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Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Review – Greatly Uneven But Still Worth a Look

Alessio Palumbo • Oct 17, 2025 at 09:00am EDT

Game Info

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

October 21, 2025

Platform

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S and X

Publisher

Paradox Interactive

Developer

The Chinese Room

It's been over six and a half years since the original announcement of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Fans had been clamoring for a sequel for years; even though the 2004 action RPG developed by Troika Games was commercially unsuccessful, mainly due to launch bugs and being squeezed in what we have called gaming's greatest month ever, leading to the closure of Troika, Bloodlines eventually gained a cult following and was rightfully recognized as an excellent roleplaying game.

The developer picked by publisher Paradox, Hardsuit Labs, had no RPGs in their track record. However, they had enlisted Brian Mitsoda, who had written and designed the first installment and was effectively an insurance for fans. Despite a fairly advanced state of completion, though, the project did not meet the expectations of Paradox Interactive, which eventually decided to remove Hardsuit Labs from the job and delay Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 indefinitely.

Later, Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester admitted that the game was very close to being canceled before another developer came in with a pitch that convinced the Stockholm-based publisher to let them make Bloodlines 2. We had to wait until September 2023 to learn that the developer was The Chinese Room, known for adventure games like Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture as well as horror games like Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and last year's Still Wakes the Deep.

It was another studio without prior experience with action RPGs, and this time without the guidance of someone who actually worked on the original game. Still, stranger things have happened in the games industry, and most fans were just happy to finally get a full-fledged action RPG in this beloved corner of the wider World of Darkness setting.

I have been very much looking forward to this myself. As an avid tabletop RPG player, I've been fascinated with Vampire: The Masquerade for a long time and thought this setting was criminally underserved when it comes to quality triple-A videogames. So, can Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 fit in that category? Now that I've finished it, I'd say not quite, but it's still a decent, enjoyable experience if you're into the setting.

Given what I wrote about The Chinese Room, you could be forgiven for worrying about the game's combat. After all, they had no prior experience making a melee-focused action game like this one. However, as I had noted after playing the first few hours in the preview build, combat is actually quite fun. It will not be revered alongside games like God of War or Devil May Cry, that's for sure, but it does a good enough job of capturing the fantasy of being a powerful vampire while still providing a solid challenge on the highest difficulty level.

Genre fans will be familiar with the basics, like light attack and heavy attack, the latter powerful enough to launch regular enemies airborne. You can, of course, dodge, and there's no stamina bar to worry about. It wouldn't make any sense since you're playing as a vampire, not a mortal. Even so, most of the enemies you face during the game are also not regular humans, which means even unlimited dodging is not really enough to make you invincible to their blows. Perhaps my biggest complaint with the combat is the 'parry' system, which only works by dashing toward your foe right before they hit you. It's counterintuitive compared to most action games and I found myself favoring the dodge by far, even though the parry also comes with a built-in counterattack move.

Naturally, as a vampire, stealth is always a great option to start combat as it gives you the option to feed right away. Feeding is the only way to regain health (unless you've got a health elixir) in the game, and you'll be doing it constantly even in combat. Once you've battered a foe within an inch of their life, you are given the option to feed, but beware: you are still vulnerable to enemy attacks while the feeding animation takes place. Feeding is also key to recharging the active abilities, so you have to do it, but try to isolate the victim first.

As an Elder vampire, you also have access to telekinesis from the beginning of the game. This lets you pull enemies toward you, but its best usage is to gather nearby objects (evidenced in blue when activating the vampire senses) and fling them to the foes at hand. Interestingly, when grabbing firearms, telekinesis will fire them against your enemies while ammo lasts. Then you can throw the spent weapon in their face.

The stars of the show are the abilities, though. At the beginning of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, you will choose one out of six clans: Brujah, Banu Haqim, Tremere, Ventrue, Toreador, and Lasombra. Each clan has six abilities, two passives (the clan feeding passive and the clan perk, respectively the first and the last ability in the skill tree) and four active abilities, each belonging to a different category: Strike, Relocate, Affect, and Mastery. At first, you unlock only the abilities in your clan's skill tree.

However, it doesn't take long before you are allowed to acquire abilities from other clans. What I hadn't realized in the preview is that if you want to get a Strike ability from another clan, you have to temporarily remove the one from your clan. Essentially, you always have four active abilities available, no matter how many you have unlocked. You can always swap them via the skill tree window, though.

This disappointed me at first, though I realized The Chinese Room had to do it or by the endgame the player could end up with way too many abilities. Another restriction is perhaps more questionable: you can only swap a Strike ability for a Strike ability, and so on. Again, this is likely done for balancing purposes, but Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is ultimately still just a single player game that's focused on delivering a power fantasy. I believe this is something that the developers could change at some point to allow players to build their own vampire moveset however they like.

Even with this limitation in place, there's variety to be found in setting up the abilities. I picked the Toreador as my clan choice, mainly due to the Entrancing Kiss Strike ability, which charms an enemy to your side. This is extremely useful as groups of enemies do not stand around like in other games but attack you relentlessly, at least on Hard difficulty, and turning even one of them can make a big difference. If you turn a heavy foe, the charm will last less, but those types of enemies usually deal more damage, so in some cases I've had them wipe out most of the enemy group on their own.

The Toreador has the Blink ability in the Relocate category, which can be used both for traversal and to deliver a solid kick to foes. There are other solid options such as Shadow Step and Recall, but the Banu Haqim's Split Second is simply fantastic. It's effectively a bullet time effect that slows everyone but you down and lets you get close for a combat feed even if they're at full life, which is absolutely invaluable in certain scenarios.

When it comes to the Affect ability, I chose the Brujah's Taunt, which forces a foe to focus on you and also makes them take more damage for some time. Lastly, when it comes to the Mastery ability, the Toreador's Blurred Momentum is a great choice as it evades all attacks for a few seconds, but the Banu Haqim's Unseen Aura is also awesome, making you temporarily invisible (though not silent).

When you learn how to use all of this arsenal to maximum effect, you really feel like an unstoppable Elder vampire. It's a bit of a shame, then, that there aren't that many memorable boss fights in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, except the very last one. That's not to say the previous ones are bad, but they could be more epic given the powers available to the characters.

During the entire game, Seattle is buried under a Christmas snowstorm, which is also the developers' excuse for cars not circulating. I don't think in reality this level of snow would completely stop traffic, but I can understand them using it as a way to avoid the headache of traffic pathing.

As a vampire, you have access to traversal abilities like unlimited sprint and gliding from heights. You can also climb buildings (up to a point) and get on the roofs. This is the best way of quickly getting from one point to another without either having to walk normally like a human or risk breaking the Masquerade. That's right, the game incorporates the setting's titular mechanics: vampires sworn to the Camarilla, the premier vampiric sect, must avoid discovery by humans at all costs. Whenever you do something supernatural like sprinting at superspeed or even double jumping in sight of another human, the Masquerade bar will fill, starting with green, then yellow, and ultimately red. When the red bar is full, you are instantly stabbed to death by a Camarilla assassin.

Before that, though, you can also be tracked down and shot by police officers who have been alerted by civilians. That usually gets you into the dangerous red bar; at this point, you should immediately find a way to vanish before the red bar is filled completely. If you manage that, the bar will slowly deplete and the Masquerade will be restored, though be warned that when the bar is yellow, officers still have your trail and can resume the hunt. Only when it gets back to green do they 'forget' about you.

Needless to say, feeding on humans in plain sight is the quickest way to fill the Masquerade bar, but you'll still need to find a way to feed. Sometimes it's about finding someone isolated enough, possibly in an alley; other times, though, you can lure them either with abilities like the Toreador's Beckon or simply by talking to them. Feeding also takes the Blood Resonance system into account, especially when it comes to unlocking abilities from other clans. You will need a certain amount of Sanguine, Choleric, and Melancholic blood, as well as the ability points, to unlock those abilities. You can spot a human's blood type with the vampire sense; sometimes, when their blood is at half-resonance, you should try to talk to them to get them to full resonance. For example, if you want Choleric blood, make them angry. If you want Sanguine blood, seduce them.

Granted, it's not like this version of Seattle is huge. It's fairly small as far as open worlds go nowadays, and it won't take you long at all to learn where every major is located. The open world as a whole is not particularly interesting, either, but the biggest sin of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is arguably that its side content is shockingly subpar. RPG fans know that one of the true hallmarks of a great roleplaying game is its side content being as good as, if not even better, than the main quest.

Here, The Chinese Room stumbled hard. After you become the Sheriff of Seattle, on each night, you're given optional side missions by three characters: Mrs. Thorn, an old woman who is also the clan contact of the Tremere; Niko, a Russian guy who is the Banu Haqim contact in Seattle; and Onda, the Lasombra contact. All three mission types are extremely dull. Onda will ask you to wipe out Ghoul leaders while barely telling you their names; Niko will point you to civilians who have wronged others in the city and must be punished; and lastly, Mrs. Thorn, who is a scholar and a mage like all Tremere, gives you textbook fetch quests where you are literally just asked to get a package in the hands of some non-player character.

I don't have to explain that the developers could have done much more in all these cases. All these secondary missions are also standalone, rather than building up to something actually interesting from a narrative standpoint, as you would expect in an RPG. Even in quantity, the game does not meet the stated 25 to 40 hours of content; I spent just 18.3 hours completing practically all of the game's missions, although I did have the advantage of having played the preview build and knowing the first few hours like the back of my hand. The average player is probably going to spend no more than 20 hours.

Thankfully, the main quest is another thing entirely, living up to the level of mystery and intrigue you would seek in a Vampire: The Masquerade game. The main cast is composed of deep, interesting characters whose motivations are not easy to unravel, and the true villain is possibly the least one you would expect at first. The addition of Fabien, the Malkavian vampire in the head of Phyre, may have caused a one-year delay, but it also undoubtedly improved the narrative. He's likely the best character in the whole game, and he's also voiced brilliantly by actor Ronan Summers. The only criticism I'll levy against the story is that the fate of one of the main characters is seemingly forgotten at the end. I don't know if that's because the team ran out of time or something else, but either way, it felt very weird.

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 runs on Unreal Engine 5. As far as recent games made with Epic's technology go, its visuals are pretty average, but this means it still looks pretty good overall even without any fancy technology like ray tracing. On PC, it also supports NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and Multi Frame Generation, and AMD FSR 3.1 with Frame Generation.

However, even on a high-end PC like mine, which equips a 9800X3D CPU and an RTX 5090 GPU, the game runs badly. The biggest issue is the near-constant stuttering. We are sadly accustomed to it by now with UE-powered games, but this is one of the worst instances I've seen to date. I'm working on a deeper technical analysis, but as you can already see in the gameplay footage, it drops down to very low frame rates while simply walking across Seattle. It's very annoying to say the least. I had already noticed the stuttering in the preview build and told the developers about it, but there have been no noticeable improvements in the final version. Here's hoping it can be improved with patches, but I'm not very confident. To make matters worse, the game does not support High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays at all, which for a triple-A game launching in late 2025 is frankly inexcusable. Besides, it should be pretty easy for Unreal Engine 5 games to enable at least basic support.

Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).

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WCCFTECH RATING