Vampyr My Impressions (Spoiler Free)
So I got an early broken street date copy of Vampyr and wanted to share my thoughts. I've completed two playthroughs one without killing anyone and one with killing a few people.
Throughout the game you play as Dr Jonathan Reid a newly created Vampire who has just returned to London from WW1 in Europe. Throughout the course of the game you need to learn more about the epidemic terrorising London and who turned/why you were turned into a Vampire.
So the game consists of a main story and "side quests", I hesitate to call these side quests due to the side activities being learning about each citizen these are unmarked quests in a sense but the citizens will also give you marked side quests to complete. You learn more about the citizens of London by talking to them and finding clues when you find a new clue this will open a dialogue option with them or a related citizen. The purpose of this is to improve a citizen's xp level and gain xp by talking to them. Sure you could go around killing everyone to gain a massive xp boost to become overpowered but this would be at the cost of losing quests and potentially destroying an entire district. As you talk to citizens you will learn more about their relationships and who would be affected if you decided to kill one of them. Killing them also has additional benefits as you will hear their last thoughts gaining information on other characters and will also gain all of their items for instance, a man in one district dropped a legendary shotgun after I killed him. It is also important to craft cures for citizens diseases as this will improve the blood quality/xp level they will give when you kill them. If you are doing a pacifist route then this will also help keep the district in a healthy state. Each district has an important figurehead (pillar) within the district and it is up to you throughout the story on how to deal with them.
When you sleep you can spend all the xp you have gained but choosing when to level up is also very tactical as it advances time to the next evening. You can sleep and craft at various safe houses throughout the game. If you killed citizens or cured citizens advancing to the next evening will positively or negatively affect the district once the district goes down to hostile all the citizens die and the district is lost.
As for the semi open world, I like it and it is split up into four districts with other hostile area's in between. I feel like the game could of benefited from fast travel but it doesn't really become an annoyance as you can open up shortcuts throughout the city.
So as for the combat, you can equip two melee weapons which you can switch between and two offhand weapons. Off hand weapons consist of pistols/shotguns weapons which can be used for high amounts of damage and stakes weapons which let you stun your opponent so you can suck their blood mid combat. Your blood gauge lets you use 'vampiric' abilities in combat some of these are defensive like a blood shield that will protect you from hits, stealth letting you go invisible, offensive and also ultimate abilities. I was able to make a nice combination for my pacifist play through where I could freeze my opponent suck his blood and heal myself in a pinch. I thought the combat was a bit clunky at first but after becoming use to it, I began to really love the system being a mix of normal weaponry and supernatural abilities. I think clearly the delay helped really improve this aspect of the game and is way better than other AA games of the same genre such as the Technomancer and ELEX. The combat also has a standard dodge which drains stamina, although stamina replenishes quickly each standard swipe with your weapon will also drain stamina.
Crafting is an important mechanic in the game and most weapons apart from the ones you obtain early on can be upgraded all the way to legendary. I found constantly upgrading my weapons just as important as levelling up my character damage wise. Also at your bench you can craft blood, stamina and health injections which you can use in combat. Lastly crafting medicine once you find the recipe is something I found myself doing often especially if I killed someone disease would spread throughout the district.
As for enemy types throughout the game you fight human vampire hunters, skal's a lesser form of vampire, werewolves, ekon's (vampires like you) and a more powerful type of vampire which I won't spoil. There are plenty of boss battles throughout the game all of which felt fun and pretty unique in terms of their combat mechanics. If you haven't killed anyone then these fights become more dark souls in nature as a couple of hits could easily kill you. (There is no difficulty setting it's totally up to you how hard the game is based on whether you kill citizens for their blood). On my pacifist play through I was able to beat the final boss at level 25 with the boss being level 32 this was simply due to dodging attacks and preparing well before hand such as restocking bullets, health injections etc.
Overall Vampyr is a really fun RPG and will easily give you 15 to 20 hours of fun and 30 hours for 'completionists'. The graphic's are of an AA budget but this shouldn't put you off this game as the gameplay and story are very good. I was also impressed to see a nice epilogue long/multiple endings something a lot of AA rpg's can't afford.
I'd rate Vampyr: 8/10.
Comments
Glad to hear it's good! I'm still too busy with Detroit and Far Cry 5 to get Vampyr right now but it's on the to do list. I gather there's about four endings?
Yeah I'm not sure how you get them all though.
That's fine. Without spoilers, outside the pacifist ending (I assume that's one) is it dictated by your alliances? Like with the Upper Class Vampires or the Skals or the Human Doctors or something?
Depends on how many people you kill/the state of districts in London.