Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York

This is a standalone visual novel, loosely based off Coteries of New York. Many of the picture slides and characters were reused for this game that was in the previous one. Excluding replaying it, there's about ~5h of gameplay from beginning to end. I do find the main character much more relatable than those you could choose in it's predecessor. In Coteries, your choices had very little to no impact on the overall story. Without replaying it, it's difficult for me to say if that's true of this game or not. Aside from the main character sometimes seeing strange shadows, or some story dialog letting you do something that's more than human, you don't really need to be a vampire in this game. That's not to say it isn't portrayed well, just that it doesn't matter much--it's mostly a game of clue w/ some vampire elements. Overall, I think it's a bit sub par for a visual novel. There are definitely some areas I had wished they had improved on from the first game, which they didn't do, and it's rather short. If you enjoyed Coteries, odds are you will enjoy this game as well.

This is a lot like Coteries, just that you only follow one protagonist who is more fleshed out. Which is a good thing, imo. Again the strong parts are the characters, the dialogues between them and little side stories (although I'd say Coteries did a bit better in that department). Unfortunately the games don't focus solely on those, but try to weave some grand conspiracy overarching plot, which gets weird especially towards the end. Trying to pull one "you never would've guessed this shocking reveal" after the other. No, I wouldn't have guessed, cause I see no connection to the rest of the story, so I have absolutely no investment in this mystery. Add to that that the 'narrative' bits still aren't super well written (matter of taste and preferences ofc). My major gripe with both games is not being able to save and reload scenes. Dialogue options are often unclear, so it's easy to pick something you absolutely didn't intend to, being able to reload there would be nice. Or just to find out what's behind a different one without having to replay the entire thing. Also apparently the choices you make during the night apparently affect how you handle the relationship with your partner? Sure makes sense, I always apply the same logic to work/dealing with criminals as to my romantic life /sarcasmOff All in all it's a passable visual novel. If you're into the universe and don't mind okay writing, sure, play it. There's enough I liked about it to finish it, just a lot of things that frustrated me along the way. Lots of potential, I *wish* they had more time to shine things up (and just let me have several save slots *please*). Alternatively I wish this was just 'bad', so I could just ignore it and not be frustrated with a "we b*tch because we love you" impulse... but I guess that's following V:tM tradition ;)

Played the first of this series, wasn't thrilled by the linearity of it. However, Shadows was on sale, so I figured I'd give it a shot. 20 minutes in, my first significant choice is fatal. That's not "branching narative" it's the same one dimensional crap. If this was a tabletop session of VtM, you'll throw you coffee in the GM's face and never sit down at a table with them again. Learn to craft something other than jump through the hoops naratives, DD.

The story and writing style are rather poor, even embarrassing at times. Same as it's predecessor. You can really tell what kind of a hipster the writer is by their style and how limited their life experiences are. This is something that it has in common with the newest edition of Vampire the Masquerade however, so maybe it's intentional. Unfortunately a visual novel that fails at story and writing doesn't really have anything else to offer.