My 2 cents:

I've only played the vampire masquerade half so far (kinda) and it's ok. I have some problems I really hate though.

First is the "pics" sent in the game I can't tell what the heck they are and they are supposed to give me clues. Kinda like looking at abstract art and trying to come up with some sense. Not really my thing. The protagonist and friends don't really act like anyone I know, but maybe I just hang with a different crowd, who knows. It made me feel very little about them, since I couldn't relate very much.

The whole thing takes place on a cell phone, and it's irritating mostly because it doesn't make sense. There is little sense of impending death when apparently you have the time to text it all to your friends. The game kinda even admits to it, when he mentions that you are constantly locked up somewhere with nothing to do but text, because they allowed you to keep your phone. lol.

Right now I'm stuck on this choice tree where I die if I choose the wrong thing, and the entire chapter is like 30 choices long and I'm tired of replaying it all when one of the choices is "F*** you" or "You're disgusting!" Apparently one of those leads to death and the other is safe.

I quit and am writing this out of frustration. Maybe I will have better luck with the mage side of things, if I decide to give this game a chance again.

I much prefer the choice of games publisher for a similar style but better writing imho.

Could be worth it on sale if you really dig this kind of thing though I guess.

THIS IS ABOUT THE VAMPIRE FICTION.
So... by the time I'm writting this review I must say I have only played about 4 or 5 hours and altough I still hope the game changes, it is much like gambling. Once in a while the game decides that would be nice for you to think you're in control of the story, but it does the absolute opposite as it forces you to pick the right line so you can move forward. You never have true control of things because once you pick the wrong line, you die. And I beg you pardon because it may be just me: You'll die a lot.The two times the game does it the most (at least in 4~5 hours of playtime) is when Marco appears as a challenge. You get to choose from a lot of stuff (which is good) but if you choose the wrong one, you die almost instantly (which is exhaustive and primarily bad). Sometimes when the game is not satisfied, it misleads you into thinking that the line you picked was indeed the right one and... Welp... There you are dead again.
Of course this is not entirely bad. The first hours were incredibly thrilling as you have to manage picking the right choices. But the story escalates reeeeeeeally quickly and at first you were (kind of) rewarded for being cautious while in the next minutes you have to make some real f***ing nastyass recklessly brutal f***ed up ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy aggressive choices like insulting one of the strongest vampires in the scene which is like hundreds of years old and way above you in the food chain. And you think this may be an overreact but the girl who was embraced a few days before the "Marco incident" was already beating (or trying to) vamps up like a boss and acting all experienced-neonate-ish (this also happens with the main character with this thing of her/him having no remorse in killing people).
The fiction is good, the characters are well made, the music fits well and the paintings give a nice touch for you to get immersed but this pick-the-right-choice-or-you-die is just plain bad. I recommend it if you don't see a problem with it, but yeah, if you're some picky person about your visual novels and chosing your own destiny you might as well stay away from the game.

Edit: I saw that there are more people stuck in the same part as me due to this system of pick-the-right-choice-or-you-die. Changed the recommendation status to "no" and I think it'll stay that way.

First things first: World of Darkness has always been one of my favourite pen and paper RPGs and therefore I am a huge sucker for the entire lore.

The Vampire game isn't necessarily one of the best visual novels I have played in quite a while, but it is the most immersive I've ever played, although it will require background knowledge of the World of Darkness lore to make any sense at all to the player. I can greatly imagine why it was downvoted so much, because to someone completely new to the franchise, nothing makes sense. To the initiated though, it's an interesting story to follow a thinblood deal with the aftershock of having been sired.

The Mage game I didn't like too much, as it is painfully short, features little to no choices at all and doesn't feel interactive in the slightest. The story is written better than the other game though and yet again, to the initiated it proves to be an interesting view on an unwillingly awakened protagonist.

All in all this lastest me roughly 8 hours, so I definitely got my personal bang for my buck, with the added benefit of revelling in all the memories of all the awesome pen and paper adventures I have experienced with the ruleset many years ago.

So for fans of the franchise which also happen to be fans of visual novels, this is a must buy. To anyone else, this quite heavily niche game might not be for you. I will recommend it for the general public though because the first game alone is a very unusual and refreshing take on visual novels in the first place and the story is interesting even if you have no idea what's going on.

I am a fan of World of Darkness and i have played my fair share of text games/choose your own adventure style games before, so even with that in mind i must admit i refunded it. The choices were non-existant, it is very linear atleast the parts i have played and frankly, if you have 3 options and 2 of them get you killed. Constantly, that is not 'good' choices. Especially when none of them are the obvious answer.

I was enjoying the game until I got to a point where I was on the third long conversation with multiple choice points where there is no indication what the right approach is and the wrong choice leads to instant death, so I'm randomly choosing options, dying, then playing the whole conversation over again. Over and over and over. So, I just stopped playing, because there is no universe where that is a fun experience. If I ran a tabletop game like this, my players would lynch me.

An excellent introduction to the World of Darkness, well-written and aesthetically-pleasing in general, but with unforgivable game design.

This is a pair of gamebooks, with special aesthetic touches. It can be likened to the Choice of Games types, but the opposite of spartan web-page presentation. The Vampire scenario is presented as a bunch of phone texting with other people, with occasional blood drops on the phone, and screen cracks to indicate that you have been roughed-up. The Mage scenario is a more conventional gamebook interface, but with all sorts of crazy visual effects to indicate the straining between Magic, Reality, and Paradox.

The political stuff is actually something I do not mind at all. It is a part of life and affects everyone, so of course it will be used. It also makes quite a bit of sense where it is introduced. In the Vampire scenario, the Anarchs are the only ones who are not trying to kill you, and they have biases that perfectly extend from their faction ethos. In the Mage scenario, you deal with a situation that puts an entire part of the world under extreme stress, and you can choose a side in the debate.

The aesthetics and writing are perfect, but the game design is not. The writers have a lot to learn from the veterans of the Choice of Games Engine for avoiding stupid deaths, supporting many possible choices and branching paths, and so on. The Vampire scenario consists of trying all possible choices until you clear the (very linear) game, while the Mage scenario only has 2.5 paths, and only a few choices at the end truly matter.

Consequently, this is not a good set of gamebooks in general. It is only useful as an introduction to one specific conflict in Vampire: The Masquerade and to the basic three factions of Mage: The Awakening - and it would be more useful in these roles if it were either better-game-designed or flattened into interactive books without choices.

This is simply not a "game" worthy of the world of darkness tag. This "game" that is more than a visual novel is an abomination both in writing and the characters provided. This game presents you with two stories in the world of darkness universe, one being the Vampire, perhaps familiar to you if you've played Vampire the masquerade bloodlines and the other one being Mage, set in the ascension universe of world of darkness. Both of these stories do the original material no justice and it gives you clique after clique plus hamfisted political opinions that the writers seem to force in which is not needed and should be thrown away as this franchise has never been about the mortal fragility of politics, vampires and mages deal with stuff on a whole other level, mundane human politics and the mortal frailty is beyond their concern, so if the bus driver is "racist" or that this bookstore you work at is "ultra pc" it is not relevant to the universe, never has and hopefully never will again.

A mage should be concerned about the technocracy and the war that they have pretty much lost. Vampires should be concerned about the masquerade, where their next pray is. Both navigate an incredibly vulnerable world which could be exposed at any moment and are much more important than a regular human could ever be, especially the humans weak mindset and opinions of things. Even new vampires show often a cold detachment to the mortal world which they no longer inhabit and the older they get the more dark and cynical they become. Do you think a 100 year old vampire would moan about being politically correct or care about racist human behaviour? no, i dont think so, the same goes for mages.

Both the main characters in these games have newly discovered their new "gifts", but there really is not a whole lot of emphasis on how they deal with it personally completely missing the point of personal horror that the original franchise presented, its about how YOU experience things, how this new world that have opened to you is and how you deal with it and what dangers lurk within it. Mortal politics would rarely and never enter to a big extent because they were useless. Vampires being concerned with the coming Gehenna and the end of all vampires and Mages fighting a losing war with dimensions opening left and right and there is not much they can do to save their dying world.

In this "game" prelude you are dropped into the shoes of two females, little character investment is considered and you are bombared with their opinions and hopeless characteristics with an awfully modern and story driven by mortal politics plaguing the world today, to try to make the world of darkness more modern in tone could not hurt but when you do it in such a wrong way its glaring to look at, especially when the writers they hired have no previous experience in writing this kind of work and have never understood the essence on what the universe itself is about.

I would therefore not recommend this product to a fan or hardcore fan of the world darkness franchise, the vampire nor the mage story adds nothing new and contributes nothing at all to the universe except for poor political statements mixed with poor understanding of an amazing universe.

Preface: This is a review for the Vampire storyline. It's the reason I bought this game and after sitting through that steaming pile for 2 hours (felt like 6), I have no interest in trying out the Mage one (especially because it sounds to be even worse). UPDATE: I eventually did play the Mage story and you can read it below the original Vampire review.

Pros:
- Story and characters start out well enough. The beginning premise works well and is written believably. The "texting friends" format works particularly well for this bit
- Some nice references, like Velvet Velour being at the party
- Art is neat. Can't tell what the hell you're looking at most of the time, but it's a nice and fitting aesthetic

Cons:
- The entire second half or more turns into complete and utter garbage writing (which is all the game is, keep in mind), specifically:
- Multiple characters show up ENTIRELY to vomit out massive diatribes of exposition, then immediately leave
- Multiple characters show up ENTIRELY to vomit out their sexual and political views, then immediately leave
- Every character is forcefully "edgy", including one who exists just to kill cops
- There is no "Masquerade". I get that LA is run by the Anarchs, but the ♥♥♥♥ these vampires do on a nightly basis (like the cop eating one) leaves no believability whatsoever that this society could remain a secret
- As the game goes on, the texting format becomes more and more tiresome from a mechanical perspective AND a writing perspective. Everyone writes like an incoherent madman, when only two characters actually are incoherent madmen
- The texting format becomes a joke when you're supposedly being chased by vampires but are still texting your friends
- Zak wrote himself into a hole: the game reminds you how weak you are with every choice, making the end complete bs
- Ending sequence is a large set of trial and error insta-death choices with the only recovery point at the very beginning of it

I cannot say enough how excruciatingly bad and frustrating the writing is. There was more than one time I openly exclaimed "Haha, oh my God, ♥♥♥♥ you" at the writing itself. It's stuff like this that makes me embarassed to tell my friends about Vampire: The Masquerade.

UPDATE: After three full years I decided to try the Mage storyline out of morbid curiosity.

It's also trash.

I had absolutely no idea what was happening at any given time. The protagonist has no agency in the story at all; everything just sort of happens around her regardless of her existence. Even some of the choices are written so cryptically or vaguely that I didn't know what I was choosing.

The entire story is strongly connected to real life Swedish/EU politics and it handles it laughably poorly. There's no tact or subtlety whatsoever, with everything being displayed as entirely black or white. You're either pro-immigration or anti-immigration, with nothing in between, and you allow the opposing side to be slaughtered. Well done.

There's also some reeeeeal creepy sexual fetish ♥♥♥♥ that comes across super fanfiction-y, but at least that can be avoided based on choices (though the main choice was one of the aforementioned vaguely written options that did not in any way lead me to believe it would turn into a rapey sex scene).

So all in all, just please don't support these people.

Only Reviewing We eat blood.

Art: 0/10 If I have to spend 15 minutes of my time craning my neck to make visual sense of a piece with an explicitly stated subject, it's bad art. 95% looked liked abstract art drawn by a 10 year old with a crayon and the legible 5% looked like it was drawn by some angsty emo picasso wannabe with a crayon.

Soundtrack: 10/10 Those seductively tranquil melodies were making love to my ears. Made me feel like I was right back in the heart of bloodlines.

Story: 1/10 Terrible. Riddled with contrived plot devices During the New York route: unidentified 'Nosferatu?' woman and damsel in distress 'Macy' are conjured to push the Protagonist into a meeting with the antagonist before being quickly (in Macy's case) swept away to witness protection in England in a throw away line or in the case of the Nos, just never referenced again. For some x reason, the random friend of 'Izzy's' lover is conveniently close enough to save our Hero in an alley from a blood hunt in the span of a few text with no directions given. AND manages to impale a vampire who just happens to jump right in front of their car. During the Seattle Route: Some random mutant monkey thing escapes, goes on a murder spree that for some x reason knows to attack the Protagonist 'friends' out of all the people in Seattle. The mother, one of only two who can track the protag only exist because she was randomly kidnapped off a bus full of sex slaves? Ect & so forth. I mean it's just ridiculously terrible writing. It's obvious somebody confused Deus ex Machinas for substance & sense while they were off ranting on their Social propaganda soap box.

Chapter 1 starts off promising for like the first maybe 5-10 minutes with the protagonist trying make sense of their situation, before it quickly deteriorates into a tiresome borefest of no-choice rubbernecking into other people's affairs and social justice crusading rather than trying to get one's own household in order so to speak. The protagonist is 'that guy'-- you know the type; will be witness to some 'grave injustice', and instead of doing something to remedy the situation, will sit back and spend their time tweeting about how terrible the society is? Always on the lookout for the pettiest attributes in their fellow sentient like someone being too rich or acting a bit cantankerous just to tweet they discovered a new jerk face? Yeah that guy. An annoying busybody who I would be nauseated to cross two thoughts with in reality, let alone appreciate having to look through the eyes of in a universe which is supposed to be about amoral creatures of the night. I mean really why would a transitioning vampire be worried about the bus driver trying to make someone, who isn't them, take off a turban? Or even someone getting cranky if you change the channel to cnn? I mean don't you have waaay bigger fish to fry like trying to figure out how to fill that alien hunger gnawing on your gut? The stupid just snowballs from there. Oh and you know, they happen to be a car thief for hypocritical good measure. By the end it's just an extremely ridiculous fifth rate parody of WoD. And cringe inducing one at that. A 600 yr old Tremere regent, Lord of the Chantry, cursing and dishing mother insults over the phone like some stunted man-child? Really? *cringe*

I mean and then you even got people you've talked to for five minutes grinding your face in their sexual orientations. I'm talking to this transgender vampire chick for like five min and she goes on a tangent about killing Donald trump supporters, Transgender bathrooms and trying to psych out (specifically) male uber drivers by telling them she got a little something extra down there, while asking if she could fondle their junk for them. Number 1 & 2 I can just let fly over my head. but 3 & 4? I'm like why is this being relayed to me!? What does this have to do with ANYTHING about me or the overarching dilemma? Not a thing. White wolf however seems to think this character is great, even going to far as gloat on their blog about how Avery is a representation of transgenders and an awesome vampire to boot who helps you at the end. (by texting useless guest trivia and throwing a toaster oven that missed its mark I might add) Please, I know a useless background decoration and shock value when I see it. You want to make controversial characters? Fine, I welcome and look forward to it. But don't try to hide that controversy behind diverse group portrayal. Call it what it is. A projected fantasy that took a wrong turn on its way to penthouse.

I totally wish I could get my refund right now. I feel like I've been trolled out of 10 dollars. Which makes me sad because Vtmr, Vtmb and the WoD books are some of my all time favorite past times. However too late for me but don't make the same mistake I did and stay away from this catastrophe. Better yet, Just act like this never existed.

My advice to white wolf: Keep projects in-house and freelancers out. Especially the ones angry at the world with chips on their shoulders.

This was rather disappointing. Choose your own adventure games can be done rather well, but only when"choosing" and "adventure" are in equal parts. This author got a wee bit too into telling their own story and forcing the same linear plot onto us. It would be fine if it did not frame itself as a roleplaying game, but it does when it is just another adventure game. The plot is weird, the dialogue is juvenile and honestly it did not do much to engage me.