Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong Reviews
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong falls short of its ambitions as a story-focused detective RPG due to a dense but uninteresting plot, bland characters, and unintuitive puzzles.
Vampire The Masquerade: Swansong, offers a deep gameplay, a rich universe and real consequences to our actions. Unfortunately, the game is counterbalanced by a sluggish pace and technical flaws.
Review in French | Read full review
A bland and occasionally baffling return for the Vampire: The Masquerade series
Another entry in the Vampire: The Masquerade world, this time bringing us some RPG detective work with three new characters.
My relationship to Swansong has become almost like my ritual appointment with Passions — until I fully exhaust the entire story, I need my dose of ridiculous people making ridiculous decisions, and the nuclear fallout of their mistakes.
Swansong is a good investigative adventure dressed up in vampire finery, but doesn't quite live up to my expectations due to some overly restrictive design and a disconnect between the third person perspective and the largely text and table top mechanics. Once some of the bugs are patched and there are resources available to support the build choices you make, there is a solid adventure to be found here. It's not the new Bloodlines, but it's an authentic Vampire: The Masquerade experience nonetheless.
Is it actually fun to be a vampire? Let's find out together, in the latest attempt to export Vampire: The Masquerade to video games.
Swansong's biggest problem is that at times it's perhaps not as clear as it could be about what you're actually meant to be doing or how to bypass certain problems, and you'll find that it's trial and error that gets you through. There's also a couple of technical issues, including one in which we spent ages wandering around trying to solve a puzzle only to reset the game and discover that the solution to the problem hadn't loaded the first time around. Not cool.
Vampire The Masquerade: Swansong is a flawed game for sure, with some rough visuals and a gameplay loop that certainly won’t be for everyone. However, if you are looking for a compelling vampire mystery and don’t mind quite a few annoyances that are usually present in modern AA games, then there is a lot to like about this flawed, but certainly captivating detective adventure.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong feels like something that might’ve been released five years ago when it would be hailed as something special. However, it doesn’t do anything new besides telling a story that is already too complicated by the time players first take on a role. The mechanics are tightly contained, never allowing the player to fully explore the better parts of this game.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong follows in the vein of narrative games like those of Telltale and Quantic Dream, but cannot reach the same level of quality. The narrative has a tendency to feel too linear and technically wise the game is far from impressive.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong manages to suck almost all the fun out of being a vampire. Billed as an RPG, it functions more like a frustrating puzzle game. Only the most patient players will have the time for it.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong tells an incredible story, one the player can truly influence, but it falls short in many of the efforts to translate the World of Darkness into video game form. A must-play for fans of the universe, but fans of the narrative-driven RPG may find more frustration than enjoyment.
Vampire: The Masquerade — Swansong is a narrative, investigative RPG centered around three vampires in Boston. While the writing and quests are enjoyable, the visuals leave much to be desired. Swansong loses a lot of its charm with its jarring graphics.
Solid and definitely have an audience. There could be some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.
It's possible to restart each chapter of Swansong if the player wants a do-over, but that's not the best way to experience the game. Swansong should be treated like an ironman experience, as it is tough on player consequences. Swansong tells an excellent story about betrayal and bloodshed, which can play out in a number of different ways, and the player has a staggering number of options for how they want to proceed. Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong has some design and technical hiccups, but it offers a dark and compelling story that is told in a unique manner, where situations must be resolved through deduction and intelligence, and each choice puts the player further down the path to victory or defeat.
Vampire The Masquerade: Swansong is a game with many imperfections. For example, the game is visually graphically substandard and the acting of some voice actors is mediocre. The game does have an interesting story for both a layman and fan. In addition, the fan can enjoy the original lore woven throughout the game. The controls are also quite simple. It is mainly a unique innovative mechanism within the conversation system that makes this game.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
Overall, Vampire the Masquerade Swansong appeals to your inner Sherlock who speaks with a silver tongue. The game is most appealing to those who are into crime mystery-solving games. I highly recommend to those who are new to the series to play some of the old Vampire Masquerade games which can be found on the Nintendo Switch and let them experience the dark world of vampires and then let them decide whether or not to play this game.
Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong impresses like a good song with its content and form of communication. This is a meticulous and thoughtful project. It determines the essence of choice in games and condemns to irresistible consequences. You want to know this story in another variant and start over with sharpened abilities. Exploration is rewarded not only by satisfkation, but by experience points. The story drips with blood, luxury, the content of dialogues and multidimensional characters. Visual workshop deficiencies pale with such content.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Swansong offers a successful dive into The World of Darkness with a proposal worthy of the tabletop role-playing game.
Review in French | Read full review