Vampire The Masquerade Swansong Review: Learn from your mistakes
Today we bring you a review that many people have been waiting for, we are talking about Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. The title itself had great success during its announcementleaving fans extremely excited to see the creation, after almost 20 years, of a work set in the universe of the 2004 game of the same name. there was a great expectation that hovered around the Nacon creation which, unfortunately, was not respected. We don’t want to spoil anything, but the game couldn’t hold its own against its opponents, as you will read in our review.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong Review: Learn from your mistakes
For the uninitiated, Nacon already has a history in the gaming world, despite its fame extends more to the hardware landscape than to software. Many of these have come under heavy criticism, just like Werewolf The Apocalypse – we leave you our review here – which failed to even remotely support the competition in the market due to extremely poor animations and the models worked quickly and not accurately.
Well, this premise embraces what Vampire is: The Masquerade – Swansong, that is a hasty game with a technical sector that leaves something to be desired. We are in 2022, with the birth of the most powerful graphics engines in history, there is no plausible excuse to create animations that restart their loop like gifs.
From this point of view, the game unfortunately loses many points, being then surrounded by graphic glitches and bugs of any kind (so we had to start all over again twice). Why is this point so important, you ask? The answer is very simple: the game is based on storytelling.
Following in the footsteps of works such as Life is Strange or Detroit Become Human, Swansong can’t hold a candle to itdespite the years of difference. In a Narrative RPG like this, three things are important: the choices, the graphics and the plot.
Fortunately, the game lacks in only one of the three things, although this element is so important and so disturbed that it distracts us and spoils the identification – vital to any narrative game. Finally, let’s talk about the scenarios and places that surround us: sometimes they will be too bare, others will be too flashy and there will never be a real balance. This will ruin the colors and feel of the game.
“Narratively, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong manages to seduce the player”
Moving from one side of the coin to the other, now let’s discuss what the plot is and how the story unfolds. First, we will play three distinct characters: Leysha, Emem And Galeb. Each of them will have a different character, a purpose and allies in its fight against corruption and conspiracies. Emem, the youngest, is famous in the world of show business thanks to its clubs and discos. In the vampiric world, however, is frowned upon by the Firstbornthe most important group just after the Prince.
Quite the opposite with regards to Leysha, which is often denigrated because of its powers, who took her to a “madhouse” for three years, developing an incredible foreknowledge ability. In the end Galeb, the eldest of his racealways manages to stand up to anyone thanks to his troubled past and his “centennial” experience.
One of the best choices made by Big Bad Wolfthe development team, was to branch the story in three extremely different directions among them. As we have seen in many other works, the choice in the dialogues is very much linked to the temperament and character of the characters: this limit does not exist in Swansong.
The character design is definitely one of the highlights of the game, thanks to which the adventure will receive that diversification without which it would run into a boring and stale gameplay. The only flaw in this aspect is that the NPCs will not be as well structuredoften becoming predictable.
A narrative game therefore must have an intricate and interesting plot, unique characters that evolve to improve – or get worse – and in this Swansong does not disappoint.
Dubbing in Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong
The last note I want to make to you concerns the dubbing, also a fundamental aspect of any narrative game. Very often, especially in Italian games, we have managed to witness real nightmares regarding this technique: just think of the early 2000s.
Swansong takes some of these downsides, as some sentences will seem clean cut and they will not flow like a real speech. Nothing to take away from the apt voices, the tone and skill of the voice actors, mistakes were probably made in the editing.
Since Swansong is a narrative game, unfortunately, it must have certain high-level parameters to compete in today’s market. As the title says, you have to learn from mistakesand not just those committed with Werewolf maybe, but also from those of other works of the genre.
In many narrative games such as Detroit Become Human or Road 96 we find a not excellent dubbingwhich is why Big Bad Wolf could have played out and managed to overcome major milestones of the chosen genre.
Should you buy it?
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a narrative game with RPG elements that help differentiate choices and push the player to start the story over and over.
If you are gods Fans of storytelling games, then the answer is yes, you will be able to enjoy a title with an interesting plot. It has many flaws, first including very poor graphics and terrible animationsnot justifiable in current times.
On the other hand, however, we have an intrigued plot with many different outlets, which can be unlocked by playing and moving forward with the storyline, this pushes the player to move on and take an interest in the plot. The right price is what you find on the official sitewhich goes a bit to justify the lack of more complex and studied graphics.