>>723467202 (OP)
Even leaking the review embargo date can land you in a lot of hot water if it can be traced back to you, so most reviewers simply won't take the chance.
>>723468601
You mean to tell me that the dozens of journalists who are spending 20-40 hours of their lives reviewing the game right now don't care about their jobs?
>>723471190
That too. In Bloodlines 1 you were able to side with the Kuei Jin or La Croix even though it was nonsensical. And CQM added a fucking Sabbat route.
Here, I can't side with the villain, because...?
>>723469847 >excited for rush job from a publisher desperate to push something out
I don't believe anyone with 2 brain cells would be excited for this.
>>723467202 (OP)
Nothing says "we have no confidence in our product" than a review embargo. Steam should start doing a sales embargo until 100% completion reviews are up.
I mean PS5 physical copies have been in the wild for a few days now, early impressions are nice city hub, dialog reasonable, combat shit and 5-6 hours long but pretty replayable, sounds like a solid 7/10 to me
>>723470806 >spending 20-40 hours
mate, of all concerns the people who got early physical copies had, a long length is not one of them, lol, the main story critical path is like 3-4 hours if you just gun it
>Bloodlines 2 has little of that emergent storytelling where mechanics align just so; instead, it often boils down to an A-to-B run of grabbing and completing simple, forgettable quests. It seems The Chinese Room has taken all of Bloodlines' bad bits - chiefly janky combat and performance woes - and somehow magnified them.
https://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/ps5/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2 >But as the game's structure becomes more and more apparent, the real Bloodlines 2 shapes up to be a bit of a disaster. This sequel to Troika Games' 2004 cult classic very quickly collapses in on itself, despite some strong story moments and a smattering of cool ideas.
>However, unlike the first game, Bloodlines 2 is severely stripped back as an RPG — to the point where we'd hesitate to even call it one. Developer The Chinese Room has tried to lower expectations in this regard, suggesting that it's more of a 'streamlined' experience, but that's putting it lightly. >Yes, you're handed plenty of dialogue options, and the title specifically tells you that your decisions will have an impact — but ultimately, only two or three key choices actually matter across the game's 15-hour runtime. >And even then, the ramifications are often questionable. Characters will tell you that your actions have resulted in something, but you'll rarely, if ever, get to see these consequences take shape. Most of the time, your chosen dialogue will simply result in flavoured responses from the person you're talking to — and then it'll all be forgotten the next time you meet.
> The vast majority of quests I completed lacked any kind of meaningful decision-making at all – there’s a risk of minor reputational damage if you don’t choose your words carefully, but you’re also unlikely to fall out with anyone over the course of a single chat. Anyone who didn’t already hate you, at the very least.
https://www.eurogamer.net/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-review >Sadly, it hasn't worked out. We already knew this follow-up to 2004's scruffy but well-loved Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines wouldn't be a role-playing game in the same way. We knew that developer The Chinese Room, which inherited the troubled project from Hardsuit Labs, had repurposed Bloodlines 2 into something more resembling an action game - an action RPG specifically. Expectations were tempered. That's okay, ideas change. But Bloodlines 2 isn't much of an action game either, or a stealth game, or an immersive sim or whatever it tries to be. It feels caught in the middle of ideas and unsure of what it is, and in the end feels like nothing much at all because of it.
>But it doesn't develop. This is an action RPG with barely any character development (or even customisation) in it. You have four abilities you can use, tied to the clan you belong to, and you will unlock all of them within a couple of hours of play. And that's it - you won't get any more powerful after that. Powers don't evolve or change.
