Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 review

“So weary is the wanderer that treads upon the fertile soil.” In many ways, this single echoey line embodies Bloodlines 2. Having gone through multiple teams and survived one of the most turbulent development cycles of all time, The Chinese Room’s take on the World of Darkness is finally here – it’s in my Steam library, which I’m still pinching myself over, but it has so much to live up to.

The developer has previously described Bloodlines 2 as a “spiritual successor,” and it’s clear that, while its snowy take on Seattle does have flickers of Troika’s Los Angeles, there’s no substantial narrative connection between these two games. Throwbacks to Bloodlines are hidden in disparate lore drops that most people will collect for the XP, then swiftly forget about, or in the Santa Monica Memories DLC pack, which isn’t part of the core game. If the same vitae runs through Bloodlines and its childe’s veins, I’m not seeing it.

Seattle certainly has a grimy underbelly, but its streets quickly begin to blend into one. Within the relatively tight boundaries of Bloodlines’ Santa Monica alone, there’s your apartment, the medical center, Gallery Noir, The Asylum – the list goes on and on. Almost every building in each of Bloodlines’ zones is explorable. Seattle, by contrast, is filled with mostly inaccessible buildings that function as a pretty backdrop. As the story progresses, the city begins to mirror the mounting political tensions, but Seattle often resembles just another Unreal Engine 5 metropolis, and a mostly barren and bare one at that.

There are still flickers of greatness in its environmental design. Wake the Dead, the coffee shop owned by Tremere Magister Mrs. Thorn, oozes coziness and eloquence. Aurora Pawn, the goods store operated by Banu Haquim primogen Niko, has a collection of oddities that he could have collected over his time in undeath, and that’s without mentioning the weird bone sculpture Toreador leader Patience has constructed in the back. But then the Hole in the Wall, owned by Anarch leader Katsumi, is your average dive bar with walls emblazoned with signs that read ‘SPORTS!’ in a generic font, while reused assets crowd tables and corners. For every little nook that catches your eye, there’s an equal serving of bland.

One area of the map feels notably out of place, as though it’s from an earlier iteration of the game. It seems poised to tie into the original, only to amount to a simple puzzle sequence. There’s also the sizable and beautiful Chinatown, which sits slap bang in the middle of the map, and, as far as I can see, never gets used outside of one simple quest.

While asset and animation reuse is often a smart and effective way to craft large videogame worlds, Bloodlines 2’s approach can be immersion-breaking. In former prince and avid opportunist Lou Graham’s penthouse, there are repeated pictures in close proximity. Elsewhere, an image that a lore drop claims depicts a relative of Katsumi’s can also be found on several walls in the police station. Similarly, animations play on a short loop, with Lou toying with her hair at least three times during our first proper interaction, making her feel more robot than regent.

And it’s a shame, because the game’s characters are, on the whole, well-written and well-performed, each embodying their unique clan and its values without ever becoming a stereotype. Lou, for example, is ambition incarnate: her blue blood seethes with magnificence and malice, just as a Ventrue should. Flamboyant Toreador Ysabella is very much the artiste, with her slow, enticing drawl and penchant for high fashion making you see stars. Safia, Graham’s most-hated Warlock, is sickly sweet, latching onto your Elder in a way that feels authentically Tremere. They work together to create a cast that you want to engage with, whether it’s flirting as a Toreador or sparring as a power-hungry Tremere usurper.

The side cast, which includes a host of Primogen like Mrs. Thorn and Niko, doesn’t get enough time in the spotlight. While they often serve up side quests, these take the form of repetitive lists of busywork. Mrs. Thorn will send you to fetch packages, while Niko gives you an object, tells you a little about its history, and tasks you with assassinating its former owner. Sometimes they drop lore snippets and the odd potion, but they’re uninteresting and seldom worth pursuing. Additionally, there’s the shell of a romance system, where all you’re required to do is flirt persistently until the arc reaches its dull conclusion.

The real star of the show is Fabien, the Malkavian in protagonist Phyre’s head, voiced by Ronan Summers. Playing a Malkavian in the tabletop game is difficult – they see visions and hear voices. The Malkavian route in the original Bloodlines is a wonderful bit of videogame design, with Troika reworking every voiceline to reflect the clan’s approach to conversation, all while myriad other chats play out in your character’s head. While I, like many, found Bloodlines 2’s approach to ‘playing as a Malkavian’ via Fabien’s detective quests to be somewhat of a cop out, his story and acting make up for it tenfold. There’s humor (some of which is sadly locked behind the Santa Monica Memories DLC) mixed with dramatic nuance, and a real sense that you’re playing as an eccentric noir detective. From start to finish, Fabien sings, even if his later investigations feel like roadblocks as you rush towards the final levels.

For me, he kept the story moving more so than Phyre, who’s a plain protagonist, neither offensive nor inoffensive, but hardly a showstopper in their own right. Fatigue begins to set in as the narrative goes on, with (to steal a line from White Wolf brand manager Jason Carl) “multiple things happening at once.” All of these disparate parts do eventually form a cohesive narrative, but there’s an awful lot to keep track of, and you’d be forgiven for losing the will to unlive.

As I mentioned in my Bloodlines 2 preview, the game’s story starts strong, getting its fangs in you from the get-go. But as the hours pass and things increase in complexity, it eventually struggles to make good on the promise of its many intriguing setups. The big reveals seldom pack much punch, and I found myself hoping for a connection to the original that never arrived.

But a lot of this could be forgiven if the underlying RPG structure and action were solid. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. It’s no secret that Bloodlines’ combat really, really sucked, especially if you didn’t have any points in firearms and attempted to take on the effectively mandatory boss fight with Ming Xiao. While Bloodlines 2 has certainly smoothed things out, it just isn’t fun to play.

I picked Toreador for my first run. Much like the tabletop game, they mess with your mind and blink around the battlefield at the speed of light, and while I appreciate The Chinese Room’s attempt to translate that into the action, the result is messy. There’s no lock-on ability, which, when you’ve smooched an enemy and turned them into your ally, isn’t great. They’re often fighting the same foe as you, and as you zip from one end of the battlefield to another, your newfound friend usually ends up with a fistful of collateral damage. The lack of lock-on is a serious problem that hits a new nadir during the final boss fight.

You also can’t block. Every clan has a relocate ability (in the case of Toreador, you’ve got Blink), but, bar dodging, there’s nothing to stop you from taking hits. I also found dodges to be somewhat inconsistent, almost as if there was a hidden stamina meter slowing me down. Enemies, however, can block, and you need to hold your mouse button to unleash a heavy attack to break through, but attempting to do so as enemies swarm and your health bar dwindles can be outright painful (literally and figuratively).

To top it off, the game simply can’t keep up with how quickly the Toreador move. I suffered regular frame rate drops and performance issues during almost every fight sequence, which, when combined with the lack of block and lock-on, often turned things into a gory, blurry click frenzy. Mercifully, some of those issues vanished when I played as a Tremere, given that they’re a slower, range-focused clan.

Combat scales with your level, too, meaning that fights get harder as you go. The boss battles are fairly routine, with my Tremere’s long-range blood magic immediately mitigating a lot of what punch-first-ask-later Sheriff Benny Muldoon can do. Later encounters are better, with one removing your disciplines entirely and forcing you into hand-to-hand combat, but they’re never something to write home about.

There’s also an over-reliance on guns later in the game. Phyre can pick up weapons using their telekinesis and unload them on unsuspecting foes, which feels like it should be more of a fun gimmick than a core mechanic. If the fantasy is to be an Elder that can shred through humans and lower-level Kindred, you shouldn’t need to rely on silly little guns. I found that, as a Toreador, my distinct lack of damage-focused abilities started to hinder my progress, and while sniping foes from afar elicits a rather snazzy slow-motion finisher, I wanted to be up close using my vampiric powers, not playing an FPS game.

There is a positive here, though. Having played as both Toreador and Tremere, with lashings of Lasombra and Ventrue, each Bloodlines 2 clan has a unique playstyle that’s reminiscent of the TTRPG. You can further hone your builds by mixing and matching other clans’ skills into your kit, letting you craft a chimera that perfectly suits your intended playstyle.

That progression mirrors the tabletop experience, too, with disciplines that fall outside of your clan’s three core skill trees costing slightly more to learn. As a Toreador, for example, I shared the Celerity tree (hitting hard and fast) with the Brujah, meaning I could pick up Celerity powers at a lower cost. When playing Tremere, which doesn’t have access to Celerity on its base tree, that cost would then increase.

You ‘pay’ for these new powers using Resonance Points, which you obtain by drinking specific blood types. Reminiscent of what Sharkmob did in Bloodhunt, it’s a fun way to integrate the system and give the game a slight mechanical throughline with its sister titles.

But it’s still hard to kick the feeling that Bloodlines 2 pales in comparison to its predecessor in just about every way. Bloodlines released with a full humanity system that introduced consequences for your actions, the ability to hack into computers to disable alarms and discover new, crucial information, and feeding times that you had to juggle so that you didn’t accidentally kill anyone. On top of that, its world feels shockingly alive given its age, with secrets around every corner and vice behind every door.

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. Bloodlines 2 is neither a satisfying sequel nor a strong enough RPG experience to make the splash that the franchise sorely needs. If you’re a long-time Vampire: The Masquerade fan, you might just find enough to enjoy Bloodlines 2. I myself loved meeting its characters and lurking in the more hand-crafted sections of Seattle. But if you were hoping for a game that comes close to recapturing the magic of Troika’s classic, you won’t find it here.