is... streamlined"
I roll up a Tremere, put a few pips in random places, and do a test run. Notice when levelling up it costs more XP to buy higher ranks. Realise it was dumb to distribute my pips between things rather than put them all in one thing, and also I decide I don't want to be a Tremere after all, so I try again with a Brujah. Decide I'm gonna play as a good rebellious anarchist -- kind to the oppressed, giving the finger to the powerful. Give her the Academic background, pump Intimidation and Persuasion, put a pip into Potence figuring that since I don't intend to pump Strength much that'll come in handy. And set off again.
"Wow this looks and sounds pretty good"
The opening cinematic sequence is really good. Voice acting is top notch, there's great narrative tension, and it's filmed and cut like somebody actually knows what they're doing. The graphics have aged well -- it looks more stylised than outdated, the occasional low-res texture and all. The lighting and colour palette help a lot.
Tutorial is pretty cool too. Jack's a hoot. Lot of reactivity in the tutorial -- there were material differences between my first autistic Tremere and my second socially-gifted intimidating Brujah.
(But, the second time around -- yeah I like to restart -- I notice I can't skip it. Bleh.)
"Wow is this floaty"
Movement feels terrible and (in third-person view) looks awful too. It's like I'm driving a hovercraft. Combat is just about as bad as I remembered it; fire up Potence and click madly to see the enemies go down. In fact it's so bad that for a bit I feel like I just can't put up with this. Then I figure out I can just run up to people, hit FFFFFFF and drink them dry, or sneak up on them to stealth-kill them, and decide I'm gonna focus on brawling and stealth so I can do that and avoid the whiffing/popamoling as much as possible.
"Holy shit this writing is fantastic"
No really it is. I can't think of any cRPG with dialog that flows as beautifully as this. Even bit players are fully characterised, have loads of personality, and talk ... naturally. There's no typical "let me tell you about my mother" RPG-ey bullshit. There are also lovely little twists that almost, but not quite, break the fourth wall -- like the one guy named "E", which is also the key you press to talk to people, and that piece of advice from the spaced-out thin-blood with the accent. (That voice and accent though. Where have I heard it before?)
The lore-dumping in the intro was a bit heavy but it was comparatively well-executed and now that it's out of the way, things are going even better.
Also, Deb of Night is rad.
Just hit a minor lore inconsistency (unless I'm missing something):
Thin-bloods aren't supposed to be able to sire; that's what makes them thin-bloods. Yet Lily sired E, even though Lily is by her admission, and according to her German sire, also a thin-blood. What's the deal with that? Is she just confused, and not a thin-blood? If so, then how come her sire just dumped her there?
All of it is really nicely voice-acted. The facial animations are great too, they've aged extremely well, and in fact I find the somewhat low-fi facial animations easier to relate to than newer, more realistic ones which are deeper in Uncanny Valley.
"Why are all these ladies walking around in their underwear?"
Yeah, that's a bit jarring. It also lessens the impact from where it counts: nothing is as un-sexy as a nudist colony, and VtM:B is a bit too far in that direction. Jeanette for example would make a much stronger impression if there weren't all those other ladies walking around wearing next to nothing.
"Is this really going to be this easy all the way through?"
So far, it's been... really easy. I've done a bunch of stuff in the first hub and am about to head off on a mission for Therese. There have been a few closed doors but nothing to stop me from easily reaching my objectives. Lots of dialog checks for Intimidate and Persuade with pretty neat results, some hacking. The only combat I've encountered so far was really really easy, and I haven't built up my combat skills much at all (picked the Academic background which dilutes some of the Brujah's built-in combat skills.)
We'll see how it goes later on. I notice a tendency to hoard XP just in case, trying to fight that actually.
So far... it's really good actually. The character development is a bit too streamlined for my taste and the moment-to-moment gameplay is frankly bad, but I find that easy to forgive because of the great writing, numerous skill checks (skill checks everywhere!), and sound and visual design that's aged surprisingly well.
To be continued...
Combat doesn't get demanding until Chinatown when you're practically done but man does it annoy people with bad builds. Some people will claim it starts with the Hollywood sewers but to be honest I never found that difficult, just a boring combat crawl that takes about 20 minutes if you do it all at once.
. Not to worry though, you haven't missed much, they have little in terms of clan-specific dialogue, Dominate dialogue options are pretty boring compared to Dementation, Fortitude makes you a walking Terminator if you heavily invest in it, not being able to feed on rats makes a certain section of the game more challenging and that's about it, well they also have great looking trenchcoats though if you wanna larp JC Denton or something.
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