#whatever !!! sorry if any weird autocorrect I’m on mobile

[cerealmonster15]

Will I outpost the number of fics I had for rvb with twst 🤔

I’m already at 9 twst fics on ao3 bc I had a backlog of some I just wrote to show my friend, and then something possessed me the past few weeks with a bunch of ideas 🕺 but rvb is still the category with the most, apparently 16 fics (I’m too scared to read them it’s been years) (even tho my fic themes probs haven’t changed much from what I do now l o l)

[secretsofthemasquerade]

WoD Prelude: Vampire end-game review

World of Darkness Preludes: Vampire and Mage on steam, ios and google play store

This review is about the game in a vacuum. I will make another post about the authors, the meaning behind it, and WWP as a whole. This is, let’s say, a drama-free, spoiler-free review of the game as a game, ignoring everything else.

Thanks to @abadbadman (whom I can’t tag for some reason… thanks again so much <3) I’ve been able to play the VtM/Mage preludes. This is a spoiler-free game review now that I finished it! I also recommend this very well made, spoiler free steam review. 

I have liveblogged it and with the tag “secrets liveblogs” you can avoid spoilers. I try and put the most heavy stuff under “read more” but sometimes shit happens sorry :p

What kind of game is it?

It’s a choose your own adventure text-based game. You’re texting your contacts and have, sometimes, options to “fill in the blanks”.. So you have “some” leverage to how you “did” things as you tell them to your contacts. So your game system is just your mouse (or your finger if mobile version) to choose the options. No QTE, no skill involved. There’s no stats, you don’t know what you’re good at, or bad at, and you don’t really choose who you text or what you choose to not tell them. You cannot rewind, but you can restart any chapter.

Except there’s little to no “choose your own adventure”, and more of “pick the right choice”, which can be incredibly frustrating. I died so many times xD

So, it’s a very linear game. Which in and out of itself defeats the purpose of licensing a RPG... 

The music and sound effects, which I didn’t mention in my first review, were fine and nice. I usually play soundless, this is why I didn’t mention it previously.

The characters. Some of them are really well developed, but the protagonist (Case) is just uninteresting af, is it a self insert by Zak? And for many, my question is “why are they even here?”. They’re all insane, though, nobody texts “like a normal person”. I mean, it’s full of rambles and trips all the time, there’s only very few people who have a normal, believable text conversation (even taking into account the vampiric aspect of it). Everyone’s drugged out of their minds, how am I supposed to sympathize, feel a connection, or get into the character’s mind? Nothing anyone does is remotely rational (again, even taking into account the whole vampiric stuff). Why isn’t there a block option? Or ignore? And the “high end characters” just.. lack elegance, to say the least.

The art. the whole aesthetic of the game, I just don’t like it, I dislike modern art, I hate how sometimes the author(s) added in a “oh, I drew this” to jerk off and show off their artz. They serve no purpose, they give no clues that can be read and tbh they’re just useless for me as a player. If they were more accessible and not just a splash of ink on paper, I’d actually be able to have them be “in game” and use them. Most of them are sent from the other main character, who has “dreams”, they are supposed to be important! But I can’t even read them. Am I that dense? Am I not working hard enough to get in the artsy mood? Blah. What I really did like, was the interface of the mobile, the name, the color coding. That was really well done. So, good job on UI!!:)

The story. It’s not a terrible story; it’s just pretty nonsensical, some decisions are very out of character, or at least out of context; so you know you’re being hunted down, but you accept an invite to a random high society house for a drug-party. Why do I want to go there? Why am I not doing X or Y instead? Why didn’t I keep contact with whatever? But there are moments where your “battery is dying”, that’s nice. Too bad that’s the only thing i can really salvage. There is a hint of a Bloodlines character being there, though! And a few real names are used as well.

The writing. There’s clear research on wording, phrasing, and characterization through dialogue; I can differentiate most characters easily. There are great lines in there, but overall it’s drowned in the clusterfuck of spam that gives me no real information to make any decision, everyone uses weird non-factual wording, and you just go along with the drug-high. Maybe, again, I’m too dense to “see the vision of the author(s)”? I had a few laughs, and I really enjoyed most of what wasn’t a drug ramble of random stuff (”and this is how I’m here in the gutter dying but I wanted to say goodbye” for instance, or “but I’m weak and an idiot and now [killer] has a new shitty phone”), but there are really a bunch of misses “but he was too strong I knew it would fail” while you’re being killed is just bleh. What I absolutely cannot accept is that “hey, use voice to text to be stealthy” few aspects that happen mid-to-late-game. Do these people know who voice to text work? Also, the writing of those texts is terrible (they really look typed, instead of “computer heard and typed for you”, aka, there’s no “god damn autocorrect” moments, cuz you all know how voice to text, hushed and fast, can do shit). That’s just poor research/work, or at best, it’s plain laziness.

Mechanically speaking.

The game is sometimes broken because when you “retry”, you often have no choices in your options (like there’s only one option and it kills you), which means you need to restart the full chapter (which is long sometimes). 

Unlike Princess Makers, where you really need to restart the FULL GAME at each death (no rewind, but considering how short and easy to skip these games are, it’s only enhancing replayability), this ability to “try again and pick the right option ;)” is a bit annoying; not because I get to try again, but because of the god damn dead ends that force me one way, which is shitty for a choose your own adventure game. Being able to read back the texts and so is nice, though.

Sometimes the game goes black “you died” before you even had the time to read what happened. That’s poor coding as well.

Choices were sometimes weird; just “turning around the corner” gets you killed without any explanation, but other totally random shits nope. Why? I mean, there’s no reason. At least Ming Xiao explains you stuff and while you’re fucked, the ending feels satisfying to the player (you had it coming though lol). What about non-death end-games ? Like “And you finished as a slave of [person] while texting lobotomized shit to your friends”. That would have been fine. But no, nothing like that.

The fact that I knew almost nothing about my character and what they know of other characters is just stupid. There’s also no instance where I can choose who to text, the game forces me one way and tough luck, I fucking hate that when I’m being told it’s a game about choices and agency. I felt I had almost none. I felt railroaded to the “right choice” all along, and because the game didn’t carry on despite my failure (like a good visual novel does 95% of the time), it was a frustrating experience.

As a game, it’s a failure. As a story, it’s a failure. In terms of progressiveness and bringing something out there, it’s a failure, it’s worse than that, it’s a step back. There are far better choose your own adventure games, and apart from dropping some names, this has almost nothing to do with VtM ; many twists of the lore, way too many exceptions... Everyone’s a special snowflake and I hate that. No surprise there.

I felt I was playing Damsel (in a very, very bad way). “Fuck off” or “you’re disgusting!” isn’t a choice, you dense assholes.

You might not want to buy it because of the controversy about the authors. I say don’t buy it because it’s bad. We deserve better.