Others say...

"The straw that broke the camel's back"
I am a huge fan of the pencil and paper RPG, and was very excited to see this conversion. In the interests of simplifying the game (why would you want to I do not know), the creators modified the experience-point and atribute steps. They have also included Diablo-style magic weapons and items, the effects of which are more subtle than those in Diablo, but somehow detract from the WoD mood.
In good news, the vampiric disciplines are converted almost flawlessly (except for why do Brujah have protean???), and in this aspect the game far surpasses its successor, Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines.
The game is split up somewhat unevenly between dungeon crawl-type sequences and dialogues that serve to advance a complicated and well-written story line. You get relatively litle control of the dialogues and their outcomes, and as previously mentioned, combat is just a mess. Party members unleash their most powerful disciplines on rats and spiders attacking them, and are constantly clamoring for blood. This would have been resolved if there was a way to pause the combat and issue orders, instead of leaving everything to the piss-poor AI.
The new patch corrected the problems with save-games, but combat is poorly executed, and since it makes up 90% of this game, it can be very frustrating. By the end I would just cast presence, draw the baddies one-by one, and drain them. This is a repetitive and booring process, especially in the context of the well developed skill trees that the characters have.
The graphics definately stand the test of time, and are very creative in some ways. Look closely in the silver mines: the texture of the walls is not just stone, but is actually evil faces staring back at you- very unusual and kind of creepy. Its also quite fun viewing the world from first-person perspective.

With the ability to pause combat this game would have been great. As such it is a fine product with much time and energy obviously invested into its development, but which is difficult to play and like, despite the engrossing story line.

"Flawed AI brings a potentially excellent game down to average."
This game has a lot of good things going for it.

The graphics were really great for its time, and even now still look good...at least on the main characters. The story, while not great, is still far above the average for a videogame. The same can be said about the voice acting.

And probably most importantly, the game is *fun*. Or at least it starts out that way. By the time you get a 3-4 character party, the game's horrible AI and pathfinding are irritatingly obvious.

For starters, you have the choice between your allies sitting there doing nothing while you're in a fight, or them running off on their own through half the level in search of something to fight (and biting off more than they can chew and dying). Babysitting them is extremely tedious, especially when you switch to control one from running off on his own, only to have another one do the exact same thing.

Pathfinding is awful. Going around a corner and through a door and getting your entire party to go along is more difficult than any boss in the game (and some of them are fairly difficult). On top of it, your allies will buff themselves with every spell they have (consuming blood...one of the resources you have to maintain at a decent level or suffer bad consequences/death) at the sight of so much as a rat. There is an option to make it so they only auto-cast from a short list of spells (that you choose), but apparently the option is bugged and doesn't work.

In the end, I found it easier to go through a level with just one character. I left the rest behind, only using them to store equipment and for boss encounters. That's how bad it is.

It's a shame because the character advancement system is very customizeable, and I would have liked to play the game multiple times to try things different each time. However the annoying AI has sapped any replayability the game might have held.

"Get the patch first"
Overall, I would say I loved this game. The plot was great, the world and characters richly developed both visually and plot-wise. You begin as a crusader in the middle ages, and become a vampire, the demon you once fought. The game continues into modern times as Christof still searches for his love, Anezka. The weapons and powers are interesting, although most weren't of much use. Towards the end especially you got a lot of extra experience you could place in any old thing. The guide was helpful and detailed; the pictures were also beautiful. And it was helpful, not confusing. I liked how the game included a variety of places and characters.

The glitches I came across included a horrible save feature (you got an auto-save every time you went into a new world, but you could only save directly from your haven). Also, occasionally you would be clicking away, moving with your main character, and the ones following would get trapped up, sometimes getting 'stuck' in walls or tables. Most times I just had to manually select them and redirect them, but then there were those tiring times when I had to go out of the level to get them unstuck. By the way, the first time I had a patch from online where you could save from any place and the glitches were fixed.

Sometimes, also, the dialogue could get tiring. You could use the space bar to skip it but then you lose the great plot aspect. The one thing I liked about its sequel, Bloodlines, was that you could do something so that the dialogue appeared as words...and you could go along at your reading pace. And, there were several members of the coterie that were pretty pointless, just extra arms to fight, I guess.

This game was a lot of fun; you are pretty much locked into one plot line but there are a few different endings. Great game, get the patch first.

"Overall great game"
In this game we find a new storyline among the vampire world that is brought to life in this tale. However, the saving of the games in progress are horrible and sometimes it doesn't save and a whole section needs to be redone because of it. Although, that part is a CON for the game, the Pro for the game is that you get to see a character move through history and his way of trying to gain some sort of redemption for himself because of what he is.

"a vampire's tale"
this game is pretty good. it isn't exactly the best but then again no games are. as an RPG, this game is fairly standard. the first hour or so is really boring, but once you become a vampire, things pick up rather nicely. i LOVE how you have vampiric abilities and are able to feed off whomever you see fit. this is the ultimate game for anyone who wants to live out their dream as a vampire. the story is good. the thing that i hate are the other characters in your team, maybe it's me, but the were annoying and got in the way. they didn't have terrible path finding, but they had some awkward moments. another thing that bothered me is that if you don't have control of A character, they usually go off attacking some monsters you might not be ready to attack, due to the nature of their vampiric ways or the character's build. overall, this game is fairly exciting, with something nice for lovers of RPGs and lovers of vampires.