Miaka Lee

I wanted to love this game, but it missed the mark in too many areas. For a game that relies so heavily on dialogue and interaction with NPCs, the dialogue choices offer little in the way of real world consequences except for gaining hints and setting the tone of the conversation. Whilst I found myself curious to listen to the extraordinary life circumstances of each character you encounter, the constant need to talk for the sake of XP gets boring fast. Combat was thrilling but utterly infuriating. It's far too easy for enemies and mortal enemies to level up while you, the Dracula incarnate is stuck trying to muster up XP without embracing anyone. I enjoyed the power up options given, because when managed correctly they're a pretty good headache against enemies. Fighting the enemies takes some strategy and patience, which was an enjoyable challenge. I really did appreciate the moral conundrum the game puts you through in trying to figure out your ethical embracing selections. But then there's the travel and the maps.... Both were pretty bad. A game like this desperately needed fast travel, what with all the locked gates at every turn forcing you to spend an eternity trying to backtrack and head down the only paths the developers want when there are several paths on the map. I spent well over an hour trying to get to one area to embrace a few people to get some XP to defeat a boss, as the game repeatedly suggests, only to be be met by a plethora of locked gates that for some reason my shape-shifting, eighteen-foot ledge-transporting vampire couldn't get over. On the positive side, the voice acting in the game is outstanding. The graphics, the musical score and the overall atmosphere is very good. Haven't finished the game so I can't comment on the story in its entirety and its replay value, but so far it has been enjoyable despite the infuriating hiccups.