Review Good Bloodlines review

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Troika Games; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

After posting that <a href=http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=10444>KOTOR 2 review</a>, I had to restore the balance in the universe by posting Richard Cobbett's <a href=http://www.vampirebloodlines.com/>Bloodlines</a> <a href=http://www.richardcobbett.co.uk/codex/journalism/article/vampire_the_masquerade_bloodlines/>review</a>. Why? It's nice to read an intelligent opinion every now and then, even if it was written awhile ago.
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<blockquote>Importantly, however, doing all this evil stuff is entirely your own decision. You /could. have bought a bag of blood to sup on; you could have persuaded that vampire groupie to leave town rather than snapping her head back for elevenses. Moral choices are always yours to make, but not necessarily as clear-cut. You can try to play the saint or you can go rampaging until your mouth smells like an abattoir and your humanity is a tortured stub of charcoal evil; but like it or not, you’re in for some tough decisions.
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The characters play a huge part in making Vampire so good. Much more than simple mission terminals, each and every one features some of the best, most realistic, and damn-funny writing ever heard in an RPG - superbly acted by many familiar voices, and brought to life with Half-Life 2’s soon-to-be-standard character engine. From bickering twins Therese and Jeanette to your hard-as-nails mentor Jack and the whining of Steve Buscemi-esque fixer ghoul Mercurio ("Is that my rib? Oh god, it IS my rib!"), almost every single one is worth talking to. True, they’re not quite up to the visual quality of Half-Life 2 - you can’t count skin-pores, like you can with the G-Man, but make no mistake - there are many, many, many of them to meet up with, all excellent, and amongst the best characters ever created for an RPG.
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More pressingly, as with Troika’s last two games - and please don’t blame the publishers again, guys, you’ve had three of them and every single one of your games has needed an urgent patch - it clearly needed more time in the QA labs. While superbly written, the in-game text is riddled with typos, while the scripting contains several showstopper bugs that you have to open up a cheat console to get past - including, on occasion, the tutorial! Unacceptable. This isn’t just the best RPG of the year, it’s one of the few capable of reaching Planescape and Fallout levels - and jaw-droppingly sloppy glitches like this smack of an ill-advised rush to make an end of the year deadline.</blockquote>I disagree with certain things, but overall, it's a damn good review. At least, there is no doubt that he played the entire game.

 

[Zomg]

It reads a little harsh now that we know the fate of Troika and in the context of the nosedive of the RPG market, but it seems very appropriate for a release-time review. I would probably have had a poorer experience with VTMBL if I hadn't gone in with forgiving expectations for the technical and polish aspects.

I think he somewhat understates how fun the combat is but otherwise I'm in agreement.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I think he somewhat understates how fun the combat is....

That's the part I disagree with too, but hey, that's what opinions are for.

 

[Richard]

Eh, we'll have to disagree on that one. I liked the more destructive Disciplines when I played through as Tremere, but my Toreador spent so much time using Celerity to just get past opponents that the key wiped clean. Whether it was melee or firearms, I just wanted those bits over with. I played through the sewers and ending levels exactly once without God Mode on for the review - my Malk getting a full whammy of cheat-codes for a third playthrough.

It reads a little harsh now that we know the fate of Troika and in the context of the nosedive of the RPG market, but it seems very appropriate for a release-time review.

Unlike the KOTOR post, that one was an actual review. I'm actually pretty sympathetic to Troika's problems - I enjoyed all their games and throughly enjoyed Vampire- but bluntly, for the average reader, corporate politics stop being relevant at the point where they hand over their £35. And a showstopper bug in the tutorial (the door sometimes didn't open, leaving you stuck with Smiling Jack for all eternity) is just beyond a joke, no matter how strapped you are for QA time. There's a line in there that may be a bit harsh, but when you've had the exact same problem with three different publishers (Sierra with Arcanum, Atari with Temple of Elemental Evil, and then Activision with Vampire), the excuse is going to start wearing a bit thin.

 

[Zomg]

Eh, we'll have to disagree on that one. I liked the more destructive Disciplines when I played through as Tremere, but my Toreador spent so much time using Celerity to just get past opponents that the key wiped clean. Whether it was melee or firearms, I just wanted those bits over with. I played through the sewers and ending levels exactly once without God Mode on for the review - my Malk getting a full whammy of cheat-codes for a third playthrough.

You'll get no argument from me that the three really egregious combat sections of the game (the old sewers bit against the biting meatballs with arms and the two branches of the endgame) were all filler garbage, but the basic combat design was fairly fun. I thought the automatic first person -> shoulder third person shifting between ranged and melee was great and added a ton of fluidity to combat, and together with the light sneaker aspects and discipline stuff all added up to a pretty fun baseline system. In the quality combat set pieces it really shone (I'm thinking of the disease cult and the section where you might kill the guy extorting that club owner, although there's probably more I'm forgetting). No system could salvage the trudge of those sewers and the endgame, though.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Whether it was melee or firearms, I just wanted those bits over with.

I thought that ranged combat was rather enjoyable, at least when your bump up the skills. Never had problems with anything including that full-of-zombies building, that Kuei-Jin temple including its mistress, or the Sheriff. What aspect of ranged combat you didn't like, out of curiosity?

but bluntly, for the average reader, corporate politics stop being relevant at the point where they hand over their £35

While you have a point there, Troika games had quality despite the bugs and issues, and somehow I doubt that without Troika the average reader/player is better off paying $50 for crap like Dungeon Lords & Gauntlet that has very few if any qualities. Even comparing to KOTOR 2, Bloodlines is a far superior game.

 

[Screaming_life]

You'll get no argument from me that the three really egregious combat sections of the game (the old sewers bit against the biting meatballs with arms and the two branches of the endgame) were all filler garbage

The sewer section was bad, i don't remember the meatballs but the china branch i did pretty much all with stealth so it wasn't too bad... although having the person you just killed re-spawn after you'd moved about 2 meters away was a bit of an immersion killer!

My biggest problem with the game though was that you had no (none that i remember anyway) long lasting effect on the story... but it was often implied that you would and then you get to the end and just choose your ending. It completely ruined it for me


BTW: does anyone know if it's possible to beat the end boss if you've not spent any points on firearms or got no ammo left? i was so pissed with the game by this point i had to cheat to finish it but it always seemed like it would be almost impossible if you weren't good with firearms.

 

[Richard]

I thought that ranged combat was rather enjoyable, at least when your bump up the skills. Never had problems with anything including that full-of-zombies building, that Kuei-Jin temple including its mistress, or the Sheriff. What aspect of ranged combat you didn't like, out of curiosity?

To be honest, it's been so long since I played Vampire that I can't give you many specifics, but it came down to the general feel of it, really - a lack of weight and impact, not so much against one enemy at a time, but very light in crowds - not helped by the Toreador I used for playing through the game having the resilience of tissue paper. A hefty axe and Celerity were usually much more convenient.

While you have a point there, Troika games had quality despite the bugs and issues, and somehow I doubt that without Troika the average reader/player is better off paying $50 for crap like Dungeon Lords & Gauntlet that has very few if any qualities

Sure, hence it got a good review and a good score - but much as I hoped it would be one of those games that would get the success it deserved, it wouldn't have been a fair review without mentioning its problems. There was a lot of debate amongst people playing it in the office - my view was that the first two-thirds were so damn good that it deserved the high marks, but only with the necessary caveats in place, others were so annoyed by the post-Chinatown stuff that they'd have marked it down, but I was reviewing the game, so high marks it was.

(There was more on its features in the magazine, as boxouts and captions that I didn't port across for the site archive. I can't remember if I mentioned specifics like Heather, which was a stunning piece of cruelty on behalf of the game designers - forcing you to break her heart to do the right thing, only to give you a get-out clause at the last second - but I generally don't go into much detail on aspects that are best left as a surprise. It turns them from being something cool you encounter to 'Oh look, that's that bit from the review'. For instance, you'll note that I mention Therese and Jeanette, but not what their actual plotline is - even though it was that part that made me realise how much fun I was going to have playing this game...)

 

[7th Circle]

IMO, a very accurate review.

Basically, in tems of character interaction etc., Bloodlines was a masterpiece. I've played a fair bit of the PnP V:TM and when playing Bloodlines I remembering thinking how well the characters brought the White Wolf world to life; Troika dodged many opportunities to reduce this to cliche and mediocrity.

However, the combat, especially the melee combat, was annoying and often frustrating beyond belief. Besides the often mind numbing length and lack of variation in certain scenes (e.g., sewers, Kuei-Jin area), the balance was, at times, horrible. I don't want to know how many times I had to save and reload in order to defeat the Kuei Jin mistress "without cheating" using my melee based Ventrue character. Of course, a ridiculous numbers of saves during combat is all but cheating but that's another story...

Additionally the bugginess was all too obvious and, overall, the game felt like an early beta of a great game as opposed to a great game.

 

[Jora]

First he says:

and please don’t blame the publishers again

And then he blames the publisher:

it clearly needed more time in the QA labs

:

 

[Volourn]

BL had fun combat? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! VD , and others who believe that shit need their heads examined. It's combat is AWFUL. It makes KOTOR2's combat look to be on par with FO's. WOWSERS!!!

And, Bloodlines is nowher enear Fo's level. FO = Top 5 game for sure. Bloodlines = Top 20 if Lucky.

Fun game. Just because it had potential to be amongst the best doens't mean it is.

Bugs, horrible combat, uneven role-playing, and poor ending does not equal one of the best games ever.

Period.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Sometimes I feel funny when people put down the game only because of some bugs and go as far as giving it 7 out of 10 when in case of bug-free'ness they would grant it a shiny 9 or above (not the case of Richard's review, it was fair). But this was very much the case with overall receivement of Bloodlines in the general gaming media. Similar reaction was often observed with both Fallouts. OMG, thier is bug, teh game is unplayeable!!

Why I am telling this? I only got a stable access to the internet 3 or 4 years ago and started reading various feedbacks on games I have been playing at the time I hadn't. Hence my surprised when I suddenly found out that Fallout and Arcanum is actually full of awfull bugs and glitches that drags those games down to mediocrity despite the godly gameplay and replay value. I'm not sure if my standarts are too low or I was having paranormal events while playing those two games, but I hardly stumbled upon a bug and if so it was only some minor unconviniency that never ever could make me think worse of the game or even stop playing it. It would be like saying that a particular novel somewhat sucks because there are few typos here and there.

As for Bloodlines, I can't give a honest feedback on bugs yet as I just recently restarted the saved game and haven't finished it yet (now dealing with China town affairs).
The reason why I stopped playing it at one point (after it was recently released) was actually the one that also detracted Mr. Cobbett too.

Combat IS NOT MUCH FUN. Maybe some of you would say that combat has not to be an issue if all the other rpg aspects are fine to excellent (and they are in Bloodlines except for a lack of openendedness).
It's too hectic.
There are too much forced tedious dungeon crawling (sewers). Pretty mutch the only main drawback in Arcanum for me too.
I tried the ranger char and realised it's quite non effective against large crowds (who tends to even respawn in some places) even at high levels.
Melee/brawler is quite fun to have in your posession, especially with celerity of 5 (now playing pure combat type brujah), but combat is too tedious never the less. I would like something more like Gothic when talking TPS/FPS RPG with RT combat. Much more diversity in combat tactics, not so hectic button bashing. Bloodline's combat just seems plain consolish. I like the implementation of disciplines though.

 

[Richard]

First he says:

and please don’t blame the publishers again

And then he blames the publisher:

it clearly needed more time in the QA labs

:

Welcome to the wacky world of things not being mutally exclusive. It needed more QA, that much should be patently obvious, but you can't pin the blame on three different publishers and three entirely different games and still expect that excuse to hold much water when every bug in the thing is by definition your own making. Troika's job was to design and create the game according to its abilities and resources, and while the design was often top-notch and I applaud its many successes against the odds (lest we forget, the review is basically very positive), it consistently bit off far more than it could chew. Once is unfortunate, twice regrettable, but three times? That's one for Lady Bracknell, whatever the ultimate reasons.

 

[Zomg]

Does anyone disagree with anything else in this thread at more than a micron tolerance? I think the critical opinion of Bloodlines is codified at this point (no pun intended).

 

[Gnidrologist]

Does anyone disagree with anything else in this thread at more than a micron tolerance? I think the critical opinion of Bloodlines is codified at this point (no pun intended).

Well, if that would make you feel better - combat in Bloodlines sucks and lienarity of themain plot suxXorZs too.
Satisfied?

*wondering to myself why this game still r0xXorzzZ so very much*

 

[dunduks]

I kinda liked melee combat, though that might be becouse I like fighting games or games like ONI, on the other hand I didn't like ranged combat, so all my character builds were melee. Of course, combat could be improved, but as it is, it's not that bad.

 

[LlamaGod]

I like how most bugs people complain about i've never ever had.

I guess i'm just magically lucky or something

 

[Jora]

but you can't pin the blame on three different publishers and three entirely different games and still expect that excuse to hold much water when every bug in the thing is by definition your own making.

But the only time they "blamed" their publisher for some of the problems in their game was when they said Atari could have released a newer version of The Temple of Elemental Evil but chose not to. All else is pure exaggeration.

Some say they blamed Activision when asked when they would patch Bloodlines. Troika's answer was that it was for Activision to decide although they had a patch ready. Should they have said something else? Why?

Some say Troika blamed their publisher when they said they needed more development time for their games. But since the games are so unfinished, isn't it pretty much an undeniable fact? I see no reason for the publishers not to take the blame for releasing so buggy games. Do you think the publishers don't have to care about the quality of their products? Why?

Some say that when the developers willingly agreed to take the blame for all the technical problems in their games, they didn't really mean it and were actually posessed by illithids and dark jedis. Do you agree with this? Why?

 

[Richard]

But the only time they "blamed" their publisher for some of the problems in their game was when they said Atari could have released a newer version of The Temple of Elemental Evil but chose not to. All else is pure exaggeration.

Troikawatching isn't one of my hobbies - but the cry has invariably gone up to lynch the evil publishers after a release. If everyone there left the office thinking sunshine and smiles about the experience, and all the anger and finger pointing was courtesy of random internet folks, I apologise. Clearly I was reading the wrong stories.

But the point is still pretty much the same, that no matter what publisher interference there was or wasn't - that it was Troika's job to make the game they originally pitched, and when you've got three titles with three different publishers all hitting the exact same problem, the majority of the blame really isn't going to land in the usual places. Whether Troika accepted fault every time or had a cast-iron excuse for each and every one of them makes pretty much no difference, save that it's not one of the development teams that I can feel especially sympathetic about development hell tales from. (The people, yes, the closure, yes - I liked their games plenty, and would have liked to have seen more. But Troika as an entity made its own bed three times over as far as criticisms of it go - something that even its members acknowledged).

 

[Jora]

Fair enough, though in my opinion you could read what you yourself wrote : Welcome to the wacky world of things not being mutually exclusive :D

There's something I forgot to add to my earlier post:

Something else that should be noted is that Troika has a way of shocking the crap (again, a technical term) out of publishers with the amount of complexity we put into our games. It takes much, much more QA for a Troika RPG than most publishers are prepared for. This is our fault, as we push our games as far as possible without considering the financial restraints publishers have in terms of testing budgets, etc.

In the future we will be working closely with publishers at the beginning of our projects to determine what type of testing we can get budgeted, and construct our game accordingly. Being the bunch of RPG geeks we are, we have to reign in our rampant enthusiasm that has a tendency to overtake our common sense judgment.

So, to sum up, publishing games is a business and everything that goes into game development is budgeted. If Troika makes a game that will blow a publisher’s testing budget out of the water, that’s our fault and not our publisher’s.

That could be interpretet in a negative way (publishers are too stupid for Troika's games!11!), but I don't think it would be clever.

 

[Deacdo]

HAven't the recent patches corrected the typos and glitches?

 

[Section8]

The point of contention with the recent fan patches is that they not only make fixes across the board, they also add a lot of modified content, changing the overall game experience in questionable way.

If you're willing to dig through some of the news comment archives, you can see a few of the issues people take with the unofficial patches.

 

[franc kaos]

I just started playing this game thanks to this thread, and finally put it down at 3.30 this morning GMT. I haven't enjoyed a game this much in ages (tho' I answered questions and took the clan the game gave me) I might start a new one now I know a little more of what I'm doing.

It reminds me of a cyberpunk/vampire RPG I played in the 80's from Microprose, tho' that felt a lot more linear than this one. Here, at least you can go off at tangents and do other side quests, and there seems to be more than one way of dealing with things.

The interface is a little clunky, and I keep getting thrown out of first person view, even when readying a weapon, my pref is FPP, bit the game seems to have been built for third - I find combat in third person to be much harder (read: annoying), and I don't understand why walk wasn't at least a toggleable option (I like to wander and check out the sights).

I installed a V1.1 patch, but haven't come across any unofficial ones, does anyone know a web site? I've played for about ten hours straight and haven't come across any game ending bugs yet, but I'm always curious to see what fans have come up with.

This game is the first one in a long time that's captured me so completely, are the other vamp games as good, or is this the best version? Cheers.

 

[Section8]

It reminds me of a cyberpunk/vampire RPG I played in the 80's from Microprose, tho' that felt a lot more linear than this one. Here, at least you can go off at tangents and do other side quests, and there seems to be more than one way of dealing with things.

Most quests have various different approaches to them, and something that I liked was the fact that a lot of the time the stealth/combat/diplomacy routes weren't neatly portioned apart so as to be completely obvious.

Also, You'll find that most of the characters respond in different ways to certain clans, especially Malkavians and Nosferatu. Playing as a Nosferatu also has a pretty dramatic impact on how you play the game, but you miss out on 90% of any human interaction, which for me was one of the game's highlights.

The interface is a little clunky, and I keep getting thrown out of first person view, even when readying a weapon, my pref is FPP, bit the game seems to have been built for third - I find combat in third person to be much harder (read: annoying), and I don't understand why walk wasn't at least a toggleable option (I like to wander and check out the sights).

It's possible you could modify the game's .cfg file, but I haven't tried anything myself. I'm sure you could find it out on a site with some modding info.

This game is the first one in a long time that's captured me so completely, are the other vamp games as good, or is this the best version? Cheers.

The previous Vampire game was more like Dungeon Siege, though not nearly as automated. It's almost entirely linear, and not nearly as interesting as Bloodlines. Still, it looks really nice, and if you really need a blood fix, then it might be worth a play. There are certainly worse games, but there's plenty of better ones too.

 

[dunduks]

Once you finish the game, definitely try to play as Malkavian - it will be a really different game.