Criminal violation just means the cops are after you. Holster weapons and hide/change areas until it dies out.
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Hey Era, Let's Play/Replay Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
- Thread starter Dusk Golem
- Start date
Yeah, you're basically at the tip of the spear, and even MORE combat. There's still a lot left. Also,
good luck with Ming Xiao ]:D
Well she wasn't that bad, just took forever to defeat lol. Maybe I needed to shoot off the tentacles more. Anyway now to kick LaCroix's ass.
It indeed does, just went through it yesterday. Took me an hour or so and I hated every minute of it. I really hope this is something they avoid in the sequel.
Also I've been thinking if the atmosphere and horror is as strong as in the first game, I might be having some real difficulties playing the game because of modern graphics. Especially if 3rd person perspective is not possible, it's been helping me through some of the toughest spots.
Edit: So happy this game has the console, just had to give myself two more cameras for the Model Citizen quest. For some reason Imalia only gave me one, maybe it was because of my inventory was full.
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I beat this last night.
Gonna pre-face my thoughts with this. The endgame has terrible game design. However, the little bit at the end was worth seeing through. The story was engaging enough I wasn't willing to walk away.
I've seen people allude to it here and there in the thread and they aren't kidding. The game really expects you to go all in on combat at the end. I wasn't a fan of the handful of times the game did that early on but I felt the encounter design was well done enough to warrant them.
This throws the kitchen sink at you near the end and I wasn't into that. I had built my character with melee combat in mind at the end but the amount of dudes with Celerity and machine guns hit and running me was enough to wear my patience thin.
So I'm not proud of it but I ended up god moding my way to the end. Now that I understand what's in store at the end of the game I know in another play through (which I plan on doing at least one more time before 2 drops) how to prepare myself so I don't have to cheese it that way cynically. I just didn't have the patience to do it with the character I had built.
Here's specifically my issue. They ask you to run these massive areas full of dudes and the problem is two fold in my mind. It feels as if they forget what was fun about the game for these last few areas. Being able to sneak through areas and puzzle or stealth your way past unnecessary encounters goes out the window. Personally, that's my favorite approach in any game similar to this one.
Then the combat itself is not interesting enough to warrant these huge assault style maps. The gun play, even in 2004, was clunky. I also used the console to max out my combat stuff just to throughly explore the final levels to see if my assumption was wrong and there was to do the stealth and puzzle thing I like doing in these games. And disappointingly there wasn't. But even with the gun skills maxed out it felt very weak and unsatisfying to engage in fights at range. The melee combat was not nearly deep enough to really make you feel powerful running into a room with 5 or 6 sword guys while two other range guys are chipping away at you constantly. It doesn't help a lot of the areas you encounter stuff like this in is very narrow and has more enemies in corners you can't see them in (unless you have the ability that lets you see auras all over the map.)
All in all I really do love this game. But those last 3 or 4 missions were not to my liking in terms of design approach. I spent most the game sneaking, hacking, lockpicking and talking my way through a bunch of the scenarios. And when it did force you to fight, the pacing to the level and encounters they set up made sense for the areas you were in. These last few areas felt like they were wanting to pad out length with these lengthy encounters but they were more frustrating than anything. Not impossible! But not something I personally had the patience for.
Like I said, not proud I relied on godmoding. But I don't think there's any shame if you go this route if what you ultimately decide, like myself, at the end is just to see what's in that damn sarcophagus.
Speaking of
Game is good! I will beat the game on it's own terms without god moding another day. This is def something that begs multiple playthroughs cuz MAN the RP options are fun to explore.
Gonna pre-face my thoughts with this. The endgame has terrible game design. However, the little bit at the end was worth seeing through. The story was engaging enough I wasn't willing to walk away.
I've seen people allude to it here and there in the thread and they aren't kidding. The game really expects you to go all in on combat at the end. I wasn't a fan of the handful of times the game did that early on but I felt the encounter design was well done enough to warrant them.
This throws the kitchen sink at you near the end and I wasn't into that. I had built my character with melee combat in mind at the end but the amount of dudes with Celerity and machine guns hit and running me was enough to wear my patience thin.
So I'm not proud of it but I ended up god moding my way to the end. Now that I understand what's in store at the end of the game I know in another play through (which I plan on doing at least one more time before 2 drops) how to prepare myself so I don't have to cheese it that way cynically. I just didn't have the patience to do it with the character I had built.
Here's specifically my issue. They ask you to run these massive areas full of dudes and the problem is two fold in my mind. It feels as if they forget what was fun about the game for these last few areas. Being able to sneak through areas and puzzle or stealth your way past unnecessary encounters goes out the window. Personally, that's my favorite approach in any game similar to this one.
Then the combat itself is not interesting enough to warrant these huge assault style maps. The gun play, even in 2004, was clunky. I also used the console to max out my combat stuff just to throughly explore the final levels to see if my assumption was wrong and there was to do the stealth and puzzle thing I like doing in these games. And disappointingly there wasn't. But even with the gun skills maxed out it felt very weak and unsatisfying to engage in fights at range. The melee combat was not nearly deep enough to really make you feel powerful running into a room with 5 or 6 sword guys while two other range guys are chipping away at you constantly. It doesn't help a lot of the areas you encounter stuff like this in is very narrow and has more enemies in corners you can't see them in (unless you have the ability that lets you see auras all over the map.)
All in all I really do love this game. But those last 3 or 4 missions were not to my liking in terms of design approach. I spent most the game sneaking, hacking, lockpicking and talking my way through a bunch of the scenarios. And when it did force you to fight, the pacing to the level and encounters they set up made sense for the areas you were in. These last few areas felt like they were wanting to pad out length with these lengthy encounters but they were more frustrating than anything. Not impossible! But not something I personally had the patience for.
Like I said, not proud I relied on godmoding. But I don't think there's any shame if you go this route if what you ultimately decide, like myself, at the end is just to see what's in that damn sarcophagus.
Speaking of
Yeah, okay. That was a great way to end that story. I should have seen it coming. Cabbie being Cain was a nice touch, too. The Anarchs are just cooler. Why would anyone ever side with the Prince?!
Game is good! I will beat the game on it's own terms without god moding another day. This is def something that begs multiple playthroughs cuz MAN the RP options are fun to explore.
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They had to shove it out the door, hence the oddness at the end (and all the bugs).
Can you imagine how (more) great it would have been with 6 more months in the oven?
BL2 should be amazing
So, did you open it?
Bought the game on GoG since it's the only version with cloud saves and that's a big deal to me since I'll be switching between my desktop and my laptop constantly.
A few questions, what are the most useful skills that I should try to max out? And are there any useless ones?
Is it worth it to spend experience points on firearms?
btw I just started the game without any mods since the GoG version comes prepatched with the unofficial patch, is that ok?
A few questions, what are the most useful skills that I should try to max out? And are there any useless ones?
Is it worth it to spend experience points on firearms?
btw I just started the game without any mods since the GoG version comes prepatched with the unofficial patch, is that ok?
Get your computers and security up. Firearms is good to, melee or weapons if your clan focuses on it (like gangrel or brujah) Research is good to.
Yes GOG patches are fine.
Yeah, I get it. Being told to kick it out the door because Activision didn't want to spend any more money on it in a post CoD world makes all the sense in the world to me. Just bit of a let down in terms of quality whiplash.
Yes. By mistake, however. I picked the option I thought would be me walking out with the key to prevent the prince from ever opening the Sarcophagus so it'd just be this big moot point. But my guy walked over and opened the damn thing leaving me like "Hey! I didn't choose that!" But it's okay. I got a good laugh out of it. Like I said, now that I know what's in store for me at the end... Next time.
Yeah, it's all quite understandable if you know the behind the scenes reasons (thanks activision), but the huge combat focus makes for quite the whiplash indeed. I already disliked some of these earlier sections though they were indeed better designed, the astrolite one is all right because they do let you stealth your way through it if you know what you're doing. But then you have sections like the warrens which are a mess as well. But the truth is that Bloodlines doesn't have good combat or stealth at all, it's the RP that I find to be so enjoyable. And the game giving you the impression that it'll let you get through these moments with your other stats only for that to turn out to be a lie is its biggest sin. (again thanks activision)
So hey, I say there's no shame in godmoding your way through these parts for sure. I still choose to do it sometimes.
And yet it somehow it still manages to be my favourite WRPG ever. Funny how that goes.
Anyway, do you think you'll use the Plus patch for your second playthrough? It doesn't fix all of the game's flaws but it does restore some of the content they were forced to cut, I think it's rather interesting.
Without a doubt! Now that I've seen it vanilla with the scripting fixes (even if I did find some doors that wouldn't open I had to noclip through) I wanna see the restored and fan content it adds.
Did that BS last night. Had to do multiple quick saves and hiding to get my health up. Don't even know how many tries it took, but it felt forever.
Cool! I haven't played Plus yet in its more recent iterations but apparently it has recently added some shortcuts that let you skip some of that forced combat, so I'm really curious to find out how that changes the experience.
Especially if you're melee. I managed to cheese him with guns after a few tries tho, I thought it was kind of fun even though less ideal with by build. He dealt more damage than me, but making use of the environment for cover did the trick. He's pretty dumb.
My solution to that, and this was before I ever opened up the console on the game, was to get new armor and the best weapon I could find. I had the fireaxe and armor. Just spammed blood heal, buff and presence and stay on his ass until he was dead.
Bloodbuff chip damage and cornering him where I could just knife him to death without him zooming away are what worked for me.
Yeah, I think that's how you're supposed to do it. GOG currently uses 10.2 so I guess you just need to make sure you install a version that's that or higher, it's at 10.3 atm.
edit: here's a tutorial https://www.gog.com/forum/vampire_t...asquerade_bloodlines_patches_mods_etc/post187
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Appreciate it. I installed it and added the plus version I decided to switch to my gog copy because of the clouds saves Do I need to add the perimeter that's in the link ?
If you use gog galaxy, yes. Otherwise if you were to launch the game through it it wouldn't work correctly, I think you'd be launching the unpatched game. That's how it works on Steam too.
As long as you use the correct shortcut on your desktop it should be fine though. That's also the one you'd be using if you went with the direct download.
But I think Galaxy is what adds cloud saves in the first place, correct? So yeah, I'd just do all that to be safe.
Bishop Vick is probably one of the few fights I didn't have an issue with...but I guess that's the benefit of blood magic as a Tremere.
For something interesting, in each of your apartments, use noclip and fly around to find some interesting things beyond the walls.
I found the tv reporter sitting in a room, is that what you mean or is there even more?
Finally sat down and played some over the weekend, managed to get to Downtown.
I was glad that Ocean House Hotel was still able to put me on edge, despite the fact I'd been through it before and remembered it pretty well. I was surprised to see the game get creepy during one of the side-quests as well, I'm hoping that there's some more side-quests that capture that feeling.
I was glad that Ocean House Hotel was still able to put me on edge, despite the fact I'd been through it before and remembered it pretty well. I was surprised to see the game get creepy during one of the side-quests as well, I'm hoping that there's some more side-quests that capture that feeling.
Oh there is. But then the terror turns over to annoyance so it's a mixed bag.
I didn't have much issue with Vick, but I had put points into guns, melee, and defense. Used guns until I finished him with melee. Melee was actually easier since you can disrupt him and knock him down.
I have no idea how'd I play the game without Blood Heal though. How else would you heal? Not to mention I still haven't found a way to protect against aggravated damage. The guy in the sewer I had a harder time with since he kept closing in with melee attacks.
I have no idea how'd I play the game without Blood Heal though. How else would you heal? Not to mention I still haven't found a way to protect against aggravated damage. The guy in the sewer I had a harder time with since he kept closing in with melee attacks.
Bloodpacks and drinking it out of your enemies before you killed them.
I didn't realize Bloodpacks healed instead of just giving you blood. Makes more sense why there are many options for buying them. They are basically potions then. I guess going without Blood Heal is possible.
Not really possible to drink blood from the adds in the Vick fight. Though I never tried drinking blood from the "sick" enemies. It would be nice if it actually hurt you since blood drinking is what spread the disease.
Not really possible to drink blood from the adds in the Vick fight. Though I never tried drinking blood from the "sick" enemies. It would be nice if it actually hurt you since blood drinking is what spread the disease.
Hostile humans are easy to feed and heal from in the combat stages (as you'll probably have unarmed combat points by then), only places I felt that bloodpacks were obligatory were later when you didn't have any humans around. At that point, I definitely stocked up (with elder vitae being a complete heal even through a bar full of aggravated damage).
And drinking from the sick people will definitely hurt you! It's very easy to be surrounded and beaten to death once you start succumbing to the chain vomiting.
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Ouch, and using an unpatched save file with the patch isn't recommended either...
He luckily was playing the GOG version, so he at least was using an older version of the patch. He just didn't get all the newer goodies.
Ah okay, the GOG version's patch isn't that old. It's understandable that he didn't notice then, I thought it was strange that he managed to run the game unpatched in the first place. Haha.
I knew something was fishy when his downtown dance club didn't have a turnstile. Still, this was his first time through and he had been experiencing a lot of glitches and crashes so he isn't as into it as I was hoping.
Even with 1.2 basic (the GOG version has this one), there were still times where I'd get stuck in a door or on a corpse and have to noclip and pray this wouldn't hard-freeze the game. Sometimes getting stuck in doors could be solved by reopening them, at least. Save often!
I almost got stuck in the Downtown apartment elevator even on 1.3. And the Sabbat location late in the game was really bad for colliding bodies and debris.
There, beaten. Did not open it, and the ending (Anarch) was pretty amusing. XD The credit song is so damn good (in fact the music overall was pretty good in this).
So yeah, despite being a frustrating experience at times (whether it is a bugs or the huge focus of the clunky combat later on), this game is still pretty good in many ways, and I am glad that I finally got it out of my backlog lol. I'll see if I do another run later with a Malkavian, but regardless if I do that or not, I am definitely excited for Bloodlines 2 now.
So yeah, despite being a frustrating experience at times (whether it is a bugs or the huge focus of the clunky combat later on), this game is still pretty good in many ways, and I am glad that I finally got it out of my backlog lol. I'll see if I do another run later with a Malkavian, but regardless if I do that or not, I am definitely excited for Bloodlines 2 now.
Agreed, I dig the tracks quite a bit. It's pretty cool that they've got the original composer back for the sequel too.
I am playing as a Ventrue, should I slowly start pumping into combat for the late gameÉ
I was Ventrue in my first playthrough and the answer is: Absolutely, yes. I went for Ranged Combat and managed okay, but it does get fairly combat-heavy in the last quarter of the game, with the occasional 'boss'-like fight popping up before that to mess you up.
I've used ranged a bit and I find that it seems to do crap damage and super inaccurate compared to melee, does that change?
You get exponentially better guns in later parts of the game, and the effect of higher Firearms on your handling can't be ignored.
The Steyr Aug bullpup with maxed Firearms has literally 0 recoil, so your crosshair becomes Pointer of Death.