 I was excited for Vampyr before I even knew about it. Don't Knot Entertainment's previous game, Life is Strange, was my favourite game of 2015 and my all-time favourite narrative telltale-styled game, boy am I using game a lot. That comes with certain perks, like putting the developer's studio on my radar and earning its preferential treatment where my wallet is concerned. But the subject matter of Don't Knot's next project was Vampires, possibly my favourite fantasy creatures of the night only served to excite me further. My excitement was contained for the most part, while I saw a trailer or two and read the officials' synopsis of the game, I didn't sift through every piece of information and content released by the developers as the June 5th release date came ever nearer. And finally there it was, and I'd pre-ordered it as well. Nothing I'm generally against, but did anyway, because I knew I would be getting it, good or bad, and I absolutely don't mind 5-year reward of discount. I played through it for 5 days, and I had fun, finishing a 23 hour long playthrough in 5 days is something I only do when I enjoy a game quite a bit, and when I want to get a video out very much. But enjoying a game doesn't always mean the game is perfect, or even great. Fun or not, Vampire has some issues. Let's begin with those before I jump into what has become my mother's uprandi, an inexhaustible well of positivity. For the first day of Vampire's release, I had the worst FPS drops in Stutter imaginable. It's insane how bad things were actually. I'll be playing at mid-range graphics at 50-60 FPS when all of a sudden a scene began and my FPS dropped to 7. Yes, 7. That very specific number. Why 7? Because I guess 7 is the number where my computer just decides to die with this game anyway. That did change once Nvidia's Vampire related patch updated. Nevertheless, as I played further, I will still occasionally get these unfortunate FPS drops for just a few seconds. The problem was most annoying whenever it happened in combat, but on that later, whenever you defeat mobs, you can look forward to all of them respawning come the following night. Defeating mobs, whether Skull or Vampire Hunters, makes for a miniscule amount of experience awarded further, which makes the whole battling them quite unpleasant to be honest. Furthermore, combat, while not a weak point of the game, isn't enjoyable enough to offer much in the way of entertainment. After the third time you've swept the streets of London with the same patches of mobs all around. I will note that some of the mobs change later on in the game, but no one near enough to make traversing the city feel more like a chore and less like an exciting way to lengthen your stay in 1918's play grid in London. This game is either too hard or too easy, depending on whether you're willing to feed on many of the citizens or show restraint. But not to have forsaken the traditional difficulties for a policy that while perfectly sensible on a narrative level doesn't play out as well as I hoped. The very first tip I saw in the game said something along the lines of The difficulty of the game is not set. The more you feed, the easier it will get. Which sounds quite in line with the whole vampire power fantasy, but I don't think it works all that well in practice. Open world or linear? No, can't seem to decide. While London's map shows a wholesome city, we're nevertheless constrained by the lack of elementary mechanical conveniences such as jumping and blinking between doors, and we're constrained by such lunacy as doors locked on one side only to be unlocked on the other. No, despite Dr Jarton's readability to blink from one place and to another. So unfortunate that he be constrained by such dreadful things as iron doors, if only he could have reached between the iron bars and unlocked the door. But no, alas. Granted, I rarely went exploring, I'm much more into following the linear story myself, but if you prefer greater freedom, this game doesn't offer it. It in fact suffers from the lack of it. If you find your way into areas you're not supposed to visit until later, you'll have the options to speak with citizens about topics you really know nothing about at this earlier point, but which you will know about only after you've finished quite a bit of the main story. The store page proclaims feed to survive, but, and here's a very nasty catch, you don't at any point have to feed, unless we count the very beginning of the game which is completely outside of our control and is a cutscene. When you feed, you gain experience, sometimes enormous quantities of it, but you never have to feed to survive, not unless we count the very beginning of the game, or the combat mechanic of staggering your enemies so that you can bite them in order to gain life and blood for your vampiric abilities, which is nothing like what the tagline leads you to believe. Buggy animations, some of them especially at lower settings. Less central characters, hairs would often look very weird and it doesn't help talking with someone whose face is rendered only three quarters of the way. That might be because of the lower graphics, I haven't seen it happen on any of the high end streams I've seen, but there again I've only seen one of those streams or maybe two, so that's not exactly a statistically relevant piece of data, is it? At any rate, these are my black marks, the big six issues I have with vampire. What about the good bits? Stick around to find out. This episode has not been brought to you by audible.com, audible.com, a place where you buy books, just like many others. Say one thing about vampire's London, say it's atmospheric. With an excellent fog, lightning and five different boroughs with their own unique looks, London is neither too samey nor do its lesser parts look so different from one another as to make you forget that you're supposed to be in one single city. In short, London looks excellent on a visual level. The music is Osu, words of an excellent commendation. I think music and atmosphere go hand in hand, particularly in this game. The music I can only describe as a masterpiece, this is so far my favourite game soundtrack of the year. I suspect only Austin Winery's Panasaga 3 soundtrack might have the juice necessary to overwhelm the smooth sounds of violin and cello, which dominate vampire's soundtrack as well as an eerie choir which sounds whenever you start drinking someone's blood in the shadows. It is truly some creepy creepy stuff and I couldn't recommend it any more. Through music and sound direction, there were times, especially early on, when I was on the edge of my seat, I remember visiting Morgue very very early on in the game during its second act, at the very beginning of that second act in fact, which really was, it kept me completely enthralled. In that moment it reminded me the most of Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines, a game I never finished but which I have very fond and very very scared memories of. For Vampire to work despite its problems, Dr Jonathan Reed needed to be the heart and soul of the game. In that aspect, Don't Know's work has been met with great success. Jonathan is a healer forced to take a life to survive and this conflict hounds him through the rest of Vampire. Most importantly, it's done very very well. He's the perfect man to face both his inner and outer conflicts, whether battling his blood thirst or the epidemic does the reason for everything going down in 1918's London. Dr Jonathan Reed is an excellent choice for a protagonist to ground this story in early 20th century realism, which is I think quite difficult to achieve. They have done it nevertheless and he has an excellent voice actor, but on that later on the story. If I had to describe it in a sentence, I would say Vampire is delightfully melodramatic in just the right way for Vampire fiction. We've got all the staples of the Vampire fantasy subgenre, romance, moral dilemmas, oh the dilemmas, several factions at odds and ends with you and one another. And a disease that plays all of London, that last one is important, since it is the disease running through the city that's really the antagonist of this whole adventure. I think it works and it works well. There's also between 50 and 60 voiced NPCs, which are the lot to the world. There are sorry demands of conversations to be had with all of them and I won't lie, some are better than others. More relevant to the plot, adding more to the world, to characters' backgrounds, to main characters' backgrounds and all that. Others, eh, not so much, I didn't speak and investigate every single one of the citizens. There's about 10 to 12 13 citizens in each borough of London and there are 4 boroughs in the game. I personally cannot wait, now that I have done my mostly peaceful playthrough of London, to just go bash it insane and drink every single citizen's blood. That will be at least a tad entertaining, I think. The voice acting, it's very very good. I love the voice direction, I love the actors, especially Jonathan, His Sire and Elizabeth Ashbury. Sounded fantastic, all of them, as did several other characters I won't mention for fear of spoilers. Excellent, brilliant voice actors on this and once again Doctor Reed's voice actor are the lead, he deserves all the commendations I can give him. The collectibles. Collectibles rarely interest me enough. Last time that happened was, weirdly enough, when I was playing Shadow of War. But Vampire's collectibles were really quite interesting to read and I went out of my way to collect more than just those standing on my way. There's a lot of interesting, Dracula inspired backstory and just general vampiric missiles inspired. A lot of folklore sent into these missiles between characters in these articles I really enjoyed quite a lot of them and I especially enjoyed a little Easter egg, a copy of Dracula which was signed by Bram Stoker for one of the characters and it made me think that perhaps in this world Bram Stoker was inspired quite likely by one of the characters in the game, which I wouldn't be at all surprised. The mech. Ah, it's the combat, isn't it? It's got good sides and bad ones. The bad side is repetitive and it's boring for that very reason. The good parts, there's enough skills to make it bearable, barely bearable. Even the boss battles, with an exception of two, don't do nearly enough to entertain. There is, however, a certain thrill and pride I took whenever defeating a group of mobs without taking any damage, while executing my combos perfectly. There's the tools to make it a bit more enjoyable, depending on your playstyle. Which is fine, I guess, but it is not in itself something that makes you want to do more fighting. You rush through the battles and that is not the linchpin of a solid combat system. It is the linchpin of a dull, completely run-of-the-mill action, role-playing game combat, which I was not particularly happy with. I was not entertained with it, not for too long at all. It is probably the only reason why I will take a lot more time in replaying this game than I otherwise would have. I originally planned to replay this twice, once being a goody-two-shoes and the second time being a complete and utterly villain. But no, the combat is quite enough to, um, yeah. It doesn't leave a great taste in your mouth, let's just leave it at that. In the end, who is this game for? You will like this, if you're a fan of vampire fiction. Whether in the form of novels, games or movies, there is quite a bit for all three, I think. Unless you're a fan of vampire demascrate bloodlines, in which case, nothing will ever make you happy again. Furthermore, you might find this game fulfilling if you care about choices, although conversations don't offer you such freedom of choice as life is strange or traditional role-playing games such as those by Bioware. The choice in vampire is all about choosing which citizens to spare and which ones to eat. Yum. You will dislike it if you're into open-world games, if you enjoy deep combat and if you don't have the patience for hours upon hours of conversations. Stay clear, all your combat junkies. If I had a gun pressed to my head and had to give vampire a score, I'd describe it as the poster child for a 7.5 or maybe even an 8 out of 10, with some caveats, the ones I already mentioned. I enjoyed it. I really did. I am happy with what I got for my money, whether you will or only you can say. Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, tell your mom, tell your dad, tell your kids, tell everyone. Well everyone, and anyone willing to listen, scream it out of rooftops. I leave you with one question. What is glass but tortured sand? What is salt but a call to arms? What is hate but jilted love? What is life but death pending?