the ending where you align with him,
so even Tremere kindred who favour
the freedom loving, dorky good guy
Anarch faction, like I do, have good
reason to help him out.
Wesp5’s reconstructed quest
involving the downtown LA
library leaves a bit to be desired.
Most frustrating for me was its early
stages, where you have to track down
notes scattered across the city in the
cut content interiors he added back
in. It’s very neat to see these areas,
like a cigar club, or a recently
shuttered bistro, but you don’t really
do anything in them aside from pick
up the note, which then leads you to
your next objective.
It all culminates with a boss fight
in the library against a teleporting
vampire assassin (very cool),
which you only reach after a puzzle
section that penalises you for killing
any of the hostile human guards in it
(not so cool). A final hurdle is a
persistent bug, which traps you in
the library on quest completion,
whose only resolution is console
commands. At the time of my
playthrough, it had not been resolved.
The most impressive thing here is
definitely the way the quest’s final
boss can be seen stalking you
throughout the game, G-Man style.
It integrates him with the pre-
existing story and is a clever idea.TO LIVE FOREVER
The quest, QoL fixes, and roleplaying
options added in by the plus patch
are certainly appreciated, but the
most critical addition is one,
single door. Bloodlines’ weakest
moments are a handful of completely
linear, combat-mandatory dungeon
slogs, the favoured self-sabotage of
moody, cerebral RPGs everywhere.
The worst of the lot is a positively
inexcusable sewer sequence at the
halfway point. It’s about twenty
to forty-five minutes of no story,
no dialogue, just long corridors with
high-hitpoint flesh monsters jumping
out at you and an apocalyptically
fiddly water-pump puzzle that I
bypassed with the noclip cheat on my
first playthrough. The plus patch
adds in a shortcut to the very end a
little less than a quarter of the way
through the sewers, and Bloodlines is
infinitely richer for it.I can’t end without bringing up
my favourite part of the game,
the Giovanni Mansion mission late in
the main quest. A secretive, ancient
clan is holding your priceless
McGuffin, and a big soirée at their
base of operations gives you the
perfect opportunity to sneak in and
steal it back. I favoured the social
approach, smooth talking a guest
outside into giving you an invitation
and ingratiating yourself with
competing Giovanni factions to your
own ends. But you’re also free to
sneak your way through, bypassing
the need for an invitation and getting
in and out without a trace. While the
combat bloodbath is often the most
boring way forward in an RPG, here
it provides an encounter with a bonus
boss, the Giovanni elder Bruno, who
you don’t even have the chance to
talk to in the other paths. This player
freedom, upheld by quality writing
and worldbuilding, exemplifies
everything I love about Bloodlines.
So if you dig RPGs and are at all
on the fence, go and grab Vampire:
the Masquerade – Bloodlines off your
digital distributor of choice. Just be
sure to get the plus patch too, I don’t
want your love of this game to wither
in an awful sewer full of flesh
monsters like mine briefly did.THESE FUN TREMERE
ABILITIES COMPLETELY
CHANGED THE GAME FOR MEEXTRA LIFE
NOW PLAYING I UPDATE I MOD SPOTLIGHT I HOW TO I DIARY I WHY I LOVE I REINSTALL (^) I M U S T P L A Y
You and your fellow
Cybergoths are still better
dancers than Cmdr. Shepard.