Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is a role playing game based upon the successful White Wolf pen and paper role playing system. The game has a serious following, and the PC version of the game includes much of the detail and translates it into a very entertaining game.
You play Christof, a young crusader who is injured in battle and left in the care of the Prague clergy. Once nursed to health by the lovely local nun, he becomes a local hero by reclaiming a mine for the town. He is then transformed by a vampire clan who seeks to gain his aid and protect him from other, more dangerous, clans. Not only does poor Christof have to deal with the moral dilemma of becoming one of his most hatred enemies, the undead, he is also struggling with his love for the nun from the convent where he was recovering from his war wounds. The storyline is actually very compelling, although parts of it could have been taken from any of a number of soap operas. The story begins in a medieval setting and ends up in modern London and New York City. Much of the White Wolf Vampire lore is eloquently explained in the game's many detailed cut scenes; much of this information also appears in the game manual.
The graphics are displayed courtesy of Nihilistic's Nod engine, a 3D engine capable of some impressive effects. The game world and characters are 3D modeled objects, and you control your party from a third-person perspective. Fog and lighting details are well done, and the textures are gorgeous. There is a small bit of breakup in the objects here and there and some areas are improperly lighted, but nothing truly severe. The third-person perspective is good, but not enough of the game world is viewable at a given time. A first-person option is available, but the game is not playable from that mode. Sound effects and music are good, and the voice acting is only slightly overplayed. For the most part it is a very well done and professional job.
The game's interface has some good points and bad points. The character screen, inventory, and skills panels are all laid out well and quite useful. Disciplines may be stored in a quick-slot area, making using them very easy to manage and use on the fly. Combat is simple click and slash and the target even lights up nicely so you know what you're targeting. Advancement is simple; when you "rest" in your lair you automatically go to the proper screens where you may spend your experience points on upgraded statistics and disciplines. I won't go into White Wolf's entire statistic system, as it is fairly complex. It is, however, well translated in this game.
AI is very poorly implemented. Enemies simply attack you when you get into aggression range and run away when they get hurt too badly. They make use of any disciplines they may have, although they can be reckless with them unnecessarily. Pathing is horrendous - even the character under your current control does not know enough to walk around the end of a halberd while trying to pass a party member. In the single player game, one party member is under your direct control at any given time, and the others tend to try and follow while frequently lagging behind, not attacking the proper target, or generally getting lost. There is no way to walk in formation, which might have helped a little, but basically the entire pathfinding/AI system is very poorly implemented and extremely frustrating. The game's biggest problem, however, lies in its save game mechanism. You may ONLY do a manual save in your current lair. If you are partway into a dungeon and want to save the game and exit, you need to run all the way back to town in order to make a manual save. There is, however, a way around this. The game does a quick save every time you load a new level. What this means is that you can force a quick save by moving into a different "zone", then immediately exiting the game. The autosave may then be loaded in your next session. This is an incredibly cheap way of having to save your game, but unless you really feel like running all over the game world every time you want to exit, you have no choice. I experienced one bad lockup with the game and was forced to go back and repeat the level I was playing simply because I had no proper way to save my game. I don't understand how something as simple as a decent save game mechanism gets left out of a game, but it often does and needs to be mentioned.
Despite the previously mentioned problems, the single player game is still very impressive. First and foremost, the storyline is incredibly detailed and interesting. That is the main reason I was compelled to keep playing the game and moving forward - I wanted to know what was going to happen next. For that reason alone I would recommend the game to RPG fans. Many of the quests feel somewhat alike - you traverse a number of levels until you meet up with the dungeon's "boss". There are times where the game wanders from that formula, but for the most part it plays out like that.
The multiplayer component of the game has some real potential. The "storyteller" mode allows a person to GM a personal game and run their own custom Vampire campaign. This could have been the most powerful part of the game, and might, once the proper tools for doing so are released. As it stands now, out of the box Vampire does not include the user-friendliest way to design and implement your own game. Too much is not configurable or scriptable. Hopefully, this will happen and allow for some decent games to take place, but as things stand at the time of this writing, it is probably more troublesome than most people are willing to deal with.
