Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Palms-On Preview: We have been fortunate sufficient to get an early hands-on with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 on PC. And the brief model is, I’m positively amazed on the excessive manufacturing high quality of the sport. After the years of delays and going by means of completely different developer studios, I used to be sceptical, however seeing the sport first-hand made me looking forward to the completed product.We bought to play the primary few missions. This was on PC in Extremely Settings, and the PS5 efficiency stays to be seen. However extra on that under, let’s dive in!Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Palms-On Preview – From Improvement Hell To Triumph?Welcome to SeattleYou play as Phyre, an elder vampire who was asleep from the Twenties till fashionable instances. You get up in twenty first century Seattle round Christmas time. The sport begins out in a constructing the place you’re taught the essential actions, skills, and fight mechanics of vampires. Your motion by means of the world entails working up partitions, sneaking by means of vents, gliding for longer distances, and utilizing your heightened senses to identify factors of curiosity. A white circle in the course of the display will get bigger when interactable objects are close by, similar to story targets or gadgets. There are additionally waypoints within the open world, however not a lot whereas inside buildings.The fight revolves round utilizing dodges, bare-handed assaults, and Telekinesis to throw objects and jank enemies round. For instance, you should use Telekinesis to select up weapons dropped by enemies from a distance and throw them again, or use objects within the atmosphere. I threw fireplace extinguishers that exploded, knives of disarmed enemies, weapons, and varied family objects that lay scattered round. From my time with the sport it doesn’t appear to be you’ll be able to equip any weapons your self, so the one method to make use of weapons, for instance, is to make use of telekinesis and seize them from defeated enemies.You’ll be able to then goal weapons and discharge them at enemies. I began each encounter bare-handed, nevertheless. You even have particular vampire skills that allow you to manipulate and overwhelm enemies. You’ll be able to possess foes to remote-control them and switch them towards one another, or command them to kill themselves, or make them overlook you have been ever there. The sport is gore-heavy, with frequent dismemberments together with grisly decapitation.Your beginning skills depend upon what class you choose – there are 4 lessons and two DLC lessons. There’s additionally a personality creator the place you choose your gender and design your individual character. Extra cosmetics are unlocked all through the sport and may be geared up at any time from the menu. The sport is in first particular person view, so the one time you see your self is throughout dialogues and cutscenes.Your beginning class additionally impacts the beginning opinion different characters have of you, primarily based on their affiliations. It appears you’ll be able to unlock the identical skills throughout lessons although. There’s a talent tree the place you purchase new skills as you progress within the recreation to earn capability factors.The Silence of the BloodThe fight is styled extra in direction of stealth and utilizing your skills. Open battle isn’t too tough on straightforward to regular, however some encounters may be fairly difficult on exhausting in case you are noticed. Within the early recreation sections that I performed, the enemies have been people, though maybe there will probably be vampire fights too. You’ll be able to sneak up on foes to carry out stealth kills and skinny them out utilizing your skills earlier than coming into fight. The best way you restore well being is by “feeding” on enemies. You are able to do this both on stealth kills from behind, or on the ultimate hit in open fight. Nevertheless, throughout fight different enemies can nonetheless hit you whereas the feeding animation is ongoing, so that you would possibly lose extra well being than you generate.Exterior of mission encounters, you typically should stay unnoticed. You aren’t allowed to interrupt what the sport calls “The Masquerade,” which is you hiding the very fact you’re a vampire. If people spot you utilizing supernatural vampire skills, the Masquerade meter on the prime of the display will rise (i.e. their suspicion). These are issues like utilizing your vampire dash, gliding, feeding on individuals, or attacking individuals on the streets. In case you break the “Masquerade”, i.e. individuals understand you’re a vampire, one of many different vampires will immediately seem to ram a stake by means of your coronary heart and kill you.All of the vampires should hold the key that vampires are actual and if anybody breaks this rule they’re killed. You then get a recreation over display and respawn on the final checkpoint. However apart from shedding progress because the final checkpoint there doesn’t appear to be any long-term consequence that I noticed.Maintain ‘Em TalkingDialogue selections are additionally an enormous a part of the sport. My greatest comparability is that it’s just like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 or Baldur’s Gate 3, the place you all the time have a number of dialogue selections, and what you choose impacts how individuals deal with you and the way quests unfold. The dialogues are significant and might have long run affect on the story. When making an necessary selection there will probably be a popup how the opposite character feels about it, whether or not they preferred it or not. Selecting the “good” dialogues will yield approval, whereas selecting the confrontational dialogues will yield disapproval. This can provide numerous replay worth to play by means of all paths and outcomes.The sport solely has one autosave and no handbook saves, so there’s no fast solution to bounce again and check different selections. That is maybe intentional to provide your selections a sure finality and encourage the sport’s replay worth.After the preliminary tutorials within the beginning constructing, you go outdoors on the streets of Seattle. It’s Christmas time and the town is snowy. The best way I’d describe the world is Cyberpunk 2077 in winter; there are lots of neon lights and the graphics are high-end. It regarded shockingly good and ran completely clean on PC. If PS5/Professional efficiency is something near it we’re in for a deal with!Clear Up The StreetsThe open world is split into a number of districts. The districts are comparatively small. You’ll be able to discover solely on foot, as I didn’t see any automobiles that may very well be used. Lots of the buildings may be climbed by means of parkouring. You’ll be able to run up partitions and climb up pipes. This vertical open world design jogged my memory of the parkouring in Dying Gentle 2. There’s additionally a collectable counter on the map for the completionists. The district I performed had three merchandise varieties tracked on the map. There are additionally codex entries scattered across the recreation which may be picked up and supply some backstory.There are little facet occasions on the map that get marked when close by. Some civilians in search of a hookup who may be lured into alleys and feed on them, and a few rowdy civilians which might be in search of a battle. These are a supply of bonus XP. Most important quests are additionally marked with icons on the open world map. Oftentimes you should use your heightened senses to trace paths to targets, similar to scent trails.You may as well enter a number of the buildings, that are marked pink on the map. These are necessary mission associated locations. Different buildings can’t be entered, however can generally parkour to their roof. The town seems very good and is enjoyable to discover, buildings are festively adorned to get you into the Christmas spirit.Total this felt extra like an AAA recreation than I anticipated and fewer like a undertaking that went by means of growth hell.I went into Bloodlines 2 with none prior information of the Vampire video games. I had solely seen the trailers and heard of the delays, however was blown away by how polished the sport seems (PS5 efficiency pending). I’d describe it as a mixture of BioShock’s fight, Dying Gentle 2’s parkouring, Baldur Gate 3’s dialogue system, and Cyberpunk 2077’s world design. It now climbed to one in all my most anticipated video games for the remainder of 2025 and I can’t wait to play the complete factor.Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 releases for PS5 on October 21, 2025.
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