The world of Vampire: The Masquerade has become a lot more dangerous for the Kindred, and the story 🌳of a lone undead courier takes center stage in Vampire: The Masqu𝔍erade - Night Road, which is a deadly CYOA game that is true to the source material but has a few issues holding the experience back.
Special Delivery
In the current edition of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Vampire: The Masquerade, the Kindred are being hunted by a group known as the Second Inquisition, which is made up of mortal organizations that have discovered the existence of vampires. As such, the Kindred avoid using technology at all costs in order to prevent them from being hacked or tracked. This has led to an increase in the use of couriers, and that is the role the player takes on in Night Road. It's the player's job to complete clandestine missions for high-ranking Kindred, while also avoiding the Second Inquisition, potential Masquerade breaches, enemy vampires, and the ever-present threat of the sun.
Night Road is a text-based CYOA-style video game, with an incredibly barebones presentation. The screenshot below gives a good idea of what you'll be staring at for most of the game. Night Road has a couple of images for main characters, but people expecting the sleek visuals of a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:game like Shadows of New York will be disappointed by the lack of flair. Night Road also lacks sound, so you better have the Bloodlines OST ready if you're going to attempt this game.
The most surprising thing about Night Road is the sheer number of options that are present for character creation. You'll have a character sheet that is gradually filled out during the opening hours of the game, which defines everything from your character's gender (including the option to play as a non-binary character), sexuality, abilities, stats, powers, and even their name. There are five playable clans to choose from (Brujah, Banu Haqim, Gangrel, Toreador, and Ventrue) and the game does a good job of keeping track of the individual attributes and banes of each clan. There are also two paid DLC clans (Caitiff and Tremere) that I couldn't try out yet, as they will be released at launch. The fact that a text adventure game has DLC is kind of sleazy, especially for a fan favorite clan like the Tremere, even though the Blood Sorcery Discipline is available through other means in the game. The Malkavians and the Nosferatu aren't playable in Night Road.
Night Road quickly puts you in the presence of the Prince of Tuscon, who requires a courier to help deal with the threat of the Second Inquisition. Cash-strapped, you'll have to deal with these missions to survive, but the game offers a more open-ended approach than you might expect, as you can tackle these levels in any order you choose. You'll also earn cash and experience points from the missions, so you can improve your character's gear and abilities over time. As a courier, you also gets to purchase a vehicle and improve its stats, which is a welcome addition to the game, considering how much time you spend behind the wheel.
Decisions, Decisions
For a CYOA-style game, Night Road has an abundance of options for dealing with solutions. Each dilemma that crops up will offer lots of possible plans for you to enact, ranging from using skills, Disciplines, calling on allies, or bringing out gear. The game does an excellent job of letting you resolve situations in a number of ways and rewards options that don't involve potential Masquerade breaches. The game also does a great job of keeping track of different aspects of your character. If you gain a wolf familiar with the Animalism discipline, the text will keep reminding you of the wolf's status in different scenes.
The one unwelcome element of the old CYOA games that appears in Night Road is the cheap deaths. After a lengthy playthrough, in which I had completed most of the missions, my character went back to their haven and was killed by a Second Inquisition squad with flamethrowers, with no warning in the text or means to protect ourselves. These kinds of cheap deaths might encourage multiple playthroughs, but they were a major annoyance during our time with the game. Night Road also does a poor job of letting you know when your Hunger increases (such as when using a Discipline), which means that it's easy to lose track and find yourself unable to use powers or stop yourself from feeding on nearby mortals.
Spend The Night
The quality of the writing in Night Road is excellent and it captures the feeling of the World of Darkness perfectly. The pop culture references go overboard at times and there are spelling mistakes/incorrectly labeled HTML brackets peppered throughout the game, but these are easy to overlook. The characters and the story ar♏e engaging, which is of vital importance for a gam🎃e like this.
Night Road is a Vampire: The Masquerade CYOA novel, and if that sounds appealing to you, then you'll like this game. It offers lots of options for character creation and dealing with problems, which will allow you to recreate your favorite Kindred in the game, or just have fun playing as a new one. If Night Road had the same polish as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a title like Coteries of New York, then it would be a must-have game for fans of the genre. As such, it's an entertaining game that is lacking in some areas, but is still worth checking out if you're a Vampire: The Masquerade fan, especially now that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网✱:Bloodlines 2 has been delayed to next year.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Night Road is available now Android, iOS, and PC. A digital code f𒆙or the Steam version of th🔯e game was provided to TheGamer for the purposes of this review.
Vampire: The Masquerade is a tabletop RPG revolving arounf𒀰 a secret vampire society.