After six and a half years, we at the moment are only one month away from the discharge of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. After altering builders a number of occasions, quite a few delays, and a good few controversies alongside the way in which, I managed to go hands-on at Gamescom 2025 with an early preview construct and got here away excited at the truth that The Chinese language Room is attending to flex its writing and narrative experience on an enormous, meaty challenge.
Nonetheless, the features of the sport that The Chinese language Room are least acquainted with, particularly open-world and fight, shortly started to get in the way in which of that enjoyment to the purpose the place I ponder if a extra restricted scope would have served each the sport and its developer higher.
Story Shines
Unsurprisingly, given The Chinese language Room’s historical past with Expensive Esther, All people’s Gone To The Rapture, and Nonetheless Wakes The Deep, the gathering of features that make up the narrative half of Bloodlines 2 is the place issues are strongest. The Voice performing is expertly carried out, and the dialogue is well-written and feels true to the World of Darkness IP and the mystique embedded inside it.
Fabian, the voice that narrates your experiences and accompanies you as you play, does a wonderful job of performing as a working monologue, breaking down features of the lore, the totally different vampire clans, and serving to to clarify connections between characters within the small Seattle map that The Chinese language Room has created.
The extent of element on present of their character fashions is extraordinarily spectacular, and a substantial step up graphically in comparison with anything The Chinese language Room has completed earlier than. Bloodlines 2 feels extra like an immersive sim-lite than an RPG. These characters really feel like figureheads inside Seattle, individuals who transfer round have their very own objectives and intentions as they skulk round within the shadows of Seattle.
Quests I’ve performed each at Gamescom and within the early preview have additionally been spectacular, consisting of a number of phases that go from studying info by speaking with individuals, to discovering clues, utilizing environmental puzzles to resolve riddles, and extra action-oriented fight (extra on that later). The purpose is, there may be a number of depth and thought that has been put into the narrative, characters, and quests of Bloodlines 2 that I believe will please newcomers (because it doesn’t actually really feel like one other recreation available on the market with its pacing and construction). Most immersive sims are set in some sort of sci-fi world, and it feels nice to have the ability to play in a fantasy-driven, vampire-filled world, even when that world feels fairly restricted in scale.
The one factor that has nervous me thus far is that the sport seems like you might be enjoying on autopilot at occasions. Whereas the quests and tales being advised are fascinating, it does really feel rather a lot like you might be working round from level A to level B, merely following an goal marker consistently, which is the place the sport type of feels trapped between its want to be an RPG and the extra immersive-sim components The Chinese language Room has carried out.
An Try At Motion
The one side of the sport that actually struggles when beneath any sort of strain (whether or not that be a small, enclosed atmosphere or a number of enemies without delay) is fight. It feels good bodily. Assaults have a number of weight and energy behind them, and having the ability simply to punch individuals throughout a room feels nice. Equally, utilizing your vampiric talents like an immediate head twist to execute somebody feels snappy and responsive.
However when the sport forces you into fights with greater than a few enemies, issues shortly get out of hand. It turns into inconceivable to handle all these enemies, forcing you to play an odd recreation of cat and mouse, working round a room or a set of rooms within the hopes of slowly ticking down an enemy’s well being after which with the ability to heal, repeating this for each enemy.
As a result of the sport’s important type of assault is a melee strike, Bloodlines 2 suffers from the plague of “auto-lock” melee assaults that may’t sustain with the pace and dodges of enemies. This results in you consistently jerking ahead as the sport locks onto an enemy, and that enemy dodging or shifting out of the way in which, forcing you to spin the digital camera round to attempt to relocate them once more. It simply sucks, and I grew particularly annoyed as quickly as the sport offered me with something a couple of or two enemies in entrance of me.
It additionally doesn’t actually really feel like the sport has sufficient instruments for a stealth or full chaotic fight playstyle, so you might be pressured to sit down awkwardly in the course of these two playstyles, with neither one being totally fleshed out.
Whereas Bloodlines 2’s fight isn’t unhealthy, it has a number of the hallmarks of a primary fight system from a developer that hasn’t actually had an opportunity to craft the sort of gameplay, which, to be honest to The Chinese language Room, is the case. It nonetheless doesn’t make the sport extra pleasant within the second.
Sufferer To The Weight Of Expectations
That recreation’s points general really feel emblematic of the issues Bloodlines 2 has confronted over time. There have been so many iterations of this recreation that the one we’re getting feels virtually too broad in that it’s making an attempt an excessive amount of. It isn’t actually an RPG in any respect, regardless of some effort to deepen the vampire clans by their talents and ability bushes. The depth simply isn’t there. On the identical time, its fight isn’t sturdy sufficient to help a recreation revolving round it. On prime of that, the immersive sim components in relation to the narrative are a lot better, nevertheless it additionally seems like a half-step in the direction of totally embracing the style.
The top consequence, from the few hours I’ve spent with it, is a recreation that feels trapped by the burden of the expectations on it, making an attempt to juggle so many various issues that it underdelivers virtually in every single place. Would a extra restricted scope for the challenge have labored higher?
For instance, the sport is open-world, however the map is tiny, no greater than a couple of blocks of Seattle, and it isn’t notably fascinating or stuffed with issues to do. The ability tree isn’t actually a tree in any respect, and there appears to be virtually no construct customisation past the talents you select, as you simply comply with a linear improve path. The sport has collectibles listed on the map menu, however they appear pretty underwhelming, and the one objects you actually choose up throughout missions are dozens of lore notes, which supply a wealth of flavour textual content to learn from the menu, however nothing else.
We’ll by no means actually know what Bloodlines 2 would have appeared like in a special state of affairs. Nonetheless, I do get the sense that The Chinese language Room may have created a very compelling narrative-driven, vampire recreation in a vibrant Seattle in the event that they had been capable of focus extra on the features of recreation design that come naturally to them.
As a substitute, Bloodlines 2 seems like a recreation that can come out throughout a busy October launch window and be forgotten about weeks later. Strong, however nothing I’ve seen suggests it’s something particular, and I doubt if it’s a recreation that can usher in newcomers to the IP or if it’s the recreation followers have been ready 21 years for.
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