Vampyr Reviews
After the success of Life is Strange, Dontnod dares with an adventure in capital letters. Vampyr is not perfect; It has flaws and questionable design decisions, but its virtues lead it to shine with its own light.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Vampyr is worth experiencing in general and the Switch port is a fine way to do so.
Review in Greek | Read full review
Vampyr is a flawed gem which is unfortunately a bit more flawed on the Nintendo Switch. It feels a bit like a game from a by-gone era, when technical issues and rough plotting often went hand-in-hand with passion and a unique vision. If you’re willing to turn a blind eye to the technical issues you’ll most likely have a ghoulish time, even with the Switch port. I give Vampyr a vampire-destroying Thumb Culture Silver Award.
If you’re yet to experience the dark and gritty world of Vampyr, the Switch is a great place to sink your teeth into it. True, this version is vastly inferior in regards to the visuals and suffers from a few performance dips here and there, but after playing in portable mode for a few hours, you’ll become accustomed to the compromises which were necessary to get this brilliant game on the system. With a few new difficulty options and the ability to either join the dark side or not, you can roleplay your own story which changes based on your actions and desires throughout the game. Multiple playthroughs are a must as seeing London thrive or suffer are two very possible outcomes.
Vampyr on the Switch is another quality port in my eyes. It took a game I never expected to be able to have on handheld and transformed it into an experience more players can now excess. The core concepts of the original release are retained here and only expected technically issues arise. While Vampyr seems to be a title that’s always had a bit of mixed reception, I feel the same will follow on the Switch release. Yet I find sometimes these are some of the most interesting games released. Now I can take my vampire skills on the go and in the night. If players can enjoy Vampyr on other systems, I say go for it as it’s a cheaper price. If the Switch is the only system or it’s a one for the road, I still highly recommend Vampyr, its one dark tale worth taking in your pocket.
Aside from a few technical issues, Vampyr delivers one of the most engaging action-RPGs in recent memory. It is a game where everything and everyone is connected through some fantastic gameplay design and yes, your choices do actually matter here.
For those looking for a unique, dread-filled experience in the RPG realm, Vampyr offers a type of game seldom seen. But much like the streets of 1918 London, expect a few bumps along the way.
From Remember Me through Life is Strange and now to Vampyr, Dontnod Entertainment has striven to introduce new ideas to each genre it dabbles in. However, the team's latest project is also the one in which that desire feels the most diluted. Novel mechanics including the social web and that core conflict between the Hippocratic Oath and vampiric urges hold immense promise for a project to carry weighty consequences, but the potential is never fully achieved in Vampyr. The need to ground these ideas within familiar, saleable gameplay leaves the title lacking. While the game is enjoyable and engaging, the apparent lack of courage in the strength of its more unusual ideas is slightly disheartening, leaving it feeling slightly toothless.
The expectations for the follow-up project after the great success with the Life Is Strange series of the French developer studio Dontnod were high and at least partly justified, because if they can do one thing, they will tell stories and force players to make decisions, which will sometimes have devastating effects on the further course of the game. The rest of the game remains rather mediocre. The wooden graphics and the repetitive fighting actions, which are especially unpleasant for "boss opponents", the tubular level design and the especially in fighting situations with several opponents questionable camera work cloud the quite positive first impression of the game after a few hours of play. Vampyr doesn't reinvent the genre and also doesn't present anything that hasn't been seen in other RPGs before, yet it's one of the games that manages to cast a spell over you in spite of some flaws and especially grant you many nice hours of gameplay with some surprising twists in the story. At the next sale you could strike, but you don't have to.
Review in German | Read full review
Unfortunately, the gameplay itself never rose above mediocrity and the time I spent in battle, I was just mindless mashing buttons to try and get to the next story beat. Throw in the fact that my character was usually under leveled because of my lack of wanting to kill off NPCs and the games combat was never fun and usually borderline maddening.
Vampyr is a must-play for all fans of vampires and very good AA RPGs. The French developers from Dontnod Entertainment have done it once again.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Whilst each element isn't perfect, Vampyr manages to weave a brilliant dialogue system into a bleak yet atmospheric depiction of early 19th century London. The combat is serviceable, and the crafting system is basic. Yet the game is still a fantastic accomplishment - a refreshing reminder of just how important mid-tier titles can be.
Vampyr is the worst glitchfests of 2018 so far.
Vampyr is a game marred by a mediocre combat system, but you know what? I don’t care – It’s the first game in a long time that made me think Vampires are cool again, with an incredibly interesting story that has me unable to stop thinking about what’s happening next.
Vampyr has a few issues, but its top-notch storytelling and voice work drive a dark, intriguing narrative accentuated by memorable characters and a believable world.
It will satisfy fans of the genre, but if you weren’t convinced just by looking at the game’s title, Vampyr might be a tough sell.
Vampyr might not please everybody, but if you're looking for a lite action-RPG experience with plenty of Dontnod excellence when it comes to story, charaters and narration, you're in for a treat.
Overall, the game is enjoyable when you don’t encounter the game breaking bugs which more than often happens and it can be frustrating when they do. Even in the current patch when I tried to update the game, those bugs have still not been quelled. I hope that in the future that they can fix the PlayStation port because I feel like they did not really give that much attention to it and just focused their resources more on the PC release.
From Focus Interactive and Dontnod Entertainment comes Vampyr, a Gothic RPG action adventure where we'll see what it's like to be a Vampire.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Vampyr is a brilliant game from Dontnod which I’m sure is bound to be up for awards in its storytelling, atmosphere, music, and design. Will you embrace the hunger within yourself and devour all of the citizens in order to make yourself stronger, or will you remain mentally strong and resist the urge as you investigate the source of the strange epidemic? It may take you a while to become accustomed to the controls if you’ve not played a Souls-like game before, but once you’re used to them then the game becomes a lot more fun to play. There are many interesting and unique characters to meet, lots of side quests to work through, and tonnes of places to visit as you wander around early 20th century Victorian London in the dead of night.