Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Bloodlines: no wonder troika is out of business

bryce777

Erudite
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
4,225
Location
In my country the system operates YOU
My biggest complaint is just that the user interface is about the worst thing I have ever seen in a game. It is even worse since I am left handed, which forces me to play in a seriously awkward position, whereas in most games I am fine.

It is the least intuitive interface that I have ever played, too. It also does NOT seem to get any better as time goes by unlike most goofy interfaces - it still annoys the crap out of me.

Using feats is a huge chore, and even the hotkeys work in the most retarded fashion imaginable, making it pointless to invest in more than one combat discipline because you simply will not have time to use them both much before they expire.

I also end up accidentally using feats trying to escape out of object interaction, and the esc key has stupid behavior; instead of being context sensitive, it always breaks you out of the game except when using a computer. In this game you seem to get hardly any blood for your pool, and besides the tickmarks on your meter you do not have any numerical way to check your blood level, or it is hidden somewhere ridiculous.

It is also not easy to check on much of anything including how much health you have, the stats for items, what items you even have. It is a joke. Of all the complaints, I am shocked no one has ever brought up any of these issues.

I could deal with this, but the reload times just kill me. In normal gameplay you end up transitioning every couple of minutes, and it always takes me at least a minute...I seem to spend most of my time just staring at a task bar. This is to load up tiny one room shop much of the time, as well. You can't tell me they couldn't have does something a little better here. If not, they should have scaled back a little in the graphics department to get it loading.

The graphics are good, but honestly, they are no more immersive to me than the ones from the old vampire game, which overall I am liking much better. It was much more complex in that not only did it have a party, but there were far more (and more interesting) disciplines available, and the combat in this game is just too easy 9at least playing melee), and ultimately there seems to be no real strategy to it. In the original the combat was not a panacea, but it was definitely a little more involved.

The story seems good so far, and the voiceacting and characters are all nice and I really like the touch of the overheard conversations and some of the haunted house stuff, but it is not enough to make it into a game which I can imagine replaying.
 

Dhruin

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 15, 2003
Messages
758
Can't say I found the interface a problem. Load times were an issue but that bad.
 

Elwro

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
11,746
Location
Krakow, Poland
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
Somehow I didn't mind the interface. The complaint I'd have is the inventory limit, but I reached it only near the game's ending.

I like the fact that the numerical value of HP/Blood Pool is not directly displayed. What for? To calculate "Hm, let's use 2 points for this and 3 points for that"? Besides, I never had too many problems with refilling my blood pool. You just need to learn how to do it properly or find alternative solutions.

I finished Bloodlines this September and, while the last part of the game was just horrible (and I played with Godmode), I'll definitely replay it chosing a different clan and focusing on other stuff than Persuasion and Seduction (I played a Toreador).

The gfx are good imo; although e.g. the gfx of Painkiller or FEAR are at least on the same level and both of the games (I'm talking about FEAR demo here) run a lot faster than Bloodlines on my computer.

The game has some obvious flaws (like: if you bring up the Character screen, a new piece of music starts playing, but the old one doesn't stop which can result in quite a mess), but playing it was a unique and memorable experience.
 

Section8

Cipher
Joined
Oct 23, 2002
Messages
4,321
Location
Wardenclyffe
I thought Bloodlines came really close to being a great FPS/RPG hybrid, design wise. The dialogue, and balance of skill use in the levle design and missions was good, but between the painful load times, lack of polish to certain aspects, and long linear sections of pure combat it fell a bit short of what I'd hoped for. I'm not disappointed I bought it though.
 

RuySan

Augur
Joined
Jul 11, 2005
Messages
777
Location
Portugal
i think the game is really good, and the only pount that i agree with you are the reloading times. Altough i'm just now starting china town, and according to people the last part of the game is crap
 

Greatatlantic

Erudite
Joined
Feb 21, 2005
Messages
1,683
Location
The Heart of It All
How come I get the feeling you don't have a mouse wheel? That made changing powers very easy. Beyond that, the interface was pretty streamlined. You could use K to assign hotkeys, and if the interface really bothered you, it was possible to rebind them with the options menu. No interface is going to be perfect for everyone.
 

golgotha

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 3, 2005
Messages
187
Didn't have a problem with the game until the last few quests. It was obvious they just threw the ending together to finish in time.
 

MarFish

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 7, 2004
Messages
266
Good story, good quests, horrible combat, horrible breakdown after 66% of the game, buggy as hell, nuff said.
 

bryce777

Erudite
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
4,225
Location
In my country the system operates YOU
Well, I haven't finished it yet. the hotkeys work rather retardedly, and the extremely fast expiration of the disciplines makes it so that using more than one seems to be a pain in the ass. I do have a mouse wheel, but it moves very quickly and there are very many disciplines.

If you can rebind keys that will make me a lot happier - the alt key also seriously annoys me becuase I game in the dark, and every time I hit the windows key on accident, it kicks me out of the game and it takes literally several minutes to get back in. I know about the hotkeys but as I said they are not too useful because of the way they work.

I agree that the quests and story are very good so far, but I like good...you know, GAMEPLAY! Which means combat, and moving around, and not having to fucking spend half my time waiting for reloads.

I am going to put my installation on my bigger disk which is 300gig instead of the 60gigger and see if that speeds it up any. I should have plenty of ram that I shouldn't need to load ANYTHING. That is a lot of what annoys me - this is not 1991 with Ultima 7! A game engine should be smart enough to not mindlessly load from disk if you have the memory to avoid it!
 

Drakron

Arcane
Joined
May 19, 2005
Messages
6,326
You can lower loading times with more RAM and if you mess with the Virtual Memory settings to 1.5 gigas.

That game was build with a aplha build of Source engine, it have issues.
 

bryce777

Erudite
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
4,225
Location
In my country the system operates YOU
Drakron said:
You can lower loading times with more RAM and if you mess with the Virtual Memory settings to 1.5 gigas.

That game was build with a aplha build of Source engine, it have issues.

Well, that kind of sucks. I did think it was a stupid idea all along to license such a high end engine. High end requirementswise, that is.

I will pump my virtual mem up a bit too. Too bad I can't (I think) put that on a separate disk.

I might get another 512mb but I don't remember what sort of memory I have...maybe I can find out.
 

voodoo1man

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 10, 2003
Messages
568
Location
Icy Highlands of Canada
I too found the controls less than polished (yes, I did have a mouse wheel). Quest bugs were annoying (but the fan-made patch addresses all the ones I came across). The linearity is the part that really annoyed me.
 

roguefrog

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 6, 2003
Messages
545
Location
Tokyo, Japan
Aside from the combat only areas (sewers, last portion of the game) and loading times/performace issues, I didn't have much of a problem with it.
 

jiujitsu

Cipher
Joined
Mar 11, 2004
Messages
1,444
Project: Eternity
I think the game is fun and I replayed it a lot of times. Yea, it's buggy and has bad memory leaks and slow framerate, but that's Troika's trademark.
 

Jason

chasing a bee
Joined
Jun 30, 2005
Messages
10,737
Location
baby arm fantasy island
I'm fairly early in the game, but the only complaints I have so far are the loading times and hearing that same gay ass fucking song whenever I enter the club. The interface is no problem for me.
 

Kamaz

Pahris Entertainment
Developer
Joined
Feb 16, 2004
Messages
1,035
Location
The Glorious Ancient City of Loja
Oh, I liked Bloodlines very much. I usually hate games about vampires and I do hate the fact I have to play as one. This is why I decided to play the game in a rebel-way.

First off, I took gangrel clan. It did not help me in no way, because they have bonuses for frenzy, but during the game I never entered one. Plus, I never actually used any of the feats. Next thing - I became really fucking hardcore hacker. Then, I decided to stick with guns rather than blades (well, because I hate vampire stuff and I want to stand up against the rule of blades!), which made the game pretty hard. Then I boosted up stealth, so I could avoid many kills (because I hate vampires and wanted to be as normal person, as possible, so no killing!). Then, again, I avoided stealing (unless the ones I was stealing from were 'bad guys'). In the game I never drunk blood from human. I used bloodpacks, but when realised how they are made (clinic in Santa-Monica) I stopped buying them as well. My Humanity hit the ceiling fast and I couldnt raise it any higher - damn, was I good man.

So, I enjoyed the game, because I played it through the way I like, I wanted. Dialogue options gave me enough freedom of "role-playing" my character.

Speaking technically, RAM is what I need to play the game properly. That and also better VGA (I stick with GF4ti), but even with this stutter, the game was playable. I liked facial expressions, "wet" eyes and quests (like those Malkavian twins). Yes, the game was combat heavy, had bugs (damn doors!), but I have played games with more combat that didnt offer that choice Bloodlines gave. SO, the game was fine, and i really dig the musical score for it.
 

Jinxed

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 5, 2002
Messages
901
Location
Special Encounter
I wish the game had another hub and Chinatown filled out instead of the combat near the end. That would kick ass.
 

Saint_Proverbius

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
11,475
Location
Behind you.
My big problem with the game was the linear storyline which was mostly go to an area and kill-kill-kill. The rest of the game was great with side quests that allowed multiple ways of doing things, a lot of dialogue, and so forth.

If the game had been way more open and just littered with little clues about the sarcophogus, it would have been much better than having the linear plot string you have to do in order to advance from location to location.
 

fnordcircle

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 6, 2004
Messages
693
Location
Frowning at my monitor as I read your dumb post.
The gameworld was tiny, the NPC interaction was non-existent and all those loadtimes didn't seem worth it based on the graphics it had.

The combat was fun and the combat effects were cool, I guess. I preferred the previous Vampire game by Nihilistic by a lot. The levels were just as small and it was linear as hell, but at least it wasn't a pig on my system and the multiplayer component was fantastic. Plus it lasted longer.

Both had their major faults when it came to how true they were to the WoD, but that's not a big deal to me.
 

bryce777

Erudite
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
4,225
Location
In my country the system operates YOU
I liked the original one quite a lot, too. I think I will replay that one once I finish this, for comparison.

I decided to pick up 2 gig of memory - I moved the game to my larger drive and set a fixed size 4 gig swap on it as well, but the load times are still pretty slow. Faster, but still painful. Before it was practically unplayable, though; I really think I will like the game much better if I can kill the reload times.

I rebound the keys and that has helped a lot, too. The mouseclick driven nonsense was just painful, and the wasdfe stuff unmanageable for me....
 

Jinxed

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 5, 2002
Messages
901
Location
Special Encounter
Adjusting the swap file didn't do much for me. With 512 ram, athlon 2500 xp and a radeon 9600pro card it was playable, the loading times were very long but I played it anyway. After a while of playing however, the game began to work incredibly slow, the loading times were longer and I had a very annoying jitter and like I said, the swap file thing didn't work. When I got more ram, 1gb, the loading times were much better, other than that the game ran identically despide an upgrade to a pentium 3.0 64 and Geforce 6800gt.

ToEE has the same problem. Upgrading doesn't really help.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom