A little witch

As a standalone game it's not fun to play and the story is not interesting or engaging; as a sequel to Bloodlines, it's even worse. I'm baffled why the developers, who excel at story-based walking sims, pitched an action RPG with a poor story as a sequel for a game loved for its vibrant writing? Surely they'd be more in their wheelhouse if they just tried to write an actual sequel to Bloodlines? (Yes, the original Bloodlines had combat, but we all know it's janky. It definitely was not Bloodlines's belle of the ball.) The gameplay and story really limp along until it aborts prematurely with very little replayability that's worth the slog of seeing minor variations in the (underwhelming) story. I'm not sure what it is about this game concept that the developers wanted to execute at all costs, because it's really not ... good, for newcomers to the series, or anyone who just wants a regular vampire game. And I'm both! I came into this game with the mindset that I'd be happy if it was a decent VTM game, *or* a decent vampire game. But it's neither. I think this is because the developers have gone on record discussing VTM and the vampire genre as a whole in various interviews, and they seem to have a disconnect between what people find cool in the genre. Their infamous quote from the developers thinking vampires using weapons is uncool and unvampiric (as if this weren't a supremely popular trope!) is telling, but you see much of this disconnect in the game's dev diaries. I wish this tried to be good at at least one thing instead of good at nothing at all. Given the developers barely seem to understand what's fun about vampires, it doesn't even seem like they were interested in making this game to begin with. It feels more like they wanted to experiment with a couple things and get funding for it before moving onto a game they actually care about, which sucks, but not in the vampire way. I hope they continue adding content to this game over time, but they'd basically have to finish the game using patches, so... I'm not holding my breath.