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)

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

Solid on the surface.

The Good
Vampire is damned addictive. The story keeps going from one exciting locale to another and spans 800 years (sort of). For the most part, Vampire is an excellent action game. I would compare it to Diablo with the camera zoomed in. There is a mixture of sword and sorcery and guns and ammo. Vampires are much like humans, except their undeath gives them access to powerful spells called Disciplines. Disciplines work like Jedi Knight's force powers or Undying's spells in that you can upgrade spells to make them more powerful. Unlike most games, it pays off to master a few Disciplines rather than knowing a little bit about all of them.

The game is largely combat based with a surprising amount of linearity. There are some quests that involve acquiring items, but most of the game entails raiding enemy vampire camps. Still, combat is varied with a large number of enemies and a variety of weapons and spells to choose from.

The mythos of Vampire is very well developed and is excellently presented here. I have not played the pen and paper game, yet was able to follow the story which involves 13 rival clans vying for supremacy. The actual story of the game is entertaining if not original and various conversation options and your Humanity level (an indicator that shows whether you are following a human moral code or are succumbing to the Beast) determines the game's ending.

The Bad
I expected the Masquerade to be more masquerady. The World of Darkness assumes that vampires are among us (and always have been) yet they remain unknown due to the Masquerade. That is, they hide from our view and operate out of our knowledge. In this game the Masquerade involves running past London bobbies with swords, guns, knives, fangs dripping blood, etc. Imagine what a stealth element would have added to this game.

Vampire is billed as being an RPG and has been hyped as being a first-rate RPG, I find both claims doubtful. If you accept Diablo as an RPG, a pure hack and slash game with one way to completion than so be it. Granted there are three possible endings and you can customize your character, but many games have multiple endings and various character/weapon/spell choices.

This game does use the character stat/discipline sheet that is part of the pen and paper game. Within this game I felt those stats were poorly realized. Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina all seemed to take an active role, but others such as Intelligence and Charisma served only as prerequisites for higher Disciplines. In true CRPGs these stats come into play throughout the game. In Fallout, a great RPG, Intelligence determines conversation options, Charisma (or the equivalent) determines character interactions.

Another problem I had with the game is the Discipline choices. The manual (which is pretty but bloody useless) offered iffy descriptions and failed to explain why I would want to upgrade certain Disciplines. One Discipline identified magical objects, would level two really identify them? Would level three identify the hell out of them? Or how about another useless Discipline that allowed you to determine if a person was good or evil? This would be very useful in the pen and paper game, but in the computer game you could usually tell your adversaries by the way they swung their swords at you.

Graphically this game was incredible except for poor clipping, sprite based shadows, and combat. Combat, the majority of the game, was incredibly frustrating. There was no difference in animation if a sword/arrow/bullet connected as opposed to a miss. In a game with as great of graphics as Vampire had, it's the little details that stand out.

Finally, the AI. AI is bad on both parts and sometimes coterie (party) members behaved so poorly I wished the game was turn-based. There are three settings for coterie members: do nothing, kill everything, tag along. I unfortunately had the party set for kill everything and after sitting through a long cutscene explaining how we weren't supposed to harm humans, my party went berserk in town. Party members also fire ammo into walls, refuse to move to get a better shot, cast powerful spells on weak creatures, etc. Enemies stand still until you come within striking range before swinging into combat. Ack- and pathfinding- Pedestrians routinely walk into lamps, sides of buildings and get stuck, your own party isn't much better. You fortunately have the option of releasing party members and controlling them one by one, this isn't a great feature it's a poor fix to a design flaw.

THE PATCH IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST!!!

The Bottom Line
Not quite an RPG but a fun action/adventure game that is novel in having the player assume the role of a vampire. Graphics are quirky at times, but are largely the best to be found and the music is remarkable. The patch is necessary in that it refines a save system and provides a balance for the early game. Highly worth its now bargain price.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2002

Love at First Bite? Um, no.

The Good
The graphics were quite good for their time, and the sound effects were superlative. The voice acting, with a couple of exceptions, was solid, and the characters were three-dimensional, i.e. they had their own dreams, aspirations, and agendas.

The Bad
To anyone who ever played the pen and paper version of this game, this is a horrible oversimplification and insult to their intelligence. The pen and paper version is a game that puts its emphasis on the story and the surroundings, building a sense of tragedy and futility juxtaposed with the eerie savagery of not being human anymore. This was apparently forgotten by the writers of the computer game's plot, who instead chose to use every stereotype they could think of from the pen and paper version. Playing the campaign in this game was like playing in a Vampire adventure ran by a barely literate moron who thinks "bittersweet" is a rather nasty form of chocolate. The artificial intelligence of the enemies in the game was almost non-existent, consisting of running around a lot and randomly attacking, almost always one at a time. Several times, the enemy simply stood there and let me kill them, even with the latest patch installed. In addition, the save system that shipped with the original version was horrendous; you could not save the game except at a save point, which was located in your haven! You might have to travel several levels deep into a difficult dungeon, and if you die, you would have to repeat hours and hours of game play. A patch remedied this to being able to save anywhere, but for a game released in 2000, and not being a console port, that is borderline criminal. Finally, the multiplayer mode was a complete failure. The editor was cumbersome and limited, and the graphics could not be altered without a degree in computer science. Playing online with strangers was not a viable alternative, either, as they would either kill you on sight, or make it their goal to annoy you to the brink of insanity.

The Bottom Line
If you have never played the pen and paper version of Vampire, go ahead and try this, because it will give you a very simple idea of what the real rpg is all about. Similarly, if you enjoy dumb-downed rpg's, by all means, play this game. However, if you are a veteran gamer, either computer or pen and paper, avoid this at all costs, because it will make you sad; for ultimately, this is a game that could have been great, but barely achieves mediocrity.

Windows · by Daniel Reed (28) · 2002

[ 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.