Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

aka: Vampire: Die Maskerade - Redemption, Vampire: La Mascarade - Rédemption
Moby ID: 1709
Windows Specs
Buy on Windows
$5.99 new on Steam

Description official descriptions

It is the Middle Ages in Europe, and people live in constant fear of demons and God's punishment. Christof is a warrior who fights the creatures of darkness. After being badly injured in a battle, he is nursed back to health by the nun Anezka in a Prague convent. Love strikes Christof when he least expects it. He realizes that it is impossible for him and Anezka to be together, but he swears to protect her and the town of Prague from demons. What he does not know is that Prague has become a battlefield for the struggle between different vampire clans. The Brujah clan sees a duty in protecting their wisdom and the unsuspecting mortals from the more vicious clans. They turn Christof into a vampire, hoping to use his skills and his passion for their cause.

Christof has lost his soul, his faith, everything he had ever had, becoming one of those he had always fought and hated. But his love to Anezka has not died. And so Christof agrees to help the Brujah, getting involved in a complex net of intrigues and struggle between vampire clans, a struggle that will eventually take him to modern times, to London and New York, where his fate will finally be decided.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is based on the pen-and-paper role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. Much of the game is dedicated to exploring hostile locations, fighting enemies (mostly other vampires) to complete missions and advance the storyline. Gaining experience points, the player develops Christof and other characters by increasing their statistics (such as Strength, Intelligence, Manipulation etc.) or learning and improving various disciplines, the magic spells of the game. Disciplines require blood, which can be restored with items or by feeding on enemies.

Combat is action-oriented. The player can directly control only one member of the party ("coterie"); the rest are controlled by AI. It is possible to switch between different characters at any time. Following the ethical code of the RPG, there is a Humanity bar for Christof, which can be reduces if the player decides to kill innocents or make evil decisions in the game. The game has several different endings that depend on the protagonist's Humanity level. There is also a multiplayer option.

Spellings

  • Vampire: בעל המסכה - Hebrew spelling
  • 吸血鬼: 假面舞会 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (Windows version)

269 People (195 developers, 74 thanks) · View all

Producer
Press Relations
Executive Producer
External Test Coordinator
Global Brand Manager
Associate Brand Manager
Marketing Director Germany
Brand Manager Germany
PR Director Germany
VP of CS/QA
Staff Planning Lead
QA Senior Project Lead
QA Project Lead
Production Testers
QA Testers
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 52 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 88 ratings with 7 reviews)

Better than Diablo

The Good
The graphics are incredible to say the least, with more than a few absolutly breathtaking effects included to make this one game that will leave your eyes smiling with satisfaction.

The sound effects, voice acting and music are also excellent, leaving little to be desired short of better hearing when you're trying to pick out all the subtle moans, and hypnotic groans as you traverse one location after the next.

The architecture throughout this wonderment is an example of what true talent can create. Hats off to the designers behind Redemption, every location is another piece of heaven, taking into account detail, beauty, mystique, and gameplay.

For those literary types who love a good story, here's one along with great graphics. The storyline behind Redemption is well written and well told.

The Bad
Pathfinding, Pathfinding, Pathfinding! While the new patch does address this issue to some degree, your characters are susceptible to some ridiculas glitching.

Also, your party members are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, and thus you must be extremely cautious of their mood settings, otherwise you'll find yourself babysitting a bunch of moronic nitwits... or better yet, corpses.

Gameplay is the age old, time told hack n' slash approach. Here's the dungeon, go in, clean it out, get the item, come back. One 'fetch-boo boo-fetch' after another. Tiresome, uninspired.

The Bottom Line
To put it as bluntly as I can: Darkstone on Acid.

Windows · by tantoedge (19) · 2000

Don't let the title or topic scare you, let the intro!

The Good
For starters, when you get done installing the game, you'll start to feel very cold and lonely as you let the intro finish up. From there, it just gets better. Extreme detail went into this game to make it engrossing and enthralling.

The graphics are as good, and occasionally far superior to, anything else out there. Some scenes are truly stunning, and you'll find yourself re-loading a saved game to see it again and again. Spell effects are superb, and the "floating camera" angles and the ability to control the camera are just fantastic.

The sound is excellent to. Between the background music and the sound effects and the dark, dank tone of everything, it just adds to the whole experience.

There are plenty of weapons and armor throughout the game, and the differences in weapons (bashing, slashing, etc.) actually make a BIG difference.

The story is totally encompassing, and it isn't too long or drawn out that you'll get annoyed with it. Everything has been timed so that you get new spells/weapons/toys just at the time you need them.

There's plenty of character development (though die-hard fans of Vampire may not like being forced to be one clan), and you even get to develop the characters who join your group.

The Bad
I hate to admit there's something wrong with a game this great. But not admitting them would be just wrong.

There are some glitches to the game. The stark example of this is a dead character who shows up at a cutscene to do some talking.

Party memebers are rather idiotic. You can set some options to make them smarter, but I find that if you give them an inch, they'll abuse it (insert joke about a better idiot here).

Extrememly limited replay value. Oh, how I hate this one. Something you need to understand is that, in the Vampire world, everything is based on destiny. Nothing you do will ultimately effect where you go next. There are choices throughout the game as to what you want to do, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. I've been waiting for another Vampire game, but, alas.

The Bottom Line
I've never played the paper and pencil version of Vampire, and I didn't need to. The game is excellent at teaching you as you go (no stupid tutorial here, it tells you how to play the game as you go, and ties it in with the story).

For sheer story-lovers, this is your game. For hack and slash, you might really like the mix of hack and spell-casting, but you can't totally forget about evertying else.

Occasionally you'll feel like a general trying to order around a bunch of six-year-olds, but take some time, and it'll pay off big.

Oh yeah, don't let a six-year-old see or hear this game. He'll have nightmares for weeks!

Windows · by Cyric (50) · 2001

Great story, great atmosphere, repetitive gameplay.

The Good
The game starts with great story-telling and quickly builds up the atmosphere. In the beginning, gameplay is simple enough and very addictive. But the difficulty quickly rises and requires you to use disciplines (spells) properly.

Story is divided into two parts, both are good alone, but together they create nice "twist" in the atmosphere and game itself.

Every game "dungeons" looks differently than another, they are very specific, with great looking graphics, but in single dungeon you will most probably have trouble telling different levels one from another.

Inventory and whole interface is nicely done and works almost perfectly, although it is not exactly suited for quick-enough combat control.

Vampire the Masquerade rules are nicely implemented, though it is necessary to read the manual to understand some disciplines. Manual is also nicely written and helps in understanding the world of darkness for those not familiar with it.

The Bad
While the story is deep enough for RPG, the actual gameplay gets repetitive. You talk to someone, they will send you to nearby dungeon, you battle through four levels of dungeon, kill boss creature, listen to new facts, go back to the quest-giver, talk, clean four level in another dungeon and so on and so on. It is always a small progress in story and then four levels dungeon. Exactly something for those who loved repetitive gameplay of Diablo.

AI of the enemies is nothing special (enemies usually stand at one place until they see you and then approach/shoot/use discipline). Nothing special, but their sheer number makes up for it. What troubles me is the AI of your characters. When you will watch your character walking in circles for three minutes trying to get through the doors or going down the stairs, you will know what I mean. Also character become stuck behind one another far too often, and try to shoot through walls.

Since you play with up to four characters, some sort of quick commands should be implemented, but no, only thing to help you manage your team are selection shortcuts and attitude setting. Everything else is up to your reflexes and clicking skills. Also rearranging your inventory in combat is almost impossible (since you cannot pause the fight). Due to this, some boss fights are really hard and the final one is almost impossible.

The Bottom Line
It may look like I found more bad thing than the good ones, but it is not the case. I really enjoyed playing through the game. I recommend reading the manual, as it will tell you which disciplines are useful and how you should develop your character. If you can get over occasional stupidity of AI, repetitive gameplay (surprisingly mostly in the middle of the game), you will receive good story telling and solid RPG. A must for any RPG or Vampire fan.

Windows · by Dan Mokosh (56) · 2011

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Game Resources for New Players phantom goat Nov 10, 2016
How do I run this on modern OS? (and getting a way to run in a window) BlaringCoder (169) Jun 30, 2016

Trivia

Credits

The post-game credits end with the following statement: "No szlachtas were harmed in the making of this game", followed by "Okay, well, maybe just one or two". The szlachtas are a common species of monsters you encounter in several dungeons of the game.

Endings

The game has several endings, depending on Christof's humanity level at the end of the game. All the endings have completely different flavours and should be tried out.

German version

In the German version, all blood and gore effects were removed.

Reflections

Some early ads showed that the vampire characters were unable to cast reflections (as per standard vampiric lore). This was changed for the final release, as in White Wolf's World of Darkness being reflection-less is a unique trait of the Lasombra clan (this is also used as a plot device in the game).

Information also contributed by Unicorn Lynx and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Matthew Bailey.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper.

Additional contributors: Kic'N, Unicorn Lynx, Jony Shahar, Naglfar, Hitman23, Xoleras, Havoc Crow, Crawly, Patrick Bregger.

Game added July 11, 2000. Last modified March 14, 2024.