Tuesday 8 March 2022

Vampyr

"This is... despicable..."

It is 1918 and a new epidemic is spreading in London. As a doctor recently turned vampire it is up to you to save the city, or hurry it along to meet its demise. It's an interesting setup and exploring the map is great especially once you can unlock shortcut gates ala Dark Souls.

As to be expected the map is also peppered with enemies: other denizens of the night and a literal army of vampire hunters. Most importantly, if you play as a "good" doctor, they will constantly out level you. This is because combat nets you around 5xp per kill and doing little side quests gives you a few hundred while drinking a civilian can give you anywhere from 2000 to 6000 XP.  


Let me inspect your cold in that dark alley madam. Trust me, I'm a doctor.

Being out leveled is mainly a problem just at the start though, when you are a weak little vamp. Once you start improving your stamina (expect to dodge a lot) and get the blood shield skill (tip: improve stamina and get blood shield anyway) you can last longer in fights. Improve your weapons and you can start winning quicker.

Combat is a bit clunky and you probably never want to use the lock on feature but it is serviceable. You also will probably forget to use guns as I did, up until almost the end where they are super handy ("C" to toggle off hand) but  ultimately even finishing the game at level 26, I felt like an unstoppable powered up super vamp without killing a single innocent. Erm I mean civilian.

One of my favorite parts about the game is it goes out of the way to show you all the good and bad parts of many of the civilians. Do you actually slay the serial killer? The gang boss? The mother who abuses her daughter? The guy trying to kill himself?

Not killing any means you are "good" somehow which suffers a severe disconnect to the number of armed hunters and monsters I actually killed in the course of the game. I wasn't a fan of the violin music either and while the story is decent there are problems with it too. Still a fun game though and one I'd recommend to those interested in the subject matter of vampires.

No comments:

Post a Comment