Review: Vampire the Masquerade – Swansong

destructoid.com:

Ambitious, brooding, stylish, and messy, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong feels right at home with the eternal undead it follows.

It takes the narrative adventure style, mixes it with tabletop RPG and some pen-and-paper puzzle solving, and comes away with something fresh. It just also stumbles a few times on its way there.

The Vampire brand has been slowly upping its presence in video games over the past few years. Alongside the slew of visual novels and a nebulous in-development Bloodlines sequel, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is an interesting new entrant. When it shines, it really feels like the better parts of playing a tabletop campaign. It’s the stutters in-between that cause the most trouble.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong (PC [played], PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S)Developer: Big Bad WolfPublisher: NaconReleased: May 18, 2022 MSRP: $49.99 on PC, $59.99 on console

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong follows three different vampires—Galeb, Emem, and Leysha—hailing from three different clans but all falling under the thumb of the Boston Camarilla and its upstart Prince Hazel Iversen. An attempted reunification party meant to consolidate Hazel’s power became a bloodbath, and so she disperses the three protagonists on different quests to ascertain who has attacked them, why, and whether another strike is imminent.

It’s a good kickstart to the plot, and I enjoy the moments where Swansong leans heavily into the lore of Vampire: The Masquerade. There’s a lot of internal politicking and posturing, as internal disputes within the Boston Camarilla spill over. It doesn’t hurt if you don’t know the difference between a Toreador and a Nosferatu, and a Codex is available to handle more esoteric concepts like the