The Vampyr Review

My head cannon for the sudden romance with lady Ashbury is that her mesmerise level is 20 where as yours is about 3 at that stage of the game and she basically hypnotised you into falling in love with her.

It's nearly 2021 and still NO ONE even MENTIONS the 9ft tall werewolf

Wait, London was bombarded in WWI? Aren't we mixing it with WWII here?

This is not the first game by dontnod with actions mechanics either btw. Remember me had combat, though it is true this is their first RPG.

The music... I remember the Obscure days.

I hope you mention the music.

I lvoed the game myself, but one of the biggest issues Jacob adressed here I agree with. The game posses certain duality of its nature and to me it seems like gmae was run by two teams while team A was doing world building, character and story writting to make it narrative driven experience it is while the team B was... well the fight club.

Thinking about the fact, that 90% of all combat in the game could have been effectively deleted without story being influenced at all, making such combat completely unnecesary confirms this theory of mine.

Combat feels forced and not only that but vampire hunters are not even considered humans, since (spoiler alert) th "good" ending where Jonathan didnt kill a single person ever since the woman he did in his blood hazed hunger state in the beggining does not count vampire hunters at all. Player could kill hundreds of them but hey, they are not in NPC story menu, they do not exist.

It does feel weird and sadly player who wants to enjoy the gmae have to accept this sort of dual world, where combat scenes are mostly just artificial filler to the game lenght and has zero lore or canonical value.

It all feels like big management boss came into office one day and was like "hmmm this vampire game looks neat but guys where is the sick vamp combat? needs more action according to our slaes team" and hence they jsut shoved it in.

Vampire in french is Vampire. That's the '' Ye old' french'' way of writting it.

So arpg is like the Witcher 3?

I loved Vampyr! Got it free in October on PSN in 2020 so very relatable setting

neat

Good review, one thing; London was bombed (blitzed) during WW2, not WW1.

This atrocious ending is the equivalent of S8 of Game of Thrones, it's so bad it retroactively ruins the entire thing.

In Sweden we say vampyr

dork

Brickface Beardo MacMann is such a common protagonist in games these days...I think game devs have daddy issues.

If the game has an ability that nearly breaks the game and makes it easy to play, and you need to actively ignore it to enjoy the game, then it’s not well designed. You can make any game more challenging if you ignore healing items or spells.

Honestly i found it funny how he mentioned no one noticing the werewolfes in what felt like every 3 or 4 minutes.

It'd be good to see a game use the npc stuff from this an watchdogs legion could make a very immersive experience if it was pulled off properly, kind of like a make your own adventure
Great review anyway just found your channel so subbed

Yeah, I made the regrettable choice of buying this game when it came out and got to experience the disappointment firsthand. Prior to release, people were really excited and full of speculation about how this could be the next great vampire game - instead, we got an ARPG disguised as a bad RPG with a few cool ideas and mechanics.

About to play this. Curious to see if I will bounce off it.

"But sometimes he'll just pull out a heater and ventilate you."

I love the fact that Johnny stays strapped. Because of his military background he has been trained with a gun, so when need be, he can pull out the yopper and lay them skals down.

jonathan had more chemistry with that main vampire hunter guy than he does with his 'love interest' lmao

Smelly boy

You dont need to drop the healing ability to make the combat fun.
If you play "Not even once" playthrough you gonna need it.

My first playthrough I finished lvl 24 on normal.
All enemies where lvl 35.

I find myself agreeing completely with how poorly the fantasy elements were stitched onto the setting. There's no way with how civilization has developed for vampires to remain hidden from public view in the 19th century coming into the 20th, and even then in many parts of the world they would still be somewhat of an open secret as legends which proof of existence holds weight, but haven't been officially recognised.
If you're into literature, a more tactful vampire fiction would be 'A Journey of Black and Red'. The story starts somewhere before the American Civil War and the writer really puts an effort in making sure the magical elements are carefully woven into the real American history story beats right up until the latest book ending late 19th century, as mounting events have finally strayed the mundane world enough for history books to probably not as useful any longer

Just finished Vampyr after watching your vid years back. Gotta say, the whole 'Choose which citizens to nibble on' system is incredibly cool. You have to juggle your ethics and need for xp in order to survive the harder boss battles. Once the Docks started falling, I went in a chewing spree since I knew most of everyone else was gonna die, and spent the rest of the game not letting a single rando get sick

It's SUCH a tragedy this system wasn't expanded to the ending too, as an ending with lots of narrative webbing could have been a real game changer for RPG games, but I guess it was not to be.
If you wanna know more about that system, I watched a GDC talk called Narrative Legos from the guy who heads Irrational games. It's a good watch and is DEFINITELY a system I look forward to seeing.

"John you son of a b"🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Vampyr is indeed a game that exists, it is a game, one of the games out there right now, would I say its as gamey as other games? Eh, its not as gamey but it is indeed a game

Ok Sean quest has another ending...
You can turn Sean into a full vampire.
Also, this game makes more sense if you apply Vampire Masquerade rule sets to it, so a lot of inconsistency with some characters could be flushed out by compare characters, Johnathan sister could be consider a malkavian vampire while Jhonathan would be a toreador.
Malkavians deal with madness, so it isn't so far off to think that the sisters just got insane due to her mental condition after death.

Um I just wanted to point out with his sister there was that curse of whatever it's explained close to the end of the game where female vampires during the return of the queen who share the same blood as the queen (because Jonathan was bitten by the queens son and he bit his sister so they share the queens blood I think) go all crazy and insane so there was no reasoning with her, also his mom doesn't just disappear actually if you killed alot of people his sister kills their mom but if you didn't then he ask her to release their mother and she tells their mom to run off home. I find alot of times reviewers complain about something but it's really they missed a piece of information so yeah I just wanted to correct that.

Honestly this game feels more like VTM inspired. For instance, with the game VTM Bloodhunt, there is open war in the streets and Prague is in lockdown. Human society still doesn't' know about vampires outside of the hunters and second inquisition, even when it's open war in the streets between the camarilla and the anarchs. Any masquerade breachers are hunted down and brutall murdered by the camarilla, the anarchs are brutally slaughtering the camarilla, the Entity (second inquisition soldiers) have locked down prague and set up outposts and use red gas to harm vampires (humans can't exactly see it or be effected by it and they know things like the church has been set ablaze and some bombings happened, setting them to believe this force is here to investigate terrorism probably) while also having themselves caught between the camarilla and anarchs war. Now, to be fair, the gun fights and whatnot in bloodhunt are all over the place rather than just around the corner from peoples houses (though they can be), and it's much more modern than this game, so the way this game does it is a little more awkward than bloodhunts way of doing it. But looking at it that way, it's not too bad.

You forgot the best option with Sean. You can turn him back to human for 500 Xp.

If I have to hear this mf act like they don’t explain beasts are a lesser version of the Vulkod species of vampire I’m gonna brain blast

The Vulkods are the “werewolves”. Although not true werewolves, they are an evolutionarily offshoot of the vampiric blood line to take on a much more beastly form. Fergal was higher up in the evolutionary hierarchy of the race. One at his status can remain in a form that transitions between both humanoid and beast. To where they have the strength of the beast, but remain with most of their intellect and knowledge.

VtM Bloodlines still remains the King of vampire games

You missed a lot in the story but the ending is total ass. I only killed murders, gang leaders, terrorist… people who, if left alive, would have definitely made London an objectively worse place to live and killed more people. And what did I get for this careful forethought? Told I was a bad boy who couldn’t control myself, so my “love” threw herself into a fire. Wtf man.

"Nobody ever mentions anything about the 9 feet tall werewolves!"
Literally the first NPCs you can talk to: You have to be careful at night. All these people were killed by the sewer dog, a wolf like creature with daggers as fangs that kills at night and has been terrorizing london for a long time
Lady Ashbury just after your first fight with one of the werewolves: What you fought was a kind of vulkod that was consumed by his internal beast and transformed into that monster
A huge bunch of the collectibles: Hey, look, what normal people know as werewolves are in fact different types of vampires and here's a huge amount of info about it

YEP I’ve played this game 3 times and not once used a gun

I’m half way and let me tell you what to expect in 2023. SET EXPECTATION

even tho it’s a vampire game ITS NOT listen

FIRST this is Sherlock Holmes/Noir detective game we’re you spent 40-70% of talking (lots of talking) and understanding the socially of each district. It’s fun and engaging also reading lots to fully get it.

SECOND The combat is a worse version of Bloodborn we’re you have a sword and gun but feels extremely clunky and slow. I don’t know if I recommend hard for that idk how people can try hard on this game is very mid on combat and you fight decent amount but not lots.

THIRD you are a Doctor and find savage parts to help people when there sick and the small sand box is fine. The atmosphere and lighting is really good with the music hitting.

FOURTH You are a Vampire now your a vampire lol but at a cost cuz the game doesn’t want you be a vampire really. It’s weird but it works somehow but if you were hoping for a cool OP vampire you won’t get it really.

Once you have that mindset it helps did for me when I pick it back up for the second time.

I just picked this game up for $8 on psn. I think that's the perfect price for a game like this, and I think I'll enjoy it. I just wish there was one decent vampire game out there. The last time I played a good vampire game was Blood Omen, and that was over 20 years ago...

Some of the saddest characters in the game are carol price and carina billow

I let Sean live in vampyr by letting him suck johnathan’s blood. Nothing bad happened to the docks.

Pretty late to the party here, but I'd always took it that the civilians believed the vampires hunters were a militia brought in to enforce the flu quarantine.

And I always took the people being oblivious to the chaos around them because they were being quarantined to their verious hubs

There's actually 5 vampire species in the game. Ekons, Skal, Vulkod, Ichor, (which Jonathan notes are only female) and Nimrods. Technically 6 if you count "The Disasters"

'Mary was not developed as a character' - I mean, she WAS kind of the main reason Johnathan wanted to find out what happened to him and who did it. I feel like that is enough development as a plot point.

Did everyone get the Dracula Easter Egg. “The Blood is the life Mr. Renfield.”