Let’s get this over with early: Bloodlines 2 in all probability mustn’t have been referred to as Bloodlines 2. Shared setting and a pair transient, questionable cameos (plus one completely garbage little bit of beauty DLC) apart, there’s little tying this sport to Troika’s authentic janky cult hit FPS/RPG hybrid. This isn’t an RPG with deep mechanics, all kinds of character builds or dialogue that reacts to mechanical selections. If that’s what you want out of a sport bearing this most hallowed of names, then you’ll be disillusioned and pissed off.
However in case you are keen to put many years of desires to relaxation and method it purely by itself phrases, you would possibly discover an entertaining if flawed romp by the World Of Darkness. A brawl-heavy, linear motion sport punctuated with Telltale-esque reactive dialogue and held collectively by a surprisingly compelling, century-spanning undead detective thriller.
Weirdly, I might say that Bloodlines 2’s closest peer is Teyon’s surprisingly charming Robocop: Rogue Metropolis. One other sport set inside a small unfold of dense metropolis streets and fight places, providing dialogue selections to color within the margins of a mostly-static story. A narrative during which your character is a corpse pressured into the position of enforcer and investigator on the behest of town’s cold-blooded rulers. Though, Robocop one way or the other has extra RPG components. Go determine.
At the very least your main protagonist right here is extra photogenic than Alex Murphy. You are taking part in as The Nomad, a semi-customizable (you possibly can tweak their gender, face and outfit, however not pores and skin tone or voice) Dracul-esque elder vampire, waking up from a hundred-year nap into modern-day Seattle. Choosing the pseudonym ‘Phyre’ from a band poster, you are thrown straight into the morally ambiguous motion (splattering a pair hapless human safety guards) earlier than rising straight into native vampire courtly intrigue.
I say ‘main’ protagonist as a result of as a result of Plot Causes, the Nomad is sharing their head with a second vampire’s disembodied character – Fabien, a show-stealing bloodsucking detective who’s been working the Seattle beat because the Twenties. He is a Malkavian – a member of a clan of vampires usually stricken by visions and insanity, however manifesting right here as simply being a unusual Tex Murphy-like gumshoe.
Fabien is an affable, ever-present voice of comedian aid and perception, commenting in your actions and selections in dialogue, and infrequently cheering in your victories in fight. Whereas a lot of the sport has you taking part in as Phyre over the course of every week within the Emerald Metropolis, even a vampire wants their magnificence sleep. Through the daylight, management switches to Fabien’s prolonged flashback sequences – non-combat segments that use his psychic detective-ish powers to research a sequence of grisly murders courting again 100 years.
Alternating between the 2 roles and storytelling types works properly, too. Fabien will get to talk with inanimate objects (actually simply arguing along with his personal creativeness), dig into individuals’s reminiscences and navigate conversations by psychic disguises, whereas Phyre handles all of the preventing within the current, armed with a set of fundamental fight strikes, plus 4 blood-fueled fight talents primarily based on which of the six clans you selected – an assortment of direct-damage talents, motion powers, distractions and room-clearing ‘ultimates’.
There’s an entire lot of fight too, and whereas not with out some awkwardness (The Chinese language Room’s bread and butter has at all times been walk-and-talk narrative fare), it is a largely satisfying energy journey. Working like a mix of Batman: Arkham Metropolis, Dishonored and a first-person Streets Of Rage, Bloodlines 2 could be very a lot not a stealth sport, exterior of a pair mercifully brief instant-fail segments. Sneaking can assist, but when the sport places you in a room with enemies, it needs all of them useless earlier than it’s going to allow you to proceed.
Happily, the Nomad is constructed for brawling, with a combination of fundamental gentle and heavy punches – the latter generally setting enemies up for satisfying however rare air-juggle combos – triggered by brief or lengthy mouse clicks, and an assortment of poorly-tutorialised, multi-target kick strikes carried out by dodging in a route and following up with an assault. You might be tanky, aggressive and may heal and restore makes use of of your 4 clan-specific fight powers by ending off enemies with a fast bite-punctuated ending transfer. A bit like nu-Doom’s glory kills, albeit with much less diverse animations.
As you get additional into Bloodlines 2, extra highly effective, interesting-to-fight enemies are launched, and extra weapons grow to be out there. When you cannot equip any gear completely, the Nomad’s telekinesis energy (out there always with no value) enables you to magically throw knives and swords as projectiles, lob explosive fuel canisters or choose up weapons simply lengthy sufficient to empty them within the tough route of an aggressor earlier than discarding. The rhythm of brawling, improvising with dropped weapons, burning by fight powers, and refueling them with finishers is an engrossing loop.
Nonetheless, there’s a couple of rookie errors right here. Issues can get messy if too many enemies nook you in melee vary. And as talked about, components of the fight are poorly defined, with kicks – particularly the highly effective dropkick transfer – by no means even getting talked about, and a parry transfer – the one actual defensive possibility, carried out by dashing forwards – being largely ineffective in my expertise. I might additionally advocate anybody re-bind the keys for the sport’s 4 potion varieties – a non-replenishable useful resource solely present in fight zones. They’re certain to the 1-4 buttons by default, and it is all too simple to by accident chug them, particularly provided that activating your fight powers requires you to carry the correct mouse button and press a kind of 4 keys, too.
Exterior of fight, Seattle is a surprisingly small place, roughly 4 blocks by 4 blocks, lower than a sq. kilometer, all of it mendacity beneath a number of inches of snow and gearing up for Christmas celebrations. Much less an open world, extra a handful of very scenic streets that you’re going to shortly grow to be very accustomed to. They’re attractive environments although, with neon lights illuminating the snowy haze round buildings.
Inside and outside, every set is meticulously dressed, if often static. Curiously, texture element is wildly variable. Some partitions are lined with indicators that you may learn each little bit of positive print on, whereas others are illegible smears that look twenty years outdated. All the pieces seems nice from a distance, however the insides of some rooms are full of those clashing belongings. At the very least the tip result’s mercifully gentle on hard-drive area, with the sport clocking in at a comparatively svelte 25gb.
As scenic as Seattle’s streets is likely to be from a distance, they’re simply units for characters to behave in opposition to. ‘Searching’ people for blood is a tedious course of however solely actually vital in the event you do not wish to trouble climbing to the rooftops to select on randomly spawning packs of enemies for therapeutic. Whereas not likely offering any sort of reward – fight gives minimal XP, and there aren’t any cash or loot programs right here – rooftop fights do get entertaining in a while within the sport, when rival enemy factions plus Seattle’s police division flip the higher metropolis right into a messy warzone, whereas the locals under fake to not hear the fixed screaming and gunfire. Nonetheless, it is fight for fight’s sake, if the principle mission areas have not sated your bloodlust.
Again at road stage, the worst half is the sidequests, that are unquestionably unhealthy. Every of the six vampire clan representatives scattered round city presents a little bit little bit of dialogue about themselves and their faction, a ‘romance’ possibility that begins with awkward flirting and ends in a fade-to-black and a pair traces of eye-rolling dialogue, plus (most crucially) the choice to unlock powers from the opposite clans, letting you swap out any of your default 4 – the closest factor the sport has to RPG mechanics.
The issue being that to earn these unlocks, you have to do busy-work, and it’s the most shameless padding I’ve seen in any sort of open world in a very long time. One vampire needs you to assassinate human targets. One needs you to assassinate named however in any other case common enemies across the map. One other presents fetch quests, and the final three need you to tediously scour town for hard-to-spot collectibles. With out fail, they’re all time-wasters providing not a single fascinating encounter, and will solely be engaged with in the event you actually desire a particular energy from one other clan.
Bloodlines 2 does have lots of little flaws round its edges, a few of which may get patched in the middle of round half a 12 months of deliberate DLC, a few of that are unshakeably structural, however the story the sport tells stored me going till the tip. This can be a tightly written vampire homicide thriller, delivered extra theatrically than cinematically, with dialogue and exposition usually occurring with a handful of characters buying and selling verbal blows in opposition to one in every of The Chinese language Room’s exquisitely dressed backdrops. A couple of crimson herrings that really feel like dropped story threads from a extra formidable iteration of the sport apart, it builds up the layers of intrigue properly, and nearly all of the solid (a pair dozen vampires and their minions) are simply the correct stability of shifty and flamboyant sufficient to maintain you guessing at motivations, till the revelation-heavy closing act.
Funnily sufficient, two of the most important gamers within the story – the participant character and Ryong Choi, the newly-appointed ruler of town’s vampire inhabitants – are the blandest. The latter being a by-the-books company sort as stiff as her pant go well with, and the previous’s motivations being yours to form, inside limits. Forcibly assigned the position of Seattle’s vampire ‘sheriff’ not lengthy into the story, whether or not Phyre is working for private acquire, a want to maintain vampire society on the down-low, or benevolence to man and bloodsucker alike is up so that you can select.
Nevertheless it’s Fabien that steals the present. Even when taking part in as Phyre, he is a cheerful, advising voice in your head that provides every little thing a bit extra color, and higher nonetheless once you’re taking part in as him throughout these prolonged flashback sections. He is a goofy Twenties gumshoe archetype that simply occurs to be a vampire, not a lot looking as accepting blood donations from a handful of contacts round city, fueling his means to have sassy items of proof back-talk him, or to interview suspects magically disguised as a random individual that the interviewee is aware of, leaving you to navigate dialogue bushes rigorously to determine who he is even taking part in the position of. His presence turns Bloodlines 2 right into a buddy cop drama with vampires. Phyre’s the nice/unhealthy/murderous straight man/lady (relying on the way you play them) and Fabien’s the humorous one. And it largely works.
However is ‘largely’ adequate to justify that steep price ticket? The general downside right here is that in a 12 months filled with completely superb video games of all sizes and styles, Bloodlines 2 is merely okay. An entertaining mid-budget approach to cross a couple of evenings in a well-known setting. With the credit rolling after round 22 hours, together with some skippable sidequests, I am unable to deny that I loved most of my time with it, however not sufficient to have me replaying it any time quickly.
Not that there is a lot cause to, both. A cursory try and yank the story off the rails by choosing each delinquent, confrontational dialogue possibility resulted within the plot following the very same trajectory, with considerably snippier interactions with the solid and some new traces of incidental dialogue primarily based on clan selection. Being an elder vampire signifies that individuals will put up with a LOT of your bullshit, it appears. Except for some Fallout-esque epilogue slides primarily based in your few selections, there’s not a lot you are able to do to steer the story. Not an inherent flaw in the event you’re keen to guage this sport by itself phrases, however a closing nail within the coffin for these hoping Troika’s legacy lives on by this sport.
