Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2

Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC

The original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines launched over twenty years ago, becoming a cult favourite RPG – specifically a video game RPG, given the franchise's roots in tabletop roleplaying. While various attempts have been made to bring the bloodsuckers back to PC and consoles over the decades (2022's Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong being one of the more prominent, if not necessarily successful, examples) nothing has really cemented the series as a major, ongoing, interactive concern.

Will Bloodlines 2, finally launching after years of troubled development and shifts between studios, break the curse? Probably not. Not only is this long-delayed sequel a thoroughly average outing in its own right, it’s a massive departure from what most fans loved about the first Bloodlines.

Chiefly, this doesn't feel like much of an RPG. Part of what made the original so compelling (eventually; let's not forget that it was also a bit of a flop at launch, taking years to earn its "cult classic" status) was how deeply you got to tailor your experience through its world, your decisions having real weight to them, changing the direction of the game. Bloodlines 2, in contrast, is an action game with some dialogue options, but no real sense that those choices matter or alter how situations play out.

Then there's the power fantasy of it all, or lack of one. In Bloodlines, you were a freshly turned vampire, struggling to find your way in a new un-life. Gaining and evolving your abilities over the course of the game added tremendously to the sense of growing in power. In Bloodlines 2, you play as the 400+ year old Phyre, an already immensely powerful elder vamp. After waking from a century-long slumber, you're immediately throwing enemies around the streets of Seattle, have access to plenty of spooky vampire powers, and are a generally unstoppable force – and that's despite finding a sigil mysteriously etched into your hand that's supposedly inhibiting your abilities.

While Phyre can be male or female, broader approach to character creation and development here leaves much to be desired. You can choose your vampire clan from one of six, but while building "Blood Resonance" with a particular faction can unlock extra abilities, they just get added to a boring tree of skills to be unlocked with points from levelling up. Worst of all, none of the later abilities meaningfully change how you approach anything the game throws at you, neither in roleplaying terms – you can't do that quintessential RPG trick of asking "what happens if I…?", because too often the answer is "nothing" – nor in combat, because Phyre feels overpowered from the off.

The saving grace is the story, which proves engaging even if you don't have much significant stake in shaping or redirecting it.

That might be forgivable if the combat itself weren't so relentlessly frustrating. The first-person perspective and the overly-zippy, dash-heavy approach to up-close battles feels hideously misaligned. Even on the easiest settings, keeping your opponent in focus while you try to beat the hell out of them feels impossible. Bloodlines 2 practically forces stealthier approaches – exploding an enemy's blood or using mind-control powers from afar, if not trying to dodge encounters entirely – because the combat is so clunky.

The saving grace is the story, which proves engaging even if you don't have much significant stake in shaping or redirecting it. Upon waking, Phyre realises they're sharing their head with the consciousness of another vampire, Fabien, a self-styled gumshoe who's been investigating the "Rebar Killer" since the 1920s – a case that echoes into the present, where Phyre is largely dealing with the fractious sects of the council governing vampire activity in Seattle. It's nothing truly groundbreaking, narratively – although flashback sequences where you control Fabien add a nice bit of non-linearity – but it hits all the right notes for a satisfying vampire saga. Fans of the core "World of Darkness" tabletop setting will likely get even more out of the tale, filled as it is with references and lore drawn from the source material.

Rather than its own predecessors, Bloodlines 2 is perhaps most reminiscent of the Prototype series, an action game that also offered a bounty of monstrous super powers and an open world to wield them in. There's maybe even a hint of Fahrenheit in there too, with its endlessly snowing urban landscape and weird plot tangents that never really matter. If Bloodlines 2 had launched alongside them, or the rest of the mid-2000s' janky "cinematic" games, it might have fared better – but after decades of development hell, this just feels like a broken relic.