Rats! I was torn between just showing it for a couple moments at a speed fast enough to easily read names and making fast enough that all the names will go across the screens a little too fast to read. Thanks for all your work on keeping this game going!
Said it before and I'll say it again; if this game was left in the oven for just a few more months, it would've been the Witcher 3 of the early 2000s; hands down, fangs out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go reinstall an old friend.
@RWDS honestly I havent downloaded the unofficial patch yet I absolutely love this game, I'm shocked people consider it so bad considering what it offers. (Bad as in buggy, I've never seen a soul hate this game) Especially compared to the witcher 3, uck
@@fareastman2079 You're just using my comment to get people to go to your virus-infested site; aren't you? You're just a bot that spreads these around the web. Proove me wrong.
Well if you want a studio to take more time to polish a game and fix bugs then you gotta fund them. But you stupid fans spoke against kickstarters. Paradox is a small studio with limited investments. They ain't mainstream like that just yet.
@@user-jv7gr1jb3r What? I think you got me confused with someone else, man, the fuck did I do? Besides I don't think Kickstarters were a thing back then. Also, iirc, Paradox isn't a small indie developer, they aren't as big as say EA or Ubisoft, but really, that's a good thing. And yes, fans want games, they want them fast, I'm open to ideas on how you'd fix thousands of people.
When I played the game I chose to answer the questions to determine my starting clan. I answered all of the questions honestly in accordance to my actual personality. It gave me Malkavian.
I bought and played this game when it was still available on shelves. I beat the entire game as a 13 year old, before the unofficial patches, FIRST RUN MALKAVIAN. It set a huge standard in writing for me that unfortunately no other game has 100% stratched that itch since. At that age my friends and I were also playing tons of the pencil and paper White Wolf system. I am absolutely terrified of how the sequel will turn out. However, I am still very excited.
Ah yes Fortitude, lets just RUN through a building on fire... how many vampires survive that? Few... but the Ventrue will! They can take a lot of beating... and it is a great counter against potence!
Gangrel would like to have a word with you... But yeah I agree that Ventrue are not only for chit-chating. In combat they can be good tanky characters that stay in the back using dominate and guns. But they have to use a lot of blood for that and they can't feed on everything.
@Antun Šturlić They kinda made the "Jack dies, Gehenna begins" un-canon. In the new version of WoD, Gehenna never actually started, so we can assume Jack is 'alive' somewhere (just like Beckett). So yeah!
It’s interesting that Strauss senses something in you. He’s right too. In the tabletop game, the things Lacroix has you do in this game as a mere fledgling are things that you’d expect elder vampires to do. Mostly fledglings would just take care of a few problematic kine. Clearly Lacroix is trying to get you killed by sending you on these insane suicide missions, but you always emerge unscathed!
My friend never understood what I was talking about when I talked about the giant slug being near unbeatable, and that I had to glitch it to progress (I wedged my character in a place where I couldn't be hit most of the time, at the top of the braziers, and unloaded all my weapons in the inventory that I luckily had stockpiled even though I had no firearms skill, and then I could bring the boss to about half HP and just about beat in in melee before I died). Turns out later, when I watched him load his save, that his game had glitched in a way that made his character unkillable, which he hadn't noticed, lol.
just beat her as a brujah. maxed melee, strength n almost stamina. used 2 elder vitae and several blue blood. still a pain. with celerity and potence up full time
The Asian tentacle boss? Yeah she can be tough. Making sure you get all the fetishes and items to give you soak, and having maxed stamina and/or melee are critical.
20:28 - It was thanks to this very place that I not only got introduced to Chiasm, which I still love to this day, but also the whole of darkwave. I can also thank this game for introducing me to Tiamat, and while I knew Lacuna Coil before playing it, having Swamped in the soundtrack was an awesome surprise.
@@odinlindeberg4624 it wasn't parched he was just playing a malkavian. It is also supposed to be distracting, playing a malkavian means you're crazy. ... Or maybe it was patched since the plus patch does whatever the stupid modders want, they probably actually thought it was a bug.
god damn im so glad in my early teenager years I played new vegas. as a 14 year old I learned to appreciate the nuances and unique writing of that game. 5 years later, 19 now, playing through cult classic games like lisa the painful and VTMB, we've all come a long way
This game has been my obsession since i came across it in 2009. Haunted hotel that actually freaked me out, never thought i could play a game as a vampire and actually get scared! Really immersive that i almost felt like i was roaming an actual city, so many places to check out, my favorite the night club and listening to their music choice. Then the op werewolf, the haunted mansion and the fact that you could insult and piss off anyone! Malkavian became such an obsession that i used that title for a while! The psychotic skisto vampire that'd say weird things. I was even more excited when i heard they were making an mmorpg but sad that they chose to just work on Eve online :/ or so my sources said.... Id be super fat and antisocial if they did make it though so maybe its a good thing they didnt lol
Playing through VTMB without unoffical patches is like crawling through a small sewer tunnel with shit with open wounds and slowly but surely going insane. The story is awesome, the characters are great.... but the gameplay is so buggy that you can basically die by going forward. Awesome game, the crawling is all worth it. Malkavians are hilarious as to play.
God Bless Clan Malkavian. The Clan with the Invisibility ability and AoE Crowd Control. Fighting through those last few battles was a significant struggle, yes, but I managed it thanks to Easy access to sneak attacks on basic enemies and an obsessive need to keep both kinds of weapons on me and upgraded DESPITE putting very few points into both Melee and Firearms.
I only noticed the spaghetti power lines when I played Malkavian for the first time. I thought that was a feature of playing the loony mad oracle vampire clan o-o.
i loaded in as my malkavian who is in hollywood and the powerlines were perfectly still maybe it only happens occasionally or they forgot to implement it in hollywood
* Paid full price for VTMB on release day * Finished the game and enjoyed it * Did own 2x 6800GT SLI at the time, tho :/ Dunno if that last bit mattered, but I remember having *SO MUCH* fun with this game I'm glad I didn't encounter the stuff other ppl were complaining about. No game-crippling bugs I remember. Simply loved it.
Yeah there was a chance to get an immovable wood beam on the golden temple, and also there was a chance of not escaping the society of leopold as well as beckett not appearing to warn you about the sarcophagus and getting you stuck there.
I remember beating Ming Xiao unarmed on my first play-through, with a Gangrel. Protean war-form claws do hit hard. Sheriff was also easy. Chinatown club was however indeed most difficult fight for me. Feeding healed a lot in early "game version"s so I managed to beat it after a dozen tries.
I sapose China town club was the hardest area but to be honest do not remember any of the areas being that hard I played it all the way through 3 times and I do not think I ever used the better guns actually had more trouble in some early fights before I had a decent power set. oh if it matters the play throughs were as brujaha venture and malkaveian
I don't remember having troubles never haha. Only with Ming xiao and the sheriff just because he transforms and you can barely hit him if you dont have good weapon skills.
I haven't even got to those parts got stuck trying to blow up a wearhouse then the museum the abandoned ship trying to kill the 3rd plague guy "shotguns hurt" I will admit I am used to having my hand held a bit and the only reason I beat the museum put no points in stealth cause a video said it was pointless didn't realize you could just kill the guards and from what I have seen I lost nothing killing them :/
I was one of the "first" to buy it. I remember seeing it as a new release in store, begging my mother for it, and then getting it soon after with it's velcro fronted box in all its glory. Bugs and all I still fucking adored it.
Meanwhile here I am having played the whole game through with a melee Malkavian without plus patch. In fact I never played characters that use firearms. You need to put points into dodge and stamina to mitigate damage.
Yea, my first ever game, which was without the plus patch, I made a Ventrue with maxed out dodge and melee, nearly maxed stealth and level 5 Fortitude. While there were definitely large spikes in difficulty and some areas where I struggled (like Grout's manor when my stealth was still low), I only used firearms once in the entire game (the flying bat Sheriff boss) and I otherwise had no issue finishing it. I even managed to beat Ming Xiao on my first try (though I tore through a few blood packs). Also, stealth at higher levels is ridiculously OP, which made the Society of Leopold and Ventrue Tower fights a breeze.
After the Seth video, I was tempted to give it a try, this helps confirm it to the "Games I should really get to list". It might even eventually get to the downloaded on my computer list.
@@dive_bomb3r Yup I finally caved and played it and it was very much worth it, just got to china town and am definitely gonna complete a full play through, which normally I'm pretty bad at doing.
I know you made this comment a while ago, but I’d just finished watching Kelly’s Heroes right before I clicked on this video. Your profile pic made me question if I was losing my mind
I actually played through this game for the first time unpatched and I did just fine as Tremere. Stealthing around is extremely broken because near max level you pretty much turn invisible as soon as you crouch. That solves every combat situation in which enemies don't auto-spot you because of story reasons. For boss fights, blood strike and blood boil were honestly way more than enough. Those spells hit like a truck and you can just save all your blood packs until you run into a boss, then buy some new ones after you're done. None of the bosses or mandatory story content felt impossible, the only parts I had to skip were the zombie killing sidequest, and saving that dude in Chinatown from dying from the gang. Luckily the former sidequest can be completely avoided by doing an alternative equivalent quest, and the latter is just completely optional with no reward afaik. The only things I ran into that were genuine problems were two: -a character in the nosferaru warrens would act like I failed her sidequest without me ever talking to her beforehand, therefore making me unable to do that sidequest -the door in the final Quei Jin palace where you need to push the wooden log to open it wouldn't let me push it. All it took to fix that was reloading the save file though. Aside from that the game acted normally, despite being the Steam unpatched version. Of all the issues you mentioned I only really had the resolution problems but those weren't that bad. By the end, the game even felt kinda easy to complete. Both Ming Xiao and the Tzimisce boss only took me two tries because I had to learn their moveset. After that I always had enough blood packs on hand and at least one powerful gun with enough bullets to finish them off. Overall I still really enjoyed the vanilla version because of its writing. The endless sewer adventure to get to the nosferatu warrens was super boring and should've been shortened, but that was really the only part of the game I outright disliked. Anyways, I've now installed the unofficial patch and I'm looking forward to my next playthrough as Malkavian.
I actually bought the game day one before there was even an official patch to make the game beatable. I still have everything that came with the physical release including a bent busted box. My PC at the time was well above the recommended specs but the game had some serious issues. Going from outside to inside took minutes. I could go make a sandwich and get a drink and the game would still be loading when I got back. There were bugs and physics issues everywhere. When I finally got to the end of the Society of Leopold and the game broke I was dejected because I couldn't go forward no matter what I did. I put the game down for a while but I kept checking the internet to see how to fix the game. When i finally found the 1.2 patch I realized I'd have to start the entire game all over again. I was actually more excited than angry because there were so many choices I had made that I wanted to revisit and see what happened if I approached a situation from another direction. The game definitely wore its flaws on it's sleeve without the unofficial patches but even in it's rawest form the potential of the game shown through like a diamond. The very first moment Jack started talking to me in the tutorial I knew it was going to be my favorite game of all time. I almost pity the people that find the game today, I was fortunate enough to experience Ocean House in all it's glory without anyone to warn me or prepare me for the sheer terror I'd feel. Up to that point the game had made me feel like an invincible badass. Then I found myself alone at home at 1 in the morning standing before the doors of an old hotel not even remotely prepared for what lie in store for me. When the ghost ran across the screen I about fell out of my chair. The experience left me so spooked turned every light in the house on for the rest of the night. I wish I could relive that moment. Broken or just cracked and dinged it's still an amazing game. I'd rather a developer do something ambitious unique and full of bugs like Bloodlines than make a polished but bland and lifeless product like so many AAA games are these days.
It's amazing that, of all the games you mentioned to follow Bloodlines, what we actually got was a battle royale! Only a Malkavian could see that one coming.
@@finnisdead2188 No, the life itself. Video games taught me politics, human behaviour and other nasty things, which i used later in my life to get better at it.
I bought the game when I was 18 at the super high recommendation from a buddy of mine. We played VTM together and somehow I didn't know about bloodlines (Same year it was released). I picked it up and got pissed (cause of that certain broken quest that wouldn't let you finish the game without the official patch) and my buddy directed me to the official game patch. We both played different clans, he played Ventrue, I played Tremere. Awesome memories. Here's to hoping that Bloodlines 2 is as epic as the 1st one.
Great video. Melee is perfectly viable if you're a Brujah I was able to do all content... but I was min-max-ing pretty hard. Played this game who knows how many times. :)
18:15 - I don't know what version of the game I had back in 2007 when I first played it, but: 1) I played as a Malcavian. 2) I heavily focused on stealth so I hit Steath 10 before going to the Museum and was pretty much invisible => steamrolled through the most of the game. 3) I helped Mercurio and didn't rat on him => he sold me relatively cheap guns and ammo. 4) I saved ammo for the bosses and situations where I couldn't sneak up and drain/one hit kill everyone in a given room 5) Flamethrower was OP as fuck. Maybe fan-patch nerfed it considerably, but I remember grilling Ming-Zhao with 2 canisters of fuel in about 30 seconds and I still had another one to spare when she died. 6) Sheriff was way tougher, mostly because of 2-stage fight and him flying around, but I had flamethrower and pretty much all of the guns Mercurio could sell with full ammo, so... It was a matter of time. Basically, this game is relatively easy, if you are economical. Don't buy anything except for armor, unless you really have to. Don't use guns on small fries. Don't use blood packs for every scratch you get. Don't use vampire powers, because they are fine and dandy, but slow and/or finicky. Stealth though the game (because on Stealth 10 you are basically invisible for everyone but bosses and these fleshy things in sewers) and loot the shit out of everything around you. By the time I went in LaCroix's tower, money and tradeable stuff-wise all I had is 4$... and that's it. But guns, ammo and blood pack-wise I was 100% stocked, so whatever.
A few corrections: It's VenTRUE, not Venture, that's just the name of Lacroix's Tower as a on-the-nose comercialization of 'hey this massive building is Ventrue-owned'. Then there's the 'Cerelity' thing... it's Celerity. I am OCD about correct pronounciations.... heh, sorry ^^;
I only recently purchased this game. I didn't think anything could challenge Deus Ex for the title of my favorite game, but Bloodlines pulled it off. This game is truly incredible.
I mean I got the game from GoG and honestly my thirst (or "obsession" as my friends like to say it) for vampire games has once more been quencehed. This is one of my favorite RPG games even with its flaws I love it and I don't know how will the next game fair but this I really loved and it also got me to the "World of Darkness" series (where this game is set) I just hope I'll find another cool vampire game too :D Seriously I need more vampire games I've been hungering for another one and I've see games like Dark (We don't like to talk about it though) which were just.... not okay.... but I do play the Legacy of Kain games now (from the 1st game) but if anyone has any other suggestions (besides Castlevania LoS 1-2 Mirror of Fate and Symphony of the Night and Vampyr that is) please let me know and I'll seek it out :D Edit: Okay watched the video and honestly My real issue with the "Old" version was that I lost my save after I got the fanpatch... but otherwise I agree with you this game didn't make me feel like I was playing a game but rather as if I'd have taken a peek into the world of Darkness and practically being a part of it. There are questlines and characters that I will never forget many that I could save and many I couldn't and even those whom I managed to release from their eternal torments (those who played the game will know) This game as you have said it IS THE WORLD in which you are just 1 guy (or girl depending on your choice) and its up to you to either win or die. Also Malkavians are my fav clan storywise as they are practically having the ability to see the future and getting strange whispers. Also QUESTION. Do you think its okay that I ACTUALLY understood what the Malkavians were saying? like I really DID understand them. Idk.. it was fun though. Gameplaywise though the Tremere Clan hands down the best and its a nice touch that we actually have a clan representative specialities happening I wonder if Troika team have planned to do the same for other vamps too or just the Tremere but DAMN it felt good to be recognized by a straightforward group of vampires and whom were loyal to me as I was to them. It was a nice touch :D And also Now I'm going to check out the other Vampire Masquerade game before the 2nd game comes out :D
Yeah, it was buggy, and there were few places where i had to google how to get around them, but it wasn't unfinishable. I absolutely love this game, it's one of my favourite RPGs. To this day i remember the pre-release trailer with the amazing voiceover done by one of the nosferatu NPCs. During my first playthrough i played as a Tremere, and i was completely immersed in the gameworld, so much interested in certain questlines, that i completely forgot about having to visit my mentor. And i somehow managed to finish the game despite that. On my second playthrough (after the official patch) i played as Malkavian, and oh boy was that TONS of fun. The game is COMPLETELY different during Malkavian playthrough. Bloodlines is one of these games where i remember certain scenes even after almost two decades passed and i've played tens if not hundreds of other titles since then. I highly recommend playing as Malkavian to anyone who haven't tried it yet. Being able to talk to roadsigns or TV presenter made me LMAO. There's a situation where you cause a huge explosion. When you stop by your flat and turn on the TV as a member of any other clan, the presenter just says something along the lines of (paraphrasing):"The investigation of what caused the explosion at blah, blah, continues. Reason is yet unknown..", But when you play as Malkavian, the presenter just simply says:"The investigation continues, but the explosion at blah blah was of course caused by you." Each clan membership gives you completely different tools to deal with quests, but there are also TONS of these small gags and little changes which basically turn Bloodlines into several games in one. My third playthrough was way later (i don't recall whether i had the community patch installed at that point), as a Nosferatu, and again - COMPLETELY different experience. Nosferatu playthrough is the most different, mainly because he can't be seen by the human NPCs at all. I highly recommend going for stealth build, but even if you don't, the game is SO WELL designed, that you can get to most places via sewers without running into any NPCs whatsoever. Of course you HAVE TO get out here and there to feed. I don't know what the playthroughs as Brujah, Gangrel, Toreador or Ventrue offer, because i haven't tried them (yet), but i bet that there are situations that make playing as a member of these clans worthwhile as well. Too bad, that Troika ended up as they did. They deseved much, much more. VTMB is one of the best games of the decade, and that decade was packed with some truly great titles. Morrowind, Gothic 2, Titan Quest, there were many great RPGs, and VTMB definitely belongs up there with them. Unfortunately, the franchise seems to be cursed, since whenever someone tries to resurrect the Bloodlines, some kind of joyblocking daemon from hell appears and screws everything up. Btw, System Shock seems to be affected by this daemon as well.
😀 thanks for the review, i hear good things about this game from time to time, i need to pick it up whenever it goes back on sale for $5, i imagine during the months between August thru December, thanks again for the review ✌😍👍
Really nice video! I enjoyed all of the background story. Also great, that you cite your sources! Seems like I will get me that game, once it comes into sale on steam or gog.
Oh! I haven't heard of this game for years! I didn't play it much, but I loved every second that I spent on it. I think it was my first horror game, and it definitely freaked me out. Who else remembers the elevator scene when you hear a voice whisper "beeee carefuuuuuul"? After you hear that, you go down the elevator tower, you hear a noise above you: it's the elevator falling down on you. That was scary _and_ epic! I also remember a haunted mansion, now classic in videogames but back then, it felt revolutionary to me xD.
(Answering the title) I mean, I played it for the first time a few days ago and it blew me away so nostalgia has got nothing to do with it for me. The game very much holds up even today, it was ahead of its time.
You know it is a superb game when a random vendor's self introduction is as good as this: "The ladies call me "Oh god!", but you can call me Fat Larry with an F-A-T, cuz I know I got a weight problem an' I just don't give a fuck!"
you: im not the biggest OG fan of it,, i was only 10 or so when i first tried it. me: i was born the same year it was released (im 15) and ive never replayed a game so much in my life. Im currently on the last clan as a nosferatu before i beat all the clans total! ^0^
I'm a (amateur) writer, my first playthrough of this game was with Malk and I haven't been able to bring myself to play any other clan since, it's the definitive Bloodlines experience in my opinion. It made every conversation 8x more engaging, as every response was a puzzle, a battle of not only wits with my opponent, but also with my own character as I tried to decode what meaning they were trying to communicate (in the middle of the game's already thick layer of politicking and obfuscation). I had to be glued to the dialogue in a way I've never really been with a game before, just to have a chance of saying vaguely what I actually wanted to say. And the delight of retroactively understanding the prophetic statements my character made, that I had initially dismissed alongside the rest of the deluded ramblings they spout, it's unlike anything I've ever played before. It's like Troika took 1INT/Terrifying Presence, and made it a whole playthrough where everyone underestimates you but nobody, not even you OR the character you're playing, realises you've actually been 2 steps ahead of the game the whole time. All that is to say this game is something else entirely and deserves it's newfound high status
Yeah, Unfortunatelly Bloodlines downfall was basically Activision's fault (And Valve).... :c And I hope Paradox will get it right... .and won't give it 100 Dlc's costing at least 5$ each. xD I love paradox, but oh boy those dlcs....
Way late to the party here but I just found this channel and I'm loving it. Binging through the archives atm. I was one of the people who did play the game close to release with only the official patches, and while it was most definitely buggy, it was certainly not unbeatable. I'm sure my teenage self didn't really register how broken the game was, and I don't know that I would actively recommend the vanilla version to people playing it for the first time these days, but I think it's a bit unfair to paint it as unplayable without the unofficial patch. I played through it with most of the classes back in the day without fan mods. And yes, as some other comments have pointed out, the plus half of the patch definitely has detractors too. I didn't try it out a whole lot myself, but it does change the game pretty significantly and adds a lot of things that the modders just thought would be cool things to add. Like more sexy stuff. Playing the game that way is certainly valid, and the restored content is an impressive achievement in its own right, but I think I would recommend going with only the bug fixes for an initial playthrough.
Whilst I did buy my version on Steam sometime last year (cause it was insanely cheap), installing the patch by yourself on that version isn't too hard either.
Coming back here, since your constant coverage on this game made me play it and holy freaking crap was in incredible. Put a full 40 hours into and it truly was one of the most wonderful things I've ever played... All up until the Sabbat hotel mission. Then the game fell apart. But I don't know that against the developers at all. I powered through it, got to Xiao and turned on God mode and never looked back. I will say that I will look back on this game with a smile now.
Since the guy's mistake was so painful, you should be corrected too: CE - LE - RI - TY. (NOT ce-ler-it-y). That's the correct phoneme segmentation of the word's syllabes.
This game is as good as I remember. I had fun quests OUTSIDE the game, like going to another part of my country, to try and get the Bradygames strategy guide to work out one part I was stuck on. The problems and issues this game had made it more special to those of us who have loved this game from the outset. I also love that it never faded away and died, but is stronger than it ever has been.
It worries me that vampire-related early 2000's games have such good stories. I'm interested in checking out this game. I'd love to be impressed by a story in a similar way to how Legcay of Kain impressed me.
This is a great video but I'd just like to interject that I feel it's unfair to compare the unpatched game to the plus patch rather than the basic one. Idk to me the plus patch feels like a mod that's treated as canon, and I know the content is based on things found in the code but I don't think that qualifies it as official. There's no way for wesp and anyone else helping to create the patch to know what the intentions for the stuff was, or even if all of it was going to be put in the game - developers often change projectory in the middle of creating assets simply because the act of making things takes more time than deciding what's going to be included in the finished game, and the stuff that's not used always is just left in the code because there's no point to removing it. I understand the worth of talking about unfinished quest lines and stuff, but we also cannot assume that it was All intended to be used, nor that the route wesp and co went to implement this content was true to the original design because that'd be literally impossible. Again, this is a great video and I do not mean to detract from it, i just feel this is worth thinking about
Developers have also changed game storyline, lore, or canon based on player feedback, plotholes pointed out, and even fan fiction. Mass Effect 3 is a prime example of this. There's nothing in the rulebook that says they won't "steal" new concepts introduced from the mod as canon for BL2, they won't purge whole parts of the original game because... fuck it why not, or they won't change the original trajectory *cough* in favor of something changed by the mod. Developers often change stories due to licensing disputes, licensing expiration, or copyright claims filed against them. Until or unless there is a BL2 anything released by the "unofficial" mod should be lore-ish. Serious modders rarely if ever intentionally try to create conflicting content with the original work. Unlike paid developers modders will not only get attacked by other modders and hostile gaming community but some dissenting a-hole might just release a patch that undoes your work. I've been in my fair share of debates. That said, it's been 15 years it a bit late in the game, pun intended, to be turning it into a debate now.
Never even heard of this game before today. When VTM 2 was announced I thought it was a follow up that that recent vampire RPG people had said was pretty good. But after this I think I will pick this up on GoG and give it a shot. Thumps up.
You forgot about the "Clan Quest" mod! I recently played through this game four times, twice with CQ and twice with The Final Nights. CQ is definatly the best of the two because of all the new locations and quests and the fact that you can join the Sabbat.
🙂 on GOG,com...... Bioshock 1 is $6.59, Bioshock 2 is $6.59, and Bioshock Infinite is $13.74, and for Vampire Bloodlines wait for September for the autumn sale then its $5
I've played it a few times, usually as a Tremere. It always pissed me off a little that I couldn't play Tzimische though . . . Reckon that would make for a completely out-there run through.
I played this for the first time last summer so no nostalgia bias and... it's pretty great. The dialogue is amazing and the atmosphere is very well done, great narrative experience... if you can tolerate all the bugs that is. Thankfully I had only one gamebreaking bug on my gameplay [which was fixed by the unofficial patch]. Surprisingly, still not as broken as Skyrim (or any Bethesda game for that matter).
Protip; you can get the glock early by doing Trip's sidequest involving stealing drugs from the hospital. Makes the warehouse an absolute breeze. Also, weapon recoil scales off strength. The SMG's do become very useful at a high strength level, but aside from the AUG automatic weapons in general should be ignored on characters that have a poor strength attribute. Additionally, firearms can be easily maxed throughout the course of the game. One rank in firearms to start off, start the bail bond quests, use the skill book in the bounty hunter's suite. Then upgrade firearms to 3 once you reach Hollywood. Do either of Romero's quests and he can upgrade your firearms skill to 4 as a reward. Then, finally, a skill book in the hunters' monastery will allow you to raise it to 5 without ever having to invest more than like a dozen xp into it.
I just recently played through it, again, for my 125th hour spent ingame (after getting it on Steam) and can confirm it is indeed as great as we remember.
My biggest hope for VTMB2 is that the best boi's will actually play like they should (Gangrel). They are supposed to be unarmed vicious beasts, like clan Gangrel are the only ones who actually FIGHT werewolves and dont just run (in tabletop werewolves are basically anti vampire nukes, they can do damage that cannot be healed through blood healing). In the game......well they kinda suck sadly. Gimme my beastie boi's!
Okay, this is my second post... Did you even play this game? I'm very serious. Between not being able to pronounce the powers properly you're making outright false statements. I beat this game, in every possible way, from melee to guns. You can *totally* take out Ming Zhao with melee, it is very easy, and if you are a Gangrel then your Protean freaking straight up melts people. Here is how you melee: 1. You must have a decent Strength, as this game (for reasons I don't like) uses Strength as your go-to melee attribute (in the tabletop game it is Dex to hit, Str for damage)... 2. You want to use Blood Buff *or* have decent Potence. But you can melee anything down in this game, I've beaten it tons of times without using guns, tons of times. You can easily do it, and I did all the social options throughout the game too. I ask again, with all seriousness, did you actually give this game a shot? Is the game perfect? Heck no. Is it buggy? Oh yes. Is the plus patch required? No, but it helps. A lot.
But the plus patch is not needed or even helps. you can use the basic patch made by the same people but without adding all the absolute garbage tier content they add. Besides that I fully agree with the rest of your comment, he didn't really explore the intricacies of the game, you can definitely beat the game in any way you want, and if you struggle with combat, the flamethrower is there for you by the end of the game. Since people who complain about combat SHOULD have saved mercurio's ass.
I too didn't come to play VTMB until like a decade after it was released, but what it lacks in polish, it makes up in charm and heart. There is passion and genuine creative effort put into the game, what with all the little details from quirky characters, humorous dialogue & quests, and detailed environments. I'd dare say the game is indeed deserving of the praise it receives and this comes from someone who is also a non longtime fan. Some of other great examples of Janky ass, but otherwise brilliant games are Stalker series, Mount & Blade, New Vegas, and more recently Kenshi.
Awesome video. Gosh. I'll have to play it again since I never got the tremere ending. Also, Outstar is an awesome rolplayer too! She's in a great game I saw some time ago.
Getting to meet Grey Griffin last year, aka the Voermann sisters VA, and as I was talking to her about the game, she jokingly responded to me a couple times in character, was AWESOME.
I just started this game. Wanna get into vtm. And even though i had some bugs and the clunky controls ti fight with . . . It was a blast. The most immersive game i have played. I dont know how to describe it, it has something to it which makes it even better than most games nowadays. Never was much for graphics anyways
I was an OG fan. I played 1st edition WoD Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, even Mummy, (never got into Wraith) so this game was extremely my jam. I bought this as soon as I possibly could buy it. It was... rough. I manually modded some python config files to quintuple the amount of exp that quests awarded and memorized the dev console command to immediately fill my blood pool. With those two tools in hand, it became tolerable to play. The story, the setting, and the characters were always just amazing and absolutely nailed the atmosphere of the pen-and-paper game. I played through it multiple times before the unofficial patch. It was good enough to endure the wonkiness.
My first playthrough, which was before I knew about the patch, was with a Ventrue with maxed out Melee and no points in firearms. I only used guns in the last fight, because I did not know about the lights.
Aw dang, you cut off the Unofficial Patch credits just before my name pops up. :)
Thanks for the video!
Hey, look it's the icons dude. :P How's it going, man, been a minute since the chats.
Rats! I was torn between just showing it for a couple moments at a speed fast enough to easily read names and making fast enough that all the names will go across the screens a little too fast to read. Thanks for all your work on keeping this game going!
Youre a hero man!
You guys gonna fix the vtmb2 when it launches, too?
many thanks for your work
Said it before and I'll say it again; if this game was left in the oven for just a few more months, it would've been the Witcher 3 of the early 2000s; hands down, fangs out.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go reinstall an old friend.
@RWDS honestly I havent downloaded the unofficial patch yet I absolutely love this game, I'm shocked people consider it so bad considering what it offers.
(Bad as in buggy, I've never seen a soul hate this game)
Especially compared to the witcher 3, uck
@@fareastman2079 You're just using my comment to get people to go to your virus-infested site; aren't you?
You're just a bot that spreads these around the web.
Proove me wrong.
Fuck the Witcher 3
Well if you want a studio to take more time to polish a game and fix bugs then you gotta fund them. But you stupid fans spoke against kickstarters.
Paradox is a small studio with limited investments. They ain't mainstream like that just yet.
@@user-jv7gr1jb3r What?
I think you got me confused with someone else, man, the fuck did I do?
Besides I don't think Kickstarters were a thing back then.
Also, iirc, Paradox isn't a small indie developer, they aren't as big as say EA or Ubisoft, but really, that's a good thing.
And yes, fans want games, they want them fast, I'm open to ideas on how you'd fix thousands of people.
Legend has it that everytime you mention Bloodlines, someone reinstalls it!
I bought it ffs :P
Aaaand... reinstalling it...
Reinstalling!
I never uninstalled it
Ah shit. Here we go again.
i just started playing this for the first time and it's definitely amazing
T1J nice to see you here
I wasn't expectating you here :D
You picked an amazing time to play this game. Hopefully you’ll be hyped fo the sequel
I knew you had good taste
I'm on my fourth playthrough, this time with patch 10.8 plus X20 mod. It rocks.
When I played the game I chose to answer the questions to determine my starting clan. I answered all of the questions honestly in accordance to my actual personality.
It gave me Malkavian.
I did, too, and it gave me Ventrue.
@@JoshuaRWorkman I got Tremere. I wanted Brujah or Gangrel though.
...I got Nosferatu and had to switch to Brujah after a while because I was failing so much
Lol I got Nosferatu and I rolled with it.
I got gangrel, which is fine since I loved the wrestler who went by the same name.
guess you could say: the game was rigged from the start
it's funny just how much the fallout creators are valuable in the rpg market
Sure, if your a fink, but i ainna fink
I bought and played this game when it was still available on shelves. I beat the entire game as a 13 year old, before the unofficial patches, FIRST RUN MALKAVIAN. It set a huge standard in writing for me that unfortunately no other game has 100% stratched that itch since.
At that age my friends and I were also playing tons of the pencil and paper White Wolf system.
I am absolutely terrified of how the sequel will turn out. However, I am still very excited.
I strongly recommend Pathologic 2.
Witcher 3? Fallout New Vegas? Dragon Age Origins? There's a few games out there my man
Try Deus Ex if you haven't yet.
>Ventrue are just for talk
It shows you never rolled a Ventrue with Fortitude and soaked every bullet like the T-1000
Ah yes Fortitude, lets just RUN through a building on fire... how many vampires survive that? Few... but the Ventrue will! They can take a lot of beating... and it is a great counter against potence!
Gangrel would like to have a word with you...
But yeah I agree that Ventrue are not only for chit-chating. In combat they can be good tanky characters that stay in the back using dominate and guns. But they have to use a lot of blood for that and they can't feed on everything.
@@-Zakhiel- I wonder if the Gangrel is gonna have Protean/Fortitude or Protean/Animalism in VTMB 2.
@@matheuscruz8574 I just hope it has good dialogues and atmosphere.
@Antun Šturlić They kinda made the "Jack dies, Gehenna begins" un-canon. In the new version of WoD, Gehenna never actually started, so we can assume Jack is 'alive' somewhere (just like Beckett). So yeah!
It’s interesting that Strauss senses something in you. He’s right too. In the tabletop game, the things Lacroix has you do in this game as a mere fledgling are things that you’d expect elder vampires to do. Mostly fledglings would just take care of a few problematic kine. Clearly Lacroix is trying to get you killed by sending you on these insane suicide missions, but you always emerge unscathed!
Yes. Yes it was. Great game and I enjoyed every minute of it.
agreed! I am replaying it now XD
i know, i played it more than 5 times. a game ahead of its time.
i also played more when good mods came out, like late nights.
Except for the fucking sewers. In my first playthrough my hacking level was too low to open the shortcut.
@@gabescrazy5504 As have I. Gameplay mechanics? A totally fucking mess. But the rest? A+
Beat me to it.
"Melee is not gonna work against mistress Ming Xiao"
*Laughs in Brujah*
I thought you were SUPPOSED to go melee on her lmao
Others: NOOOO! You're supposed to struggle with the boss!
Brujah: Haha, sledgehammer go BONK
i swear to god the asians were so damn difficult to kill. Why tf are asian enemies so op in every game?
Laughs in blood purge stunlock
My friend never understood what I was talking about when I talked about the giant slug being near unbeatable, and that I had to glitch it to progress (I wedged my character in a place where I couldn't be hit most of the time, at the top of the braziers, and unloaded all my weapons in the inventory that I luckily had stockpiled even though I had no firearms skill, and then I could bring the boss to about half HP and just about beat in in melee before I died). Turns out later, when I watched him load his save, that his game had glitched in a way that made his character unkillable, which he hadn't noticed, lol.
just beat her as a brujah. maxed melee, strength n almost stamina. used 2 elder vitae and several blue blood. still a pain. with celerity and potence up full time
The Asian tentacle boss? Yeah she can be tough. Making sure you get all the fetishes and items to give you soak, and having maxed stamina and/or melee are critical.
Nah as a torreador with celerity and blood buff you just about beat everything you see . Also full dex and melee
20:28 - It was thanks to this very place that I not only got introduced to Chiasm, which I still love to this day, but also the whole of darkwave.
I can also thank this game for introducing me to Tiamat, and while I knew Lacuna Coil before playing it, having Swamped in the soundtrack was an awesome surprise.
you're the second person i've seen the past 3 days to use the Shodan profile pic
The Last Round introduced me to Genitorturers and I haven't stopped listening since.
Darling Violetta was a revelation to me.
Chiasm is so good
11:25 That's not a bug, that happens when you're a malkavian.
A lot of what this fucking idiot said were not bugs.
I imagine it's pretty distracting regardless, and he did mention it's been patched.
@@odinlindeberg4624 it wasn't parched he was just playing a malkavian. It is also supposed to be distracting, playing a malkavian means you're crazy.
... Or maybe it was patched since the plus patch does whatever the stupid modders want, they probably actually thought it was a bug.
Since I’ve had it happen as a ventrue it doesn’t seem like a feature
Being a Malkavian is awesome!
god damn im so glad in my early teenager years I played new vegas. as a 14 year old I learned to appreciate the nuances and unique writing of that game. 5 years later, 19 now, playing through cult classic games like lisa the painful and VTMB, we've all come a long way
This game has been my obsession since i came across it in 2009.
Haunted hotel that actually freaked me out, never thought i could play a game as a vampire and actually get scared!
Really immersive that i almost felt like i was roaming an actual city, so many places to check out, my favorite the night club and listening to their music choice.
Then the op werewolf, the haunted mansion and the fact that you could insult and piss off anyone!
Malkavian became such an obsession that i used that title for a while! The psychotic skisto vampire that'd say weird things.
I was even more excited when i heard they were making an mmorpg but sad that they chose to just work on Eve online :/ or so my sources said.... Id be super fat and antisocial if they did make it though so maybe its a good thing they didnt lol
Ditto to everything you said
Playing through VTMB without unoffical patches is like crawling through a small sewer tunnel with shit with open wounds and slowly but surely going insane. The story is awesome, the characters are great.... but the gameplay is so buggy that you can basically die by going forward.
Awesome game, the crawling is all worth it. Malkavians are hilarious as to play.
what's so awesome abput the story? personally I found Arcanum a lot better.
God Bless Clan Malkavian. The Clan with the Invisibility ability and AoE Crowd Control. Fighting through those last few battles was a significant struggle, yes, but I managed it thanks to Easy access to sneak attacks on basic enemies and an obsessive need to keep both kinds of weapons on me and upgraded DESPITE putting very few points into both Melee and Firearms.
I only noticed the spaghetti power lines when I played Malkavian for the first time. I thought that was a feature of playing the loony mad oracle vampire clan o-o.
This guy is a fucking idiot, he really hasn't played the game.
Powelines are a Malkavian feature. Maybe the unpatched version had them go ballistic with other clans
i loaded in as my malkavian who is in hollywood
and the powerlines were perfectly still
maybe it only happens occasionally or they forgot to implement it in hollywood
Nasty-looking Navi are you trying to cosplay as that annoying Patty NPC from the Confession club or are you just genuinely an elitist shit?
* Paid full price for VTMB on release day
* Finished the game and enjoyed it
* Did own 2x 6800GT SLI at the time, tho :/
Dunno if that last bit mattered, but I remember having *SO MUCH* fun with this game I'm glad I didn't encounter the stuff other ppl were complaining about. No game-crippling bugs I remember. Simply loved it.
Yeah there was a chance to get an immovable wood beam on the golden temple, and also there was a chance of not escaping the society of leopold as well as beckett not appearing to warn you about the sarcophagus and getting you stuck there.
Good old flamethrower cheese for Ming Xiao was hilarious.
It's the only way to do it. Only chumps need it for Andrei.
I remember beating Ming Xiao unarmed on my first play-through, with a Gangrel. Protean war-form claws do hit hard. Sheriff was also easy. Chinatown club was however indeed most difficult fight for me. Feeding healed a lot in early "game version"s so I managed to beat it after a dozen tries.
I sapose China town club was the hardest area but to be honest do not remember any of the areas being that hard I played it all the way through 3 times and I do not think I ever used the better guns actually had more trouble in some early fights before I had a decent power set. oh if it matters the play throughs were as brujaha venture and malkaveian
I don't remember having troubles never haha. Only with Ming xiao and the sheriff just because he transforms and you can barely hit him if you dont have good weapon skills.
@@xerty5502 the sewers kicked my ass as a melee ventrue. Chinatown was a breeze until i had to fight ming
I haven't even got to those parts got stuck trying to blow up a wearhouse then the museum the abandoned ship trying to kill the 3rd plague guy "shotguns hurt" I will admit I am used to having my hand held a bit and the only reason I beat the museum put no points in stealth cause a video said it was pointless didn't realize you could just kill the guards and from what I have seen I lost nothing killing them :/
@@jeremygarcia25 Actually you lost 2XP
I was one of the "first" to buy it. I remember seeing it as a new release in store, begging my mother for it, and then getting it soon after with it's velcro fronted box in all its glory.
Bugs and all I still fucking adored it.
This game will be a cult classic no matter what. Yes to both
Also may I remind everyone. this game WILL NOT run on modern systems without the fan patch.
Since the game will think you ddo not have enough ram. lol
Mine ran fine but I didn’t get too far into the game before I discovered there was an unofficial patch
Vampire: The Masquarade was one of my favourite traditional tabletop RPGs growing up.
31:13 That "Mar 2020" release date hits different in 2023...
15:13 no one ever mentions the dealer is a obese Carl Johnson from GTA: SA. Also released in 2004.
Just because he's black doesn't mean he's CJ lol
@@crazyd4ve875 you can make CJ look like that tho
@@wrathofthewitchqueen Actually yeah you can lol, get the jersey for him and make him fat, than afro and boom
Just because you're correct doesnt mean you're right
Meanwhile here I am having played the whole game through with a melee Malkavian without plus patch. In fact I never played characters that use firearms.
You need to put points into dodge and stamina to mitigate damage.
Yea, my first ever game, which was without the plus patch, I made a Ventrue with maxed out dodge and melee, nearly maxed stealth and level 5 Fortitude. While there were definitely large spikes in difficulty and some areas where I struggled (like Grout's manor when my stealth was still low), I only used firearms once in the entire game (the flying bat Sheriff boss) and I otherwise had no issue finishing it. I even managed to beat Ming Xiao on my first try (though I tore through a few blood packs). Also, stealth at higher levels is ridiculously OP, which made the Society of Leopold and Ventrue Tower fights a breeze.
After the Seth video, I was tempted to give it a try, this helps confirm it to the "Games I should really get to list". It might even eventually get to the downloaded on my computer list.
Hahahha I'm the same. I own it now but haven't downloaded it
@@dive_bomb3r Yup I finally caved and played it and it was very much worth it, just got to china town and am definitely gonna complete a full play through, which normally I'm pretty bad at doing.
hey hey people
I reinstall Windows more then I do this game, it never leaves my drive
I bought this and preordered WoW the same day. Time to reinstall.
I know you made this comment a while ago, but I’d just finished watching Kelly’s Heroes right before I clicked on this video. Your profile pic made me question if I was losing my mind
I actually played through this game for the first time unpatched and I did just fine as Tremere. Stealthing around is extremely broken because near max level you pretty much turn invisible as soon as you crouch. That solves every combat situation in which enemies don't auto-spot you because of story reasons. For boss fights, blood strike and blood boil were honestly way more than enough. Those spells hit like a truck and you can just save all your blood packs until you run into a boss, then buy some new ones after you're done. None of the bosses or mandatory story content felt impossible, the only parts I had to skip were the zombie killing sidequest, and saving that dude in Chinatown from dying from the gang. Luckily the former sidequest can be completely avoided by doing an alternative equivalent quest, and the latter is just completely optional with no reward afaik.
The only things I ran into that were genuine problems were two:
-a character in the nosferaru warrens would act like I failed her sidequest without me ever talking to her beforehand, therefore making me unable to do that sidequest
-the door in the final Quei Jin palace where you need to push the wooden log to open it wouldn't let me push it. All it took to fix that was reloading the save file though.
Aside from that the game acted normally, despite being the Steam unpatched version. Of all the issues you mentioned I only really had the resolution problems but those weren't that bad.
By the end, the game even felt kinda easy to complete. Both Ming Xiao and the Tzimisce boss only took me two tries because I had to learn their moveset. After that I always had enough blood packs on hand and at least one powerful gun with enough bullets to finish them off.
Overall I still really enjoyed the vanilla version because of its writing. The endless sewer adventure to get to the nosferatu warrens was super boring and should've been shortened, but that was really the only part of the game I outright disliked.
Anyways, I've now installed the unofficial patch and I'm looking forward to my next playthrough as Malkavian.
People should avoid the plus patch at all costs, it ruins many aspects of the game.
I actually bought the game day one before there was even an official patch to make the game beatable. I still have everything that came with the physical release including a bent busted box. My PC at the time was well above the recommended specs but the game had some serious issues. Going from outside to inside took minutes. I could go make a sandwich and get a drink and the game would still be loading when I got back. There were bugs and physics issues everywhere. When I finally got to the end of the Society of Leopold and the game broke I was dejected because I couldn't go forward no matter what I did. I put the game down for a while but I kept checking the internet to see how to fix the game. When i finally found the 1.2 patch I realized I'd have to start the entire game all over again. I was actually more excited than angry because there were so many choices I had made that I wanted to revisit and see what happened if I approached a situation from another direction. The game definitely wore its flaws on it's sleeve without the unofficial patches but even in it's rawest form the potential of the game shown through like a diamond. The very first moment Jack started talking to me in the tutorial I knew it was going to be my favorite game of all time. I almost pity the people that find the game today, I was fortunate enough to experience Ocean House in all it's glory without anyone to warn me or prepare me for the sheer terror I'd feel. Up to that point the game had made me feel like an invincible badass. Then I found myself alone at home at 1 in the morning standing before the doors of an old hotel not even remotely prepared for what lie in store for me. When the ghost ran across the screen I about fell out of my chair. The experience left me so spooked turned every light in the house on for the rest of the night. I wish I could relive that moment. Broken or just cracked and dinged it's still an amazing game. I'd rather a developer do something ambitious unique and full of bugs like Bloodlines than make a polished but bland and lifeless product like so many AAA games are these days.
Malkavian was my first play through and I can't play anything else after. Favorite game ever
It's amazing that, of all the games you mentioned to follow Bloodlines, what we actually got was a battle royale! Only a Malkavian could see that one coming.
I remember when i was a kid, this game changed my entire vision of life. Same as Fallout 2.
You mean vision of gaming?
@@finnisdead2188 No, the life itself. Video games taught me politics, human behaviour and other nasty things, which i used later in my life to get better at it.
nice
I bought the game when I was 18 at the super high recommendation from a buddy of mine.
We played VTM together and somehow I didn't know about bloodlines (Same year it was released). I picked it up and got pissed (cause of that certain broken quest that wouldn't let you finish the game without the official patch) and my buddy directed me to the official game patch. We both played different clans, he played Ventrue, I played Tremere.
Awesome memories. Here's to hoping that Bloodlines 2 is as epic as the 1st one.
It's not perfect, but still better than most so-called AAA games we are getting today.
I played it unpatched and it wasn’t that bad. I was able to thoroughly enjoy beating it.
Great video. Melee is perfectly viable if you're a Brujah I was able to do all content... but I was min-max-ing pretty hard. Played this game who knows how many times. :)
.
Man! I was one of those original purchasers! I felt this was a criminally under-appreciated game!
yes, a thousand times yes. and many praises for wesp5 the hero and saviour of vtmb
18:15 - I don't know what version of the game I had back in 2007 when I first played it, but:
1) I played as a Malcavian.
2) I heavily focused on stealth so I hit Steath 10 before going to the Museum and was pretty much invisible => steamrolled through the most of the game.
3) I helped Mercurio and didn't rat on him => he sold me relatively cheap guns and ammo.
4) I saved ammo for the bosses and situations where I couldn't sneak up and drain/one hit kill everyone in a given room
5) Flamethrower was OP as fuck. Maybe fan-patch nerfed it considerably, but I remember grilling Ming-Zhao with 2 canisters of fuel in about 30 seconds and I still had another one to spare when she died.
6) Sheriff was way tougher, mostly because of 2-stage fight and him flying around, but I had flamethrower and pretty much all of the guns Mercurio could sell with full ammo, so... It was a matter of time.
Basically, this game is relatively easy, if you are economical. Don't buy anything except for armor, unless you really have to. Don't use guns on small fries. Don't use blood packs for every scratch you get. Don't use vampire powers, because they are fine and dandy, but slow and/or finicky. Stealth though the game (because on Stealth 10 you are basically invisible for everyone but bosses and these fleshy things in sewers) and loot the shit out of everything around you.
By the time I went in LaCroix's tower, money and tradeable stuff-wise all I had is 4$... and that's it. But guns, ammo and blood pack-wise I was 100% stocked, so whatever.
Tremere's Blood theft (stunlock) + automated shotgun in ammospam mode is the ultimate killcombo for bosses
one of the only games that actually makes you feel like there is a difference between the starting clans or classes.
A few corrections: It's VenTRUE, not Venture, that's just the name of Lacroix's Tower as a on-the-nose comercialization of 'hey this massive building is Ventrue-owned'. Then there's the 'Cerelity' thing... it's Celerity.
I am OCD about correct pronounciations.... heh, sorry ^^;
✨ Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb ✨ 😭 Xplay and Cinametech 💕 my childhood!!!!!
I only recently purchased this game. I didn't think anything could challenge Deus Ex for the title of my favorite game, but Bloodlines pulled it off. This game is truly incredible.
Yeah it's damn close
Hate to be *that* guy, but its CEL-ERITY, not CER-ELITY. Just sayin' 😉
I'm so glad it wasn't just me. 😆
@@themastigosqueen3280 same here at first i was wondering what he said.
@@robertrogers3320 its levios-ar, not levios-er 😉.
It's also VEN-TRUE not Ven-ture. Yay pedantic!
Celery?
I mean I got the game from GoG and honestly my thirst (or "obsession" as my friends like to say it) for vampire games has once more been quencehed. This is one of my favorite RPG games even with its flaws I love it and I don't know how will the next game fair but this I really loved and it also got me to the "World of Darkness" series (where this game is set) I just hope I'll find another cool vampire game too :D
Seriously I need more vampire games I've been hungering for another one and I've see games like Dark (We don't like to talk about it though) which were just.... not okay.... but I do play the Legacy of Kain games now (from the 1st game) but if anyone has any other suggestions (besides Castlevania LoS 1-2 Mirror of Fate and Symphony of the Night and Vampyr that is) please let me know and I'll seek it out :D
Edit: Okay watched the video and honestly My real issue with the "Old" version was that I lost my save after I got the fanpatch... but otherwise I agree with you this game didn't make me feel like I was playing a game but rather as if I'd have taken a peek into the world of Darkness and practically being a part of it. There are questlines and characters that I will never forget many that I could save and many I couldn't and even those whom I managed to release from their eternal torments (those who played the game will know)
This game as you have said it IS THE WORLD in which you are just 1 guy (or girl depending on your choice) and its up to you to either win or die.
Also Malkavians are my fav clan storywise as they are practically having the ability to see the future and getting strange whispers. Also QUESTION. Do you think its okay that I ACTUALLY understood what the Malkavians were saying? like I really DID understand them. Idk.. it was fun though.
Gameplaywise though the Tremere Clan hands down the best and its a nice touch that we actually have a clan representative specialities happening I wonder if Troika team have planned to do the same for other vamps too or just the Tremere but DAMN it felt good to be recognized by a straightforward group of vampires and whom were loyal to me as I was to them.
It was a nice touch :D
And also Now I'm going to check out the other Vampire Masquerade game before the 2nd game comes out :D
There's also a shooter called Darkwatch and a game called Blood Knights(I think).
Yeah, it was buggy, and there were few places where i had to google how to get around them, but it wasn't unfinishable. I absolutely love this game, it's one of my favourite RPGs. To this day i remember the pre-release trailer with the amazing voiceover done by one of the nosferatu NPCs.
During my first playthrough i played as a Tremere, and i was completely immersed in the gameworld, so much interested in certain questlines, that i completely forgot about having to visit my mentor. And i somehow managed to finish the game despite that.
On my second playthrough (after the official patch) i played as Malkavian, and oh boy was that TONS of fun.
The game is COMPLETELY different during Malkavian playthrough. Bloodlines is one of these games where i remember certain scenes even after almost two decades passed and i've played tens if not hundreds of other titles since then.
I highly recommend playing as Malkavian to anyone who haven't tried it yet. Being able to talk to roadsigns or TV presenter made me LMAO. There's a situation where you cause a huge explosion. When you stop by your flat and turn on the TV as a member of any other clan, the presenter just says something along the lines of (paraphrasing):"The investigation of what caused the explosion at blah, blah, continues. Reason is yet unknown..", But when you play as Malkavian, the presenter just simply says:"The investigation continues, but the explosion at blah blah was of course caused by you."
Each clan membership gives you completely different tools to deal with quests, but there are also TONS of these small gags and little changes which basically turn Bloodlines into several games in one.
My third playthrough was way later (i don't recall whether i had the community patch installed at that point), as a Nosferatu, and again - COMPLETELY different experience. Nosferatu playthrough is the most different, mainly because he can't be seen by the human NPCs at all. I highly recommend going for stealth build, but even if you don't, the game is SO WELL designed, that you can get to most places via sewers without running into any NPCs whatsoever. Of course you HAVE TO get out here and there to feed.
I don't know what the playthroughs as Brujah, Gangrel, Toreador or Ventrue offer, because i haven't tried them (yet), but i bet that there are situations that make playing as a member of these clans worthwhile as well.
Too bad, that Troika ended up as they did. They deseved much, much more. VTMB is one of the best games of the decade, and that decade was packed with some truly great titles. Morrowind, Gothic 2, Titan Quest, there were many great RPGs, and VTMB definitely belongs up there with them.
Unfortunately, the franchise seems to be cursed, since whenever someone tries to resurrect the Bloodlines, some kind of joyblocking daemon from hell appears and screws everything up. Btw, System Shock seems to be affected by this daemon as well.
😀 thanks for the review, i hear good things about this game from time to time, i need to pick it up whenever it goes back on sale for $5, i imagine during the months between August thru December, thanks again for the review ✌😍👍
It is on steam now for 10 euros. Until 11th November!
The haunted mansion. One of the best quests in the game because of how atmospheric it is.
I hate to be "That Guy"
But: The Ventrue are pronounced Ven-TRUE not Ventur.
Also: Celerity is pronounced Cel-air-it-ee not Cerelity.
"Word is pronounced Wur-d, not word"
Instructions unclear, got axed by a vampire.
He also mispronounced obfuscate and showed a pic of a gangrel while talking about brujah
Really nice video! I enjoyed all of the background story. Also great, that you cite your sources! Seems like I will get me that game, once it comes into sale on steam or gog.
Good work on this video, really enjoyed it!) And yeah Tremere main here too :D
i hyped so hard when i see this on my startup page!!
it was great to hear that sound again at the start... guess i am replaying over again
Yes, it is broken, and yes, it is good. I still replay it from time to time and still love every second of it.
Oh! I haven't heard of this game for years! I didn't play it much, but I loved every second that I spent on it. I think it was my first horror game, and it definitely freaked me out. Who else remembers the elevator scene when you hear a voice whisper "beeee carefuuuuuul"? After you hear that, you go down the elevator tower, you hear a noise above you: it's the elevator falling down on you. That was scary _and_ epic! I also remember a haunted mansion, now classic in videogames but back then, it felt revolutionary to me xD.
I'm playing it now. It's great!
Great is a bit of an exaggeration. It's got a lot of charm and potential but falls short.
@@Ironclad17 mods and reshade
Play as a non-Malkavian clan on your first play though. Then play as a Malkavian.
(Answering the title) I mean, I played it for the first time a few days ago and it blew me away so nostalgia has got nothing to do with it for me. The game very much holds up even today, it was ahead of its time.
did you use mods? most unbalanced stuff is fixed when using mods
I've never actually played it with the fan patch until a few years back x:
You know it is a superb game when a random vendor's self introduction is as good as this: "The ladies call me "Oh god!", but you can call me Fat Larry with an F-A-T, cuz I know I got a weight problem an' I just don't give a fuck!"
you: im not the biggest OG fan of it,, i was only 10 or so when i first tried it.
me: i was born the same year it was released (im 15) and ive never replayed a game so much in my life. Im currently on the last clan as a nosferatu before i beat all the clans total! ^0^
I'm a (amateur) writer, my first playthrough of this game was with Malk and I haven't been able to bring myself to play any other clan since, it's the definitive Bloodlines experience in my opinion. It made every conversation 8x more engaging, as every response was a puzzle, a battle of not only wits with my opponent, but also with my own character as I tried to decode what meaning they were trying to communicate (in the middle of the game's already thick layer of politicking and obfuscation). I had to be glued to the dialogue in a way I've never really been with a game before, just to have a chance of saying vaguely what I actually wanted to say. And the delight of retroactively understanding the prophetic statements my character made, that I had initially dismissed alongside the rest of the deluded ramblings they spout, it's unlike anything I've ever played before. It's like Troika took 1INT/Terrifying Presence, and made it a whole playthrough where everyone underestimates you but nobody, not even you OR the character you're playing, realises you've actually been 2 steps ahead of the game the whole time.
All that is to say this game is something else entirely and deserves it's newfound high status
Yeah, Unfortunatelly Bloodlines downfall was basically Activision's fault (And Valve).... :c
And I hope Paradox will get it right... .and won't give it 100 Dlc's costing at least 5$ each. xD I love paradox, but oh boy those dlcs....
I don't think the new VTM is going to be an RPG which is a bit of a bummer, but I have high hopes that it's still gonna be a good game
@@veselinnedkov643 well it is not gonna be a strategy game that is for sure. And It seems like an action RPG to meh.
Way late to the party here but I just found this channel and I'm loving it. Binging through the archives atm.
I was one of the people who did play the game close to release with only the official patches, and while it was most definitely buggy, it was certainly not unbeatable. I'm sure my teenage self didn't really register how broken the game was, and I don't know that I would actively recommend the vanilla version to people playing it for the first time these days, but I think it's a bit unfair to paint it as unplayable without the unofficial patch. I played through it with most of the classes back in the day without fan mods.
And yes, as some other comments have pointed out, the plus half of the patch definitely has detractors too. I didn't try it out a whole lot myself, but it does change the game pretty significantly and adds a lot of things that the modders just thought would be cool things to add. Like more sexy stuff. Playing the game that way is certainly valid, and the restored content is an impressive achievement in its own right, but I think I would recommend going with only the bug fixes for an initial playthrough.
Back then I played the unpatched version as Gangrel. It was hard...realy hard, but it felt soo good when I opend the sarcophagus and well...upsy.
Gangrel*
@@ghaleon1103 Oh, you are right ^^"
i still have nightmares from the hotel mission, the spookiest level i have ever played, even more than actual horror games
Whilst I did buy my version on Steam sometime last year (cause it was insanely cheap), installing the patch by yourself on that version isn't too hard either.
Coming back here, since your constant coverage on this game made me play it and holy freaking crap was in incredible. Put a full 40 hours into and it truly was one of the most wonderful things I've ever played...
All up until the Sabbat hotel mission. Then the game fell apart. But I don't know that against the developers at all. I powered through it, got to Xiao and turned on God mode and never looked back.
I will say that I will look back on this game with a smile now.
It's painful hearing him say cerelity so many times.
CELERITY
CE-LER-IT-Y
Since the guy's mistake was so painful, you should be corrected too:
CE - LE - RI - TY. (NOT ce-ler-it-y). That's the correct phoneme segmentation of the word's syllabes.
This game is as good as I remember. I had fun quests OUTSIDE the game, like going to another part of my country, to try and get the Bradygames strategy guide to work out one part I was stuck on. The problems and issues this game had made it more special to those of us who have loved this game from the outset.
I also love that it never faded away and died, but is stronger than it ever has been.
Hey what up charlatan wonder how you be doing loving your new videos
It worries me that vampire-related early 2000's games have such good stories. I'm interested in checking out this game. I'd love to be impressed by a story in a similar way to how Legcay of Kain impressed me.
This is a great video but I'd just like to interject that I feel it's unfair to compare the unpatched game to the plus patch rather than the basic one. Idk to me the plus patch feels like a mod that's treated as canon, and I know the content is based on things found in the code but I don't think that qualifies it as official. There's no way for wesp and anyone else helping to create the patch to know what the intentions for the stuff was, or even if all of it was going to be put in the game - developers often change projectory in the middle of creating assets simply because the act of making things takes more time than deciding what's going to be included in the finished game, and the stuff that's not used always is just left in the code because there's no point to removing it. I understand the worth of talking about unfinished quest lines and stuff, but we also cannot assume that it was All intended to be used, nor that the route wesp and co went to implement this content was true to the original design because that'd be literally impossible.
Again, this is a great video and I do not mean to detract from it, i just feel this is worth thinking about
Developers have also changed game storyline, lore, or canon based on player feedback, plotholes pointed out, and even fan fiction. Mass Effect 3 is a prime example of this. There's nothing in the rulebook that says they won't "steal" new concepts introduced from the mod as canon for BL2, they won't purge whole parts of the original game because... fuck it why not, or they won't change the original trajectory *cough* in favor of something changed by the mod. Developers often change stories due to licensing disputes, licensing expiration, or copyright claims filed against them. Until or unless there is a BL2 anything released by the "unofficial" mod should be lore-ish. Serious modders rarely if ever intentionally try to create conflicting content with the original work. Unlike paid developers modders will not only get attacked by other modders and hostile gaming community but some dissenting a-hole might just release a patch that undoes your work. I've been in my fair share of debates. That said, it's been 15 years it a bit late in the game, pun intended, to be turning it into a debate now.
Never even heard of this game before today. When VTM 2 was announced I thought it was a follow up that that recent vampire RPG people had said was pretty good. But after this I think I will pick this up on GoG and give it a shot. Thumps up.
yep, as good as i remember, i keep enjoying it A LOT
Officer Chunk is my favorite, we need more people like him, stupid and unaware.
Calling it now: officer chunk is now Secretary of Defense Chunk in VTMB 3.
YES
@@CharlatanWonder hahahaha
It's the only game that makes you feel like you're watching a failed Josh Whedon project.
You forgot about the "Clan Quest" mod! I recently played through this game four times, twice with CQ and twice with The Final Nights. CQ is definatly the best of the two because of all the new locations and quests and the fact that you can join the Sabbat.
Can you run both together?
😀 yay Bioshock is on GOG now drm free, great version for sharing 😀
really? how do i get it?
but i already got it on discord and steam...guess ill get my 4th copy on gog now
🙂 on GOG,com...... Bioshock 1 is $6.59, Bioshock 2 is $6.59, and Bioshock Infinite is $13.74, and for Vampire Bloodlines wait for September for the autumn sale then its $5
I've played it a few times, usually as a Tremere. It always pissed me off a little that I couldn't play Tzimische though . . . Reckon that would make for a completely out-there run through.
I played this for the first time last summer so no nostalgia bias and... it's pretty great. The dialogue is amazing and the atmosphere is very well done, great narrative experience... if you can tolerate all the bugs that is.
Thankfully I had only one gamebreaking bug on my gameplay [which was fixed by the unofficial patch].
Surprisingly, still not as broken as Skyrim (or any Bethesda game for that matter).
No shit the scale of the game is a fraction of that of skyrim of course there is gonna be less bugs.
Protip; you can get the glock early by doing Trip's sidequest involving stealing drugs from the hospital. Makes the warehouse an absolute breeze. Also, weapon recoil scales off strength. The SMG's do become very useful at a high strength level, but aside from the AUG automatic weapons in general should be ignored on characters that have a poor strength attribute.
Additionally, firearms can be easily maxed throughout the course of the game. One rank in firearms to start off, start the bail bond quests, use the skill book in the bounty hunter's suite. Then upgrade firearms to 3 once you reach Hollywood. Do either of Romero's quests and he can upgrade your firearms skill to 4 as a reward. Then, finally, a skill book in the hunters' monastery will allow you to raise it to 5 without ever having to invest more than like a dozen xp into it.
... and you don't favour Malkavian. You didn't really play this, did you?
I just recently played through it, again, for my 125th hour spent ingame (after getting it on Steam) and can confirm it is indeed as great as we remember.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yes
My biggest hope for VTMB2 is that the best boi's will actually play like they should (Gangrel). They are supposed to be unarmed vicious beasts, like clan Gangrel are the only ones who actually FIGHT werewolves and dont just run (in tabletop werewolves are basically anti vampire nukes, they can do damage that cannot be healed through blood healing). In the game......well they kinda suck sadly. Gimme my beastie boi's!
Okay, this is my second post...
Did you even play this game? I'm very serious. Between not being able to pronounce the powers properly you're making outright false statements. I beat this game, in every possible way, from melee to guns. You can *totally* take out Ming Zhao with melee, it is very easy, and if you are a Gangrel then your Protean freaking straight up melts people. Here is how you melee:
1. You must have a decent Strength, as this game (for reasons I don't like) uses Strength as your go-to melee attribute (in the tabletop game it is Dex to hit, Str for damage)...
2. You want to use Blood Buff *or* have decent Potence.
But you can melee anything down in this game, I've beaten it tons of times without using guns, tons of times. You can easily do it, and I did all the social options throughout the game too. I ask again, with all seriousness, did you actually give this game a shot?
Is the game perfect? Heck no. Is it buggy? Oh yes. Is the plus patch required? No, but it helps. A lot.
But the plus patch is not needed or even helps. you can use the basic patch made by the same people but without adding all the absolute garbage tier content they add.
Besides that I fully agree with the rest of your comment, he didn't really explore the intricacies of the game, you can definitely beat the game in any way you want, and if you struggle with combat, the flamethrower is there for you by the end of the game. Since people who complain about combat SHOULD have saved mercurio's ass.
hey, thanks for your comment, I was doing sanity checks during the video, as I remember playing and having a good time with a melee char!
I too didn't come to play VTMB until like a decade after it was released, but what it lacks in polish, it makes up in charm and heart. There is passion and genuine creative effort put into the game, what with all the little details from quirky characters, humorous dialogue & quests, and detailed environments. I'd dare say the game is indeed deserving of the praise it receives and this comes from someone who is also a non longtime fan. Some of other great examples of Janky ass, but otherwise brilliant games are Stalker series, Mount & Blade, New Vegas, and more recently Kenshi.
VTMB is good and VTMB2 will never be as good
Hate to agree but yeah, after I heard about political agenda story leak I start to doubt that VTMB2 will not going to surpass the first.
Awesome video. Gosh. I'll have to play it again since I never got the tremere ending.
Also, Outstar is an awesome rolplayer too! She's in a great game I saw some time ago.
Getting to meet Grey Griffin last year, aka the Voermann sisters VA, and as I was talking to her about the game, she jokingly responded to me a couple times in character, was AWESOME.
I just started this game. Wanna get into vtm. And even though i had some bugs and the clunky controls ti fight with . . . It was a blast. The most immersive game i have played. I dont know how to describe it, it has something to it which makes it even better than most games nowadays. Never was much for graphics anyways
I was an OG fan. I played 1st edition WoD Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, even Mummy, (never got into Wraith) so this game was extremely my jam. I bought this as soon as I possibly could buy it. It was... rough. I manually modded some python config files to quintuple the amount of exp that quests awarded and memorized the dev console command to immediately fill my blood pool. With those two tools in hand, it became tolerable to play. The story, the setting, and the characters were always just amazing and absolutely nailed the atmosphere of the pen-and-paper game. I played through it multiple times before the unofficial patch. It was good enough to endure the wonkiness.
"Not going to hold my breath on Coteries" man did you make the right choice lol
(It wasn't bad... but definitely not worth the price point)
I have never pre-ordered a game... Until I instantly did so when I saw the announcment of Bloodlines 2
I love how the thumbnail pic says "Bröken"
You made me get my DVD out and install it again! Nice! (And I am already afraid to go through the haunted hotel again....)
My first playthrough, which was before I knew about the patch, was with a Ventrue with maxed out Melee and no points in firearms. I only used guns in the last fight, because I did not know about the lights.