Baying for Blood

Terra Arcanum review of
~ Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines ~
Published 28th Jan, 2005

What's in the Box?

Bloodlines is a great Action Role-Playing Game. Wait a minute, what did I just call it? "Action Role-Playing Game"? What is one of those, exactly? Well, an Action Role-Playing Game is a game which has more RPG aspects than most, but where combat is a pre-requisite, an inherent part of the game. You can't avoid it. You can't sneak around it. You can't talk your way out of it. It means quite simply that if your character doesn't have any combat skills at all, you can't finish the game. Now of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing... On the other hand, it's not necessarily a good thing either. It all depends of course, on how much you like the combat...

But more on all of that later. Let's take a look at what's in the box first.

The gaming goodies

For our full-price copy of Troika Games Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines we get 3 cds in a hard case (which is a nice change from the flimsy paper covers some games come with these days) and a 63 page manual which explains all of the game's concepts and contains a full run-down on all the disciplines, skills, clans and sects you'll find in the game, as well as having a quick-key reference on the back (which I found came in quite handy when I was learning to play). While the same cover and back image adorns the box, cd cover and the manual, at least it maintains some consistency and is better than those that try to flog some other game on the back of their CD case.

Now it might be interesting to note at this point that Bloodlines isn't specifically called an "RPG" anywhere on the box other than on the back where the heading "A New Role-Playing Legend is Born" appears. I might be wrong but I thought it was standard practice by now to plaster the words "RPG" everywhere you could on any game that had even only the remotest of what might be called RPG elements. Instead, the paragraph on the back touts "story-driven quests as you explore an open world filled with side missions, multiple pathways and characters to interact with. Yours is a living world, even though you cease to be".

Wait! I'm wrong. Underneath the bottom left screenshot on the back is the text "Interact with mortals and other vampires in a world that reacts to clan, gender and dialogue in this deep, immersive RPG". Deep, immersive RPG huh? Well now, let's see how it lives up to those claims.

The World of Vampires

The gist of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is simple. You're a Vampire. A new one at that, recently sired "against the rules". The how and why of your creation is not the point however, as you quickly find yourself on your knees before the Prince of LA - a baby-faced Vampire called Sebastian LaCroix - in front of a crowd and about to be executed. Of course it'd be a pretty short game if it all ended there so, with a little help, you're spared and put into the service of the Jester Prince while your "creator" is made an example of.

LaCroix, Prince of Los Angeles and a local newspaper.

This is where Bloodlines begins. You have 7 clans to choose from, each of which nets you a variety of different skills or disciplines - Vampire Magic Powers. Typically, some of the disciplines are fairly irrelevant, doing nothing more than making others around you glow. Some of them however, can make the game in their own right by giving you the ability to move faster than a speeding bullet (literally) or disappear in full day- er.. night-light as you sneak around immune to discovery. Other disciplines - at their most powerful level - allow you the ability to kill with the click of a mouse by making people go insane and run around attacking others at random, causing mass suicide, making people explode in a mess of blood and gore, summoning powerful animals to fight for you or simply turning yourself into one. With each clan having a different set of three disciplines, your choice of clan provides for some fun in and of itself.

The character sheet is a fairly simple affair. As you progress through the game you earn "experience" for completing quests or missions. How much experience you gain can depends on just how you complete the mission. For the missions that have multiple solutions to them, you may find that sneaking through might net you three experience points, while blasting your way through may only net you one. These experience points can be spent on various abilities, the higher level the ability, the more experience you'll need to increase it. So while at the low levels you can easily spend 3 experience points to gain a point in say, hacking, later on it will cost you 12 points to take it to level 4 or 5. Obviously you'll need to save those points up if you truly want to excel at an ability and get into those hard to access computer networks or pick that high security lock... Provided of course that the lock can be picked (more on that later too).

One of the disciplines in action.

Alternatively you may find you'll receive other rewards for completing quests. Humanity is what stops Vampire's from simply becoming beastly animals, feeding on everything in sight. Every time you kill an innocent human (with emphasis on innocent) you'll lose a point of humanity and become closer to "the beast". Lose too much of your humanity and you go into a "frenzy", a crazy killing spree, attacking the first human in sight. Unfortunately, even though I fed on several hundred humans until their death, I always had 3 points of humanity remaining. At this point, I never lost another point of humanity from feeding on or killing an innocent. However, a low level of humanity only increases your chances of frenzying when you run low on blood. By keeping my blood supplies high it meant I never experienced a frenzy except in very extreme circumstances and even then, usually in the designated "combat zones" when I was seriously using my disciplines (add "combat zones" to the list of things I'll talk about later).

It was only right near the end of the game that I finally lost two more points of humanity when I broke someone's fingers during dialogue as part of a quest. Speaking of which, your level of humanity is also supposed to influence your dialogue options, though I saw no major indication of this (it's quite possible I missed something but at this point I'm willing to wager it only occurs in such an almost unnoticeable way as to be irrelevant). Completing some quests in a "humane way" can sometimes gain you a point of humanity, though usually it's at the cost of a point of experience that you could have gained had you completed the quest in a different, usually more violent, way.

The consequences of letting your blood supply run too low.

Another possible reward for completing quests is Masquerade redemption. You see, the reason us mere mortals don't know about the existence of Vampires (and the reason we aren't hunting them down with Napalm and Phosphorous rounds) is because they've got this whole secret society thing going on. "The Masquerade" is their way of hiding their presence from us. By not using vampiric powers in public and making sure they feed when no-one is looking, they've been able to keep their existence a secret from all but the most resilient humans. Vampires that break this "code" are summarily hunted down in what's called a "Blood Hunt" and executed. As a Vampire now, you too can break the Masquerade by using your disciplines in public or feeding on people in plain sight. Do it too often and you'll start to run into Vampire Hunters - human members of a religious order who have tracked you down and want you killed, this time properly.

If you manage to survive the hunters but keep violating the Masquerade, you'll be shown a cut-scene of your execution by the hands of the Camarilla, the Vampire society that enforces the laws of the Masquerade. Thankfully for you, there are some quests that allow you to redeem yourself and grant you Masquerade redemption. These usually involve preventing other Vampires from violating the Masquerade - such as killing a vampire who doesn't particularly mind leaving slaughtered carcasses behind for the police to find.

Encounters of the Technical Kind

One of the critiscisms of Bloodlines has been long loading and saving times (some claim up to ten minutes) and a slow game engine. I very rarely experienced any problems with the game on a technical level. I'm running a (slightly under) two year old Pentium IV 2.4 Gigahertz PC with 1 Gig of RAM. It's probably also important to note that I let windows set my swap file size and I have about 10 Gig of hard disk space left (Bloodlines uses a 1.4 Gigabyte swap-file). All of the game areas loaded well under 30 seconds (usually anywhere from 5 - 15 seconds depending on just how big the area was) and the only slow-downs I experienced were in three particular places where particle effects were used. Namely: When looking at the water on the beach in Santa Monica; Crossing a particular bridge in the Nosferatu Warren and when using some of the disciplines - usually the useless ones that made everyone else glow - which caused the game to stutter slightly. Other than those two specific places where the game stuttered and when using some of the disciplines, I was able to run the game quite easily with all graphical effects turned on (and up full) and the game running in 1024 x 768 resolution (800 x 600 is the lowest).

Blood AND gore. That's two for the price of one!

That said, there were a few very minor bugs I encountered. If I went through a combat area clearing out endless supplies of thugs, zombies or whatever else and then reloaded with the quick load key, my game would load and my weapon would automatically fire until I switched weapons. Slightly annoying when it loaded a game in front of Fat Larry - the best weapons merchant in the game - and summarily executed him in front of his truck. Changing weapons and then re-loading my save game again fixed that problem however, as on the second load my weapons wouldn't automatically fire.

Other minor issues include characters talking on the phone would have the phone disappear, sometimes you'd get stuck behind another character in a tight alleyway and be unable to move passed them because they're blocking the way (Fallout 2 had a push function...), characters in alleyways disappearing and reappearing and some minor scripting bugs which cropped up on the rare occasion. One of these for me was after the "Van Helsing Experiment" where some guards were supposed to rush out and shoot me but didn't. Instead nothing happened and I was basically stuck. The other 5 times I'd been through that particular quest everything went like clockwork, it's just that one time it didn't. I had to reload. Another similar instance was during the tutorial at the start of the game. Jack disappeared after I'd had my first meal, so I had to reload. However I have not encountered this every other time I've done the tutorial since.

One thing that will also bug the grammatarians amongst you are the typo's present throughout the dialogue. Right from the start of the game up until the finish, you will encounter a string of mis-typed words. One of the more personally annoying was when instead of three full-stops in a row to create an ellipses, there are instead three commas. The sad aspect is that it occurs on more than just one or two occasions. Several times I encountered dialogue where someone would say "But there is something else you can help me with,,," or "So, you're here because,,,". There were even some occasions where an errant "&" symbol would appear at the end of a sentence. Coupled with a few mis-typed words and I found myself cringing more than once.

Bloodlines certainly earns its mature rating.

As you can see though, these are all relatively minor issues, though they are there and some of them will bug the more pedantic among you. Something you will be thankful of though, is that the game doesn't over-write save games on a regular basis. It auto-saves every area as you enter it for the first time and when you quick save, it creates a new save game rather than over-writing the previous one. It seems to only over-write an auto-save or quick-save when you've got about 10 of them, so even if the unthinkable should happen, as long as you've been quick saving or if you've only just entered that area, a save game is not far away.

There is only one technical problem I encountered which I would consider major. Whenever I quit, especially after playing for a few hours, it took quite some time for my windows desktop to reappear. Instead I'd have a black screen as small parts of my desktop re-appeared over time. Usually it took a full 5 minutes before everything was back in order and even then, I'd restart my PC just to clear up anything that might've been left over. Given this only happened when I quit and usually by that stage I was going to shut down the computer anyway, it wasn't too hard to ignore.

The Modern RPG

One of the more unique aspects of Bloodlines is that it's set in modern-day Los Angeles. Countless RPGs before it have all been set in fantasy lands far, far away. Bloodlines is one of a rare breed of RPGs to break this classic mould and with it, comes some modern-day fun. One of the skills you can learn is hacking. With this skill (technically they're called feats in the game), you can break into computers with a simple text interface (almost reminiscent of the old text-adventures) and read e-mail, access secure directories or use computer commands to unlock nearby electronic safes or disable security systems. Being a modern world, there's no shortage of computers either, with plenty of them offering a little bit more of the game to explore.

A map of Los Angeles and the sewers of Hollywood.

Of course, this also means you'll be running around modern cities. Cars (none of them that you can actually drive, they just kind of sit there), skyscrapers and neon lights. The world of Bloodlines has been nicely crafted to reflect a modern night-time society. This modern world comes courtesy of White Wolf, the creators of the Vampire, Werewolf and just about every other supernatural pen and paper Role-Playing Game in existence today. Don't worry if you don't know the rules though because one thing the game does brilliantly is fill you in on all the details when you need them.

"You can forget all that comic book crap about vampires." See, in this world, stakes only cause paralysis. Your biggest fear is a shotgun blast to the head or a maniac with a long sharp blade. All of this is wonderfully explained to you by Jack should you take the tutorial at the start of game. Quite well integrated into dialogue, it explains everything you need to know but while it's optional, completing it nets you 2 experience points - meaning you almost feel compelled to do it every time - not that that's a problem as it's well done.

Another helpful aspect to get you filled in are the screen tips. Everytime you see a loading screen, you're given some information about a faction, a vampire sect or a useful game tip. Having the world presented to you not only through the game in dialogue but also in game tips is a nice balance. Don't think it's always the same tips either because as you progress in the game, new tips appear. If you're new to the Vampire world, be sure to read them all because often you'll find they explain a sect or give you a game tip that you'll find is just about to come in handy. For example you'll find tips about the Sabbat just before you start to learn more about them in the game and tips on the Society of Leopold just before you go pay them a visit.

Some of the people you might encounter.

Now, to create this world, Troika needed an engine. This comes courtesy of Valve. Yup, Bloodlines uses the same game engine that makes Half-Life 2 tick. I haven't played Half-Life 2 - mainly because my game PC isn't hooked up to the net and I can't be bothered doing so just to get through Valve's Steam validation system - but it's clear that Bloodlines is a little bit more than just a Half-Life 2 Mod. While the faces of the characters may not be quite as realistic, they're still pretty damned good and personally, a lot better than the plastic look that plagued Doom 3 (there's also a lot more atmosphere and even though the game is set at night, no annoying flashlight is required).

Unfortunately, while Half-Life 2 is arguably the greatest first person combat engine in existence today, it's odd that Troika decided to make melee combat entirely 3rd person - from an over the shoulder camera. I've never liked that sort of combat in a game (ever since Heretic II actually). Why Troika - with the worlds greatest FPS combat engine in existence - couldn't have provided a 1st person melee combat option is beyond me. Especially considering that when it comes to firearms, 1st person is an option and in fact is almost mandatory as aiming in 3rd person is nigh on impossible.

So while ranged weapons provide a first person view, there is the option - should you so choose - to take it out to this 3rd person perspetive. During melee combat however, there is no choice to switch from 3rd person back to 1st person. So while running around with a sledgehammer may look cool, practically, the melee combat is twitch-based as you click madly about trying to swing at the next foe and praying you hit as the camera swings violently around in response to your actions. It just seems completely bizarre that no 1st person option is available for melee combat. That said, the melee combat is still somewhat fun. Whacking someone back 20 feet with a sledgehammer is great stuff.

All right then, White Wolf provided the world, Valve provided the engine. So what did Troika do?

Deep, immersive RPG

Deep? White Wolf definately played their part in providing a rich world full of conspiracies, myths and politics. The game world is deep and Troika have taken every advantage of that. Immersive? I found the main storyline sucked me right in. It plays out well and Troika have to take the credit for taking a licensed world and giving it a run for its money. RPG? In all honesty, I can't say it's not. You don't get dialogue options, 5 different endings and a whole range of stats to choose from in a first person shooter. That said though, it's quite clear that Bloodlines seems to play best [i]as[/i] a first person shooter. Maxing out your range and dodge feats and wearing the toughest armour in the game makes you a lethal, almost immortal (even more so than your vampire state), killing machine. The Lassiter Killmatic makes easy prey of even the toughest boss monster and there are certainly plenty of those. Sadly, this is the single biggest disappointment of the game for me.

Time and time again you will encounter "combat zones". These are entire areas full of bad guys where your only option is to kill, kill and kill some more. Want to sneak past? Forget it. Want to use those finely tuned speech skills? You can forget that too. No, combat areas are just that, pure combat. For a shooter it's what I'd expect. It's not what I'd expect for an RPG though. What's worse is that the end-game sequence is nothing more than a three to four hour (depending on which ending you go for) shoot fest. Swarm after swarm of bad guy is standing between you and... killing the boss monster, so down they all go. I didn't buy Bloodlines as a substitute for Half-Life 2. I bought it expecting a, well, "Deep, immersive RPG". Unfortunately the game is brought crashing down by several of these heavy combat-laden slogs.

Coloured speech options appear depending on your skills.

Speech skills seemed to be completely irrelevant. Perhaps once or twice a useful option might present itself but the result would only ever be "somewhat useful". Considering you were usually talking past someone else just to get to a combat boss monster though made it all entirely pointless. Why bother talking past the door guard at the party when you'll just be facing two hard-as-nuts Super Boss Monsters inside? The only real reason would be to conserve ammo because if you're powerful enough to take out the boss monster, his guards don't really present much of a problem.

Even in one of the smaller quests, where a plague is sweeping the city, you have no choice but to kill a female vampire, kill a Nosferatu in the sewer and then cut a swathe through an endless supply of zombies just to kill a male vampire. Each of those is a boss monster and present quite a difficult challenge if your character's combat skills aren't quite up to scratch. Sadly, this quest was a perfect opportunity for Troika to take advantage of the speech skills availabe and allow you to persuade them that what they were doing was wrong but no, combat is the only solution. One of the few memorable "speech quests" involved a Gargoyle and that was old before I even bought the game. The Gargoyle was one area heavily touted in all the previews and it's clear to see why. It's one of the few quests that you can actually finish with speech in the whole game.

The Gargoyle quest and, like vampires, zombies also like feeding on the insides of others.

Even worse, there seemed to be many times where you were presented with several dialogue options, yet each one lead to the exact same result. For example you use a taxi (provided you're not Nosferatu) to travel between the game's areas. When you talk to the taxi driver, you are presented with four options. One of those options exits dialogue while the other three load the map screen so you can choose your destination. There are several times when these "taxi driver-esque" dialogue options appear in the game. Talking to several of the game's characters will present you with multiple options yet, like the taxi driver, each option inevitably leads to the same result. Very disappointing when you consider the game has three different speech skills (Seduction, Persuasion and Intimidation).

Unfortunately this also almost makes a waste of the great voice-acting present all throughout the game. Every character you can talk to has a voice and each of those voices fits their character *perfectly*. Troika have definately learnt from their past mistakes in the Temple of Elemental Evil. You will note however, that names of some places have seemingly changed in the voice acting. So while the text might read "paradigm studios" you'll hear them say "parasite studios". There are a few other instances where the voice-over doesn't quite match the dialogue but never to a major degree. It's usually just the order of words and in every case, the same meaning is still there. Better yet, for those who are fast readers, hitting spacebar skips their speech to the next block, allowing you to get through dialogue quickly when it suits your mood.

Another skill which served little purpose was lockpicking. Lockpicking only seems to act as a way to bypass some of the combat in the more intensive combat areas of the game. Most of the doors you pick are usually encountered later if you go the long way around, through the hoardes of bad guys. Also considering that even having lockpicked the lock and bypassed at least some of the combat, you still have to face off with the other three-quarters of the bad guys as well as a boss monster or two, the point seems moot. Again, it serves as little more than a way to save ammo (unless of course you're a melee combat type person). Of course it would also help if you actually had to bother increasing your lockpick skill in order to pick them. See, every vampire has a discipline called "Blood Buff" which increases their dexterity by 5. A dexterity of 5 allows you to pick a lock of skill 5. Often, many of the doors you would encounter required a skill of 5. Use Blood Buff, open the door and away you go. No increase in ability required!

Lockpicking a door in the tutorial and a keycard which grants you access to a locked area.

But.. even then, for all the doors you could lockpick there were just as many that you couldn't. You see, these were magic quest doors. Like the Elysium (can't kill anyone) areas and the unkillable plot-centric characters (even Morrowind let you kill the main characters, although it gave you the message that you'd stuffed the plot), Bloodlines is full of things that make you do it "the right way". In fact, the only way. Often you will encounter a door that either has a lock symbol that you can't pick, or a door that requires an electronic keycard. Electronic locks abound in the game and every single one of them requires a specific keycard. Even a pumped-up hacking skill can't bypass these impenetrable security measures! Instead, you have to talk to the required person, so that you get the quest, so that they give you the keycard, so you can open the door...

... and then there's sneak and it's related (and one of my personal favourite) disciplines in the game, Obfuscation. At its highest level, Obfuscation allows you to turn invisible and interact with the environment. Unlike sneak, you remain invisible even when you're in full view of nearby enemies. Despite its power, there were only a few areas where I truly got a chance to use it. In the end though, it really only meant I could perform "stealth kills", where you sneak up behind someone and kill them with one fell blow. While there are a handful of quests where sneaking pays off, the sad reality is that when it counts, you still need your wholesale manslaughter ability. You see, you can only perform stealh kills on the minions. Once again, what's the point in sneaking through the hotel full of bad guys when you still need to be powerful enough to kill the big bad boss monster at the end? Provided of course, that the hotel is designed in such a way that allows sneaking in the first place. Often, the combat areas were heavily scripted and doors would open only after you'd killed every character before it. Killing every character before them usually ruins the sneaking and therefore makes the skill moot.

All of this means that most of the quests (and certainly towards the latter part of the game) only have one real way they can be completed. Either you're wholesale slaughtering everyone or simply taking any dialogue option you want just to get to the next point. Even though some quests require a certain skill in order for them to be completed - such as a high hacking skill to break into a security network - disappointingly, this wide variety of skills aren't useful at all when it comes to the main plot. Side quests that truly take advantage of some of the skills are also few and far between.

No wait, it's not that bad!

Despite all of what I've just said, Bloodlines is still the best RPG I've played in a long time. The storyline is fantastic and the ending, simply delicious. Troika have managed to combine Valve's Source engine with White Wolf's world to create a superb game surrounded by dark politics and intrigue. While there seemed to be a few story inconsistencies - such as how exactly the Nosferatu can be "trapped" by an evil Sabbat wizard when there's quite clearly an easily accessable "back door" for them to get out (a back door right in their den). Yet somehow these monsters in the sewer have then cornered (monsters which of course you have to kill) but after doing so, they tell you that they're laying low out of choice to avoid the Prince. So how then, does the video tape come into it in the first place? - everything seems to make sense in some way or another.

The start of the game has many quests and many different ways to complete those quests but as you progress, you find more and more pure combat areas with simply no way to avoid them. Not even a back door - plant some explosives to level the whole building and get out of there - approach. Melee combat, while fun, eventually becomes more annoying and twitch-based than it is useful. Firearms in 1st person mode were more my style and it's sad Troika couldn't provide a 1st person option for melee weapons too. With the world's most powerful first person graphics engine at their fingertips, it's an odd choice to move to a 3rd person over the shoulder "chase cam".

Yet More Random Screenshots. ®

The fact that the entire ending is one giant combat sequence is the most disappointing. Right at the point where I thought my speech skills would be most useful, I instead discover they're completely useless. Now while it's great that there are 5 different endings, the fact that there aren't 5 different WAYS to complete the end is more disappointing. An RPG is supposed to cater to a range of characters, not just the combat one. Whatever happened to Fallout's classic mantra of "combat, speech and sneak"?

Speaking of endings, it's clear Troika have tried to break new ground in the way the ending plays out. Throughout the game, though especiallly towards the end, you are presented with dialogue options that allow you to essentially cuss the different sects out. Tell the Anarchs enough times that they need the Camarilla and you'll find that the Anarch ending won't be an option. Like-wise, if you truly want to stay loyal to the Prince despite everything, you'd best ensure you complete every mission exactly as he specifies. Too many dead bodies in a mission he wants done flawlessly and you don't get to stand by his side when it matters. Unfortunately, it also means that if you tell everyone what they want to hear (or simply avoid talking to them as much as possible), almost every ending is available when it comes to the final decision. I'd certainly like to see this approach brought to better fruition in future RPG's - be they by Troika or someone else - though Troika have certainly made a step in the right direction.

Bloodlines is also a very linear game, helped in no small part by the unpickable locks and unkillable characters. There is a set order to all things. To open up the next game area, you'll need to complete each quest in the sequence it's given. Whilst in Fallout or even Arcanum there were entire cities you could bypass, in Bloodlines you're forced to open up each city in sequence as you progress down the same path each time. Sure, there are side quests but replaying the game may only net you two or three quests you didn't complete or know of before. In truth, the replay value comes with the different combat skills or disciplines provided by each of the clans. While Nosferatu offer a unique experience, as do Malkavian (make sure you listen for the whispering voices), at the end of the day you're still causing mass slaughter everywhere you go. That said, replaying the game does allow you to take a slightly different approach in some areas.

Developer funnies. Troika's next game perhaps?

Bloodlines is worth the buy (unlike ToEE which I always considered a bargain bin game, as that seemed to be about the price the games flaws became worth tolerating just to experience some good ol' turn-based comat). A bit of replayability is definately there and while the main plot doesn't differ extraordinarily, there are enough minor differences and little extra quests to pick up on to make it worth-while. It's definately worth experiencing the play style and rat-hunting fun of the Nosferatu (and people screaming in terror at the sight of you).

Now some of you might remember our Interview with Leon while Bloodlines was still in development. I'm glad to say that a number of my concerns expressed in that piece were unfounded. The swearing in the game is not over-done (and is in fact quite appropriate and refreshing at times) and while some of the female Malkavian outfits made me cringe (did we really need to see that much arse crack?) Bloodlines doesn't fall into the trap of becoming too "pornographic" (for lack of a better word). The world is certainly a mature one though, so there are plenty of sleezy clubs and women in lingerie along with all the blood and violence. Unfortunately, Bloodlines doesn't mark the return of the "true RPG" but it's clear Troika Games are still the ones who have a better shot than many at making that happen. In the end, Bloodlines was also released on the same day as Half-Life 2. Hopefully that hasn't affected sales.

Despite my critiscisms of the game, buy it. While Bloodlines is not the greatest RPG evar, it certainly proves (especially after ToEE) that Troika are capable of providing an intense and interesting story, based on a licensed world. I'd certainly love to see an expansion pack that takes advantage of the skills available - perhaps a Vampire Hunter... It's just a shame that Bloodlines is probably the best (or at least second best) story-driven shooter released in the passed 12 months, rather than being the new dawn of the RPG.

~ DarkUnderlord

You can bitch and moan or heap praise on us for this review in our Bloodlines Forum.