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Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been in development for almost as long as it takes to write out its title, but the bloodsucking RPG's Metacritic hasn't quite lived up to the original cult classic's review scores.
Bloodlines 2's reviews came out earlier today, ending the two decade wait between games and the five year wait since the sequel's initial release date (you read that right - Bloodlines 2's was first slated to come out in 2020 before getting dragged into game dev hell), and it debuted to an average Metacritic score of 66, lower than the original's neat 80.
Our one-and-a-half-star Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 review said "clumsy writing and flat, repetitive world design expose a handful of good ideas that never take root, while its poor technical quality and unstable performance will render it unplayable for some" - disappointing insight into its lower score.
"Between the frustrating performance issues, clunky combat, shallow RPG tools, and a thoroughly meandering story, I find it hard to recommend Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 at all," our Jasmine Gould-Wilson wrote. "This is a game that had so much promise, and maybe that's why it had to fall so spectacularly short of every expectation."
Eurogamer's Robert Purchese was similarly divided, explaining that "the characters and some of their writing are frequently enjoyable" but "everywhere else there are shortcomings, and too many of them."
PCGamer's 78 review sits on the other end of the spectrum. "Bloodlines 2 features the best Vampire: The Masquerade story out of any of the video game adaptations," Fraser Brown proclaimed. "It's a corker. And I probably will play through it again, even if the changes likely won't be all that dramatic."
On the other hand, "At times I want to be alone with it in a moment of passion, and at others I want to strangle the life out of it," Leana Hafer's 7.0 IGN review reads, before explaining that it might be just as deeply flawed but unique as the original game, which was divisive in itself, too. Maybe this is a worthy sequel after all.
