I had a similar opinion while playing the game. I think it excells at the mystery reveal who your sire is, and the overall structure of playing as a vampire who’s family dynamic isn’t all made up of deception was cool, but…I never had the feeling that any character was really ‘powerful’ in a roleplaying way.
We are told Markos is a bigshot and the MC can do what they want because of it, but outside of having a screwed up father-childe dynamic with us he…doesn’t really do much.
The Prince was really well set up, but then you see him like twice in the whole game, with the second confrontation feeling very by-the-books. Gor is interesting, but he becomes more of a chess piece by the second half rather than a fully fleshed out character. Elias is a cool human character, if he did anything remotely interesting. Etc etc.
I feel like there were too many one-scene characters with roles that could have been filled by other, more important characters, so that we get actual character growth and difficult decisions.
Why should I feel bad about killing a person if I know there’s a 90% chance they would never show up again even if I spare them?
This game had such a great way of describing scenes and the inner trauma our character carries with them, and being able to set up your own version of morality was really cool, but then the plot feels like a highlight reel the moment the thing at the house happens, and it felt very unsatisfying because of it.