Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood

Reviewing (mostly) every game (or DLC) in my library, part 626: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆☆☆ (7/10) In [i]Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood[/i] (“OfB”), the protagonist returns home expecting to settle their grandfather’s affairs, only to slowly uncover his connection to the local supernatural scene. It’s much smaller-scaled and more grounded than Night Road, but it gives the story a more grounded horror vibe that works well for the setting. I’m really glad OfB has 173 Steam reviews at this time of writing. I’ve quickly glanced through all of them, and each review dismantles the game pretty well, so you should do your research and know what you’re getting into. I broadly agree with all the reviews, good and bad, making me settle on giving the game a 7/10. Dattilo’s strengths clearly lie in mechanical flexibility, atmosphere, and immersive detail, especially when depicting vampirism, violence, and the more intimate horror elements of the setting. At the same time, many of the criticisms are completely fair. The tone can feel uneven and unintentionally goofy, the cast often lacks strong personalities, several mechanics feel underutilized, and the ending feels noticeably rushed. [b]As a…

The best part in my opinion was the Salem romance. It's short (because the game itself is quite short) but I really enjoyed it. It hit very close to home for me so probably won't appeal as much to everyone though. If you like the idea of reconnecting with a teenage crush or "one that got away" I think you'll really like this. As a VTM game it's probably just ok. You don't really even play a a vampire hunter, more like a normal person who may or may not become one by the end of the game. The short length also means you don't get enough XP to build your character as much as I would have liked. The parts I liked definitely outweighed the parts I didn't.

Good story, interesting investigation and character interaction options. As much as Hunter investigtation as it is Vampire story.

Considering the absolute glut of good VtM RPGs, this is fine. I liked the writing, I enjoyed the fact it's progressive in both letting you be queer, and having multiple queer characters in it. For some reason though, it won't let me romance more than one character without forcing me to either choose one or none of them. ♥♥♥♥ that. It's a text-based RPG. You can't get away with saying it would be too much work.

Out for Blood takes place at the edge of the World of Darkness. Everything here is much lower on the power scale than is usual. But things here are still deeply personal. The game shines with its large varieties of endings.

Well this one was disappointing. Four fifths was build up and fluff and then there was a mad and disjointed rush to the conclusion at the end. It kind of read to me like the author got writers block or was procrastinating/padding for word count and then kind of forced an ending actually. But I'm just speculating... Descriptions were unnecessarily detailed with padding. Connections between characters seemed lacking or rushed. Character motives were lacking. Decisions seemed to narrow to a handful of not very logical choices as time went by. These decisions seemed to miss options the text itself suggested were there (e.g. at one point you have a flashbang grenade, and the text suggests you could use it in an ambush, but then there was no option to do it. Instead a bunch of other largely sub-optimal choices were presented). Stat checks seemed to require very high scores (or alternatively the scores don't matter and you will always win or lose reagrdless maybe, I'd have to replay to confirm and I don't wish to do so) and often repeatedly focussed on only a handful of skills, with repeated options for the SAME STATS in the available decisions. So I can choose two different…