Aw dang, you cut off the Unofficial Patch credits just before my name pops up. :) Thanks for the video!

Said it before and I'll say it again; if this game was left in the oven for just a few more months, it would've been the Witcher 3 of the early 2000s; hands down, fangs out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go reinstall an old friend.

Legend has it that everytime you mention Bloodlines, someone reinstalls it!

i just started playing this for the first time and it's definitely amazing

When I played the game I chose to answer the questions to determine my starting clan. I answered all of the questions honestly in accordance to my actual personality. It gave me Malkavian.

"Melee is not gonna work against mistress Ming Xiao" *Laughs in Brujah*

guess you could say: the game was rigged from the start

>Ventrue are just for talk It shows you never rolled a Ventrue with Fortitude and soaked every bullet like the T-1000

I bought and played this game when it was still available on shelves. I beat the entire game as a 13 year old, before the unofficial patches, FIRST RUN MALKAVIAN. It set a huge standard in writing for me that unfortunately no other game has 100% stratched that itch since. At that age my friends and I were also playing tons of the pencil and paper White Wolf system. I am absolutely terrified of how the sequel will turn out. However, I am still very excited.

It’s interesting that Strauss senses something in you. He’s right too. In the tabletop game, the things Lacroix has you do in this game as a mere fledgling are things that you’d expect elder vampires to do. Mostly fledglings would just take care of a few problematic kine. Clearly Lacroix is trying to get you killed by sending you on these insane suicide missions, but you always emerge unscathed!

Yes. Yes it was. Great game and I enjoyed every minute of it.

My friend never understood what I was talking about when I talked about the giant slug being near unbeatable, and that I had to glitch it to progress (I wedged my character in a place where I couldn't be hit most of the time, at the top of the braziers, and unloaded all my weapons in the inventory that I luckily had stockpiled even though I had no firearms skill, and then I could bring the boss to about half HP and just about beat in in melee before I died). Turns out later, when I watched him load his save, that his game had glitched in a way that made his character unkillable, which he hadn't noticed, lol.

I only noticed the spaghetti power lines when I played Malkavian for the first time. I thought that was a feature of playing the loony mad oracle vampire clan o-o.

20:28 - It was thanks to this very place that I not only got introduced to Chiasm, which I still love to this day, but also the whole of darkwave. I can also thank this game for introducing me to Tiamat, and while I knew Lacuna Coil before playing it, having Swamped in the soundtrack was an awesome surprise.

Playing through VTMB without unoffical patches is like crawling through a small sewer tunnel with shit with open wounds and slowly but surely going insane. The story is awesome, the characters are great.... but the gameplay is so buggy that you can basically die by going forward. Awesome game, the crawling is all worth it. Malkavians are hilarious as to play.

god damn im so glad in my early teenager years I played new vegas. as a 14 year old I learned to appreciate the nuances and unique writing of that game. 5 years later, 19 now, playing through cult classic games like lisa the painful and VTMB, we've all come a long way

11:25 That's not a bug, that happens when you're a malkavian.

This game has been my obsession since i came across it in 2009. Haunted hotel that actually freaked me out, never thought i could play a game as a vampire and actually get scared! Really immersive that i almost felt like i was roaming an actual city, so many places to check out, my favorite the night club and listening to their music choice. Then the op werewolf, the haunted mansion and the fact that you could insult and piss off anyone! Malkavian became such an obsession that i used that title for a while! The psychotic skisto vampire that'd say weird things. I was even more excited when i heard they were making an mmorpg but sad that they chose to just work on Eve online :/ or so my sources said.... Id be super fat and antisocial if they did make it though so maybe its a good thing they didnt lol

God Bless Clan Malkavian. The Clan with the Invisibility ability and AoE Crowd Control. Fighting through those last few battles was a significant struggle, yes, but I managed it thanks to Easy access to sneak attacks on basic enemies and an obsessive need to keep both kinds of weapons on me and upgraded DESPITE putting very few points into both Melee and Firearms.

I remember beating Ming Xiao unarmed on my first play-through, with a Gangrel. Protean war-form claws do hit hard. Sheriff was also easy. Chinatown club was however indeed most difficult fight for me. Feeding healed a lot in early "game version"s so I managed to beat it after a dozen tries.

This game will be a cult classic no matter what. Yes to both

Good old flamethrower cheese for Ming Xiao was hilarious.

Also may I remind everyone. this game WILL NOT run on modern systems without the fan patch. Since the game will think you ddo not have enough ram. lol

* Paid full price for VTMB on release day * Finished the game and enjoyed it * Did own 2x 6800GT SLI at the time, tho :/ Dunno if that last bit mattered, but I remember having *SO MUCH* fun with this game I'm glad I didn't encounter the stuff other ppl were complaining about. No game-crippling bugs I remember. Simply loved it.

I bought this and preordered WoW the same day. Time to reinstall.

I was one of the "first" to buy it. I remember seeing it as a new release in store, begging my mother for it, and then getting it soon after with it's velcro fronted box in all its glory. Bugs and all I still fucking adored it.

15:13 no one ever mentions the dealer is a obese Carl Johnson from GTA: SA. Also released in 2004.

I remember when i was a kid, this game changed my entire vision of life. Same as Fallout 2.

Malkavian was my first play through and I can't play anything else after. Favorite game ever

Vampire: The Masquarade was one of my favourite traditional tabletop RPGs growing up.

It's amazing that, of all the games you mentioned to follow Bloodlines, what we actually got was a battle royale! Only a Malkavian could see that one coming.

After the Seth video, I was tempted to give it a try, this helps confirm it to the "Games I should really get to list". It might even eventually get to the downloaded on my computer list.

Good work on this video, really enjoyed it!) And yeah Tremere main here too :D

yes, a thousand times yes. and many praises for wesp5 the hero and saviour of vtmb

Really nice video! I enjoyed all of the background story. Also great, that you cite your sources! Seems like I will get me that game, once it comes into sale on steam or gog.

i hyped so hard when i see this on my startup page!! it was great to hear that sound again at the start... guess i am replaying over again

😀 thanks for the review, i hear good things about this game from time to time, i need to pick it up whenever it goes back on sale for $5, i imagine during the months between August thru December, thanks again for the review ✌😍👍

Meanwhile here I am having played the whole game through with a melee Malkavian without plus patch. In fact I never played characters that use firearms. You need to put points into dodge and stamina to mitigate damage.

I bought the game when I was 18 at the super high recommendation from a buddy of mine. We played VTM together and somehow I didn't know about bloodlines (Same year it was released). I picked it up and got pissed (cause of that certain broken quest that wouldn't let you finish the game without the official patch) and my buddy directed me to the official game patch. We both played different clans, he played Ventrue, I played Tremere. Awesome memories. Here's to hoping that Bloodlines 2 is as epic as the 1st one.

You made me get my DVD out and install it again! Nice! (And I am already afraid to go through the haunted hotel again....)

I actually played through this game for the first time unpatched and I did just fine as Tremere. Stealthing around is extremely broken because near max level you pretty much turn invisible as soon as you crouch. That solves every combat situation in which enemies don't auto-spot you because of story reasons. For boss fights, blood strike and blood boil were honestly way more than enough. Those spells hit like a truck and you can just save all your blood packs until you run into a boss, then buy some new ones after you're done. None of the bosses or mandatory story content felt impossible, the only parts I had to skip were the zombie killing sidequest, and saving that dude in Chinatown from dying from the gang. Luckily the former sidequest can be completely avoided by doing an alternative equivalent quest, and the latter is just completely optional with no reward afaik. The only things I ran into that were genuine problems were two: -a character in the nosferaru warrens would act like I failed her sidequest without me ever talking to her beforehand, therefore making me unable to do that sidequest -the door in the final Quei Jin palace where you need to push the wooden log to open it wouldn't let me push it. All it took to fix that was reloading the save file though. Aside from that the game acted normally, despite being the Steam unpatched version. Of all the issues you mentioned I only really had the resolution problems but those weren't that bad. By the end, the game even felt kinda easy to complete. Both Ming Xiao and the Tzimisce boss only took me two tries because I had to learn their moveset. After that I always had enough blood packs on hand and at least one powerful gun with enough bullets to finish them off. Overall I still really enjoyed the vanilla version because of its writing. The endless sewer adventure to get to the nosferatu warrens was super boring and should've been shortened, but that was really the only part of the game I outright disliked. Anyways, I've now installed the unofficial patch and I'm looking forward to my next playthrough as Malkavian.

It's not perfect, but still better than most so-called AAA games we are getting today.

Tremere's Blood theft (stunlock) + automated shotgun in ammospam mode is the ultimate killcombo for bosses

Awsome video as always, i appreciate you!

Great video. Melee is perfectly viable if you're a Brujah I was able to do all content... but I was min-max-ing pretty hard. Played this game who knows how many times. :)

31:13 That "Mar 2020" release date hits different in 2023...

one of the only games that actually makes you feel like there is a difference between the starting clans or classes.

The haunted mansion. One of the best quests in the game because of how atmospheric it is.

✨ Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb ✨ 😭 Xplay and Cinametech 💕 my childhood!!!!!

Hey what up charlatan wonder how you be doing loving your new videos

Awesome video. Gosh. I'll have to play it again since I never got the tremere ending. Also, Outstar is an awesome rolplayer too! She's in a great game I saw some time ago.

you have infact sold me and il be sampling it now thank you for your time sir

I'm playing it now. It's great!

Man! I was one of those original purchasers! I felt this was a criminally under-appreciated game!

I only recently purchased this game. I didn't think anything could challenge Deus Ex for the title of my favorite game, but Bloodlines pulled it off. This game is truly incredible.

(Answering the title) I mean, I played it for the first time a few days ago and it blew me away so nostalgia has got nothing to do with it for me. The game very much holds up even today, it was ahead of its time.

Yeah, Unfortunatelly Bloodlines downfall was basically Activision's fault (And Valve).... :c And I hope Paradox will get it right... .and won't give it 100 Dlc's costing at least 5$ each. xD I love paradox, but oh boy those dlcs....

I've never actually played it with the fan patch until a few years back x:

Great video. Subscribed.

just got done with my first playthrough and i can tell i'm gonna replay it in the near future. It's just incredible

I hate to be "That Guy" But: The Ventrue are pronounced Ven-TRUE not Ventur. Also: Celerity is pronounced Cel-air-it-ee not Cerelity.

Hate to be *that* guy, but its CEL-ERITY, not CER-ELITY. Just sayin' 😉

I played it unpatched and it wasn’t that bad. I was able to thoroughly enjoy beating it.

I love how the thumbnail pic says "Bröken"

A few corrections: It's VenTRUE, not Venture, that's just the name of Lacroix's Tower as a on-the-nose comercialization of 'hey this massive building is Ventrue-owned'. Then there's the 'Cerelity' thing... it's Celerity. I am OCD about correct pronounciations.... heh, sorry ^^;

Yes, it is broken, and yes, it is good. I still replay it from time to time and still love every second of it.

Great video, man!

Never even heard of this game before today. When VTM 2 was announced I thought it was a follow up that that recent vampire RPG people had said was pretty good. But after this I think I will pick this up on GoG and give it a shot. Thumps up.

you: im not the biggest OG fan of it,, i was only 10 or so when i first tried it. me: i was born the same year it was released (im 15) and ive never replayed a game so much in my life. Im currently on the last clan as a nosferatu before i beat all the clans total! ^0^

I mean I got the game from GoG and honestly my thirst (or "obsession" as my friends like to say it) for vampire games has once more been quencehed. This is one of my favorite RPG games even with its flaws I love it and I don't know how will the next game fair but this I really loved and it also got me to the "World of Darkness" series (where this game is set) I just hope I'll find another cool vampire game too :D Seriously I need more vampire games I've been hungering for another one and I've see games like Dark (We don't like to talk about it though) which were just.... not okay.... but I do play the Legacy of Kain games now (from the 1st game) but if anyone has any other suggestions (besides Castlevania LoS 1-2 Mirror of Fate and Symphony of the Night and Vampyr that is) please let me know and I'll seek it out :D Edit: Okay watched the video and honestly My real issue with the "Old" version was that I lost my save after I got the fanpatch... but otherwise I agree with you this game didn't make me feel like I was playing a game but rather as if I'd have taken a peek into the world of Darkness and practically being a part of it. There are questlines and characters that I will never forget many that I could save and many I couldn't and even those whom I managed to release from their eternal torments (those who played the game will know) This game as you have said it IS THE WORLD in which you are just 1 guy (or girl depending on your choice) and its up to you to either win or die. Also Malkavians are my fav clan storywise as they are practically having the ability to see the future and getting strange whispers. Also QUESTION. Do you think its okay that I ACTUALLY understood what the Malkavians were saying? like I really DID understand them. Idk.. it was fun though. Gameplaywise though the Tremere Clan hands down the best and its a nice touch that we actually have a clan representative specialities happening I wonder if Troika team have planned to do the same for other vamps too or just the Tremere but DAMN it felt good to be recognized by a straightforward group of vampires and whom were loyal to me as I was to them. It was a nice touch :D And also Now I'm going to check out the other Vampire Masquerade game before the 2nd game comes out :D

Oh! I haven't heard of this game for years! I didn't play it much, but I loved every second that I spent on it. I think it was my first horror game, and it definitely freaked me out. Who else remembers the elevator scene when you hear a voice whisper "beeee carefuuuuuul"? After you hear that, you go down the elevator tower, you hear a noise above you: it's the elevator falling down on you. That was scary _and_ epic! I also remember a haunted mansion, now classic in videogames but back then, it felt revolutionary to me xD.

You remember Warcraft 3? I haven't heard that mentioned in quite some time. So much nostalgia.

Back then I played the unpatched version as Gangrel. It was hard...realy hard, but it felt soo good when I opend the sarcophagus and well...upsy.

It's painful hearing him say cerelity so many times. CELERITY CE-LER-IT-Y

This game is as good as I remember. I had fun quests OUTSIDE the game, like going to another part of my country, to try and get the Bradygames strategy guide to work out one part I was stuck on. The problems and issues this game had made it more special to those of us who have loved this game from the outset. I also love that it never faded away and died, but is stronger than it ever has been.

Coming back here, since your constant coverage on this game made me play it and holy freaking crap was in incredible. Put a full 40 hours into and it truly was one of the most wonderful things I've ever played... All up until the Sabbat hotel mission. Then the game fell apart. But I don't know that against the developers at all. I powered through it, got to Xiao and turned on God mode and never looked back. I will say that I will look back on this game with a smile now.

It's the only game that makes you feel like you're watching a failed Josh Whedon project.

Whilst I did buy my version on Steam sometime last year (cause it was insanely cheap), installing the patch by yourself on that version isn't too hard either.

I played my first playthrough in June and loved it. Despite the game launching the year I graduated high school, I never had a computer I was confident in its ability to play it until this one. I gotta say, thanks to the plus patch, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Didn't have any mods aside from the patch because I wanted it as close to the original version as I could get it, but going forward, subsequent playthroughs will be modded.

The lamp post in the thumbnail made the text look like it said Bröken can’t I see it now lol

yep, as good as i remember, i keep enjoying it A LOT

Say it with me now, "Every time it's mentioned someone, somewhere reinstalls."

I bought this game new in the box not long after it came out. Played it and beat it. Good stuff. Built a new system and bought it on steam earlier this year, used the fan patch. Great stuff!

I just recently played through it, again, for my 125th hour spent ingame (after getting it on Steam) and can confirm it is indeed as great as we remember.

😀 yay Bioshock is on GOG now drm free, great version for sharing 😀

I played this for the first time last summer so no nostalgia bias and... it's pretty great. The dialogue is amazing and the atmosphere is very well done, great narrative experience... if you can tolerate all the bugs that is. Thankfully I had only one gamebreaking bug on my gameplay [which was fixed by the unofficial patch]. Surprisingly, still not as broken as Skyrim (or any Bethesda game for that matter).

Way late to the party here but I just found this channel and I'm loving it. Binging through the archives atm. I was one of the people who did play the game close to release with only the official patches, and while it was most definitely buggy, it was certainly not unbeatable. I'm sure my teenage self didn't really register how broken the game was, and I don't know that I would actively recommend the vanilla version to people playing it for the first time these days, but I think it's a bit unfair to paint it as unplayable without the unofficial patch. I played through it with most of the classes back in the day without fan mods. And yes, as some other comments have pointed out, the plus half of the patch definitely has detractors too. I didn't try it out a whole lot myself, but it does change the game pretty significantly and adds a lot of things that the modders just thought would be cool things to add. Like more sexy stuff. Playing the game that way is certainly valid, and the restored content is an impressive achievement in its own right, but I think I would recommend going with only the bug fixes for an initial playthrough.

i still have nightmares from the hotel mission, the spookiest level i have ever played, even more than actual horror games

This is a great video but I'd just like to interject that I feel it's unfair to compare the unpatched game to the plus patch rather than the basic one. Idk to me the plus patch feels like a mod that's treated as canon, and I know the content is based on things found in the code but I don't think that qualifies it as official. There's no way for wesp and anyone else helping to create the patch to know what the intentions for the stuff was, or even if all of it was going to be put in the game - developers often change projectory in the middle of creating assets simply because the act of making things takes more time than deciding what's going to be included in the finished game, and the stuff that's not used always is just left in the code because there's no point to removing it. I understand the worth of talking about unfinished quest lines and stuff, but we also cannot assume that it was All intended to be used, nor that the route wesp and co went to implement this content was true to the original design because that'd be literally impossible. Again, this is a great video and I do not mean to detract from it, i just feel this is worth thinking about

Short answer: Yes Long answer: Yes

My first playthrough, which was before I knew about the patch, was with a Ventrue with maxed out Melee and no points in firearms. I only used guns in the last fight, because I did not know about the lights.

18:15 - I don't know what version of the game I had back in 2007 when I first played it, but: 1) I played as a Malcavian. 2) I heavily focused on stealth so I hit Steath 10 before going to the Museum and was pretty much invisible => steamrolled through the most of the game. 3) I helped Mercurio and didn't rat on him => he sold me relatively cheap guns and ammo. 4) I saved ammo for the bosses and situations where I couldn't sneak up and drain/one hit kill everyone in a given room 5) Flamethrower was OP as fuck. Maybe fan-patch nerfed it considerably, but I remember grilling Ming-Zhao with 2 canisters of fuel in about 30 seconds and I still had another one to spare when she died. 6) Sheriff was way tougher, mostly because of 2-stage fight and him flying around, but I had flamethrower and pretty much all of the guns Mercurio could sell with full ammo, so... It was a matter of time. Basically, this game is relatively easy, if you are economical. Don't buy anything except for armor, unless you really have to. Don't use guns on small fries. Don't use blood packs for every scratch you get. Don't use vampire powers, because they are fine and dandy, but slow and/or finicky. Stealth though the game (because on Stealth 10 you are basically invisible for everyone but bosses and these fleshy things in sewers) and loot the shit out of everything around you. By the time I went in LaCroix's tower, money and tradeable stuff-wise all I had is 4$... and that's it. But guns, ammo and blood pack-wise I was 100% stocked, so whatever.

... and you don't favour Malkavian. You didn't really play this, did you?

VTMB is good and VTMB2 will never be as good

i bought this game in 2004ish - 2005ish and don't remember any of these things happening. I had no idea it was released unfinished, and had a blast playing it. I never downloaded any patches. I don't remember finishing it, and I thought the last boss was the fight with the bat after the sheriff. I still had lots of fun, and just found it on steam and to my surprise there are mods for it.

hi saw you on trending today congrats

Okay, this is my second post... Did you even play this game? I'm very serious. Between not being able to pronounce the powers properly you're making outright false statements. I beat this game, in every possible way, from melee to guns. You can *totally* take out Ming Zhao with melee, it is very easy, and if you are a Gangrel then your Protean freaking straight up melts people. Here is how you melee: 1. You must have a decent Strength, as this game (for reasons I don't like) uses Strength as your go-to melee attribute (in the tabletop game it is Dex to hit, Str for damage)... 2. You want to use Blood Buff *or* have decent Potence. But you can melee anything down in this game, I've beaten it tons of times without using guns, tons of times. You can easily do it, and I did all the social options throughout the game too. I ask again, with all seriousness, did you actually give this game a shot? Is the game perfect? Heck no. Is it buggy? Oh yes. Is the plus patch required? No, but it helps. A lot.

I'll have to try it out again. I didn't get very far in it when it came out, but I remember liking the style.

Hey hey people Seth here........ wait, wrong video.

The game was and still is amazing. I still have it on my pc and play it from time to time.