Was going through a really bad headache when I chose on playing the game anyways, the entire playthrough had me blanking out at scenes and skipping most of the things because I just couldn’t stand straining my eyes to read, and somehow I think it made the game more enjoyable lol.
Didn’t feel like I missed any plot because the plot was already in a blender mix of things that didn’t need me to pay attention to anything because it really doesn’t matter if you’ve bothered to remember or take note of anything because the game trips over itself to just rush into the next plot point without giving itself or the player time to weave up it’s ends.
It’s hard to get angry when a stat check is failed because most of the time it feels like the game lacks substance and rewards to get the player absorbed enough to want to do anything??
Let alone the characters, who some people above stated, can just dissipate into thin air in most of the scenes and plot it feels like there isn’t a point in keeping them around if you don’t give the player enough time with them to humanize them enough to get attached or care about them.
The quick jokes and one-liners in the game are a fun read though.
Overall not the best read but a nice game if you want to spare energy and memory, and want to zoom through the story quickly.
I wonder if some of the people who thought the game felt shallow and too rushed hadn’t looked at the word count before they played? It’s two-thirds the length of Out for Blood and only half as long as Night Road or Parliament of Knives. If readers were expecting an experience on par with a grand sprawling medium-length novel, I suppose that’s an itch a short novel might not be quite able to scratch, even an excellent one.
I love Sins of the Sires deeply and unequivocally, enough that it saddens me that so few readers have found it as beautiful and deeply moving as I did. But I seem to be almost the only person who has played it without having played any of the other three. There was no chance of it falling flat under the weight of my expectations, because I didn’t have any.
Interestingly, having played only the demos for all of them, Night Road is my least favorite. I think that may be because it’s longer, and so the demo doesn’t really cover much ground.
But based on comments here, the demo of this one covers basically nothing that matters for the rest of the game.
Even if I hadnt played the game and probably never will unless the price gets lowered, I feel sad about what happened to Sins of Sires. I guess the description got people expecting and the author failed to deliver. I cant blame the players who gave it bad reviews because PoK was such a great game on par with Night Road, and we were only expecting three games and Sins of the Sires came out of nowhere and the people were pumped that there is a fourth game.
If this game is a “failure” what’s next? Is this the last VTM CoG game or will there be another that might be a hit or a miss? I really hope that this game gets redeemed and more games will come within the future.
That’s definitely not true. The demo is what, the first three chapters? That introduces almost all of the major characters and many of the minor ones, at least hints at all the major conflicts, and includes several opportunities to use or develop skills that will be useful later.
I never judge games based on their word count; it doesn’t make me expect a super long/super short game based on the amount of words it has, it just makes me expect more or less branching paths.
Sins of the Sires delivers on the branching, and everything to do with your sire and faction is done well. The problem isn’t that, it’s that these branches overtake the narrative in the last third of the game to the point that the plot has no time to breathe.
I never found there was a higher purpose to what I was doing, because the game kicks into overdrive at the end and I need to make decisions in quick-time-succession.
It needed more breathing room, so more words sure, but it isn’t bad because it is shorter. I wouldn’t even say that it’s a bad game at all, but rather one that disappointingly loses it’s sense of purpose, so all endings end up being underwhelming. I never felt bored reading it, the author has a real way with words, but everytime I got to the end I thought “Wait…that’s it…?”
While I did really enjoy the game, I do see everyone’s points about the second half. I enjoyed the game for what it was, but after replaying Night Road and Parliament of Knives, I can recognize that it is the lesser of those games (also I personally enjoyed Out for Blood—my only issue was with the ending haha).
I think if anyone reading this is interested in the games, it’s good while it’s at its cheapest—but I can’t say it’d be worth the full price after the release sale. I think the first half has some of the best writing of the four games, and I liked the complexity of the characters. I wish they were more present—I’ve played through the game thrice now and I still feel I know nothing about the weird priest fellow.
I also really hope COG and White Wolf will be doing more of these Vampire games. It’s been really scratching the itch that the VTMB2 announcement revived. There’s still so many stories to explore, if writers are interested in doing so. Heck, any World of Darkness setting would be such a good time.
I totally agree with you, i really did enjoy it, what bothered me was the last part and the ending and how it left me saying “that’s it?” Instead of “THAT’S IT!!!”
I generally have enjoyed the VtM releases, I wanted to like this one. I mean, Athens! What an awesome setting to be in, btw a setting you really didn’t get to enjoy much of, nor did you really get much flavor of such a rich environment. I did not enjoy it though. The pacing was too rushed overall. Relationships for some seemed overly rushed and superficial in nature. While others characters you had more of an ability to bond with and they seemingly led to nowhere meaningful. And honestly, I’m a little mad at the troll “yes, daddy” option. Really. That was where it went. If that wasn’t a direction for Markos, that entire set up was ill conceived. I stopped that play then and there, because I felt baited and trolled by the author hard. Which, sometimes is funny, but in this context, while everything else felt sorely lacking, just didn’t land right in any way. At least for me.
There were also other issues with an unknown sire. The entire story line comes across as awkward if Markos is your actual sire. So he abandoned you and then adopted you? You spend so much of the story “he isn’t my sire”, even trying to smooth things over with his known childe. That made zero sense.
The skills seemed out of sync as well. Disjointed with the story. Blood for me was also an issue. Even not using abilities heavily I found the MC constantly having to feed between scenes, which made balancing and getting to other scenes even worse paced. 90% of one playthrough was spent ravenous. Two seconds after draining someone MC was back to ravenous. It made little no to no sense.
Overall, I was sorely tempted to ask for my money back on it. Left a bad taste for me and even if the author went and changed things it was enough to not want to touch it with a ten foot pole again. I think the steam reviews covered a lot of the issues much better than I did. I’m glad other people enjoyed it. To each their own.
I find it extremely unlikely that a Ventrue, the most practical of vampiric clans, would rely on a vague prophecy in order to depose a Prince, particularly when it doesn’t even specify how the Prince in question is to be taken down.
Furthermore, if the only requirement for the prophecy to be fulfilled is to sacrifice the main character, why do it in front of the Prince after declaring your ill intentions? If nothing happens, she is just going to die.
Not to mention of unlikelihood of a prophecy about an 800 years olf Malkavian of unknown generation. Powerful he may be, but he is hardly an Antediluvian or even a Methuselah.
Yea some of the choice outcomes feel bad because as a player you don’t know there’s 2 skill checks involved. Like specifically when an option is like sneak up and attack someone but it fails even if you have like an 80 in stealth and you know the other options won’t work as well. Also from my experience like having high tech wasn’t too important as it felt like there was very few and non import ways to it. Also like comparing it to night road in which your high abilities can like offset your lack of attack stats but in here using a high ability isn’t a guarantee which feels limiting in a lot of situations
It seems like a lot of them are just >0 checks. And for some reason some of the =3 checks are 1 dot discipline powers…
Like, this game as a standalone doesn’t convince people that the author knows anything about VtM. It confuses readers who know the lore. And readers who don’t know VtM aren’t going to know the difference, so you aren’t doing them a favor either.
I honestly prefer something like The Vampire Regent that is clearly not VtM even if it is VtM inspired.
I agree with others that the second half of the game feels very rushed. The “issue” that bothers me most and that hasn’t been mentioned by others is: I’ve chosen a kid to be the connection to the past life, tried to pick all options that included them. Nothing was mentioned about them in the epilogue. However, after I put Sophie on the throne, I was offered a choice to protect Alex and leave with them. I’ve never intercated with Alex throughout the game, so it feels weird that they would agree to follow their “missing for a decade bestie”
I’m glad there is an option to leave, but it would make a hell of a lot more sense if I could do that immediately as it’s confirmed that the region has an extremely weak Camarilla presence. We know that as soon as the police try to raid. That’s halfway through the demo.
Anyway, I think this disconnect is because the plotline only cares what is possible, not what you actually did. Because of action limits you are definitely able, and even forced, to skip things that have major plot impact. And the game acts as though you didn’t skip it.
I liked the first other 3 VtMs released, this one seems to be rushed, some of the choices doesnt align only to find out that u have to be very specific in choosing decisions in order to reach the achievements ur tryin to pick on
PS: anybody know some guides to unlocking the achievements I only got 4 unlocked
