Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong Review
Imagine condensing the gothic, free-world of Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines into an RPG that's slower and more deliberate in its implementation and smothering it in the same type of character-driven, linear storytelling that was popularized in the Telltale's The Walking Dead series before leaving it to receive one last injection of blood from the iconic Puzzle game Myst. This is the ancestry that Vampire The Masquerade - Swansong is trying to match however it's struggling to establish its identity as a detective-based RPG through to the final. It's brimming with choices that are important in the abstract, but the emotions are as part of a larger story, and there's no idea how to do with these moments. In addition, its numerous ambiguous puzzles are usually poorly explained. All of this being in play you'd be mistaken to walk out of the dim, hazy room before it's final kiss.
The fun begins as you put on a fancy pair of vampire footwear and make your way to the Camarilla which is a posh vampire court located in the center of Boston. It's always exciting when you can play the main villain in an epic tale... however, this isn't the norm in this. Swansong swiftly positions you as the petty sheriff of its dark, shady underworld. The villains of the show are a generic group of heavily-armed police officers dressed in religious garb that unironically call themselves"the "Second Inquisition." And as if that weren't enough for you to have your eye turn, the show's leader is Stanford who's monologues are repetitive and monotonous that he is perceived as anything more than a cheesy cartoon character. In almost every scene he appears in, he spews out some phrase that suggests ending the reign of vampires forever Then he gets into talking in Latin until he is abruptly taken off screen. What, I thought that the whole premise of Masquerade was about obscuring vampires from the general public to protect them from the public? If he was a stronger villain then he'd tweet about them.
If you don't feel a connection to Vampire The Masquerade's story, Swansong does very little to draw you in. From the very beginning where you're bombarded by jargon-filled dialog between characters that already know what's happening and also have a relationship with one another , however, they don't really know you. Three of the characters you play as that you can play - Leysha, Emem, or Galeb was really one of them was an "in" for me, however, I was impressed by Galeb's overall swagger. He's Camarilla's point-man (if are acquainted to Vampire: The Masquerade The Masquerade - Bloodhunt Galeb's character is the same as the game's Ventrue Enforcer class). But he's not very relatable and for a significant amount of the game, his conversations are like you're at an evening party where everyone talks to each other , but nobody talks to you. The three characters each have distinct backstories that are tied to their place in the Camarilla's ladder, and at the very least, they're well voiced, but it's difficult to be sucked into their respective stories with a flurry of speed without setting the stage for the vampire realm that is fast being in danger due to The Second Inquisition.
Vampire The Masquerade - Swansong always threatens to become a good detective RPG. It could have succeeded but because it constantly gets into its own ways. Its concept is interesting however its characters and villains lack a sense of humor and, as a result, the story's mediocre quality takes too long to get to its full potential. When you finally feel a bit invested in the three characters and their personal journeys to find a way out of the tense vampire underground Swansong is already at its climax. It could be better off when you play it again, because even the most brutally complicated puzzles aren't difficult to solve once. Once you've completed the game, you'll know what areas you should focus on at a particular level. the next step is to recognize the different paths that you might have chosen initially. It requires such the amount of dedication to be able to complete it to begin with that it may be too much from anyone else.
