Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong Reviews
With its intricate and well-realized setting, engaging story, compelling characters, and well-implemented RPG mechanics, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a truly groundbreaking game that no fan of narrative-driven games should pass on.
Another entry in the Vampire: The Masquerade world, this time bringing us some RPG detective work with three new characters.
An engaging experience to sink one's teeth into, Swansong may have its faults, but it offers a blood-curdling plot and amazing characters that simply can't be found anywhere else.
Rarely have I played a game where I wanted to restart a scenario to undo bad decisions as I have here. Swansong makes you pay for your missteps and should be an excellent game for watercooler discussions with others who have played it.
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
Vampire - The Masquerade: Swansong offers a deep RPG game and an engrossing story, with some well-designed puzzles along the way.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is a fantastic, yet very messy game. It lacks some desperately needed polish and refining, but the core is so fun and engaging you can put the problems to the side for a time. They'll rear their head pretty frequently, but pushing past them is well worth the rewards.
While the visuals and voice acting didn't sell me, there was plenty else to sink my fangs into. Choices. So many different, split second choices that made me feel that what I did mattered. A story that kept me searching out clues to find what was really afoot, and great RPG elements too. I was a bit unsure how a game would handle three main characters, and while they're all kinda jerks in their own ways, they're my jerks. I was able to overlook any issues I had without having to sacrifice much to do so.
In the end, despite its penchant for occasionally boring puzzles, rough character animations and wildly varying voice performances, Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is nonetheless a roundly fulfilling detective adventure with a vampiric twist that will appeal greatly to anyone that follows the World of Darkness setting. For others, Swansong makes for a fine, if occasionally clunky introduction to that sprawling world of supernatural politics and generation spanning stories.
If you’re looking for a solid, story-driven adventure, then Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a must-play in 2022, even if you haven’t played the original.
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.
It’s a little rough around the edges, but Swansong can still satisfy your craving for a vampire narrative RPG set in the World of Darkness.
For fans of vampiric tales, dark narratives and grizzly visuals, there’s a lot to love about Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong.
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.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a really engaging romp into the world of the masquerade. I really appreciate that it focuses on the less combat-oriented elements of the tabletop game, something almost every title in the franchise puts on the backburner. Some glitches and a relatively unimpressive presentation drag it down a little, but if you were looking for something focused more around politics and investigation instead of tearing people in two, Swansong is the game for you.
Big Bad Wolf did a great job translating a tabletop RPG into a video game format by showcasing disciplines and abilities in a way that works well in this medium. Having the ability to see what Auspex visually looks like is fantastic. Plus, the overall aesthetic of Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong is quite impressive if not different. I feel as though the investigation aspects could be fleshed out more, but they weren’t too challenging for a puzzle aficionado to play without any assistance. Swansong doesn’t scream game of the year, but it is visually detailed and grim, set within a rich world. I love it despite the minor flaws it has.
Swansong is an excellent addition to the World of Darkness stories. Due to the well-written characters, it's a shame there are a lot of bad animations. Despite all this, we can recommend the game.
Review in Czech | Read full review
Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is a brilliant adaptation of the themes, the atmosphere and the mood of the homonymous pen and paper RPG. The alchemical mix between cinematic adventure and light RPG works great and Big Bad Wolf Studio gives a fresh take on the concept of "playing a role" in a video game. It's a pity that technically wise the game sometimes doesn't stand up to its own ambitions.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Vampire the Masquerade – Swansong is a great introduction to the lore of this world, and despite the issues I had with the facial animations I enjoyed my time here.
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