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Vampire The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is wrapped in a veneer of glamour, promise, and excitement. The tantalizing mysteries and intriguing characters of this action RPG from The Chinese Room draw you in with the promise of a feast. However, venture off the beaten path, and you’ll find an experience that feels rushed and listless.
Paper-thin side quests and uninspired mechanics remind you of what this title could have been if given room to grow. The neon-lit environs of Seattle by night are visually impressive, but are populated with near-identical NPCs spouting stock phrases. Otherwise exciting and visually distinct supporting characters task you with finding collectibles and executing derivative fetch quests. While there’s much to love in Bloodlines 2, the title’s more shallow elements are off-putting enough to prevent true immersion.
Hard boiled
In Vampire The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, you play as two central characters: Phyre and Fabien. The latter is a hard-boiled detective who, having been turned into a vampire in the 1920s, maintains the worldly grit of the period with aplomb. Phyre, by contrast, is more of a player surrogate. They are an ancient vampire who, after slumbering for 100 years or so, awakens in modern-day Seattle to find their powers diminished by a mysterious curse, signified by curious marks all over their body.
These two figures are, for mysterious reasons, telepathically yoked together, meaning that you are never far away from a sassy and engaging dialogue between Phyre and Fabien as you attempt to uncover the source of your curse and the reason behind your connection with Fabien. These mysteries are captivating and instantly tie into the fraught vampire politics of Seattle-by-night. The Chinese Room wields genuine suspense and mystery with impressive skill.
You’ll play as Phyre most of the time. They’re the customizable player surrogate, though you cannot change their appearance beyond selecting their gender presentation, hairstyle, and pre-curated ensemble outfit. You can, however, select one of several distinct vampire clans, which go a long way to affecting your starting abilities, dialogue options, and the aforementioned outfits.
This is central to the storytelling in Vampire The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which is constructed in the tradition of the Vampire The Masquerade TTRPG. In this setting, vampires have operated in the shadows since time immemorial, using their supernatural powers to steer human politics. These vampires are divided into clans, vampiric factions vying for control and influence through a tenuous alliance known as the Camerilla.
Camerilla politics are as brutal as you’d expect from a group of centuries-old sociopaths. You’ll have to keep powerful figures on side as you and Fabien investigate your mysterious connection and the curious curse that sits upon you.
Fabien is a constant companion, offering wry, charming quips and reminders for you as you negotiate your way through Seattle’s supernatural underbelly. It’s hard to undersell just how likable Fabien is; he somehow manages to walk the fine line between sarcastic confidence and honest relatability. His very specific backstory and goals ground the more open-ended, and therefore deliberately vague, player surrogate of Phyre in the world proper. I love him.
Strong writing shines consistently across the game’s major players. Retired vampire prince Lou Graham is a particular standout, too. She radiates power and authority, while also betraying a degree of instability courtesy of her unique relationship with vampirism. Safia Ulusoy is also a standout gem. A skillful yet shy magical researcher, Safia’s gentleness and considered nature stand out in contrast to the bleak, supernatural horrors of Bloodlines 2.
In a glass darkly
While the central storyline is effectively constructed and does a great deal to keep you invested, bare-bone environments and anemic side-quests consistently remind you of what Vampire The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 could be but isn’t.
Seattle itself seems to be exclusively populated by sex workers, generic pedestrians, businesspeople, and police. In Bloodlines 2, there is no other kind of human. The businesspeople all seem to be wearing identical scarves and coats, while the rest of Seattle’s unnamed denizens spout hackneyed one-liners that joylessly bore into your brain.
The action is also punctuated with this sense of disappointment. In Bloodlines 2’s first setpiece, I wake up to find myself accosted by night guards. In a satisfying display of raw power, I sent the first of these unfortunates flying, snapping their weak mortal body in a single blow.
Amazed by this strength and sense of power, I approached a nearby boarded window with the hope that a blow would allow me to escape from my current environs and explore the wider city. I punched the flimsy wooden panel and… nothing.
In an ideal world, the wooden panel would have shattered to splinters, and I, an unleashed creature of the night, would have begun my quest for answers on my own terms. This trend continues throughout the game. Seattle is less of a sandbox and more of a cardboard cutout. Despite pretensions of open-world freedom, Bloodlines 2 does not deliver.
Even the menu is bare bones. The codex (the game’s lore repository) is merged with what would pass for a quest log. Objective markers tend to vanish when you get near them, making tracking down your precise target a headache, especially when you’re indoors. You’ll often find yourself traipsing around whatever abandoned building you’ve found yourself in, sheepishly looking for the exit or the next waypoint on your mission.
Blood on the snow
This is also true in the game’s action sections. Here, you’ll be able to dispatch augmented humans and even the occasional vampire through a combination of stealthy assassinations (which draw from an embarrassingly small pool of animations) and superpowered beat-em-up combat underpinned by a simple suite of dodging, heavy attacks, and light attacks.
This is satisfying, if simple, and is enriched by a suite of vampiric powers given to you by your choice of clan. If you’re a domineering Tremere, you can control the minds of your enemies en masse, forcing them to turn on one another or simply snap their own necks. It’s a captivating power fantasy. Decide you hail from the clandestine Banu Hakim and you’ll unlock additional stealth utility. The sorcerous Tremere get blood bullets. There’s genuine variety here, even if the combat as a whole can feel a little shallow due to its cookie-cutter baseline mechanics.
That said, as you advance through the game, this sense of distinction is eroded. It is soon revealed that, as an elder vampire, you can master the skills of every clan. This does a great deal to undermine the distinctive flavor of each vampire bloodline, as well as to undermine the significance of your initial choice of clan during character creation.
In this way, Vampire The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 often feels like a shadow of itself. Despite an engaging cast of characters and a strong central mystery, the precarious, overstretched infrastructure is too visible too often for the RPG to captivate with any sense of consistency. There are things to enjoy in Bloodlines 2, but, much like the curse of vampirism itself, these come at a cost.
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