Vampyr Reviews
Vampyr simply disappoints in too many regards to recommend.
Pitting you as a doctor turned bloodsucker protecting London from other vampires, this action role-player only fitfully explores its moral setup
Vampyr is the worst glitchfests of 2018 so far.
Yawn-inducing combat and pacing as stale as a week-old scab leave little to be desired in Vampyr for all but the most die-hard vampire enthusiasts, who might still just be better off sinking their teeth into something with more substance.
What Vampyr has in style with its looks, it lacks in consequence. An overall interesting direction mostly let down by uninteresting characters, quests and pacing issues.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Vampyr is a game that's mainly focused on telling a good story and developing its characters, which it does respectably. That being said, things such as combat, mission variety, and even hardware, end up getting put to the wayside. All in all, it's a rather bleak experience.
I struggle with Vampyr as a title. One the one hand, I love so many of the concepts and ideas that are packed into this game. Moral dilemmas, mystery, Vampires; these are a few of my favourite things. The fact that it takes place in such an intense and interesting historical time with such engaging narrative concepts excites me to my core. Yet frustrating porting issues, a lifeless world, endless dialogue and washed out visuals made it a slog to get through. As much as I would love to recommend Vampyr, I fear that the darkest parts of Vampyr have overcome the light.
Rather than going for size in the character roster, Dontnod might have done better to shoot for complexity.
Vampyr competently displays an understanding of combat, dialogue, and narrative choice, but it never rises above mediocrity, and is an utter failure on a technical level. The aesthetic of the world is the best thing on display, but beyond it lies a derivative title that fails to leave a lasting impression.
Vampyr delivers top-notch story and atmosphere, but it's held back by serious technical issues, frustrating exploration, and dull, uninspired combat sections.
Don't buy this port until the performance issues are addressed. I can't recommend it as it currently exists to fans of the game, or those with only a Switch in the house: I can't recommend this port to anyone. Skip Vampyr for the Switch; there are better ways to play a bloodsucker out there.
The underlying game mechanics require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, but those that can will find an entertaining penny dreadful.
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.
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
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.
A vivid sense of time and place, and a fantastic central idea, soon turn pale with repetitive combat and a forest of conversation trees. But what's here is different, and spells good things for the understocked vampire genre's future.
I yearn to give this game an 8. It fulfills many of its promises and I enjoyed my time with it. However—speaking for my Playstation 4 review copy (v1.02)—when you take the above alongside grammatical errors, UI errors, crashes, continually pausing to load, combat clunk, and perhaps its narrow interpretation of replay value, what could have been minor and forgivable grievances deal some objective damage.
Vampyr has a lot of great features and ideas, which is an impressive thing to say about any game in this genre, but it just doesn’t hit home on aspects that make a good action RPG truly engaging.