Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 Review: A Flawed But Fascinating Bite
After a long and troubled development cycle, the sequel to the 2004 cult classic is finally here. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 trades deep role-playing for streamlined action, creating an experience that is as frustrating as it is unique. Is this a vampire dream or an undead nightmare.
Setting the Stage: A Neon-Noir Seattle
Bloodlines 2 puts you in the shoes of an elder vampire awakening in modern-day Seattle with a mysterious mark on your hand and no memory of how you got there. To make matters stranger, you have another vampire, a 1920s style detective named Fabian, trapped as a voice inside your head. The core mystery of figuring out your predicament while navigating the treacherous vampire underworld of Seattle is an effective hook.
The game excels at building atmosphere. The snowy, Christmas-time streets of Seattle, drenched in neon light, create a perfect noir backdrop. The dialogue is often sharp, and many of the NPCs are engagingly campy and interesting, fitting perfectly into the World of Darkness lore. Even if you're a newcomer, the game does a solid job of educating you on the intricacies of vampire society.
Gameplay: A Tale of Two Halves
Clunky but Empowering Combat
The first-person combat is a mixed bag. It feels punchy and visceral; you can send mortals flying with a single blow and dodge with supernatural speed. The system combines light and strong attacks and directional dodges that double as parries or special kicks. Combined with a host of unlockable vampire abilities—from telekinesis and time-slowing to blood magic—the combat has moments where you feel like an unstoppable predator. Pulling off a flawless chain of attacks, using telekinesis to throw a knife, and draining the last enemy standing can be incredibly satisfying.
However, the system is deeply flawed. It desperately needs a lock-on feature, as you often feel like you're flailing wildly against fast-moving enemies. The physics can be janky, with enemies floating over cars or getting stuck in corners. The difficulty also spikes unfairly at times, with mobs of enemies spamming attacks at you simultaneously.
Traversal and The Masquerade
Exploring Seattle involves upholding the Masquerade the vampire law of staying hidden from mortals. Using your powers openly on the street will draw unwanted attention. This encourages you to take to the rooftops, where you can run, dash, and glide across the city at incredible speeds. This traversal is genuinely fun and makes you engage with the environment in a unique way, looking for pipes and alleys to remain unseen. The system works, but feels a little undercooked, acting more as a simple barrier than a complex mechanic.
An RPG That Forgot Its Roots
Here is where Bloodlines 2 disappoints the most. While its predecessor was a deep, choice-driven RPG, this sequel is a light action RPG at best. Your dialogue choices often lead to the same outcome, creating an "illusion of choice" that feels unfulfilling. Your chosen vampire clan and background add a little flavor text but rarely impact gameplay or the story in a meaningful way.
Character progression is virtually nonexistent. You unlock all of your clan's core abilities within the first few hours. After that, progression becomes sideways rather than vertical because you can unlock abilities from other clans but there are no stats, gear, or attributes. This lack of growth makes the second half of the game feel stagnant, compounded by incredibly repetitive side quests, which are all variations of fetch quests or assassination missions from the same few NPCs.
A World of Wasted Potential
The game's pacing is an issue that starts strongly and quickly becomes a slog. Flashbacks where you play as Fabian are mainly to blame for this. These segments should be there for excitement but have instead turned to be criminally boring. As the unarmed, unrunning Fabian, you must again trudge slowly along the same city streets, solving utterly simple "detective" puzzles in a game that is holding your hand the whole time. These kinds of sections kill momentum in the game over and over.
From a technical viewpoint, the game is also a mess. It does boast some strong art direction, but there are familiar problems: Unreal Engine 5 stutter in form of frame drops and hitches every now and then on PC. AI is mostly idiotic when it comes to enemies. Characters can get stuck or float in the air.
Pros
- An engaging story premise and mystery.
- An excellent atmosphere in a cool neon-noir setting.
- Some interesting and well-voiced characters.
- Traversal across rooftops can be genuinely fun.
- The combat provides moments where one feels powerful and flashy.
- Awesome art direction and lighting.
Cons
- Extremely shallow RPG elements with no meaningful choice.
- Combat is clunky and janky; no lock-on.
- No character progression after the first couple of hours.
- Highly repetitive and uninspiring side quests.
- Criminally dull and tedious flashback scenes that ruin what pacing exists.
- Major technical issues with stutter and bugs.
- The open world feels more like an impediment than a sandbox.
An interesting-but-flawed experience. Its cool atmosphere and occasional momentary fun are marred by shallow RPG mechanics, poor pacing, and technical shortcomings.
Final Verdict
Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 is a game of massive contradictions. For every great idea, there are a pair of great faults. For every moment of vampire empowerment, an equal amount of tedium is spent through backtracking. The story and atmosphere are most enjoyable but buried deep beneath a pile of nonsensical design decisions, technical deficiencies, and flat-out shallow systems.
Definitely not the deep, reactive RPG people wanted the original to be articulated. To me, this was worth a very troubled game worthy of finishing, only due to its most original stamp and unique view of vampire fantasy. This is a deeply underbaked, truly messy, and very difficult game to recommend at full price to most players. Only the most patient gamers and die-hard vampire freaks with a tolerance for flawed gems should consider sinking their fangs into this one and, even then, only if they get it on a heavy discount.
