Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Review (PS5): Sucking the Life From a Franchise

It is 2024 in Seattle, Washington. Sirens blare against the calm of the night as a figure rushes past and starts sucking the blood of someone walking down the street with no punishment. Even though it breaks everything the world is built on, this is the reality of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, a game so out of touch with its predecessor that it forgets to uphold the most basic values of the franchise.

Forget everything you once knew, as this sequel takes everything beloved about the original Bloodlines title and lights it on fire. What remains is a stagnant city devoid of life, repetitive side quests that make the undead want to visit the grave, and combat that is so generic it almost feels like it was created by A.I. The only redemption comes from critical story moments, which showcase enticing characters or dramatic events that are few and far between. Sorry, bloodsuckers, but the life has been sucked out of this one.

Your Undeath is Meaningless

In Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, you awaken in the cold underbelly of Seattle with the voice of a detective named Fabien in your head, who is the embodiment of that guy who can’t get a grasp on reality, so he must turn everything he can into a joke. The two of you must solve the mystery of why Fabien is in your skull and how you received some mysterious mark that removed your elderly powers, and don’t worry, Fabien will make sure to make every beat feel just as fun as watching blood dry.

Before you know it, you take your place before the Court Prince and are given a fancy title. Now, you must do the Court’s bidding while you get to know the city. This all happens in the most linear fashion imaginable, with little regard to character building and a lack of depth, as if someone decided that they needed to take the most direct route from point A to B without taking any of the detours that were essential to the first title and that made it a worthwhile game to play.

I made it a point to play nice with my dialogue choices, noting it would very often lead to the game telling me that ‘Lou found that amusing’ or ‘Safia was embarrassed,’ hoping that it would lead to some sort of payoff. Unfortunately, that payoff never came, and I was often left wondering why it even mattered how I reacted to any of the primary NPCs. Even critical choices that should have had an impact on how the story unfolded were ultimately meaningless except to decide a specific ending. There is no nuance to the dialogue choices here that made talking in the original game meaningful.

Long gone are the barrage of characters that could impact the story in unexpected ways, as consequences are virtually meaningless. Whether I chose to send a character to place A or B resulted in them appearing in place A, no matter what. Choosing to disrupt the Court and break the Masquerade was pointless as well, as it never came with any consequence that affected the story or hurt my character in any way. The plot armor was so uncanny that I practically begged to be put back in the coffin I awoke from.

It wasn’t all bad, as there were some redeeming moments that I genuinely enjoyed, and some characters that stood out to me. For instance, Ysabella, the nightclub owner and over-the-top artistic visionary, feels sinister, has a great look about her, and is a character I would have loved to have seen more of. More good moments followed with other characters, but they were few and far between. In my entire playthrough, there were only three times where I felt like the story was heading in a somewhat good direction,  before I was pulled back to the reality of the nonstop crime drama character talking in my head, turning what I did into some joke about edging that never landed or generated any positive feedback on my part.

During various parts of the game, you experience Fabien’s backstory, and it’s just as boring as his usual quips, with constant noir crime drama speech that stands in stark contrast to what you experience in the present day. The style of noir writing is admirable, but it never became interesting, and the investigation can be summed up in a two-minute speech. While Fabien was busy trying to figure out “who the rebar killer could be,” I was able to play detective and guess the answer after speaking to only a few NPCs. While part of the story did come as a bit of a surprise, the big reveals fell short and didn’t sing the notes they should have. Rather, they fell flat with very little reaction other than a simple “huh.”

Seattle Has the Heartbeat of a Vampire

Moving from the first game’s Los Angeles to Seattle, one of the biggest changes I would have expected is for the city to be far more vibrant and full of life, especially since the time has jumped 20 years into the future and hardware power has made significant jumps since this period, but the world feels about as full of life as a corpse baking in the sun. There is an awkward air of silence that has overtaken Seattle, with fewer than expected NPCs enjoying the nightlife, especially with what appears to be a popular nightclub and several red light district shops. Instead, most of the NPCs make random comments about feeding their cat or about how the winter is cold. It gives a general feeling of “liveliness” that matches a vampire’s pulse.

To draw a quick comparison: the first game had a very lively world despite its limited size, where if you made mistakes, they were seen. If you broke the Masquerade, it was known, and you could only do so a set number of times, or there would be severe consequences. Throughout my time with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, I went out of my way to purposefully break the Masquerade numerous times. I would be reckless, bite NPCs in the middle of the street, use my abilities with an audience to bear witness, and even then, I still received no consequences. It became a point of mine to be as reckless as possible, because no matter what I did, as long as that bar indicating how much of the Masquerade was broken didn’t fill, I knew I was safe. Even with police shooting me from every angle and NPCs screaming, I made it out safe every time with no consequences.

The eerie calm of the streets doesn’t enhance the experience; it hinders it massively, coming off as rushed, despite the numerous years in development. Even when events unfold that increase the number of enemies you encounter, the world still feels barren.

To end this lifeless experience, you have access to five different main NPCs that act as your contacts for the different clans. Outside of this crew, you never meet any vampires who make a big impact. They gift you their blood so that an elder such as yourself may regain your dormant abilities, but even here, Bloodlines 2 is missing personality. You have very short conversations with each of these NPCs and barely learn anything about them. Three of them give you side quests – the only side quests in the game – and every night they are the same tasks with different names. These side quests consist of collecting or delivering mail and finding a target that needs to be taken out. The game may act as if there are numerous types of side quests, but basically, there are two types of side quests in this game. Despite the repetition, I stuck it out to see if there would be a change, and it never came, making me miss the days when I could stumble into a hospital, find a cannibalistic woman, and be given unique side quests.

As Generic as They Come

Being a vampire in Seattle, you are bound to have enemies, and they are plentiful, giving you ample opportunities to test out your vampiric abilities. While there is a nice fluidity to the combat, it is hindered by stuttering that throws off your movements if you chain them together too quickly. It was a common occurrence for me to experience a hiccup, where I would turn without notice, my sprint would end, or I would just stop attacking.

Issues aside, the combat is very generic aside from your vampiric abilities. I could name nearly any first-person game with parkour-style combat, and it would fit the mold of Bloodlines 2’s combat perfectly. This isn’t to say that the combat is bad; there is just nothing unique about it. It is adequate, which would generally be fine in a game like this if there was anything else to boost it up. Rather, there is nothing to excuse the generic combat, making it all the more prevalent and the more frustrating.

A big part of the combat/movement system of the game is using your abilities to gain an advantage. I was lucky during my first playthrough and chose the Tremere, since I had experience with them from my limited time playing the first title, and blood magic is arguably a cool ability that opens up possibilities, such as launching blood daggers at your enemies or making them explode. With that said, I felt many other abilities from other clans didn’t fit in this world, and largely were useless in my hands, turning progression from something that should be exciting, to a rather exasperating experience.

While the combat is generic, there is some fun to it, and I genuinely enjoyed slashing up the three types of foes that exist in the game. Along with this, there are some fun moments with parkour that feel well put together, such as when I effortlessly glide across the rooftops of nightfallen Seattle with the move glinting off my skin. It’s the moments like that which make the game avoid being counted as an abysmal failure.

Final Verdict

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is the sequel to an amazing game that was full of life, where everything felt meaningful, and the design felt purposeful. Unfortunately, anything that its highly-regarded predecessor had has been stripped away and replaced with a generic combat system, a story that tries too hard to be the next big crime drama, and a lifeless world with little to do and a Masquerade Court that, like me, has lost all care in the world. Very few benefits outweigh the negatives that have befallen this fictional version of Seattle, leaving me feeling sorry for all the fans that waited 21 years to get a story that, if it wasn’t for the Bloodlines name, would be forgotten to time except by the most faithful scene queens and goths.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was reviewed on PlayStation 5 with a code provided by The Chinese Room. It is also available on PC and Xbox Series X.

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