f13.net

I know I'm pretty late to the party on this one.  Way back when it came out, it sounded like something I could really get into.  I'd read through the a lot of the RPG rulebooks, although never actually played.  I thought the card game (Jyhad/Vampire the Eternal Struggle, WOTC's followup to M:TG) was good fun, and unlike with Magic, I still own the cards, though they're stored away in a box somewhere.  Problem was, I heard the game was pretty buggy upon release, so I passed it up intending on coming back to it at some point when it had been patched up a bit.  Fast-forward about three years later after having more or less forgotten about it, to me picking the game up for $10 during the recent sale on Steam, and finally giving it a try (after being unable to force myself to finish slogging though Half Life 2).

Anyhow, for old time's sake, I whipped up a Malkavian (which was the clan I used most when I played V:TES), and proceeded to jump into the game.  My first impression going through the tutorial was that I was a little bit underwhelmed by the combat.  It's a fairly clunky thing, and there has been the occasional odd tic where I'd hit someone and they'd go spiraling out of control to get stuck in a wall or something.  Fortunately, a few hours in, the game doesn't seem to be too heavy in combat, and puts a nice amount of emphasis on sneaking around, picking locks, and hacking computers for information (at least if you spec that way).

Also, while the graphics are no longer shiny and new, the game still has a nice atmosphere going for it, and areas like the haunted hotel go a long way toward making one appreciate that they're playing a Horror/Sci-Fi RPG rather than just another standard Fantasy RPG.  It's no Silent Hill or even Resident Evil as far as the scares or mood go, but it's a nice change of pace regardless, and as such carries more interest to me than newer, larger, shinier RPG's like Oblivion. 


Aside from a couple of minor glitches in combat, it would seem that a lot of the bugginess has been patched out from what I can tell.  I've also heard of an unofficial patch that puts in some some abilities (Backgrounds I think they're called) that got cut from the game due to the developers not having time to balance them properly.  Anyway, for the 2 or 3 RPG enthusiasts who haven't yet picked up this game, I can't see any reason not to recommend it, especially at the budget prices it can be found at now.
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Buy It

You can grab the unofficial patches from PlanetVampire (http://www.planetvampire.com/bloodlines/files/patches/).

The main thing I liked about this game was how often you could get things done without fighting or being on rails. Consequently, the rails portions of the game (I hated the haunted hotel for example) almost always made me set it aside for months.

Still, totally worth the $20 that it's up for now.

Hrm I loved the Haunted Hotel level.  I felt they did a great job on the atmosphere for it and felt that t also helped vary the gameplay more.

I won't replay this game ever again, and I can give you a one word reason why:

Sewers.

I played through the game seven times and used noclip on the sewers for the last three.  I agree, the sewers were an ugly pockmark on the rest of the game.

Just speaking as one of the insane, multiple finish crowd, both the hotel and sewers take very little time once you've done them once.  I will admit though, there's one exit that I always struggle a bit to locate.  Sewers can also be a lot easier if you've done a lot of side quests before attempting them.  It doesn't pay to go in underpowered to that.

I just don't like doing the Hotel because it freaks me out.  I'm such a baby about that type of crap.

Playing as a Malk is something everyone should do at least once.  It's just a great gaming experience. If you play as a chick, she ends up in some pretty hilarious outfits.

I only played through once as a Nosferatu, but yes, this game is an absolute must play. At $10, it's a fucking travesty NOT to buy the game. One of these days, I plan on replaying as a Malk, and maybe some others. I almost never replay RPG's, but that one is just too good. The melee combat can be a bit wonky at times, and the bugs... ARG the bugs. But it really does deserve play time. It would have been in my Top 20 without the bugs.

Get the latest patch and you will have to look hard to find a bug. I also will weigh in on loving this game and the hotel being among my favorite bits (be carefull!). If you haven't played it at this price it is a must if you are intrested in games at all. Planet Vampire and get the latest patch.

I just started playing this for the first time a couple weeks ago.  I held out for a long time due to all the stories about game breaking bugs but I always knew I'd play it some day (to my great shame, I was a WoD LARP'er in high school).

I'm playing Brujah for the first run through, with unofficial patch 5.something I think.

Cool Stuff:

Very Deus Ex-ish cityscapes with lots of wandering around checking out NPCs.

Outstanding character writing and voice acting.  Smiling Jack and the Malkavian Primogen are both spot on.

Authentic WoD kitchen-sink supernatural population.  Hell they even pull out the Baali at one point, which is digging deeeep into the first edition supplementary sourcebooks.

Sucky Stuff:

One of the reasons I bought this when I did was because I was stuck with a loaner laptop for a bit and wanted a game tied to Steam and without bleeding edge graphics.  Unfortunately, that laptop was running Vista and I didn't have an admin account.  Game no workee.  (It is fine on my XP machine and my understanding is it's fine if you have admin rights on Vista.)

The Baali sidequest I mentioned above has twice locked me in a room with an enemy I simply could not beat, forcing me to load a previous save and go "level" more before returning to that quest.

A couple times I've had problems with scripted conversations that assumed I was standing in a slightly different spot in a room.  This means that when the conversation ends either an NPC or the game controlling my character (note to devs: Bad!) gets caught in a pathfinding glitch bringing the game to a dead halt and forcing a reload.


Hal posted while I was writing this, so I'll be a touch more specific about that last bit since it is a game stopping bug and clearly not fixed by the fan patches:

At one point you track someone to a building in Hollywood, which takes you to an abandoned building.  There's a bum cowering in a corner that you talk to to advance the quest.  If I walk in a straight line from the door to the bum and talk to him, when the conversation finishes he gets up and goes to walk out the door but for some reason the game takes control of my character and tries to walk him 20 feet to the right at the same time.  The end result is the bum can't get out the door and I never regain control of my character.

I eventually worked around this by circling the outer edge of the room until the bum was between me and the door.  Even then it was like a little race between me and the bum to see who'd get walked to the door first.

The unofficial patches are great, but if you want to try this without downloading it open the console before a new game and enter "vchar_edit_histories 1". If you switch between histories a bunch of times it can crash the game, but it's semi-rare and doesn't mess anything up later on.

I've never had any of those pathfinding glitches you've mentioned on any completion of game.  :|  Game still can randomly crash/CTD, but that's only happened a couple times in my most recent play through.

And uhh.. what Baali sidequest? I don't remember any.

I think that's the one in Santa Monica where the supernatural-type guy with the sword is stalking you.  I don't know if they ever called him a "Baali", but from the description of being locked in a warehouse that sounds like the one.

I'm trying to remember the one other pathfinding glitch I had.  I want to say it was on the beach in Santa Monica, or maybe on the Elizabeth Dane.  Anyways it was the exact same issue where I finished a conversation, the game started walking me and an NPC in the same direction at the same time, and I never got control back.

I'm about 95% sure that the plaguebringers are Baali.  I hope that's not too big a spoiler.

I had one after two or three playthroughs. It was in the blood bank, where my character would try walking out of the back room and get stuck on the doorframe.

Also, I thought the guy in the warehouse (Foxy Boxes?) was a Kuei-jin scout or something.

That guy's just Kuei Jin. 


Errr, they've got distinct clans: I believe one was a Nosferatu, one was a Toreador, and the leader was just the nutty Bishop who had to be some clan with celerity.  Just some apocalyptic vamp cult, not Baali (thx u wikipedia).

Really?  Damnit.   :heartbreak:

Huh... that happened to me a few times, but after a few seconds of jittering there the game would figure out that something was wrong and teleport my character to the correct location.

I played through an entire time as a Ventrue, liked playing in a business suit. About halfway through as a Tremere and had just started a Malk when some other shiny thing distracted me away. That Kuei Jin dude was super tough because I hadn't focused on combat enough early on, common complaint iirc. I was pushing charismatic stuff for dialog options, to fit my smooth business slimeball persona.

Blood buff is really effective early on if you're having problems with combat.

Also, here's a nice trick for basically free exp.  Any book you get is usually good for two training levels (ie 1&2 or 3&4).  If you sell the book, you can buy it, use it, and then buy it again and use it again.  This can save you a ton of exp if you want to turn your character into a bit of a multi-talented badass.

Same. I've resorted to going godmode and blaring skate punk to get through it the last time. It really didn't help though, but I may have to try noclip next time through for the extra cheese/wuss factor.

This game still win the "Best Voice Acting Evar" award for me. I think there were only two voices in the entire game that I thought were poorly done. Malk was probably my favorite play though, but I also enjoyed kick some serious ass with my Brujah.

I've played through the game three times, and half-way through a fourth.

It felt like they really knew their WoD stuff.  They had the lore down, the feel of the Clans, the fear of puppies because they're killing machines, and the atmosphere.  Hacking was fun because you got neat little story tidbits you otherwise wouldn't.

I didn't find the bugs and crashes too bad since the game enthralled me.  The forced combat portions did suck if you weren't making a combat character.

The voice actress for Juhani in Kotor did three or four in Bloodlines.  Rosa (the Malk on the beach), the Nagaraja, and Heather.  I agree most everyone was well done though.  Props for whomever the voice director was.

Great game.  My biggest complaint was that non-combat options weren't supported well enough.  I played as a fruity Toreador for fun dialog options and as an accurate reflection of my IRL incredible seduction abilities, but kept getting combat-stat-checked at boss fights. 

Hey look, I even found my 3-year-old post here on the subject:

This game rocks except what Sidereal and others are complaining about, IE, gimping your character if you go social over combat.

Smilin' Jack was fucking awesome. My favorite voice actor in a game, maybe.

Playing X-Men Legends 2, the Juggernaut was driving me nuts, I knew I knew that voice from somewhere. Same guy voiced it (I played Juggy as my main in the Brotherhood).

My fancypants Toreador found no problem that couldn't be solved by either fast talking or fast dancing.  Celerity for the motherfucking win.   :drill:

It would be nice if you could talk your way out of EVERY situation, but Bloodlines is so much better than almost any other game about giving you multiple options for so many quests that I never begrudged them the handful of forced combat situations.

I played through Tremere for the blood magic. 3 Insta kill spells are awesome for combat. Add in Trance + suck to death =  :awesome_for_real:

Yep. I played Tremere in V:TM and I played Tremere in this game. Worked great :)

He was my favorite voice in the game as well.  Not surprising, though, he's also the voice of Bender. 

Probably about halfway into it right now and already thinking about my next time through.  I'll probably try out the unofficial patch stuff on my 2nd playthrough, and I'd like to give the Tremere a try.  I'm impressed by how much of the lore they managed to squeeze into this game.

And how different each clan is tweaked. As a Ventrue you get some business options, not sure if they're available with the others. My Tremere never got an apartment, do the other clans get a second apartment like Ventrue does?

If I remember correctly, all clans have the potential to get a second apartment.  Most in the high-rise, unless you've really pissed off the Prince.  Nosferatu can get a sewer lair, and Tremere can get a room in the Chantry if they don't cheese off baldy. 

Tremere and Nosferatu get their second place a bit later than other clans. They both require a certain quest(s) to be finished and it's after other clans have already gotten the apartment.  The tremere chantry room is quite nice, however.

I just got this because I was bored as hell last night and my pinky is fucked up so TF2 is harder then it needs to be.  If "the sewers" & "the haunted hotel" are the two stages that you get sent two before you can do Murcurio's second mission then I don't get what the complaining is about.  I enjoy'd the haunted hotel for the first half of it & it was never a bother, though I did die once jumping into the glowy purple shit.  The sewers were no hassle to get through either.

I always love the whole "take a quiz to pick your character thing" but I got Malk, which was sorta funny I guess.  I rerolled a artsy homo vamp because honestly they had the best pre-selected backround.  The one where after you've been turned you start to enjoy killing people more and more as it gets easier.  That totally sounds like what would happen if I gained special powers.   :rock:

I might reinstall this and play through it for the 8th time after I finish Black & White.  This thread is making me nostalgic.   :heart:

The sewers being referred to as a major pain in the ass, at least the ones I saw as a major drag on the game, come in a later part of the game once you're branching out into other city areas.  They're basically a combat gauntlet with some of the more annoying things you can have to fight.  They're a pretty big momentum breaker. 

This impressed me the most.  The Nagaraja are even more obscure and mysterious than the Baali, and everything about that character felt unwholesome and mysterious.

Which patches should I be downloading, exactly?

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines v4.4 Patch.. what else?

That's all if you're running off of Steam (also, disable auto-update).  From retail, you probably want to patch to 1.2 (official patch) and then do the latest unofficial patch.

Cool. I have a retail disc so will d/l the official 1.2 in case it's not pre-patched.

I stalled out very early in this game...IIRC there was something else that was released around the same time that stole all my gaming time away. I really need to go back and play it with all the patches in place.

Agree with WAP. I got to the strip club area and stopped playing.

What else that is good came out around that time?

Honestly even w/ 4.4 I get some CTD's that tell me nothing, client.dll crashed, sw3333t.

Also I really don't like Hollywood, I ended up killing a couple of key npc's I was so sick of their bullshit.  Also they offered me a bunch of shit to blow my $$$ on then said haha you need it to complete this quest...

fuckers.

Links to the patches...

http://www.planetvampire.com/bloodlines/files/patches/ (http://www.planetvampire.com/bloodlines/files/patches/)

The unofficial patches really really really help.

I imagine people are talking about the sewers in the Hollywood stage.  (Or thereabouts.  It's been a while.)

I didn't really have a problem getting through the sewers.  The Malkavian Primogen's house though felt a bit longer than it needed to be (and I say this having stealthed through most of it).  The only other part that felt somewhat tedious so far was the last part of the plaguebringer quest (going through the "crackhouse" to get to the Bishop).

That plaguebringer quest was a pain in the ass.  One of the few quests I basically have to force myself to do on playthroughs. 

I'm on the Hollywood sewers bit, but I guess I'm just not at all annoyed with those enemies.  Of course my unarmed is 8 so I literally rip them in half as they jump at me.  Sure its not auto-win because they can't be drained but really with the mummy finger or whatever I recently picked up (increases passive healing) they are trivial.  If I get stuck going in circles for an hour, sure that'll piss me off so I'll get back to you after my next play session where I actually set out to find these fugly idiots hiding in the sewer.

What has really pissed me off is if I "happen" to kill a hooker I don't even get my money back.  Rockstar games has conditioned me blahlbah.  I think my humanity is at 3 atm, I don't auto-lose if it gets to 0 do I?

Also, swords, I am impervious to gunfire but swords just ruin my goddamn day, I have to bust out the auto-shotty + bullet time whenever I see some katana wielding asshole...

You don't autolose, I don't think, but your risk of Frenzy goes up.  Which isn't all bad because frenzying is sorta cool.  I deliberately tanked my humanity as a Gangrel so that I would frenzy once in a while.

Just did the sewers last night.  The combat wasn't a problem really.  I used a katana against the crawlies and the fatties and circle strafed with the shotgun around the 4 legged "women".  It did feel a touch long though, especially when you take into account the trip through the porn company and the house in the hills that led up to the sewers themselves.

I think I've hit another bug, which is quest breaking but hopefully not game breaking.  When I'm sent back upstairs in the abandoned hospital to send the director down to the basement, he's buggered off.  I've reloaded a few times to try different conversation options and have gone back upstairs via both routes that I can find, but the guy is just gone.

Funnily enough though, I was able to send someone else down there.  I'm not sure if I was lucky in the order I did sidequests or if the second one just wouldn't be available until you've done the hospital but it was a satisfyingly bastardish thing to do.

He's at his apartment, cowering in fear.

No fooling?  Cool.

That makes some manner of sense from a real world perspective but unless I missed some critical bit of text (which is possible, I'm a drunk) I never would have figured that out in game.

If I recall correctly something points you towards his apartment. She might even tell you where it is.

He drops his card with his home address on it.  Put more points into your Perception (I think that's the one) and handy clues like that will sparkle so you don't miss them.

That'd be it then.  I was going for a "big, dumb Brujah" experience so I've got 1 point of Perception and no points of Investigation.

And accordingly you missed the clue that would have been blindingly obvious to a keen-eyed Malk.   :-)  But you found a different way to handle the problem anyway.

This is a perfect example of why I think this game is so  :awesome_for_real:.  And so worth playing through a few times.

The wacky secret Malkavian clues in that game are the win.

I've played with too many "I am a jelly donut" Mulkavians to really enjoy the class. I stay away from them, even today.

So I thought I'd post, I cleared the infamous sewer, yeah it was sorta weak.  I wrote up a shorthand guide from Gamefaq's but I doubt I would have needed it for anything except saving me time on the pumps on/off thing.

It sucks that they throw a miniboss at you and then turn it into a stupidly placed standard enemy from there on out.  In fact the whole enemy placement of the sewers was pretty retarded.  But nothing was much of a challenge though I did burn through my goddamn auto-shotty ammo supply.  Also I don't much care for Nosf, the convo with the leader took forever because I wasn't going to ask him who he was, I knew, he knew I knew, fucker.

So I got to Chinatown and wow, fun times, my character is built for ripping through swaths of human fodder, which is fitting because I picked the Toreador backround that states something to the effect of:  "as it grows easier to kill mortals you begin to enjoy it more and more" which fits my playstyle in PC rpg's to a T.  I shredded everyone in a bath house, bathed in blood when they tried to ambush me and my mole and rampaged through their club, restocking ammo all the way.  Unarmed 8 + Firearms 5 + Colt Anaconda = winrar.

More tales of woe:

The Fu Syndicate was absolutely awful.  Seriously to hell with that bit.  Way, waaaay worse than the sewers.  Not only are there big chunks of unskippable dialogue and rooms full of instant death, but the "puzzles" (and I use the term loosely) forced me to gamefaqs.com after about the 10th "what the fuck do I do here?!?!" reload.

Talking to Johnny left me in some weird state where after the cutscene ended and he started firing at me I could move the camera around in circles, cycle through (but not equip) inventory items with the hotkeys, and bring up the console but I could not move or fight or trigger powers or bring up the character screen or any such thing.  I found a fix for this on the PlanetVampire forums in the form of "frenzyplayer" in the console.

Talking to LaCroix after returning from the Giovanni mansion has me stopped dead (  :uhrr: ) however.  As soon as our conversation ends he starts walking toward a red couch and the game walks me along with him.  The first couple times I was standing in front of him and he got hung up on me.  Eventually I turned on noclip and stood halfway hanging out the wall behind him, and now he's getting hung up on the couch.  Final result?  The cutscene never completely ends (the letterbox effect doesn't go away) and nothing I can find to do in the console fixes it at all.

I really want to like this game, but like basically every Troika game (ToEE, Arcanum) I'm left with a feeling of "great concept, completely fucking asstastic execution".

I'm about to do the Fu Syndicate tonight, are you using the unofficial 4.4 patch?  I am and haven't once had a cutscene issue, lots of other stupid bugs and sloppy stuff?  Hell yeah.  But nothing that broke the game except for a few CTD's which haven't cost me much time because I save regularly and autosave is a winner.

Yep, using the unofficial patch.  Tonight I'm going to try going back to fullscreen mode in the off chance that windowed mode is somehow causing my problems.

My advice for the Fu Syndicate is to make a separate save before you walk into each room.  You don't want to have to listen to the Mandarin's speeches over and over again every time you reload.

I just did the Fu Syndicate and Giovanni missions.  I had no problems with either outside of getting frozen in the hacking position (at the Fu Syndicate) when guards burst in on me.  Fixed by jumping a couple times.  I don't find Fu Synidcate to be that difficult, but I've done it a few times.  The beams are the worst part, but you can sometimes glitch it by quicksaving right before.

This is the first time I've used guns at all in a play through, they aren't that bad at later levels.

Guns with auspex and/or celerity are great.

The only part I really had trouble with in my one playthrough with the Nosferatu was the goddamn graveyard sequence. All those zombies and not nearly enough bullets. Took me about 5 or 6 tries, maybe more. I don't remember any of the rest giving me nearly as much trouble.

You people won. I will replay it this weekend. I just can't decide if Malkavian or Tremere. The Brujah playthrough was quite easy when the game came out. I'd like something more challenging.

Everyone should play as a Malk at least once.  If nothing else, zany outfits!

They give you a fuckton of ammo in the box where u get the quest.  I've found that quest to be damn near immpossible, but I didn't pump up bullet time at all.  I'm not really much of a fan of that mechanic.  Any tips for beating that one?

The fact that almost every line of your dialogue is different from every other clan is pretty good too.

Also, there are additional dialogues between you and various inanimate objects.   :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, talking to the stop sign was one of those memorable gaming moments. That's some creative funstuffs. This thread threatens to aggro the fiancee.

Malk it is then, and I'm trying not to be a Doughnut.

I liked the newscaster the most as a malk.

And we know it was you.

I think I got lucky in that I beat that one on the first try without any real problem with a mix of headshots and beating the zombies back with the sledgehammer.

I finally finished the game today.  That hotel the sabbat are holed up in was probably the most tedious part of the game for me since a lot of the hallways were too narrow an cluttered with enemies to stealth through.  I think playing through the game as a Malk the first time around has spoiled me.  I almost can't imagine playing through the game with more "normal" dialogue options.

I'd say Tremere is worth a play. Take up blood magic and firearms, fuck dialogues.

Russian Doorman: What do you want?
*trance* feed on him till death  :drill:
Enter boss' room.
Russian Mafia Boss: Says stuff in russian
*suicide*  :drill:

*Quest Complete*  :pedobear:

I'm on my 8th playthrough now thanks to this thread.  May God have mercy on my soul.

I picked Brujah because that's what my first playthrough was with, before I knew enough about the various disciplines and feats to munchkin myself out properly.  You know that first Kuei-Jin fight in Santa Monica that most people (including me) have trouble with their first few times?  I beat his ass so hard he didn't have a chance to even take a swing at me.

 :drill: