Vampyr PS4 Review: "An ambitious, enjoyable gem with notable cracks and imperfections."

Vampyr PS4 Review

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Patch Version:  -- 1.03

Before even loading into the game I'm presented with a couple of messages about the experience that awaits, the one that intrigues me the most instructing me that Vampyr has no difficulty level that I can adjust in a traditional sense.  Instead, it informs me that the more Civilians I feed upon and kill will make me stronger, in effect, making the game easier, but this will come at a cost.  Already I'm keen to embark on my dark journey.

Vampyr begins with my character waking up amid a pile of bodies.  Confused, weary and thirstily I make my way towards the only thing of colour right now, the game world black and white, the body's heart and veins before me being illuminated and glowing all red.  Attracted like a moth to a flame I am so I stagger in its direction.

After a momentary embrace I feed.  The relief from the thirst short lived however as shock and disgust hits my character.

After a quick tutorial on the combat system, having picked up a crude implement to attack with, I eventually reach a hospital which is filled with people to talk to.

Quickly it becomes clear that Vampyr is more like an investigation or sleuthing game. Not surprising considering what the developers (Dontnot Entertainment) made before it.  Those having experienced Life is Strange will see some similar conversation systems in how you communicate and make your enquires.  For those who have not, if you've played anything from Bioware, like Star Wars the old Republic, then you will be instantly familiar.

However, the first main area where you encounter civilians is filled with people to talk to and learn about. So much so that I must have spent close to forty five minutes to an hour just chatting and learning things about the location and the people that populate it.

I should point out though that I wasn't forced to talk to all these people, I could have carried on with the main mission flow, but doing so did open up a few side missions of worth, so if you are the sort of person who enjoys delving into a games facets and completing everything there is to offer, talking to everyone is a must.

As a side effect I did start to tire of the repetition of talking to so many people in quick succession, and, if being honest, read the subtitles and skipped a few scenes that were not main mission related.  However, I quickly learned that this was detrimental as I could miss vital information so began listening again to every scene.

I do hope that the other areas are not likewise flooded with people though and the civilians are gradually introduced.  We will see.

The conversations themselves consist of three paths: Questions about the area.  Personal questions and questions that are locked until you learn the related hint, all of these paths allowing you to choose a question or response respectively.

There were also certain response moments which were marked with a red Y.  Once you chose your answer it locked the conversation path.  So far, I've only answered one incorrectly, which locked a hint from ever being obtained again, meaning I'd never be able to max the blood quality for that particular civilian, lowering the XP I would attain from them if I chose to kill them.  I was annoyed by this as the game failed to highlight this as a possible consequence, or I missed it.  Either way, it frustrated me, more so as there is no reloading a previous save or restarting in Vampyr to correct a mistake or bad decision.

In regards to the skill tree system, Vampyr doesn't fail to impress on first viewing the menu.  For one, there's an array of skills to choose from, and each skill opens up into a separate skill sub tree allowing you to specialise, except for the passive abilities that are all singular.

There is also a respec button which allows me to reset my xp.  Though it suggests a zero cost, I imagine if I use it, the cost of performing the next respec will go up.

Spending your XP is also an interesting process.  To do so you must find and unlock hideouts. These are safe places in which you can sleep.  Doing so will allow you to choose your skills and upon waking will have fast forwarded to the next evening.  This also serves to trigger any consequences from your actions that you may have done or not done from inaction, which puts an importance on when you choose to evolve, meaning you have to think carefully as to when you choose to do it.

The hideouts also serve as a location where you can find a work bench to craft medicine and upgrade your weapons, which I will talk about later when I've seen more of the systems.

In regards to the game world, though my character cannot jump, something that always annoys me in games; this does not remove the ability to traverse the vertical, your character being able to vanish in a puff of smoke and appear on the object that was otherwise out of reach.  Vampyr's explanation for this stating that you are actually moving really fast and not vanishing into thin in.

These moments, however, so far, have been far and few between.  They are highlighted with an icon to suggest you can do this when in range and are looking in that direction, so if you are not keeping an eye out could easily be missed.  Even so, because of this restriction, the world feels relatively one dimensional in a traversal sense.

However, graphically I have no complaints whatsoever. The look and feel of early London in the 1900 hundreds is captured exceedingly well.  Saying that, for obvious reasons you always traverse it at night, and games tend to look better because of it, but at times I wish I had an ability to highlight objects of interest, because though they are illuminated with a subtle shimmer, they are extremely quick and easily missed.  On the flip side, it does promote exploration, and nine times out of ten if you do go exploring will always find something you can pick up.  Let it be collectables, or scavengable items to sell or to scrap for parts to upgrade or make medicines.

In regards to the size of the world, the world map suggests the playable area is not very big, but I'm kind of glad because moving around is about as much fun as being staked in the chest due to the lateral restrictions I mentioned earlier.

Sadly, there is also a couple of glaringly bad bugs, and I’m on patch 1.03.   The first is that my controller will become totally unresponsive or lag like, often landing me in trouble whilst fighting or frustrating me whilst trying to navigate menus.   I tried other games to see if this was a hardware problem on my side but they were all fine.  I have been leaving the game in standby mode in between session.  Perhaps there's a memory leak. Either way I hope it gets fixed soon as I’ve not had a single gaming session yet where this problem has not afflicted me.  A quick search of the Internet has suggested that I'm not the only one having this issue either.  But if you reboot the console and reload the game, the problem will remedy itself till the next time it occurs at least.

The second issue is a bad graphical glitch when I use my shadow Veil skill that enables me to stealth and move like a ghost.  When you initiate the ability, a huge graphical corruption occurs for the initial casting of the spell.  Not sure how this was missed because its as obvious as an unearthed confin.

However, these issues aside, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't enjoying my experience with Vampyr, whatsmore, I'm keen to continue and see where this blood thirsty adventure will lead me.  I've not 'embraced' anyone yet, which is vampyr's choice of word for killing a civilian, but I have to admit that some of these people are begging to be drained!

Initial Score after 2 hrs of play

Full Playthrough Score after 25 hrs of play

Overall Impression

Vampyr is a tough cookie.  It clearly is an ambitious gem of a game that I enjoyed, but a gem with notable cracks and imperfections, and sadly, these all come in the key area the game tries to excel in. 

I'm speaking about the conversation system and the impact it has on the civilians and inherently the districts they inhabit.

Don't get me wrong, it doesn’t spoil the experience to a point where I disliked playing Vampyr, but it did aggravate and frustrate me at times. 

So what's wrong with it?

Well, for one, the lines of available questions can be repetitive and redundant.  For instance, in one situation I enquired after my ‘Maker’ to one particular individual, which eventually lead me to ask if they were the one that made me.  Their response was clear and to the point.

However, in another conversation path, practically seconds later I was forced to ask the same exact question in practically the same manner.  The response in return, unsurprisingly, exactly the same as before.  The character in question who was giving me these answers not showing any signs of deception to suggest they were lying.   In a game where conversation makes up a good 75% of your time, you'd think it would be an idea to tailor the questions based on what you have already asked.  This was a shame and clearly something it lacked.

The second issue is the consequence questions or moments during certain conversations, moments that are highlighted with a red Y.  The problem is, that it's not always clear what will happen based on the options that are presented.  On a few occasions, what I chose and what I thought it meant only saw something different occur, this, ultimately leading to not one, but two of the pillars of the communities becoming affected in adverse situations that were anything but favourable.  Considering I was attempting a pacifist playthough before embarking on an all-out feeding fest run, I was forced to continue wondering and being afraid that this would prevent me from completing the game in the pacifist manner. 

(EDIT: Turns out it didn't affect me from attaining the 'Not Even Once' achievement, but it did cast a shadow over the rest of the game till I had completed it and earned it.)

The third is the skip option during conversations.  Main mission related content I always watched and listened to as I do in all games I play, however, the second I get weary of too much dialogue or if that dialogue bores me I'll start to skip, but only after reading the subtitles as I can read faster than characters can talk.  Problem is, skipping will skip more than the line currently being spoken and displayed, so any connected sentences not currently displayed will be missed out on, along with any pertinent information that may be about to be presented, and because you don’t know when a consequence or red Y moment is about to occur, you feel forced to listen to every single line.  Making matters worse, is that the side missions in Vampyr are attained by fully exploring these conversation paths.  You have no idea as to who has them or when they might be offered, which forces you to talk to everyone to the fullest.

The other aspect that annoyed me was that some of these civilians could wander about, meaning, subsequent visits to that district will see them in different locations.  Vampyr does try and make it easier though as you can turn on your blood mode which will show their pulsating hearts and veins at a distance, but you first have to get within range, and considering the maze like construction of the game world and the fact that 90% of it can only be traversed on foot, the fact you cannot climb or jump freely over anything really makes the experience drag, not so much in the beginning, but definitely in the later parts of the game, even after you have unlocked all the shortcut gates back and forth.  

Compounding the issue even further, is that there is no fast travel system, and that loading screens can occur seemingly for no reason in places that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, (see above screenshot).  Furthermore, the loading screens are not exactly swift of feet either, on average being over a min at least.  Don't get me wrong, I had worse loading times in other games, a lot worse, but when you're running down a street, or just about to interact with someone and the game freezes to load something, it's terribly emmerison breaking.  I will point out though that this seemed to occur more towards the end of the game rather than for the first 75% of it.  Perhaps the increase in enemy A.I. was straining the system.

However, these random loading screens really were annoying, especially when they occured when opening doors.  So much so in fact that I was scared to interact with doors, more so when inside a location out of fear of hitting a loading screen, which occurs more than you would think considering some locations have more than one door in or out. This meant, that if I wanted to go back inside to finish exploring, I had to wait for the loading screen to end, and interact with the door again, and sit through the same damn loading screen. Why they didn't ask for confirmation on doors that took you into a different instance I'll have no idea.

[EDIT:  During my second playthrough I learned that doors to new instances are marked with a slightly different interaction icon.  I missed it, clearly, first time round.  The difference though is rather subtle.  Look out for anything with arrows going around the 'X'.]

In spite of these frustrations, Vampyr does have a lot going for it.  The look and feel of the game world for one is beautiful. The city at night is very eerie and atmospheric. The level design is also done well.  Be it, interior or exterior locations.  Love and passion was clearly poured into this particular aspect that I can assure.

The mission system is also diverse and well done.  Sure, it's go here do this, or go there and do that, but the reasons driving you each time are different and interesting, not to mention that there's a whole host of side missions to complete which are equally well thought out. Each and every mission in fact fully voiced conversations during mini cutscenes, which, I might add, are done extremely well.

The voice acting is another aspect worth commending, and considering each district has between 15 to 17 civilians in to interact with is truly impressive and a triumph.  Dontnod hit the mark better than some bigger companies, which I won’t name, but you can probably guess.

The story is also quite appealing.  It dips in a few segments as you make your way through the severn acts of the game, but on the whole it held my attention and even threw in a few surprises.   What's more, your actions in key moments can really impact and alter aspects of the story, which is good, as it really made me want to playthrough again to see the differences, which is what I plan to do.  And without giving away any spoilers, the way you play will definitely alter how the game ends, further adding weight and reward for your choices, be they accidental or intentional.

I also enjoyed Vampyr's unique difficulty scaling system.  As previously mentioned, you can make it easier if you feed and evolve off the civilian populace by drinking their blood and increasing the amount of XP you can spend.  Every skill or skill tier you purchase, for the most part, increasing your character's level.

Though you have relative freedom to embrace (kill) at will, each civilian has what Vampyr calls a mesmerise level.  You cannot mesmerise anyone higher than your current mesmerise rating, which only goes up at key moments in the story.  This is how they prevent you killing a civilian that is tied to a key bit of the mission flow till you have passed it.  I was wondering before I played the game how they were going to do this.  A simple solution, but it works.

However, there is also a floor in this difficulty system, and that's the world events that can fail if you don't do them before evolving.  One in particular had sprung up and was linked to a tough vampire to kill, which I couldn't. So I found a hideout and evolved myself, but when you do this it skips forwards to the next night.  And to my horror, the man that I wasn’t strong enough to save had died.  And, he was a civilian from the new district I was in.  What is worse is that these events are not called out as limited, so I had no clue this would happen.  If the civilian had any side missions or hints for other characters, they were forever lost.  I found this to be poorly designed. It wouldn’t have taken much to warn me before evolving, because had I had known, I would have perhaps tried a little harder to kill the vampire blocking my path.

[EDIT:  Turns out I did miss the importance of these moments.  During my second playthrough, right near the start, you get a single warning that these events can be failed if you fail to act in the night you receive them.  The problem is, these moments are far and few between.  I clearly forgot and did not heed this warning.]

The other sour point to mention about the story, is it’s not entirely clear as to if your choices will lead to good or bad outcomes.  In fact, it feels completely ambiguous.  If you are just playing the game for the experience then this is fine, but if you are attempting to complete it with a set goal of being and doing good, or adversely being bad, then having the opposite to your intentions occur because of your choice can sting.

However, perhaps this is the point that Vampyr wants to impress.  It wants you to feel helpless.  It wants you to regret or to relish in your decisions because not only do they matter they are in reversible. If that was the goal, then I applaud them, but it doesn’t make me feel better about the experience that could have been better.

The other aspect that quickly becomes tiresome because it doesn’t seem to have that much of an impact, is the sector status.  From what I could tell, the only impact it had on the game for the majority of the ratings was on the price of goods from vendors, the better the rating, the cheaper the products.  However, if you do drop the rating to the lowest setting, then moving through the districts does become harder, as they’ll be more enemies to kill, making navigating the world that much more harder.

Keeping this rating in good standing is easy if you keep the pillars alive, but the second they are lost for any reason, the populace starts to get sick with an array of ailments for you to cure.  It’s an interesting concept and mechanic, not to mention you get xp everytime you heal someone, and if you’ve been exploring and picking up everything you can find as you go, then you shouldn’t have a problem crafting the medicines that you need.

However, tracking everyone down and giving them the medicine is another story, especially in the latter stages, because as I said, traversing the world is not enjoyable when you’ve walked down the same alleyway or street twenty times or more.  Again, why no fast travel, Dontnod?  Why?!  And if you do cure them, one more sleep and they'll be poorly again, creating a whole new tedious cycle.

As well as crafting medicines, you can craft injections that boost your healing, stamina and blood supply.  These are the systems which you will have to keep an eye on in combat.  You can also upgrade your weapons, through a 5 tier system requiring ingredients in the same manner in which your make medicines. 

As well as levelling through these tiers, you can also apply one of two effects to add to the weapon for every tier too, this further allows you to specialise depending on your playstyle.

Speaking of combat, the systems are actually rather well thought out and fluid.  You stamina abilities are tied to your blood supply, and your melee abilities tied to your stamina, which is also used up when you perform a vampric dodge.  It’s all about timing, and using your abilities in specific orders to maximise their effect.  The red bar being their health, and the white bar their stun bar, which, once, depleted allows you to bite them.

Where combat falters, however, is when you are facing more than one enemy at once.  One or two is fine, but more than three and it becomes a bit of a messy experience.  If you chose vampiric skills that are good against groups then it’s not that bad, but if you have chosen a more focused approached and have not been snacking on the civilians for extra XP, engagements with large groups will see you getting killed very easily if you run out of stamina and cannot dodge anymore.

Speaking of skills, even if you have decided to go on a killing spree and indulge your thirst, though you can unlock all the skills, you cannot equip them all  at any given time.  You are limited to five triggered abilities.  You are free to swap them though whenever you like, allowing you to tailor your combat per encounter, but for the most part, finding what works for you and what you enjoy will see your through.

Speaking of which, the game also has a mixture of enemies that you will do battle with, there are also a few mini bosses and full bosses for you to contend with.  I couldn't knock it in this area.  It didn't feel lacking at all, which was good.

Regarding their A.I., it's simple to be honest, but there's a pleasant side to this, and that is not once did I see them mess up or deviate from their behaviours, and it was always clear as to which enemies would do what once your learned how they attack.  Something can be said for keeping it simple and not overly complicating it like other games do.

Admittedly, and for a large majority of the game you'll do battle with either Skals or Vampire Hunters, but in the latter stages will encounter beasts, which are like werewolves, other vampires and hulking giants all of these shadowy beasts sharing the curse that is immortality.

I should like to highlight as well, that the boss fights were not just massive difficulty spikes to overcome.  Vampyr strikes a balance in that regard keeping the pacing as your go through the game.

On top of this, the enemies all have four stats that denote which damage will cause them the most harm, this, only being shown when you are in blood mode.  So it does not obscure your vision when actually fighting them.

However, for the most part, the resistances don't make all that much difference, and I say this because I wasn't really forced to switch my chosen skills or setup, and considering I hadn't drank a single civilian for extra XP it seemed like a odd feature considering it made little difference.  Don't get me wrong, if an enemy is weak in one particular area and you take advantage of it, then you'll notice a difference for sure, but these moments are rare that I noticed.

With regards to the ending, without giving any spoilers away, though it was rewarding, the run up to it was soured by a long fetch quest that saw me visiting several districts for some items that I would need to achieve my goal.  The reason for this made perfect sense from a story perspective, but it really did make it drag and taint the build up to the final confrontation.

Making it all worse, was that the districts by now were falling into disarray as I had grown weary of the never ending healing cycle and ceased my late night visits to cure what ailed them.  This of course, meant that the districts were more rife with harder enemies to kill.  And if wasn't an enemy to kill, it was a sudden surge in the random loading screens I talked about earlier.

But this sadly wasn't the biggest let down of all.  Having completed the game having not killed a single civilian, I jumped right into a kill everyone run but soon found a few flaws.

Firstly, it's a tad depressing killing a civilian only to stumble on an item you never found before, the item in question triggering a new investigation.  Problem was, that this item was for one of the civilians I killed.  How annoying.  Why allow me to find that item after the fact?

I also discovered another issue that really frustrated me.  Having picked up an investigation but not being powerful enough to complete it, I carried on with the story till I my mesmerise level increased for the first time.  Being eager to drink the population dry, I embarked on a killing spree, but in my blind thirst killed the civilian that had given me the investigation I was saving till I was strong enough to complete it.  My own fault, sure.
However, I could still select the investigation and see the marker on the map.  So travelling to the location thinking Vampyr had changed it up a bit I found the NPC related to the mission that I was suppose to kill, killed them, but the mission did not update and was stuck.  What a shame.

But the final nail in the confin came in a series of blows / realisations:

The first was that you cannot really kill at will.  The mesermise restriction is just that, a restriction.  Worse, is that the pillars can only be killed during the story moments, so if you decide whatever the option is that allows them to live, you cannot go back and kill them later.  Worse though is that Vampyr clearly throws civilians into your path that are bad, so bad that you want to kill them, need to kill them.  That's fine.  But then there's the good ones.  The people who didn't deserve to die. Killing them gives you an XP boost like killing any civilian does, good or bad, but each time you do make a kill you hear their final thoughts and learn something.  And if that person was a good hearted soul, then the new information makes you feel bad. (This was clearly the point Dontnod was going for)
However, if you're thinking you won't care because you'll be an all powerful vampire, think again.  That surge in XP is not really enough to instantly make a difference.  You're only a little more stronger, but that's it.  I wanted to drink the city dry and be some bad ass Vampire. What I ended up being was an empty, disheartened ghost of a man that didn't really want to carry on with the second playthrough.

However, I did come to understand the importance of this system.  When I think back to other computer games that I've played, there's always been a few arseholes that were proper dicks!  Characters that I wish I could have punished and killed.  Vampyr is that game.  As you slowly learn more and more about the population, you start to weed out those bad eggs.  And the fact you can kill them is rather gratifying, but leave the good ones, resist that thirst, trust me. Unless you're a sociopath.  Then do as you will.

Overall though, Vampyr is far from a failure, in fact, Dontnod should be extremely proud of what they accomplished.  It’s not perfect, nor is it a game free of annoyances and frustrations, but considering I put in 25 hours on my first run, and had started a second, that in itself should be enough to tell you it’s worth the experience and price of admission, especially if games that are narrative driven are your thing.

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