Could this, quite literally be the worst fucking "game" on the planet?

Not bait. First thought anyone playing this game is "This shit plays and looks like a crappy Half-Life 2 mod", which we all later found out it was. Overlooking the fact that it completely breaks in the later chapters, your journey is extremely linear, you are given the illusion of choice all the time but you rarely get to do anything outside of quests, which themselves are really linear. All major quests are extremely long, boring and uninteresting, artifical difficulty is applied by just throwing hordes of braindead uninteresting npcs at you. Sidequests are literally just "run across the hub 4 times then speak to me again, perhaps kill a guy or two aswell". I could go on but this absolute piece of shit is the most overrated garbage I have ever had the misfortune of playing, and the fact that Yea Forums sucks it's DOA cock is fucking atrocious.

This is one of the first times I disagreed with Yea Forums's tastes. The writing is excellent as is the quest design, but pretty much everything is mediocre to bad

Oh, and the voice acting is really good too. Doesn't save the rest of the game though.

See

I'm just going to agree with you. No one ever tries to seriously debate with me or discuss with me why they love this game so much beyond just its atmosphere.

The combat is garbage, notoriously so and everyone seems to agree with that. But the dialogue and writing isn't that great, the story is largely forgettable with the only meme being that you shouldn't open the sarcophagus because lol twist (no seriously, how the fuck did he get the guy out and no one noticed). There is a literal 'pick-an-ending' scenario with the cab driver. The RPG elements are very shallow and amount to little in terms of role playing because you basically just choose one or two ways of completing quests (hacking/lockpicking) and you can do fuck all with the rest of your build because again, combat is boring as shit. There are no interesting items to pick up. Quest design is all over the place ranging from passable with some non-linear choices to absolutely awful garbage like the zombie defense or surviving the werewolf. I get that's its unfinished but usually with these types of games, where there are such huge flaws, there are gems to be uncovered. But there just aren't any. One of the highlights of the game is apparently the ghost mansion and it's just full of cliches.

ghost hotel**

>(no seriously, how the fuck did he get the guy out and no one noticed)

Jack swapped the body with the funtimes while it was still on the ship. He's the one who killed all those sailors.

Better combat than Drakengard and Yakuza 1

More onions with your order?

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Why does Jack even interfere with the newcomer when he could've just had the camarilla take the sarcophagus?

I disagree with a lot of what you said but this thread won't last long anyway so I will just explain what it is that people love about the game and why they adore it as an RPG. You actually had it right with
>why they love this game so much beyond just its atmosphere.
That's the reason. Atmosphere in vtmb isn't just some arbitrary word with vague meaning like in most games whose atmosphere people praise. Good atmosphere basically means good immersion, which is what a real RPG should be all about. And good immersion is based on many factors. Art direction is a big one, camera view (i.e. isometric vs first/third person) is also important, as are music, dialogue, characters and the base appeal of the setting itself. And VTMB pulls all of these flawlessly. So atmosphere isn't just 1 aspect of RPGs that you can dismiss, a good atmosphere (= immersion) is basically the central aspect of an RPG, at least for a subset of fans.

It really depends on what you value in an RPG. To me and many RPG fans, being immersed is more important than having 12 different solutions to a quest. Of course multiple solutions is great, but I would take less flexibility in quest finishing if it meant better immersion.

I've played a fuckton of RPGs and I only consider VTMB to be a true RPG for the simple reason that it's the only game where I was immersed, where I really felt like roleplaying, feeling and being part of the world and interacting with it. No other game has managed it for me, not the modern open world RPGs, nor the old isometric RPGs.

no

Then I just definitely don't think this is a good game on that merit alone. It's aged awfully which breaks my immersion. It feels... fine, but nothing amazing. The clubs are extremely spacious and don't feel like clubs at all. The streets are either completely empty or full of people walking at random. Fear came out literally a year afterwards and has an incredible environment with its use of lighting and sound. VtMB looks like a half empty Garry's Mod server.

>Then I just definitely don't think this is a good game on that merit alone.
That's fair, RPG tastes are extremely variable anyway. Like I said, there's many subsets of RPG fans that have different priorities in game design.

>It's aged awfully
The droves of people picking the game recently and declaring it one of the best RPGs ever would disagree with you. Unless you want to pull the '>it's all subjective' defense again.

>The streets are either completely empty or full of people walking at random.
Yes, the setting is supposed to be a decaying society, people walking around and the community feeling hopeless is kind of the point. I think you were expecting something else from the setting. The lighting and sound are exactly what they were supposed to be. From what you say it sounds like the VtM setting isn't appealing to you, and it's important to make that distinction vs. the game doing something wrong in how it translates the setting.

It's been a while since I played, but I'm pretty sure the Camarilla DID just take the sarcophagus. It was stolen from them after you recovered it from the ship. Jack interferes with the player, probably because the developers thought it would be fun to have Jack as the tutorial character. It's worth noting that older vampires like Jack are very dangerous and their motives become increasingly alien to an outside observer. Jack appears to have orchestrated this for the express purpose of killing a lot of vampires for his own personal amusement. The only part of this that doesn't make sense is LaCroix trusting a rookie like the player with recovering the sarcophagus in the first place.

the game is shit but has a trashy early 2000's atmosphere I just love. Everything about it is corny and silly and the game is basically one joke after another.
>beyond just its atmosphere
games for me are either about 100% gameplay (like multiplayer FPS, RTS), or are just a medium to entertain you and tell a story with an interesting world, which for me VTMB did.
A game with sould is any game where you can see the devs had fun with making the game, VTMB is full of soul

>LaCroix trusting a rookie like the player with recovering the sarcophagus in the first place.

Lacroix didn't believe the rookie was able to pull it off, he just sent you on a suicide mission because he could not kill you in the begining

Jack's idea of replacing the corpse in the sarcophagus had nothing to do with the camarilla specifically, it was literally just a prank. Jack simply liked to see everyone tear each other apart because they wanted to get to the sarcophagus, whether it was the sabbat tzimisce, the nosferatu, the kuei jin or the camarilla, and it worked, they all fucked each other over. He just wanted to make it ironic for the king of the hill to get a different prize than what he expected.

More importantly, Jack did NOT orchestrate the whole thing, he was a pawn in it. This is very difficult to discover in one playthrough, but if you have max persuasion and talk to the archaeologist in the Society of leopolod quest after the bach fight, you can persuade him to reveal to you that he didn't "discover" the sarcophagus, someone told him where to find him. And jack can't really know about an ancient sarcophagus. Which just leaves the person he's seen with in the ending, the taxi driver, a much older vampire who was behind this and actually knew the location of the sarcophagus to get the whole plot going. The irony of the ending is that the people of the city were right to be paranoid and have a strange feeling about the sarcophagus, and that they were in the presence of an ancient vampire. It just wasn't the sarcophagus that was the source of their fear, it was the taxi driver that was stalking them.

Your post just screams bullshit, especially the part where the RPG elements are very shallow. Like, who are you kidding here? Each clan has a distinctive playstyle and differs considerably from the rest of the clans, so fuck off.

the ancient vampire is cain, he even has a dark mist around him, literally the mark of cain

oh and also Grout is not dead ;)

>oh and also Grout is not dead ;)
headcanon I agree with.

>you are given the illusion of choice all the time but you rarely get to do anything outside of quests, which themselves are really linear
Read your posts once or twice before hitting Submit, helps with making better bait.

>each clan has a distinctive playstyle
Tremere, Malkavian, Nosferatu (lol sewers) are the only interesting clans and one is basically a meme where you need to know the story of the game before you play it

>haha soi
>posts bl2
nigga excuse you

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Yeah I know the devs meant for him to be cain, but ww retconned it. The reason I said ancient vampire is because it doesn't really matter if he was cain or not, the point of the story was that the whole shitstorm that got the plot going was just a little scheme of an elder vamp. Every vamp older than you in the game tells you that some elder will be using you, without realising that an even older vampire is using them as well. The plot works with or without the driver being cain.

Look up the definition of cult classic mongo

>and one is basically a meme where you need to know the story of the game before you play it
You don't have to, but it makes it a lot better if you do. And no, they're not the only interesting clans.

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yeah the layering of intrigue is amazing for this game

>but ww retconned it

how so and literally why

Everyone is using you in this game.

Not that guy, but completely rewritten dialogue for a choice at the start of a game that affects the whole game is a gigantic role-playing accomplishment, there's a reason it's brought up that often. Even if a lot of it is flavour dialogue. Having the nosferatu dialogue be very different and have unique reactions is just cherry on top, same for every other unique clan interaction.

Deb

No, that lofty title belongs to the dullest rpg of all time. Each attempt Obsidian makes to create their own universe rather than simply deconstruct a setting made by others, has been more disastrous than the last. Aside from the outdated gameplay and lifeless cities, Pillars of Eternity's only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of combat mechanics, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Sawyer vetoed the idea of making anything at all innovative or original; he made sure the game would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody, just ridiculously profitable nostalgia pandering to ageing Baldur's Gate fans. Pillars of Eternity might be anti-casual(or not), but it’s certainly the anti-Divinity series in its refusal of spontaneity, fun and excitement.

>a-at least the writing was good though

"No!"

The writing is dreadful; the narrative was terrible. As I played, I noticed that every time I engaged in dialogue with an NPC the game presented me with a Wiki-page style infodump instead of anything resembling actual human conversation.

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time this was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Sawyer's mind is so governed by obsession with pointless minutiae of the lore that he has no other style of writing.

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Pillars of Eternity by the same David Gaider. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kiddies are playing Obsidian games at 17 or 18, then when they get older they will go on to enjoy Dragon Age II." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you play "Pillars of Eternity" you are, in fact, trained to shill for Bioware.

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Apart for the sewer level, and the last few bosses, this game is great. Buggy, but worth it.

I felt no shame using noclip to skip the sewer level, lowering my FPS to fix the "Flamethrower ammo being tied to FPS bug", and using godmode for the last two bosses.

NPCs have disposition towards other clans. Beckett, for example, treats Gangrels fairly well even if they have abysmal social stats.

>you are given the illusion of choice
kind of fits with the theme of the game desu

>how so and literally why
can't remember all the details, they basically said that the taxi driver in vtmb was not cain because they were writing about cain being somewhere else at the same time in one of their novels. dumb shit

i hope you forgot to mention the music. it pretty much had a perfect soundtrack all around in my opinion, all the music contributed by other bands was great and the game music itself was top tier.

i actually find the combat fun too, even though enemies get to be unbalanced later in the game. as long as you keep putting points int combat stats and paid attention on how melee works with directional combos, it's fun.

I mean just having an absolute shit ton of dialogue is commendable, but that doesn't really contribute that much to the story which is just passable

>Complete failure to point out anything bad or wrong at all.

Ok puppy.

the story was never really meant to be super deep. it seems to follow alice in wonderland a bit with you suddenly being thrown into that world for a while and to just enjoy the experience.

each clan does play differently though, some are more social, some stealthy, some just for combat. and then even how social/stealth/combat can be done differs between them.

>and one is basically a meme where you need to know the story of the game before you play it
not really, that's just a retarded meme from people who get upset at not immediately understanding something. there's nothing wrong with playing malk first and a lot of people enjoyed doing that.

I really like the fan theory of the cab driver being an ancient Malk who only thinks that he's Cain. Why else would an ancient vampire work as a cab driver? Dude's fucked in the head.

>the fan theory of the cab driver being an ancient Malk
That's not a fan theory, it's canon. It's a shitty way to retcon it and they should've just left it as its own story instead of trying to incorporate it though.

The point of making the cab driver Caine was just to be a metaphor of how his blood is affecting "where you're going"/your DESTINY. It probably doesn't need to be much more than that.

I'm playing it for the first time, it's fun and the writting is keeping me engaged, I'm not sure what OP looks for in a game, honestly I'm wondering what sort of downright orgasmic experience he considers a good game

OP is just trolling or using bait to start a thread. Even for people who don't particularly care for it, they always end up just saying "it's okay" at worst.

I swear to fucking god this is not bait, this so called "game" (read: Half-Life 2 mod) is pure fucking horseshit, the only redeeming quality is the malkavian female model, period. Let me retort: I wonder what shitty fucking subhuman third worlder games you have played if you consider this playable war crime to be "okay" or "enjoyable". Once you get to the sewers you'll agree with me. 10 minutes in it was still fine for me to play, the further you go the worse it gets.

Recommend me some good games user

I'd wager that's subjective. Give me some genres you enjoy and I could whip up a list of acceptable games.

using the source engine doesn't make it a "Half-Life 2 mod", and that doesn't mean it's good or bad either, it's a pointless argument to make.

i never had an issue with the sewers, but i actually paid attention and put points into combat stats and don't need every level to be a single linear hallway.

I love RPGs, both JRPGs and WRPGs, aside from that survival shit and anything that revolves around exploration and dialogue

Just watched the new trailer. Fuck, that music got me. Other than that, eh, looks ok, they already fucked up by going with Seattle and not some European capital, or something like Rio de Janeiro as a way to include odd clans and explore the lore in an easy way.

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I've honestly given up on it and just want to revert back to the old vtmb threads. I may check it out when it's released but I don't expect anything. Now I realise how the right the user that said all we need is VR vtmb and not a sequel was. The announcement attracted politics-obsessed zoomers to arguably the best threads in Yea Forums.

>paid attention
You get no map or hints whatsoever, faggot. Nice "point".

>Put points into combat stats
As did everyone, it's still a boring trudge of endless waves of cheap monsters, and those newbies who didn't put combat stats probably had one fuck of a time.
>Don't need every level to be a single linear hallway

Ooh la di da you fucking cocksucker. Like anyone ever said that? Having a level be a random as fuck maze isn't good level design just because it "feels hard". Pretentious dickhead.

>to arguably the best threads in Yea Forums.
Aye. For a time, there were a lot of morons spamming how "SJW" this game is and other such retarded drivel, it was hideous.

>needing a map and hints
There are actually maps in the office areas for multiple sewer levels though showing you where to go. And each of the levels aren't particularly big, you shouldn't have that much trouble navigating them. Saying it's a lot combat-heavier than anything you've previously done would still be a valid complaint, though.

>Put points into combat stats
>As did everyone
Not really. It's surprising how many people think they can do a 100% social build, even when Jack tells you during the tutorial that you absolutely must learn to fight, and are forced to fight multiple times before even leaving the first hub.

>Having a level be a random as fuck maze isn't good level design just because it "feels hard".
It's not even hard though. I don't think it took longer than an hour for me to get through the whole thing my first time. If every level in the game was designed that way then I'd say it's a bigger problem.

>There are actually maps in the office areas for multiple sewer levels
There are maps of sewers inside the actual sewers.