Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Gets Staked By Poor Reviews
- Bloodlines 2 launches after years of delays but faces backlash for stripped-down RPG mechanics.
- The game switched studios from Hardsuit Labs to The Chinese Room amid major creative team upheavals.
- Critics pan it as shallow; some praise its combat and atmosphere.
Jump to:
Undead, Undead, Undead
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is the long-awaited sequel to the cult classic vampire RPG from 2004 and it’s out now on all major platforms. However, critic and player reviews are already coming in that suggest this almost-cancelled sequel should have stayed in the grave.
Long delays and a shift in development studio follow Bloodlines 2 like a persistent shadow, and it’s cloaked the majority of players’ experiences in negativity, with comments calling out the complete lack of proper RPG elements and no inventory or weapons.
However, White Wolf, the publisher of the original Vampire: The Masquerade TTRPG, sees things in a different light: “To finally launch Bloodlines 2 is a landmark moment for White Wolf and for Vampire: The Masquerade,” said Marco Behrmann, White Wolf Executive Vice President and Bloodlines 2 Executive Producer, in a press release.
“It carries forward the spirit of what came before while standing on its own as something new. The supernatural hunting grounds of Seattle are open to players, feeling both new and familiar in all the right ways. I want to thank the excellent team at The Chinese Room for their vision and dedication in shaping this world of modern horror. They’ve built something atmospheric, intelligent, and true to the dark heart of Vampire: The Masquerade.”
Fangs For The Memories
Bloodlines 2 started development in 2015 under Hardsuit Labs, a Seattle-based studio that’s worked on the likes of Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Bioshock Infinite. When it was officially announced in 2019 the game was already being handled by its current publisher, Paradox Interactive (Cities: Skylines, Age of Wonders 4), as Paradox owns the Vampire: The Masquerade IP.
The game suffered multiple delays after the announcement, including removing the original Lead Narrative Designer Brian Mitsoda and Creative Director Ka’ai Cluney from the project in August 2020. Paradox posted the news in a since-deleted post on the official Bloodlines 2 site, in which it said “This was a joint decision made by the leadership of Hardsuit Labs and Paradox Interactive.”
Mitsoda was the lead writer for the original Bloodlines and expressed surprise in a statement at the time:
“That this came as a shock to me is underselling it. I’ve worked on Bloodlines 2 for almost five years. The story and main cast was initially conceived in my living room. I helped develop the pitch for Hardsuit Labs and helped pitch the project to Paradox in Las Vegas. I’ve been in charge of the narrative since the beginning, working long days and sometimes weekends to deliver a successor to Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and I’ve never been led to believe that I hadn’t succeeded.”
Paradox went dark for a while after this news, but returned with an (also now-deleted) post in February 2021 in which the publisher revealed it was removing Hardsuit Labs from development of the game, although it didn’t specify why.
“This game is very important to us and it has been an ambitious project from the very start,” the publisher said. “In order to meet our goals for it, we’ve come to the conclusion that a change is needed and, as a result, more development time is required.”
New Blood
In September 2023 Paradox revealed that Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 would be continued by UK-based The Chinese Room (Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, the recent Still Wakes the Deep). Studio Director Ed Daly released a statement at the time acknowledging the scope of Bloodlines 2 was The Chinese Room’s biggest game to date.
“Vampire: The Masquerade holds a special place in our hearts,” he said. “The story world’s dark setting filled with intricate narratives built on top of modern society perfectly fits our studio’s catalogue. Bloodlines 2 is our most ambitious project to date. Fans of the franchise have been eagerly awaiting this game, and we are up to the challenge.”
Paradox Interactive suffered multiple issues in 2024 with other games it was set to publish, postponing the likes of Cities: Skylines 2 and Prison Architect 2, and splitting from studio Harebrained Schemes (the Shadowrun trilogy) despite initially buying the studio for $7.5 million in 2018.
Other behind-the-scenes shake-ups contributed to further delays with Bloodlines 2, including a rebrand of the World of Darkness arm of the publisher in May this year. Initially acquired by Paradox from original company White Wolf in 2015 (which it, confusingly, later rebranded to), World of Darkness is a transmedia initiative that includes inviting game developers to submit games set in the World of Darkness universe. These are then sold via Itch, with devs receiving a 67% revenue share. There are currently 20 titles available, with the most recent slated for a full release in 2026.
I Vant to Drink Your Blood
Bloodlines 2 is finally out, but not before it experienced one final controversy: Paradox announced, in August this year, that two of the game’s vampire clans (Toreador and Lasombra) would be locked behind paid day one DLC.
Originally slated to release with just four (the first Bloodlines game had seven, including Toreador), Paradox caved to public blowback less than a month later and revealed that Toreador and Lasombra would be included in the base game at launch after all.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 puts players in the 100-year-old body of a powerful vampire called Phyre, who’s woken from slumber and somehow ends up with the voice of a vampire detective, Fabian (played by Ronan Summers), inside their head. Alongside choosing from the now-six available clans, players can also upgrade and unlock vampire powers like teleportation and mind control.
Yet, players are finding the game to have a dearth of true role-playing elements, and are using reviews to also lambast Paradox and The Chinese Room for making a mess of the game promised in early reveals.
“Action RPG, right? Action is meh, RPG where? There are no stat checks, no inventory. You should be ashamed to call that an ability tree. Clans give you a few extra lines but they’re about as deep as a puddle. I guess letting players make real choices is illegal now,” reads one recent player review on Steam.
“No weapons? NO STATS? NO INVENTORY? Are they mental? ‘We removed everything you loved about the original, enjoy this sequel!’ If it’s not a true successor for the OG game, then they shouldn’t have named it as such,” reads another review.
A Light in the Darkness
However, while some players have acknowledged disappointment at Bloodlines 2 not being a worthy sequel, they’ve still found something to like.
“Honestly, if it had been called anything else, VtM: Seattle, VtM: Dishonored, VtM: ‘Insert Phrase Here,’ I think there may be less hate. I’m having fun with it. I like the art, combat is cool, it runs well – for me anyway, and there certainly are RPG elements in the game.”
Another positive review starts “Dialogue really isn’t there, you won’t use guns, or melee weapons, you won’t put points into attributes or anything,” before praising the combat: “The real winner for me is the combat, as you’ll be drop kicking enemies across rooms, tearing their throats out in executions, or even kicking their legs out from under them only to grab their head and slam it into the ground reducing it to pulp.”
“What’s here is pretty good, there’s even lite character customization. It should have been called something else though.”
or
