Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Review – Hauntingly Disappointing

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It’s disappointing when a promising concept doesn’t live up to its potential, and that’s how I feel about Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. The game has interesting ideas and a strong foundation within the World of Darkness universe, and could have been a standout title next year. Unfortunately, it’s let down by repetitive gameplay that mostly involves traveling back and forth between locations.

Let’s begin with the positives of Bloodlines 2. The developers have done a great job creating the city of Seattle, and the dark, nighttime setting really fits the game’s story. I enjoyed the art style, the color choices, and the overall feel of the game – it clearly tries to recreate the atmosphere of the original, though some design choices unfortunately detract from its charm.

“The quest design in Bloodlines 2 leans too heavily on generic fetch-and-carry tasks.”

The premise – playing a vampire named Phyre who’s lost most of their memories and powers with no explanation – had a lot of potential. The story initially held my attention, but unfortunately, the pacing felt off. Important plot points were introduced and then dropped, making the story’s twists feel sudden and unsatisfying. While it wasn’t a bad story, it ultimately didn’t live up to its promise.

It’s especially frustrating because the game has some genuinely interesting characters. Fabian, a vampire from the Malkavian clan, is a standout. His internal struggle with madness – a result of his clan’s curse – made his attempt to act like a private detective really compelling. I also enjoyed interacting with other characters, and you might find them appealing too.

I particularly enjoyed the game’s soundtrack, which created a great mood and atmosphere. It really enhanced some of the most important story moments, making them more impactful. However, despite these strengths, Bloodlines 2 couldn’t overcome its many flaws.

If you’re looking for exciting combat to break up the slower parts of the game’s story and exploration, you might be disappointed.

The game focuses heavily on detective work, which could have been great, but it often feels slow and repetitive. You spend a lot of time running between characters who are spread out, just to get small bits of information and move the story forward. It’s a cycle of tasks that doesn’t feel very engaging or rewarding.

While the game’s world wasn’t inherently flawed, the uninspired and repetitive quests ultimately made the experience feel old-fashioned and boring, even if the city of Seattle looked appealing.

The quests in Bloodlines 2 rely too much on simple tasks like fetching items, and are often filled with unnecessary combat that feels like it’s just there to change things up. This is especially disappointing in a game focused on detective work and a complex mystery. Instead of making you feel more involved or emphasizing the investigative atmosphere, these repetitive objectives slow down the story and lessen the suspense. Complex investigations are uncommon, and choosing sides with different factions doesn’t have significant consequences, so it doesn’t really make you consider where your allegiances should lie.

Honestly, the side quests felt like just… errands. I mean, I made choices in them and during the main story, but they didn’t really matter later on. It was always just about getting to the next point on the map, and there wasn’t much to actually discover along the way. It started to feel draining instead of fun, which is weird because I was playing as a vampire! You’d think it would be more exciting than that.

Don’t expect the combat to make up for the game’s slow story and exploration. It’s easy to think fighting enemies as a vampire with unique powers – which depend on the clan you pick at the start – would be fun, but it isn’t. Winning in Bloodlines 2 doesn’t come from skill or strategy; it mostly feels like a repetitive task.

The enemies behave unpredictably, sometimes attacking aggressively and other times remaining passive. This inconsistency, particularly with how accurately attacks connect, constantly disrupted my timing and made battles frustrating. I could have overlooked many of the game’s other flaws if the combat felt satisfying, but unfortunately, it doesn’t.

I also have to mention the bosses. I enjoy a tough boss battle, but I understand games need to be accessible to everyone, even those who don’t want to spend hours trying the same fight. It would have been great if the bosses at least offered some kind of challenge and encouraged me to use different abilities and strategies.

The game’s bosses aren’t particularly challenging – they’re mostly just tougher versions of regular enemies with predictable attacks. This makes defeating them feel unsatisfying, and the boss arenas don’t allow for dynamic combat. Honestly, this was my biggest issue with the game, along with the uninspired villains who didn’t create enough tension to make me invested. While the game has a visually appealing and moody atmosphere typical of the setting, it ultimately feels empty and lacks depth.

“Bloodlines 2’s ambitions are its undoing.”

I also thought the idea of choosing a vampire clan at the start and then learning skills from others by… well, feeding on them, was really cool. However, like other aspects of the game, the execution wasn’t great. It didn’t actually change how you play, just slightly adjusted your stats. This meant it didn’t feel like you were truly growing in power or making impactful decisions.

The biggest problem with Bloodlines 2 is that it doesn’t really feel like a role-playing game. Despite being labeled as an RPG, it lacks meaningful character progression. You don’t need to carefully manage items, and there’s no sense of growth or improvement to work towards. In a time when the best RPGs give players real choices and allow them to develop their characters, Bloodlines 2 falls short in these key areas, which is disappointing. The game’s different systems don’t connect well enough to create a satisfying experience. On top of that, it’s missing basic features you’d expect in a PC game, like the ability to adjust the field of view, turn off motion blur, or even save manually.

The good news is the game ran well during testing. With a Ryzen 5950X processor, 64 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA 3080 Ti graphics card, we consistently achieved a smooth 60 frames per second at 4K resolution while using DLSS Balanced mode.

Bloodlines 2 tries to do too much, and unfortunately, it doesn’t succeed. While it aims to fully capture the feeling of being a vampire, the game ends up being surprisingly bland. Instead of letting players use their vampire powers in exciting ways, it forces them to complete the same boring tasks over and over again, making the gameplay feel repetitive and slow.

Honestly, Bloodlines 2 is just a mess. I really can’t recommend it, especially for the price they’re asking. Even if you’re a big RPG fan like me, I’d say hold off and maybe pick it up on sale… but even then, it’s a tough call. The game hints at a really interesting world with lots of secrets, but it just doesn’t build any real tension or give you that satisfying feeling when you finally figure things out.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

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2025-10-24 17:43