Vampyr Critique

[Music] RPG sat outside the usual fantasy settings are a bit of a rarity and so a game set in 1918 London where you play as a doctor turned vampire who has to wrestle with both his morality and bloodlust is at the very least and interesting premise though not entertainment when peer definitely succeeds nailing some parts of the quintessential vampire experience but it also has a lot of problems it can best be summarized as enjoyable but inconsistent it's a game full of ambition dripping in style and with a fantastic atmosphere but it also has a lot of obvious issues that hold it back it's a game of lots of great ideas but those same ideas often have very mixed execution it's a game worth your time but maybe not worth your money at least at the current price it's a game that sometimes easy to love and sometimes easy to hate I want to explain exactly what this game does and doesn't get right but before that there is one question that I think needs addressing it's been many years since vampire the masquerade bloodlines whet the appetites of vampire and RPG fans alike and the years of hoping and waiting for some kind of sequel or successor can't have been an easy thing for fans to enjoy so when a new vampire focused RPG was announced it's understandable for a lot of hungry bloodlines fans set their sights and hopes on vampires maybe being what they spent years hoping for and that gave them peers some pretty big shoes to fill perhaps from that point onwards disappointment was inevitable and maybe don't not didn't do enough to dispel comparisons and so the rumor of a spiritual success of the bloodlines finally being on the way persisted and here we are the answer to the question that so many people have asked and continue to ask is this game like bloodlines is no it's nothing like it that's disappointing that I'm sorry and I understand why you may feel that way bloodlines may have deserved the sequel world of darkness may have been underrepresented in video games and the selection of vampire games in general may have been pretty poor but if you expected thump air to be similar to bloodlines you probably should have known better and if you bought the game on that basis and without disappointed you really only have yourself to blame the developers never said it was going to be like bloodlines game footage didn't look or sound like it would be the setting and tone are so obviously not alike there are no connections to world of darkness law and I could go on the similarity is that their vampire focused RPGs and that's about it but I guess that alone was enough to lead to comparisons and I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising us for some reason there haven't been any other vampire RPGs vampire games seem to have been barren recent years despite the fact that seems to be by firm market for them and plenty of opportunities for them to provide interesting game mechanics or morally ambiguous laurels vampire seeks to take advantage of all these things embracing the typical vampire tropes with total commitment and using the dilemma of whether and who to kill as its main selling point and the result is a game that is despite all of its flaws interesting before going any further let me quickly talk about spoilers this video won't have any major spoilers but it will have some minor ones these include some of the NPC backstories as well as explaining the first big choice in the game and its outcome examples used in this video will mostly come from the first half of the game and this video shouldn't spoil the game for someone who hasn't played it but what is a spoiler and what counts as a major spoiler are pretty subjective and if you really don't want anything spoiled then you may not want to watch this before playing the game yourself and finally I'm not sure exactly what the correct pronunciation of the title is I think it's actually vampire and the vampire is just the French pronunciation despite that I chose to pronounce the title as vampire as sometimes it can make what I'm referring to easier to understand and I think the extra clarity is worth it with that said let's look at the story in setting a vampire in many ways the opening of the game will tell you everything you need no about what kind of story this is as far as vampire stories go this is one that takes itself very seriously it's not at all tongue-in-cheek nor is it trying to subvert the classic vampire mythos or anything like that instead it's fairly bleak and dark are often very deliberately dramatic sometimes to the point where it can come across as overly dramatic we have some parts falling a little flats as a result at times it can even feel a bit ridiculous but there's still something endearing about how serious the game takes itself and it often succeeds of being entertaining even if occasion is for the wrong reasons religion failed men turned to science I saw them build such vain cities crafting machines made for endless war new questions flourished as old answers withered what is darkness but lurking the Sun what is war but enslaved stone what is glass but tortured sand okay they were pushing their luck already with some of the earlier lines but what is glass but tortured sand I guess this line must have sounded better in French because it sounds like the kind of bad poetry you'd find scribbled in a 13 year olds diary who's just going for a face when no one understands him and if you ever looked back at what he thought later it wondered how he could write something so [ __ ] but I speak from personal experience or anything definitely not but it's the very first scene and it's immediately difficult to take this very seriously after hearing a line like that moving on from the over-the-top monologue that almost feels like parody you find yourself coming to in the suitably glassy location of a mass grave after having already died and now reawaken after a brief section of slowly walking forward in a straight line a modern video game intro classic apparently you find a woman who seems quite pleased to see you and then you waste no time sinking your teeth into our throats and draining the life from her body [Music] and his color returns to the world and our protagonist regains his mental function and you realize this innocent woman is of course your sister oops my time to mourn those revenge shot at and chased through the street by a group of armed assailants this is a nightmare not quite but there is a tutorial section ahead so I guess that observation isn't far off hey I'm sure I've confused the two before on occasion too soon you'll begin cutting your way through the first of many nameless goons with the apparent ease that only a videogame main character can manage accidentally killing your sister and then being hunted like some out-of-control Beast or being forced to slaughter yourself a path to safety must be quite a lot to go for it but at least that protagonist still finds the time to say sorry after each person he kills so I guess he's not taking it that badly after a brief run-in with some pesky sunlight you found the place to hold up that conveniently has a gun cue an obligatory war flashback as you pick it up and then I guess our protagonist isn't taking it right so well as he lies back on the bed points the gun at his heart and then the game waits for you to pull the trigger let me think [Music] and as the drops of blood transition to the title screen you have to admit it's an entertaining opening yes the right thing can be hammy yes everything can feel a little cliche and a little too dramatic but it's an enjoyable introduction to my vampire story that all happens pretty quickly this is a story where if you stop and think about it you can easily find flaws but if you just sit back and enjoy the ride this is a fun vampire tale that despite being over-the-top kind of gets away with it in most occasions and it does so for a few reasons firstly there's the soundtrack the entire soundtrack is great in vampire with a lot of very American piece --is that really give the game a dark and gothic feeling but it's the way the game uses music to add to and complement the drama that's most impressive it uses his heavy cello pieces as well as some great choir sections and the results can be fantastic every time something dramatic is happening on-screen the soundtrack is there - absolutely carry the scene which makes it very easy to ignore any problems in the writing or story slowly I mean you no harm saith the vampire present yourself I need a word anyone Vampir really does do a great job when it comes to atmosphere even if it isn't the most graphically impressive game if a year London feels gloomy and authentic and the inside of abandoned buildings can be very detailed and ominous the morgue is a good example of showing this early in the game it's surprisingly creepy on your first trip through some story moments are very nicely directed and the effect when combined with the soundtrack is great Vampir may lacking technical price and visual polish but it sure has style the voice acting is also great how many boys NPCs there are in the game the level of quality for voice acting in general is really high the ROE standout performance is our main character the doctor turned vampire Jonathan read it helps his voice actor just as a very easy to listen to voice that is pleasing to the ears even after hours of dialogue good evening miss I'm dr. Reid the new surgeon at the Pembroke Hospital and who are you I wish this guy would read me bedtime stories each night even when the right thing can be a bit weak his performance remains strong and it helps keep the story convincing and Jonathan is a likeable main character it's worth clarifying that this is a predefined character you have some choice in dialogue which I'll talk more about later but you don't choose Jonathan's personality at all he is his own character and he's always written in a certain way and for some RPG fans this may be off-putting and diminished the role-playing aspect of the game still he's an enjoyable protagonist and it doesn't feel like your usual video game or action movie hero I don't think he ever makes any quips or out of place sarcastic remarks nor does he have had always present nonchalance in the face of danger attitudes instead he's written as an upstanding early twentieth-century gentleman who is always well mannered and sincere despite this he doesn't come across as a pushover he'll confidently stand up for his beliefs or scold others for wrongdoings and he never lets himself get talked down to giving his character strength and making him easy to respect it all works thanks to the good casting for the voice actor and the fact his character so consists in the earnest about everything I can't believe I'm doing this [Applause] this pickable Jonathan stop your whining and eat your hats up like a good little vampire all in all he's easy to become attached to and it makes you invested in the story even when the story itself may struggle to do so however as Jonathan his design character some people may miss the freedom that comes with a player created character and if you don't enjoy his personality that might be a problem I know there were times when I wanted to act differently to how Jonathan does and also there are a few small things about him that annoyed me like how he makes so many comments about being an atheist and how belief in God is silly I spite the fact that seems to have a pretty big reaction to crosses there's also a problem with playing is evil as Jonathan's personality doesn't change and that means he still acts very moral in many scenes the only big change in him is his eyes which is also weird am I supposed to believe that no NPCs noticed this it's one thing when they were just extremely bloodshot but by this point come on how can no one comment on them the final thing that helps the story is vampires and I mean that in the simplest way vampires are fun as there haven't been many recent vampire games it makes a good vampire story easy to enjoy things that should be cliche like the existence of an exclusive vampire club that secretly runs the country instead become enjoyable tropes what's more vampire isn't a modern take on vampires like certain other examples of recent years instead it has that classic gothic horror feel and that's something which is great to be able to play free it's always seemed strange to me that there aren't more games where you play as a vampire and maybe standards have just become low but on some level of ampere's overly serious and reasonably authentic vampire story just appears this Fame [Music] there are some problems with the game storyline towards the ends of the game however sorry it gets a little convoluted and it also feels like there are too many long explanations for plot points during the epilogue he finds a recently lumpy book to read that provides backstory just before talking to one NPC who basically repeats the book's contents along with some other things you already know just word it differently and then you speak to another NPC who repeats many things for a third time the game could have said just as much with fewer words while reducing the amount of boring exposition dumps the player has to listen to iris I think the game reveals too much of its mythology and it's a mythology that isn't particularly interesting more mystery could have been better the ending in general is pretty weak both in terms of story and storytelling and that's a shame but there are still plenty of enjoyable moments leading up to it alongside the main story Vampir features 64 unique NPCs speaking to these NPCs and uncovering their stories will take up a big part of a twenty five hours or so you'll spend on a single player of the game as far as the NPCs go there are ok you'll find some who are interesting and likable some who are successfully unlikable and some who are realistically boring some of the things you find out can be surprising some characters that may seem like [ __ ] can become more sympathetic some characters have some pretty dark secrets and some of those boring characters might end up at least a little less boring Vampir doesn't do a bad job at fleshing out these NPCs but these characters don't just exist for the sake of telling their stories they're in the game to provide choice choice is vampire's greatest strength from biggest failure Vampir marketed itself as being about choosing who to kill as a vampire while also stressing the fact that you can complete the game by killing low names NPCs however taken the lives of others is your main way of accumulating XP and so this choice is tied heavily to the difficulty of a game we've taken their lives intended to be challenging each life you take can have unintended consequences leading to the loss of side quests or information about other NPCs as well as prompting other NPCs through verdi become an enemy or just react in some other way killing NPCs can also provide you with new weapons open up new dialogue options with other characters and affect the overall safety level of their district and the consequences of taking a life can be a great parts of vampyre to give you a couple examples from characters you can kill early on if you kill poor scarred Thomas then his friend the remarkably likeable Felmy who has delusions of herself being vampire then goes missing and you can find her in the streets being harassed by vampire hunters with a new side quest opening up to save her completing that can get her back to the safety of the hospital but be prepared for some guilt still and I'm glad to meet you too mortal I see things much more clearly since I escaped those hunters and that includes you Jonathan another example is killing the young depressed Harry Peterson upon killing him things don't seem too bad as you receive a new gun that was presumably left to him by his father to be used in self-defense whoever when you next rest you find his father Joe has gone missing if you return to the house you'll find the clues to where he's went in the form of a vampire hunter recruitment flyer a few hours later I came across showing the streets as a hostile enemy the consequences are interesting not just in making you feel guilty but also in terms of gameplay by killing the law XP Harry I lost out on the higher XP of Joe as a result and so even if you wish the players evil you can still be punished for your lack of patience or greed if he killed too many and neglect the help of other NPCs an entire district can going nuclear making the entire place hostile and killing every NPC left without one bit of XP going your way the small details connected to your choices helped to the amount of new dialogue options that I put up for characters in the same social circle as impress and you can even find Graceland suppose he killed at the cemetery so the consequences of killing are really well done who to kill does become a good question and it's clear the game was designed to try and make that question interesting to get the most XP out of each character you'll need to uncover hints about their backstory I'm not sure what the lore explanation is for that but I don't care too much as it's a good idea by connecting their expiry with their backstory you're forced to get to know them this may make you attached in ways he maybe didn't expect to or make you have second thoughts on whether that [ __ ] really does deserve to be sucked dry when you know the tragedy in their past but it also might make you more sure of your decision not everyone is made to be sympathetic and there are some real pieces of [ __ ] who you could even argue killing might make the world a better place you also learn to be smart about who you kill you soon realize characters without the social circle are unlikely to add negative effects on other individual NPCs and after making your first district or hostile you'll probably be paying much more attention to the other districts while being in the future and of course I have to mention the process of killing itself it may be simplistic from a gameplay perspective you just need a high enough level of mesmerize for that NPC and then you just walk them to the nearest out of sight area but the execution is fantastic it's something you want to see at least once I've never felt more like a vampire than in these moments leading up to and following killing someone in this game part of me wanted to kill every single character just to hear their final words killing in this game is just so satisfying this system isn't perfect it would be nice if different NPCs had different consequences on the district safety level rather than all NPCs being equal this could make the consequences even deeper and reward you for killing unimportant characters while maybe punishing the player for killing someone who is morally bad but still serves an important role in the functioning of the community for example killing a gang leader could cause a rising chaos as gang warfare increases while killing a mass murderer could increase safety levels slightly as mysterious disappearances decrease in the area a short newspaper article could be added to communicate us to the player like what already exists for the biggest story tracers movers still giving the player a choice of who to kill and connecting the experiment to how well you know them is apartheid there and never put into the system and its consequences is really commendable too baby however a lot of people want to experience any of this and here is the big problem the game was marketed as having the option to kill no one but if you do this vampire isn't anywhere near as interesting and several things just don't work and I'm not talking about difficulty or VAR gets that lights on scratch firstly the appeal of this game is largely having choice but if after making that very first choice should I kill people or not even choose not to kill anyone most of a choice in vampire is gone when you meet each NPC you don't ask yourself each time should I kill them what will the consequences of this be is it worth it you've already decided you won't kill them because you're not going to kill anyone lots of people will play vampire this way including me on my first playthrough the game was marketed in a way so as to make this sound appealing a lot of people like the players a good character and the way it was talked about made it sound like a fun challenge it's also the only way to get the best ending it just makes sense that lots of people go for a no cure playthrough and it's what I did even though I wanted to kill people I never wanted to play as a good vampire that sounded boring to me however I did just because I wanted the challenge because I didn't want to risk reducing the difficulty and because I wanted to see how this heavily talked-about option would play out and not only does a no-kill play free remove most of a choice in the game but also many things about NPCs have just made pointless take the hints that you uncover to learn their backstory these give you more XP when you kill them but that's what they do so a big part of the game has no rewards when you don't kill anyone sometimes it can be interesting to learn about the characters just because their stories are worth finding out but there's 64 NPCs and they're really not that interesting long before the end of your play for you speaking to them will feel boring and finding out all information about them is completely meaningless from a gameplay perspective you get no XP rewards and the whole point seems to be that you use the information you find out to determine if you should kill them there's nothing else you can do it be since you're on except sometimes use them to gain more hints and sometimes it feels like there should be something you should do in some scenarios some of the things you learn seem to be things that need some kind of action and there are no alternatives than killing people for example you learn that one character is a mass murderer or that one parent is abusing their child or that a wife is poisoning her husband and then you just do nothing because you're a good guy it's jarring there are serious crimes you find out and you can't even report them to the police or confront other related characters about what you learn in general there are no resolutions for anything and it's deeply unsatisfying with a few examples feeling like they desperately need some option to do something about what you learn will though on the other hands outside of the worst examples involving serious crimes there is something realistic about how certain issues are represented in vampire video games can often trivialize serious problems in the way they allow the protagonists to meet people and almost instantly solve at the personal issues for one shallow side quest or if you're encouraging words in a conversation the truth is things like PTSD depression or child abuse aren't easy things to solve and the way a game may allow you to fix them so casually can be completely unrealistic and maybe even slightly irresponsible representation in video games is a term thrown around a lot sometimes about some pretty trivial things but I think representation of mental health problems is important and there is a side to it not always considered often focus on representation is on the need for greater representation free more inclusion of sites and things or topics but realism is also important reducing complex mental health problems that just being easily solvable side-quests may not always be helpful so in some ways I think it's a good thing damp air doesn't do this and doesn't allow you to solve every character's problems however certain examples cool fraction without giving you any non-lethal way to act which is a problem and learning about characters just for the sake of learning about them is knowing they're enough of a reason when it comes to this many characters there has to be some kind of point to it or rewards beyond maybe increasing Johnathan's capacity for small talk as he makes his rounds or something so not killing NPCs removes most elements of choice from the game provides no resolution to import some things you learn and makes the system of gaining hints pointless from a gameplay perspective Vampir is simply not as good when you don't kill people and at least you were wondering why it was designed this way if I knew they wanted to make not killing NPCs viable and then advertised it heavily why didn't they make that fun and satisfying perhaps the game would have been better if it was designed to force you to kill it's a big part of the vampire experience and there is something boring about the concept of a vampire who never kills anyway why didn't they just embraced the notion that vampires are inherently evil creatures and make the moral dilemma not be about whether you're a good or evil vampire but instead focus more on that middle ground as a vampire you have to kill to survive but it's up to you whether you resist that temptation as much as possible while only carefully killing the deserving for your own sustenance or give in to your dark side and kill for power or pleasure the concept of a pacifist play for it doesn't work very well anyway as the game forces you to kill vampire hunters by the hundreds and while killing in self-defense is different I suppose vampire hunter still aren't evil I mean most umpires clearly need hunting so the whole idea of being a pacifist vampire is diminished by the gameplay that has you killing people and sucking their blood regardless of whether you also do or don't kill named NPCs as far as choice and consequences outside of killing NPCs it mostly comes down to four big story choices that each correspond to the fates of one NPC who is labelled as a pillar of the community the first of these choices is executed very poorly I'm gonna spoil what happens but it's quite an early event in the game and you may even be grateful to have it spoiled because the result can be pretty [ __ ] so in the quest line you're investigating who is black meaning lady Ashbury a vampire and benefactor of the hospital this leads to discovering how one nurse Dorothy crane is responsible for the blackmailing but is doing so in an attempt to help the poor run down district of Whitechapel after you've confronted her about this you're given a choice that you can see now if you choose to charm her she'll die after you leave which you might find pretty surprising no explanation is given for why this kills her unless you return and ask other NPCs where one will tell you that after you left apparently you made her brain damaged and I guess that must have made her easy prey for some vampire or something the problem is there's no reason to know this could happen blue text indicates that Jonathan uses his mind persuasion power and there is one document you can find earlier in dr. Swansea's office that talks of the dangers of Minds controlling people but this is something you do non-stop in the game literally every time you talk about an uncovered to him words or when you want to give someone medicine you use your mind control power to influence them as shown through the same blue text you can't even give medicine to someone without doing this there's no reason to make the connection that this could be a negative thing this choice with Dorothy crane is also a dyadic option that you only unlock for uncovering all hints of Arthur fathering the implication that this is a good option and the actual good option is worded in quite a negative way it says forces to resign but I didn't want to force her to resign surely we need all the nurses we can get right now with the epidemic so the option to charm her and make her forget about the blackmailing seems to be the best option instead it's the worst option as you don't even get any XP from her you can return later to find her as a hostile scar which is like a lesser vampire but you don't get anything from it and by the way that flight is pretty [ __ ] I did the entire thing without being at once and then when she dies she erupts into a crowd of poisonous gas but I haven't seen before at that point and which was unavoidable without knowing about it beforehand and it drained my entire health so thanks for extra [ __ ] you I really appreciate that it the whole game uses an autosave only system the bear phone makes it impossible to load a previous save this is something I don't usually do with choices in RPGs even if their consequences are bad but after seeing the results of his choice I really wished I could as I felt like I'd been unfairly misled unexpected negative consequences can be a great thing but I think they have to be communicated more fairly Vaness different wording would have been always needed so that players know that charming her is different from what you do non-stop throughout the game and could therefore go wrong it really felt frustrating at the time and I've seen lots of other people complain about it for the same reason I also didn't know if this would lock me out of the best ending for letting an NPC die or if it was just a matter of time before the entire district was destroyed as a result it really left a bad impression for me at the time although as I kept playing I soon got over it in the end it's really just one NPC dying and Dorothy Crane didn't annoy me at times anyway finally you've returned doctor did you find anything of value I've got sake Dorothy wash your bloody hands they've been like that for days now employing vampires is one thing but does this hospital have no hygiene standards all once anyway future choices are thankfully you handled better they can also have unexpected negative consequences but they each feel fairer the options you have a Clara and sometimes more interesting one of them in particular is quite memorable if you choose a certain thing but that's something I wouldn't want to spoil for anyone these choices also don't mean you get the bad ending unless you're choosing to embrace these NPCs and I can respect trying to give interesting choices that aren't obvious I just wish the first choice you come across was implemented better the only other choices you come across in-game are in dialogue dialogue as a whole is not that strong you get some choice at times but mostly you're just exhausting in each dialogue option for a bit of extra information before choosing the highlighted one to move on when you do get choice in what to say its marked with a red Y but these choices don't have much effect and sometimes they're just free things that mean the same just while it's slightly differently sometimes when talking to NPCs these choices can be tied to hints and choosing your own one will cause a hint failed message meaning you've permanently lost access to that piece of information on the one hand I really like how there is at least some consequences the dialog choices to make what you choose feel like it matters on the other hand it means you can't roleplay conversations the way you want but you mostly fail hints for being rude to people so you are basically forced to trying to always be nice and respectful which is a bit boring also thanks to the autosave system you have no way to load a previous save and try again which will no doubt bother some people quite a lot when they lose a hint forever I think vampire could do have some more meaningful choice in conversations in a game with so much dialogue and that calls itself an RPG having more options the shape dialogue through player agency could have really helped make dialogue more engaging dialogue also has some minor issues with poor flowing conversations that result from the dialogue Wales implementation by going from one conversation topic to another can completely change the mute there's also times where the short options you're presented with can provide too little information a common problem in games that represent long dialogue lines for shortens versions conversations are how you get most hints from PCs but usually it's just the case of methodically exhausting each dialogue option which isn't very interesting you don't actually get to do any detective work or have to try to figure things up yourself the game does it all for you so learning hints isn't very satisfying the one actual detective thing you do is eavesdropping which again has some problems on the one hand it's great because you do have to pay attention and do some work with yourself to find out hints this way rather than just having everything handed to you and when you do find the scene to eavesdrop you can learn some interesting things and it feels quite rewarding to have found it yourself the problem with it is it's time-consuming having to wait around just in case of seen triggers where you can eavesdrop at one point I knew an npc had a scene that you can listen in on and I waited eight minutes for the scene to start maybe there's a way to trigger it faster I did try different things but it was pretty boring having to wait eight whole minutes and that's when I knew the scene would happen unless you always walk around with your vampire vision turned on it's hard to know that these scenes even exist I had plenty of hints I never found and I assume many come from eavesdropping but it's not worth waiting around every single NPC just in case I wish I'd put an icon on the hints that come for eavesdropping so you know which characters to at least pay attention to alongside being a part-time vampire detective you're also a full-time vampire doctor which is unfortunately more boring than it sounds being a doctor works well in the story but the gameplay ramifications are shallow you can cure npcs who get sick and doing so is important to keep in a district healthy this is much more significant if you're killing people in which case district health is important to prevent massive XP from it going hostile and people seem to get sick a lot more when district health is lower anyway it's still boring though as well curing NPCs amounts to as a simple task of walking up to the NPC and mind forcing them to take their medicine like a good boy or girl considering traveling around this game Lorde gets quite boring already the need to do so to hand out medicine can just feel like a chore I was looking forward to being a doctor in vampire and I wish there was a bit more to it it would have been nice to diagnose NPCs if Empire vision could show you that they're sick and then you could ask them what's wrong with them and listen to them explain their symptoms before choosing what to give them it would obviously still have to be shallow and it will take up some development resources to implement but I would have appreciated something more to be added to this part of the game I want to play as a doctor not just as a delivery man so the story is enjoyable but nothing amazing choice and consequences can be interesting particularly if you do decide to kill NPCs but they also have some big problems options the role player quite limited whether that's as a vampire detective or doctor and while I enjoy the main character the setting in the premise I wish more was done with them so all this left to talk about then is gameplay well except for technical issues I think this game is surprisingly polished at least for what I expected it release I had some framerate drops but not that often I don't have the greatest PC lots of reviews complained about load times but they were quick for me so maybe that's a console only issue one issue the PC version does have however is poor mouse and keyboard support in general I encounter the very few bugs that had any impact on gameplay just some odd animations some clipping of clothing and some twitching of body parts if there's one place the graphics really let this game down its faces they have poor detail facial animations are pretty basic lighting can have weird interactions and some conversations take place at some really odd angles the word that sometimes comes to mind to describe faces in this game is oblivion esque which is not a good thing to be reminded of for a modern game well it's obviously not that bad by far the biggest small issue that may be a sign of a lack polish or this games double a budget is how skipping dialogue lines are handled in conversations there's a lot of dialogue in this game and it can get boring people can read a lot faster than voice lines are read out so people may often want to read ahead to save time if you've impressed the bottom to skip a line of dialogue it will skip the next character speaking any additional dialogue from that character just get skip over so you can't just skip each line that you've read meaning you basically can't read ahead without losing parts I guess this is because the audio for a passage of text is in one chunk even if that piece of text is split up into multiple subtitles but the result can be really really annoying I think the effort it takes to fix this would have been well worth it when you aren't speaking to NPCs most of the rest of the time you spend with vampire will be walking the streets of London and fighting enemies fighting enemies can be fun but there isn't a depth or variety to make it really memorable or continually enjoyable all the way through the game compared to a true action game compared will feel noticeably unresponsive with movement outside of dodging feeling quite sluggish and all actions having some delay to account for animations combat in vampire is also not as deliberate as Dark Souls or blood-borne where each attack of dodge feels more calculated Vampir may have a stamina bar but it gives you enough to dodge around an attack several times before you have to worry about it replenishing at its most basic level then combat revolves around dodging away from enemy attacks before retaliating and then dodging away again several things make it a bit more complex firstly you have several vampiric abilities at your disposal that you can unlock with experience points these include damaging abilities utility focused abilities and ultimate abilities avoid the selection of each of these is quite small some of these need a resource blood use while others just cool down bases using these abilities well as important when fighting against multiple enemies that are higher level than you you'll also notice enemies have a gray bar underneath the health that can be depleted with certain weapons attacks to cause enemies to be stunned enabling you to perform a bite attack which is your primary way of gaining the blood needed to use offensive abilities stunning and then biting your enemies is incredibly effective early in the game particularly if you use the 200 club that allows good damage as well for some reason when you bite one enemy all of us would just stand there and watch which doesn't make much sense to me I'm sure early 20th century Englishmen were a very well-mannered Bunch but I'm not sure I should go as far as waiting politely for a vampire to finish his meal before there is Eve attacking him so biting does give an itch makes you invulnerable charges your Bloods and most importantly allows for your stamina to recharge therefore it can feel very overpowered as it's low-risk high-reward but the far ends of the game get the less braking it seems it takes more hits to stun high level enemies and also after you've bitten enemy once the amount of hits needed to stun them a subsequent time is increased finding ways to recharge your stamina becomes one of the main ways combat has depth and challenging fights I found the most effective way to play was to try to use my abilities while biting to allow me to find the time needed for stamina to be recharged using abilities while can also be a rewarding for example when using the slow two-handed Club I found the core ability can be used to utilize its increased speed in greater range to fit in an attack with a normal attack animations and quick enough or using the shield ability for deliberately tanked enemy hits and saves stamina and dodging while preventing your attacks from being interrupted the combination of managing your blood stamina and cooldowns using abilities effectively and keeping track of and dodging against multiple opponents and I'll just come back to have some depth and provide some satisfying fights if you are underleveled enemies also have different resistances to meal a range blood and shadow attacks with two weapon loadouts you can switch between and for ability slots this does encourage you to mix up your strategy against different enemies while paying attention to their resistances to do more damage and finish fights sooner I always appreciate when a game tries to encourage players to use a range of weapons and abilities like this rather than just allowing players to rely on the same senior strategy every single fight unfortunately you don't really have many ways to do some other damage types particularly blood and shadow damage at least not when your XP is limited by not gaining NPCs as you can only really afford one offensive ability to put XP in to lack of experience points also means you won't get to use many of you interesting upgraded abilities and while these aren't needed to complete the game at all it does feel a bit boring to miss out on them you can at least refund your XP to try out different abilities or builds which is good but having two Reis pens all of your experience points is time consuming especially if you just wanted to change just one single thing you can make builds with some synergies like if you want to use a stunning weapon you may want to upgrade your bite more or if you want to put a lot of XP into an offensive ability you may want to invest in ways to increase your blood gain but for an RPG the upgrade system is quite shallow Hank the rest to spend X we can also be in line at times I really enjoyed combats vertically when fighting against groups of higher-level enemies using all your abilities while dodging against multiple opponents sometimes works great the biggest problems with combat aren't so much with the combat system itself but more of the world design leading to repetitiveness if there is one big difference between an action game and an action RPG its pacing an action game is always finding ways to change things up to add new twists to introduce variety and increase the level of challenge there's a sense of momentum and if done well they provide a short action-packed adventure that keeps you interested from start to finish an action RPGs usually longer and instead uses combat to pad the game out and you'll definitely see this in Dante moving from one location to another will have you fighting several small groups of enemies for each fight can feel very similar enemies keep almost no XP so killing them can feel pointless and they're left feeling like obstacles that exist to get in your way as you move from point A to point B there is some enemy variety in the game but it feels like it's too little and introduced through late to keep fighting enemies interesting for an entire playthrough there are several boss fights which can provide some variety as well as some of the most interesting encounters in vampire if you can be too easy even on a local favorite and if you are killing NPCs bosses can buy in seconds however some fights do provide a good challenge with bosses having different attack patterns and powerful telegraphed attacks that will force you to pay attention and dodge accordingly some boss fights are repeated but there are still several memorable bosses I can imagine several people got annoyed with the resistances of the penultimate boss which I won't show in case I'm considered too spoiler and I don't think I need to show up the people to know who I mean but for me this fight was also the one true challenging fight in the game and beating him may have been slow but it also felt very satisfying a lot of what's been said in this video that combat assumes people who want interesting combats either won't kill any NPC's or will only kill a very small number and so the game will still have some challenge fighting on level enemies is very easy killing lots of NPCs will make you over levels and incredibly overpowered allowing you at times that just kill things in one hit which can actually feel kind of nice if it's your second playthrough and you don't feel like spending a lot of time in combat difficulty is such a subjective topic which of course makes aim statements like game should have lots of different difficulty options to cater for different players obvious but I think the idea of tying a difficulty setting into a games morality system is great even if it doesn't work for all players some people will play vampyre and want more XP and then be forced to think carefully about whether taking someone's life is worth it I really respect the developers for trying to do something interesting and it's an idea that fits very well into a vampire setting but there are some clear problems well but I don't think that includes something I saw a lot of game journalists mention which is that the game is too hard when you don't kill NPCs the thing is that's the point that's the morality / difficulty system working as intended either kill someone or deal with the consequences even if you don't kill any NPCs the game is never difficult enough for the challenge that feel frustrating I think a bigger problem is how I'm not killing NPCs removes a lot of choice offered by the game but I already talked about that earlier difficulty is a bit weird they can feel incredibly forgiving when you fight by appeal against the on level enemies you can basically just spam attacking two enemies at that similarly fighting against high level enemies can sometimes feel overly punishing when you play well with some attacks killing you in no time like the poison skulls the result is the challenge people slightly and satisfying at times there is level scaling in vampyre - it's hard to me to work out how much even when I played to almost two full playthroughs in polar opposite ways scaling seems subtle and is applied unevenly I've got footages shows some fights being the same level and some different so I'm not really sure how it works but there's definitely some level scaling going on I guess is to try to prevent the game getting through easy when you kill people to try to ensure things never get too unbalanced but if that's the intention I'm not sure how well it does that anyway the difficulty system may not work so well but I still love the idea it's how it limits choice and how vampyre doesn't feel as interesting when you don't care in pcs there's the system's real problem there are some gameplay problems outside of combat though I like open-world games even now when they seem to be becoming more common and more generic part of me is still a fan of the concepts for the added immersion they bring however if you want to make an open-world game you need to make traveling around that world fun traveling and around London may be visually interesting but from a gameplay perspective it isn't it's a chore having to go past endless filler enemy fights that don't even give XP trying to navigate streets that manage to feel very maze like despite often being quite linear and then you have the encounters with locked gates it's locked for a game that isn't very long traveling around this world gets boring fast there are times I think fast travelling games is implemented too often and too freely that said I wish a fast travel option can be unlocked in vampyre for example after you get to the West End or maybe only when travelling to sanitize districts as it is having to go from one side of the map to the other and back just to give some [ __ ] cold medicine gets old fast one thing I also found myself wishing for time and again was an expanded staff system currently you can start to fly it by walking up to an enemy on scene and then stunning and biting them but that's it it's very basic there's no way to take out enemies from Stealth one by one and almost no ways to use the environment or your vampire powers to sneak up on people you mostly just have to rely on them facing the other way allowing more stealth options would have several benefits it would allow you to travel around the world while avoiding combat something you might want to do and that could also help prevent combat becoming repetitive it would also allow you to kill less vampire hunters which would make playing as a pacifist vampire make more sense it also feels like a big part of being a vampire is having the ability to kill from the shadows and lead your hunters not having that option feels bad so many times I longed for a way to sneak past enemies or pick them off one by one it just felt like something Dampier needed at times I would stand above enemies on a platform and I guess other games have conditioned me to expect the way through some aerial kill but having to just jump come sit down and start fighting normally felt really disappointing about the world almost looks like it should support more stealth options there is visually a lot of that accounted for the streets of London but only sometimes allowed to shadow jump above street level having the ability to lower vampire enemies into vampire hunters would have also been great sometimes you've come across them fighting each other and sometimes you can lure them into fighting kinda but it doesn't work well and a way to get groups of enemies to fight each other from Stealth would have been a good feature so of all gameplay additions an improved stealth system is what I think would waste improve the game and I hope they do try to expand it as ever a sequel the final parts of vampires gameplay have yet to mention is loot like over open-world games everywhere you explore you'll find some basic items to pick up enemies also drop loot and seeing as they gives for XP I guess that this is meant to be the main rewards for killing them most of what you find is used for a basic upgrade system but it is just that basic there are also shops although I only ever found a few items in them that were actually useful for upgrades I need it and so there's almost never anything worth buying shops feel pretty pointless and so does looting areas beyond the few times in the game when you get something to upgrade a weapon but there has to be things to pick up in an open-world game it's just part of the formula at this point giving the player things to pick up is done to make exploration feel worthwhile even if you don't get anything useful and even when I knew it was pointless I still rummage through every bin I saw and robbed the hospital blind every time I passed the firm it I guess years of gaming have made me a virtual kleptomaniac at this point and if an open and well game doesn't give me meaningless things to pick up I think I'd miss it on some psychological level but it would have been nice if they were just a bit more useful and I had something to spend all my scavenged shillings actually on Vampir has a hell of a lot of problems but it really does try to do something great even if it's not always successful you have to appreciate the risks of Tanks it's most interesting ideas for also where it has its biggest flaws such as how choice and NPC hints are handled and there are plenty of other problems beside those there's also the question of price a lot of people want double-a games to deal well they're an important middle ground that provides more space for experimentation with a higher budget than indie games might be able to provide the gaming industry needs Double A games but if you want reviewers or consumers --tz-- and consider your game as being double-a and therefore be more lenient on its shortcomings you have to have a double-a price tag this game was released at 45 pounds that's only 5 pounds cheaper than the most expensive newly-released titles I don't think the level of quality that don't not deliver that much is the price tag and if it was 10 pounds less I think the response would have been much more favorable I don't know how that would have affected sales and profits but people do have certain expectations at certain price tags that vampyre may not always satisfy but I don't regret any of the time I spent with vampyre a good vampire game something special and this game gets the feeling of being a vampire spot on quite often and there are plenty of enjoyable moments that we have and while I could spend even longer going over the floors in vampyre because it's undeniable this game has many obvious flaws I can't say I didn't have fun with the game and you know if there's one thing professional abuse can sometimes undervalue and their attempt to provide an objective numerical indication of quality it's fun this is a fun vampire RPG and I think for a lot of people that's enough [ __ ] claimed he'd fallen in love with me really did you consider accepting his proposal well immortality no common wedding gift is it I think he just wanted to have his way with me can vampires even [ __ ] doctor what well I I I really can't answer that well since they are creatures of blood physically speaking I suppose an erection is possible but I

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 195,126

Keywords: Vampyr, Vampyr review, Vampyr critique, Vampyr analysis, analysis, dontnod, dontnod entertainment, action rpg, videogame, vampires, vampire game, vampire rpg, vampyr rpg, vampire review, vampyr gameplay, vampyr story

Id: 16Boy-DTT6U

Length: 54min 19sec (3259 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 15 2018