I'm a big fan of many of the stuff Choice of Games has published and I was not familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade until I picked up this game. All I can say is that I'm hooked. This has easily become one of my top three Choice of Games novels. The characters are great, the writer is really good, I love everything about it.

One common complaint is that the game can kind of railroad you. That's true only to a certain extent. There is a cost for failure and that usually if your unlife. It might not be apparent, but poor decisions early on can screw you big time later. All the factions are fun to play as, the abilities are interesting though the sheer number can be a bit overwhelming. Most importantly, you don't need any prior knowledge of VA:M before playing, I didn't and I really enjoyed figuring out this world piece by piece.

I would recommend. Your first play though will take several hours.