Vampyr

On 7/29/2019 at 1:43 PM, RaTcHeT302 said:

I was really excited for this one, but then I played it, and it was just kinda boring to me. I don't really have much else to add beyond that to be honest.

RPGs aren't exactly my thing, but I don't know, I was hoping from something more to be honest.

I gotta agree with RaTcHeT302 here. I thought Vampyr was going to be the next or a better version of Vampire: The Masquerade, but unfortunately it's as forgettable and bland as The Order: 1886....

The dialogue felt a little off or unnatural to me and there was way to much of it.

I also felt a little bit disconnected because the main point of the game (if you want the good ending) is saving lifes as expected of the mc profession. But the mc just completely ignores the hundreds of enemies he kills while casually walking trough the city, similar to how GTA's storyline ignores all your police rampages, except Vampyr wants to be taken seriously.

In the end I couldn't get into the game and got really bored, gave up after a few hours.

Here's hoping for Masquerade 2.

It wants to be Gothic with vampires and it does some things right. At least worth a  try.

so far so good! The first part of the game starts strong.

I dont want to eat the rats because i dont want the other vampires to make fun of me.

Having bought the game on sale for $20 CAD a few months ago, seeing this game pop up on the list was pretty much the impetus for me to finally play it and see what's up. 

The setting of early 20th Century alternative London I thought was well done. The art direction does a decent job of giving the player that feeling of being in a dark, depressing and gloomy world being ravaged by a plague with almost no hope in sight. Abandoned buildings, dead bodies wrapped up and pilled onto carts and vigilante patrols give a sense of dread and unease. There's a few interesting Sin City-esque scenes that I also enjoyed.

The story and concept I think are fine; it's a branching story with choice and consequences. You play as Dr. Jonathan Reid who returns home to London from the frontlines of World War 1 only to discover he's turned into a vampire and has to figure out why and what impact it has on the world around him. The NPC backstories of each district are presented well enough and there's a motivation to get to know them as well. The more you unearth about them, the more desirable their blood becomes, which results in a huge bump in XP should you choose suck their blood. This is valuable for stat upgrades. You also have to craft them medicine if they begin to feel sick; their sickness decreases the value of their blood. If you choose to feed on any of the NPCs, their death will have rippling effects on the health of the district, particularly if one of the district "pillars" goes down.

However, I though the execution of all of this came up a bit short. As easy as it would be to just munch on a bunch of the NPCs for the giant XP boosts, I got by well enough with out having to kill anyone. Since you also get XP boosts from completing story missions, side quests, healing NPCs when they're sick and murdering thugs in standard combat. It left me a little bit under-leveled throughout the game, particularly in boss fights, but attack pattern recognition and a lot of patience are the keys to victory in that scenario.

The combat is very Dark Souls-like: melee-centric with light attacks (one hand/off hand weapons), heavy attacks (two-handed weapons), stun damage, parrying, dodging and stamina management, instead of resting at bonfires, you rest in a bed in a hideout which you need to seek out and enemies comeback if you rest or die. However it's not as fluid or as tightly designed as Dark Souls. There's also special vampire attacks that rely on your "blood capacity". Some of them I found effective such as "Blood Cauldron" or "Claws", other I didn't even touch like "Shadow Mist" or "Coagulation".

The dialogue flows a bit weird at times (Tell me more your job, tell me more about this city, tell me more about your relationship with... etc) and it sometimes makes it feel like a bit of drag knowing that this will the help the player get to know the NPC's backstories a little better. It also felt just plain drawn out at other times, especially after boss fights and towards the end of the game. There is a romance aspect of the story, but it feels rather forced and just seems to spring up out of left field.

Overall, I think Vampyr straddles the line between "Hazy" and "Good/Great". 

Pretty good game.

Or rather, a potentially great game hampered by a million little annoyances, from bugs and glitches to odd design decisions.

It's definitely the most "immersive sim" game I have played since Deus Ex 20 years ago (even more than Dishonored); lots of similarities especially in terms of gameplay, from the complexity of it all, a high emphasis on choice and making your decisions matter, a strange skill tree, interesting NPCs and lots of things to read, clunky combat, and so many things happening at once that it's hard to keep up.

I guess you could call it a dialogue-heavy story-focused adventure-action-RPG. This game definitely tries to innovate and does a lot of things I've never seen before — for example, if you don't touch it for a minute or two, it automatically pauses itself; also you can LOSE experience points and end up with negative XP.

I particularly appreciated the visual aesthetics, really great use of lights, shadows and colour grading, even if it's a bit heavy on the post-processing (too much film grain and you can't tone it down). The music is great as well. The story is a mix of good and nonsensical, but I liked the general tone of it.

This game has a MOOD that is thick and comfy, like if Max Payne was set in London in 1918 and Max was a famous surgeon who got turned into a vampire. It definitely has the moral ambiguity since it incentivises you to be absolutely machiavellian, stealing money from homeless people and healing NPCs' illnesses so killing them and drinking their blood will grant you more XP.

It's a pretty long game as well, it took me 60 hours to finish it and I rushed through several parts. It has good replay value since your choices really matter, I'll definitely play it again to try a different playstyle.

I recommend it as long as you 're prepared for lots of dialogue and a complicated controls (if you know how to play piano or use an Ableton Push it shouldn't be a problem, and having a gaming mouse with extra buttons *really* helps).