Where Bloodlines stumbles is in its combat system, which simply feels clumsy and unsatisfactory. The combat mechanics are a blend of twitch-based action and role-playing stats, and it's an awkward compromise. You can battle it out from a first-person perspective using firearms, or you can switch to a third-person viewpoint to use melee weapons, such as knives and swords. However, while Bloodlines is built on a first-person shooter engine, the gunplay is nowhere near as smooth and natural as it should be. Your firearm abilities depend heavily on your characters stats; it's not as simple as placing the cursor over a target. Unless you invest heavily in improving your firearm skills, your aim will veer wildly. Meanwhile, melee weapons are simply overpowering, and combat is skewed heavily toward knife and swordplay. To give you some perspective, we attempted a certain boss battle with a character specializing in firearms and lost repeatedly, but we beat it on the first time that we used a knife instead of a gun.
The combat system treats guns as a disadvantage in fights. It's easier to simply use a sword or knife.
The problem is that firearms in Bloodlines are severely underpowered and they only allow you to attack one opponent at a time. By using a melee weapon you can attack multiple enemies at once. More importantly, you can even knock them down, which buys you precious time to concentrate on a single foe. The only time firearms seem more useful than melee weapons is when you want to attack larger monsters from a distance. Otherwise, you're going to find yourself at a disadvantage most of the time when using a gun. At any rate, the enemy artificial intelligence isn't too bright, as most opponents will simply rush you or fire their weapons at a distance. In one battle, we just huddled behind a counter and healed while the enemy gunmen stood nearby waiting for our vampire to pop up again.
Your vampire can also draw on your special powers, all of which are fueled by blood. In combat, vampires can temporarily boost their strength and abilities, making them even more lethal. Certain vampires can even summon spirit allies to attack their foes. Out of combat, you can use your powers and experiment with different approaches to quests. You can try to brainwash someone into giving you what you want, or you can use a cloaking ability to hide so you're not detected. These blood powers are essentially the vampire equivalent of magic. It's also not much of a problem "refueling" your vampire, as you can usually grab an opponent or passerby and drain them of blood.
Bloodlines is a mostly great-looking game, though it's not on the same level of visual quality as that certain other game featuring the same graphics engine. Even though Vampire's graphics do have some rough spots, like flickering textures and clumsily edited cutscenes, they're still impressive for a role-playing game. The virtual Los Angeles in Bloodlines is a very gritty, rundown place, though it feels rather empty. Some pedestrians loiter around on the sidewalks, but there are no cars on the roads. To some, a Los Angeles without cars may seem far less likely than vampires actually existing. Nevertheless, Vampire's visuals help give the game a lot of gothic atmosphere. Meanwhile, the sound effects for the most part are functional, with the voice acting and music standing out. The game's soundtrack is composed of licensed tracks from a variety of rock bands, and they fit in well with the game's setting, particularly the many clubs and bars that you'll peruse.
Of further note, even though Bloodlines runs smoothly most of the time, it does suffer from some stability problems and it will crash to the desktop on occasion. Also, the loading times feel a bit long, though they're better on high-end systems.
Los Angeles is gritty and colorful, though strangely devoid of cars.
In many ways, Bloodlines feels very much influenced by the classic role-playing game Fallout, which is to be expected since developer Troika was founded by members of the Fallout team. Bloodlines presents a very interesting world to explore and memorable characters to interact with, and the open-ended nature of many of the quests allows you to tackle the game in multiple ways. So if you can look past the clunky combat and other shortcomings, you'll find that there's a rich world to explore in Bloodlines, a role-playing game that ultimately allows you to indulge your inner vampire.
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