A certain kind of person is going to fall completely in love with Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Playing through a new hands-on demo showing off more of its dark vision of Seattle, I'm struck by how much it nails the atmosphere of the original tabletop RPG. If you were a goth kid in the '90s, you are going to feel completely at home.
Between two preview builds, I've now played about three hours of Bloodlines 2, and in terms of its authenticity, I'm sold. From the moonlit streets, to the moody fashion, to the derelict mansions and art deco apartments, it couldn't feel more like a world where sexy-cool vampires would be at home. And there's no shyness about taking the tabletop lore seriously—concepts like the Camarilla and the Masquerade aren't just background, they're core to the story.
It can feel a bit like Proper Noun Overload, and there is something inherently stuffy about a lot of the bloodsucker politics. But that's punctured nicely by the two playable characters—Phyre, an ancient vampire awoken from over hundred years of slumber, and Fabien, a disembodied 1940s vampire detective who lives in their head (for slightly tangled reasons).
[...]But the controls just aren't quite smooth enough to fully sell the fantasy. Climbing is hampered by both the first-person perspective and a lack of clarity around the best routes up buildings, which left me floundering in alleyways trying to figure out how to get up high. Once I was up there, jumps didn't transition into glides quite as elegantly as they should have, and it was easy to misjudge how far they'd take me, leaving Phyre floating down awkwardly to the street below.
Story missions highlighted those shortcomings further with alarmingly poor interior level design. Inside the crumbling mansions and sinister office blocks, it was often difficult to determine where I was supposed to go next, particularly because Phyre's sometimes expected to pull off parkour moves that the system doesn't really feel equipped for. In the two demos I've now played, all of these spaces have been awkwardly cramped and linear, offering none of the intriguing freedom of the first game—though again, it's definitely possible things open up more after these early hours.