Save London or plunge it into chaos, be the Vampyr. (Review)

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In Vampyr, you play as Jonathan Reid, a doctor and newborn vampire, bewildered and hunted down, you run and hide from your adversaries while trying to look for answers and for a place to stay. But after you got away and settled down in a hospital, that’s when things start to unfold, as you get deeper into mysteries surrounding the city of London, you’ll need to make a choice, Save the people or plunge them further into darkness.





Environment
The game is set in London, early 20th century, there is a rapidly spreading epidemic, wars on the frontline, and weird dangerous men roam the streets, nowhere is safe for the citizens of London. As a vampire, Jonathan can only be up and about in the night, and the game crafts a perfectly desolate and eerie city, with great background sounds and music, there’s always a sense of tension and mystery on the streets, which is great.

The ambience is great, but there is one thing I do not like about how the environment is designed, as there are a lot of locked gates and doors barring you the shortest route to the next key area and forces players to go off to a way longer alternate route just to get to the area you want to go, and there’s also no fast travel option. Even though the map is relatively small, travelling can be a pain sometimes.



Gameplay
The game is definitely a story game at its core, because that is the most enticing part of the game, finding out more about the NPCs is really very interesting, you can really get to know the people that lives in the city, there are even some of them that have little secrets that you can uncover when you go on investigations. I find Thelma Howcraft and Thomas Elwood’s relationship quite cute, unlike most of the people in the game, who are mostly quite dark and miserable.



On the other hand, if you’re looking to play this game solely for the combat, I’d advice against it, the combat is not that innovative, you have the regular Darksouls-like system, but the enemy attacks, are pretty uninspired and repetitive, it gets really easy to read, the only redeeming quality of the combat side of things come from the RPG elements of the game, and the crafting, you can upgrade skills and upgrade your weapons to deal more damage and get better stats, the combat side of things got a lot better after I managed to get my hands on a 2-handed mace weapon. Small note though, making use of the invulnerability during the biting attack can effectively change your game.



Story
The story of the game is dependent upon you, as you have the power to decide whether you help or kill the NPCs in the game, and the decisions you make will directly affect the other residents of the city, the more you kill, the more powerful you become, but at the same time, killing more citizens will also affect the stability of the city, when the stability drops to a certain level, the districts will be chaotic and filled with enemies.

The main story line, where Jonathan tries to unravel the mystery of his origin is a pretty exciting tale, each time you get more information about it, it would also present you with another mystery, so the story is actually very good!


Summary/ Conclusion
Pros:
+ Immersive Story
+ Choices have significant impact on NPC
+ Interesting interactions with NPC
+ Voiceover quite good, especially for the main character

Cons:
- Bland and clunky combat
- Slightly dated graphics
- Travelling around map can be a pain sometimes

Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

An extremely solid game for story lovers, the story will most likely keep you hooked until the end, but for action game fans, this is probably a rather subpar game. So get it for the story, not the combat.

Available platforms: XBox One, PS4, Switch, PC
You can get it on steam here: http://bit.ly/2m1Sxp3

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