Game Review - Vampyr

Game Review: Vampyr by DONTNOD Entertainment
Score: +6/-4

I got Vampyr free from the Epic Game Store. If you don't already know, they give away full titles every week, and not cheesy indie titles either.

Also see our document listing various tips for Vampyr.

 

London, 1918. You are newly-turned Vampyr Dr. Jonathan Reid. As a doctor, you must find a cure to save the city’s flu-ravaged citizens. As a Vampyr, you are cursed to feed on those you vowed to heal. Will you embrace the monster within? Your actions will save or doom London.

+1 The conversation mechanics are very good and quite engaging. The process of unlocking conditions for topics and the various conditions themselves make for a better and more interesting system than in most games. So much so that you will probably not mind how linear it is.
+1 In "choices matter" games, the consequence of your dialog has to be played out meaningfully, which means permutations of outcomes -- which in turn means quite a bit of development cost. In Vampyr, your choices rarely matter, but they have traded this experience for both an experience of conversation gameplay and depth of character development. The stories of the citizens are varied and often involve interesting twists and interconnections.

Something we didn't like is how the "critical" dialog choices were very inconsistent in their importance.

• When you can only choose one of the dialog options (when the dialog wheel has a red "Y"), there is no real consequence. Often, no matter what you choose, the citizen says the same thing.
• -1 And no matter what happens, you can go back to speaking with the citizen as if nothing happened: For example, you just accused so-and-so of child abuse but the next time you speak with them they greet you happily as if your conversation never happened.
• -1 Yet sometimes, you will permanently lose a "Hint", blocking you from fully uncovering the Citizen's story. This forces you to basically play the game all over again just to uncover one citizen's story fully, when it doesn't really affect the outcome of how the overall story / main quest plays out.

-1 Embracing mortals is a stereotype "Vampire" experience, but the consequences in-game are so irritating that you are in fact stupid to do so and it pushes you to not do so. Even more strangely, killing dozens of humans enemies is of no consequence whatsoever.

+1 Combat is engaging and oddly both fulfilling and disappointing at the same time. Your personal skill at reading the enemy and not getting hit is far more important than having stats and powers. So there's a thrill in being, say, level 12 and defeating level 20-30 enemies, especially when you can't really afford to take many hits. But the same mechanics that allow this to happen also encourage cheesy moves, and winning with cheese isn't really that exciting.

Fortunately, the solution is just to level up. And the "evolution" process even lets you level down if you really wanted with free resets and not needing to spend all your development potential.

+1 Related to this is how the game presents enemies. With each chapter, enemy compositions on the map change, sometimes with NPC versus NPC faction skirmishes. And new enemies with new abilities appear, so that the game world feels refreshed and you are kept on your guard.

+1 There's an easy-combat "story mode" for those who want to focus on the story. Too few games do this and it's really a great feature for players who have more interest in the story than time to grind through challenging combat.

+1 The story starts out interesting and each chapter reveals more intrigue. Where it might slow down terribly is if you do a lot of running around for the side quests, and unfortunately that is a necessity if you don't want to kill Citizens, especially before uncovering their interesting stories.

-1 However we felt it slowed down a lot after Chapter 3, the tone shifted to chores, and the ending was lacklustre.