Bloodlines 2: Flawed, but still a fun time regardless - A review

I have finished Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. I'll give my thoughts in a bit of a scattered way below. My playthrough took around 25 hours to complete.

It's a neat little game. It has a pretty engaging story, and the power progression is quite fun. I love World of Darkness stuff in general, and this fit the bill nicely. I will not detail any story elements here, but the setup is nicely executed, and I did successfully predict the finale based on given clues.

You pick a clan at the start, which grants you the clan's passive ability and much cheaper skill progression on that part of the tree. I picked Tremere and had maxed out all the Tremere abilities within maybe an hour of playing past the tutorial.
You can, however, unlock disciplines from other clans, with the price depending on how far “away” they are from yours in the skill tree (these get expensive). This is how you really scale up your build.

Combat feels janky/difficult to read at first, but you adapt to the timing fast enough, and it stops being much of a problem. There is actually a parry mechanic, which you never get told about (dodging into light attacks).

As for the bad:
The side quests are filler that goes nowhere; they're only worth it if you're minmaxing the skill tree (I finished with 19 unused skill points and had the entire Banu Haqim tree unlocked + other utility skills). I have done all of them, and all of them have been fetch/clear/kill quests.

The constant backtracking and moving between far-apart points gets exhausting, especially in Fabien's sections. The city is, in my opinion, too big and should've been smaller (or at least the core POI should've been closer together). Unlike Bloodlines 1, there are many buildings that are just set dressing, rather than a dense hub world.

The ending system is weird because it takes you and your choices at face value, which doesn't work if you play a character lying for their own gains (which I did). I was still happy with my ending, but I easily can see this causing really weird conclusions for some people.

Some clans are for sure better than others. The Tremere feel designed for a playstyle that prepares for combat and then rapidly executes, which works until around the mid-game. Past that, you really need to grab Banu Haqim or other combat skills; otherwise, you'll find yourself pretty helpless in the forced-combat sections (of which there are many).

Speaking of the forced combat sections, I have pretty often successfully snuck through a level, only to end up at a door telling me that “enemies are nearby.” This is not a stealth game. You can use stealth to prepare for the combat, but you will need to kill the enemies a lot of the time regardless.

Overall, I think the game is worth a playthrough for the story and power fantasy of being an elder Kindred; just don't expect deep CRPG-level choice complexity. It isn't an immersive sim like Bloodlines 1 was; it's a linear action game with a pretty good story. I don't personally see much replay value, but I had a good time. 7/10 overall.

The game suffers from the name, in my opinion. It plays nothing like Bloodlines 1, in pretty much any way. Had the game not been called what it is, the reviews would likely have been a lot more positive. People who play it looking for an immersive sim will be disappointed.