Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice Review – Supernatural Stealth Action in Venice

The Vampire: The Masquerade franchise has cultivated a cult following over the years. With roots as a 1990s tabletop roleplaying game, the gothic World of Darkness setting has seen multiple video game adaptations. After a long hiatus following the flawed but beloved 2004 RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, fans eagerly awaited a proper return to the dark alleys and political intrigue of the kindred society.

While we continue waiting for the long-delayed Bloodlines 2, developer Fast Travel Games has delivered a standalone adventure set in the same universe. Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice puts players in the shoes of the titular protagonist, a vampire driven by a personal quest for vengeance. After your sire is murdered and a precious relic stolen, the trail leads you to Venice in search of answers.

Justice begins their journey in the dark underbelly of the canal city, interacting with various factions and uncovering hidden secrets. The atmospheric settings of Venice provide the backdrop for conspiracies and combat with both mortal and undead foes. Justice has an array of vampiric powers at their disposal, from stealthy abilities to destructive blood magic. How you approach your objectives is up to you – stealth, aggression or a mix of both.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice aims to deliver an immersive RPG experience while letting you live out power fantasies as a creature of the night. Whether you’re a longtime fan of the franchise or a newcomer, Justice provides another chance to sink your teeth into the rich lore and intriguing characters of the World of Darkness. While not a direct follow-up, it should sate the bloodthirst of Vampire devotees until the forthcoming Bloodlines 2 finally sees daylight.

Blood, Stealth and Supernatural Powers

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice primarily revolves around stealth gameplay and avoiding detection. Learning guard patrol patterns is key before making your move. However, Justice has an array of vampiric abilities to even the odds if you get caught or decide to take a more aggressive approach.

Blinking allows Justice to instantly teleport a short distance, great for quickly evading enemies or reaching new areas. An upgraded Blink Attack combines the teleport with a lethal pounce on the target. For a more subtle approach, an invisibility cloak ability lets you sneak past oblivious foes. Justice can also place Shadow Traps on the ground which open a portal, dragging victims down into the abyss.

One of the most visually impressive powers is Cauldron of Blood, which slowly boils a target’s blood until their head grotesquely explodes. Of course, such powerful abilities require vitae (essentially vampire blood) to use, which ties into the vital need to regularly feed.

Managing your vitae and hunger level through feeding is a core gameplay mechanic. Humans and other kindred vampires provide the most nourishment, but rats can suffice when desperate. Feeding until the last possible moment before the victim dies provides a power boost. However, abilities and crossbow bolts drain vitae quickly, so hunger management is key.

Justice’s wrist-mounted compact crossbow provides ranged attack options to complement supernatural abilities. A variety of specialized bolts can be crafted using vitae, including gas grenades, noisemakers, and sleeping darts to incapacitate foes. Upgrades allow you to carry more bolts and reduce crafting costs.

Stealthy players are rewarded with extra XP for completing bonus objectives, such as avoiding detection or not killing mortals. Justice earns XP from mission completion and collecting artifacts, which is invested in three skill trees. These upgrade your combat, stealth and physical abilities – increasing damage, reducing vitae costs, or improving aiming.

The AI of human and vampire foes requires some patience at times. Reactions can be inconsistent – one guard might come running at noise while his ally is oblivious. However, enemies mostly behave as you’d expect and realistically react to your powers and attacks. Overall the enemy variety is quite limited, with more differentiation in abilities than appearance.

Justice has plenty of freedom to complete objectives as you see fit. Missions allow multiple routes, whether climbing across rooftops or skulking through sewers. The detailed city architecture provides options, though the lack of free-running mechanics means blinking between points instead of fluid parkour movement.

Puzzles and environmental interactions also feature, such as manipulating levers to access doors or locating keys. Some objects like desk drawers or bottles can be opened, but most background items are static. The interactive elements add some optional exploration between main objectives rather than physics-driven immersive sim gameplay.

Justice has a versatile array of vampiric powers matched with smooth stealth and ranged combat. The feeding mechanic and multiple routes give you flexibility in playstyle, even if the mission structure remains largely linear. Overall it delivers an engaging blend of abilities and mechanics within its World of Darkness setting.

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A Vengeful Quest Through Venice’s Dark Heart

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice brings players to the shadowy canals and tunnels of Venice, Italy. Protagonist Justice begins their nightly hunt for answers following the murder of their vampire sire. The winding streets, decrepit sewers, and crumbling catacombs of Venice provide the backdrop for this personal tale of vengeance.

The narrative follows the time-honored tradition of a revenge plotline. While serviceable enough to motivate the action, there are no huge surprises or standout story moments. It competently moves Justice from one lead to the next, with clues guiding you toward the stolen relic and those responsible for your sire’s demise.

Throughout the journey, various artifacts and handwritten notes provide enticing lore drops that expand your knowledge of the dark World of Darkness universe. It’s great for longtime fans while offering newcomers a solid primer on the setting and its major factions. However, the characters themselves feel rather generic, falling into common archetypes without much memorable personality.

The voice talent helps bring Justice to life and suits the brooding, deadly vampire antihero. Dialogue options allow you to shape Justice’s reactions to certain characters and situations. While you can’t drastically alter outcomes, it allows some roleplaying freedom in your choices. Conversations with NPCs progress the plot points, though lack any real branching depth or consequence.

The narrative succeeds in propelling you through varied Venice environments – from dank sewers to decaying palazzos and churches. The setting oozes Gothic atmosphere, even if it condenses and alters the actual city layout for gameplay purposes. You’ll visit reimagined Venice landmarks like St Mark’s Square, the Rialto Bridge, and the Palazzo Ducale.

The moody soundtrack accentuates the foreboding setting, while ambient sounds of lapping canal water and distant chatter adds life. The excellent sound design makes vampiric abilities impactful, like the visceral noise of fangs piercing flesh when you grab a victim to feed.

Overall, the storytelling and setting accomplishes its goal of placing you in the role of a vengeance-driven vampire uncovering occult secrets beneath Venice’s surface. It moves the action along well enough without reinventing genre conventions. The narrative may not elevate beyond the well-worn path of its central revenge premise, but provides an ideal backdrop for the core gameplay.

While not narratively ambitious, Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice succeeds in realizing the murky, conspiratorial allure of the World of Darkness. Exploring Venice’s underbelly as an empowered creature of the night remains compelling, even when the plot beats trend towards the predictable. There’s atmospheric appeal in navigating the city’s shadows in search of bloody retribution.

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A Vivid Venetian Nightmare

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice brings the dark beauty of Venice to life in vivid detail. The excellent art direction produces gritty, Gothic environments perfect for stalking prey through light and shadow. The visual aesthetic convincingly depicts a stygian version of the iconic canal city.

Textures and architecture are based on recognizable Venetian landmarks, from the Byzantine grandeur of St Mark’s Basilica to winding back alleys barely illuminated by dingy streetlamps. The locations have been carefully built to enable engaging gameplay possibilities while retaining a strong sense of atmosphere.

The city almost becomes a character itself as you traverse across rooftops, ledges, and scaffolding. Interior spaces like abandoned palazzos and crumbling crypts are just as impressively rendered. The jump to next-gen hardware allows for an excellent level of detail and draw distance.

Character models feature a signature comic book art style with bold black outlines reminiscent of graphic novels. Blood spatters in combat retain this stylized aesthetic rather than going for pure realism. This considered approach to the visuals maintains graphical fidelity while ensuring a consistent look aligned with the Vampire universe.

While the environments and art direction are polished, facial animations and lip syncing for NPCs noticeably lack the same level of quality. Their muted reactions and stilted dialogue delivery contrast against the otherwise stellar production values. This distraction pulls you out of the experience during conversations.

The haunting soundtrack adds melodic texture, alternating between somber piano and urgent strings to underscore tension during action. Creaking doors, echoing footsteps, and distant screams boost the unnerving atmosphere.

Vampiric abilities come alive through crunchy sound design. The wet impact of fangs in flesh or the violent eruption of a blood cauldron reinforce the deadly supernatural powers at your command. The audio greatly enhances the visceral thrills.

In terms of presentation, Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice provides entrancing sights and sounds to lose yourself in its brooding fantasy realm. Apart from the rough NPC animations, technical elements shine on a artistic and technical level. Roaming the darkened Venetian labyrinths portrays the rich World of Darkness with bleak splendor, making Justice both an audiovisual feast and a nerve-wracking battle for survival.

Accessible Night Stalking

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice implements various comfort options to accommodate accessible play for all gamers. Teleportation acts as the primary movement mechanic, letting you blink between ledges and perches. This avoids smooth motion sickness that can affect some users.

The ability to play while seated is another welcome addition for accessibility. Smooth turning can be enabled for those wanting more natural movement, but snap turning and vignette strength sliders allow tuning to match your comfort preferences.

The multitude of options ensures most players can bask in Justice’s creepy ambience for hours without nausea issues. Teleportation does disrupt immersion slightly compared to fluid movement, but serves the gameplay well while enabling comfortable play sessions.

Interacting with objects in the environment can occasionally feel clumsy, which detracts from immersion. Grabbing items from a distance or climbing ledges doesn’t always work as intended. Placing a vampire trap on the ideal spot also takes more precision than it should. These finicky issues interrupt the flow during tense encounters.

While detailed, the exquisitely rendered city environments offer limited interactivity. Aside from climbing pipes or manipulating specific levers and doors, most background furnishings remain static. The interactions offered focus on progressing the objectives rather than selling a fully-fledged living world.

Consequently, Justice falls just short of delivering truly captivating immersion where you feel bound to the environment. The sprawling environments have scope for more physics-based interactions that could reinforce the vampiric abilities and stealth options. Nonetheless, the stimulating level design keeps you engaged with the core action.

The overall smoothness of environmental traversal and combat animations also promotes immersion once you adapt to the teleportation system. Justice’s movements, from  wall jumps to stealth takedowns, feel suitably quick and supernatural.

Despite some control frustrations and limited reactivity, Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice succeeds at placing you firmly in the boots of a powerful hunter, thanks to varied playstyle options combined with comfort-focused design.

Roaming the darkened Venetian labyrinths presents ample opportunities for pulse-pounding encounters with fangs or crossbow. Justice may not deliver best-in-class environmental immersion, but remains an accessible way to experience the predatory thrills of being an undead predator.

Room for Refinement in the Shadows

While an overall enjoyable experience, Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice has room for refinement to reach its full potential. It succeeds in many areas but bears some flaws worth critiquing.

Justice grants satisfying freedom in approaching objectives, with multiple playstyles viable through abilities and equipment. Stealth gameplay becomes highly engaging once mastered, but the learning curve means early hours may frustrate some players. Similarly, the story moves things along competently without hitting narrative high notes.

After the initial linear tutorial section, missions open up with flexibility in routes. You can spec Justice as a stealthy predator or aggressive hunter and shift approaches as needed. Unfortunately the mission structure remains largely linear even with replayability potential. More open-ended sandbox areas could showcase the abilities further.

Justice’s vampiric powers provide varied options, though upgrades and progression lack RPG depth. The abilities themselves feel impactful, but advancement through the three skill trees is limited. Even maxing out skills by end-game unlocks no new game-changing abilities.

Repetition emerges at times from the lack of enemy variety. Aside from some unique boss fights, most foes are simply humans or kindred with recycled character models and similar movesets. Their AI also occasionally suffers from inconsistency.

Some environments are filled with hidden side paths, but objectives can sometimes be confusing to locate. The mission design generally guides you well, but a few areas descended into frustrating wandering with unclear navigation.

Overall, Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice provides a polished and atmospheric experience that checks many of the right boxes. Hand-to-hand combat and ranged crossbow action feel immensely deadly. Traversal and abilities make you feel like a powerful force of the night.

However, the repetition, uneven AI and lack of impactful progression hold it back from reaching its full potential. With refined mission structure offering more freedom and consequences, plus added impact from abilities, Justice could become a genre exemplar rather than just a very solid experience for World of Darkness fans.

It may fall short of being a masterpiece, but Justice delivers on letting you stalk fearsomely through a detailed Venetian playground. Addressing the shortcomings covered here could elevate it to the top echelon of stealth action titles.

A Bloody Good Time with Room to Improve

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice delivers an impressive sensory experience within its brooding World of Darkness setting. The excellent visual design and soundscape create high immersion factor. Conversations and voice acting also drive the standard revenge plotline effectively.

Core gameplay encourages freedom in approaching objectives, even if mission structure remains largely linear. Justice’s supernatural abilities prove highly compelling to master in both aggression and stealth. Managing your hunger and powers provides engaging risk-reward dynamics.

Accessibility shines thanks to robust comfort options for seated or standing play. Teleportation movement and vignette effects enable prolonged VR sessions without motion sickness. The overall presentation and mechanics combine into an enticing vampire power fantasy.

That said, Justice falls just short of reaching its full addictive potential. More enemy variety would help combat repetition and add challenge. The lack of impactful RPG progression also underserves the available abilities. Open-ended sandbox environments could fully realize the freedom of playstyles.

The narrative succeeds but rarely elevates beyond genre conventions, feeling somewhat generic for the rich franchise lore. Some navigational frustrations also occasionally arise in the otherwise detailed city.

However, these drawbacks don’t ruin the experience – only limit it from becoming a genre masterpiece. Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice remains easy to recommend for franchise fans or those seeking bloody supernatural stealth action.

As a display of modern VR capabilities, Justice largely delivers on its promise. The repetitive enemies and mission structure hold it back from being an instant classic, but refinement could help Justice reach its potential. For now, it remains a bloody good time honing your vampire abilities across the shadowy rooftops and sewers of Venice.

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