| 33bits |
Rubén Rionegro |
65 / 100 |
05-26-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| 3DNews |
Денис Щенников |
7 / 10 |
05-29-2022 |
Slowburner detective about vampires. For those who values story and characters more than game mechanics. |
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| ACG |
Jeremy Penter |
Not Recommended |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire runs that line between experience game, walking simulator, and social battle that few games attempt and even fewer attempt successfully. Swansong’s attempt isn’t without its enjoyable moments but it has a heck of a lot of downtime. |
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| But Why Tho? |
Arron Kluz |
3 / 10 |
06-25-2022 |
I really wanted to love Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. I already am a fan of its setting, desperately want AA video games to rise in prominence again, and love slow burns that are focused on character dialogue and interactions. However, there is just too much getting in the way of Swansong’s success. There is no way of knowing exactly what happened, but the final product is one that I can’t even recommend picking up on sale. |
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| Chalgyr’s Game Room |
Susan N. |
8 / 10 |
05-24-2022 |
Big Bad Wolf did a great job translating a tabletop RPG into a video game format by showcasing disciplines and abilities in a way that works well in this medium. Having the ability to see what Auspex visually looks like is fantastic. Plus, the overall aesthetic of Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong is quite impressive if not different. I feel as though the investigation aspects could be fleshed out more, but they weren’t too challenging for a puzzle aficionado to play without any assistance. |
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| COGconnected |
Mark Steighner |
65 / 100 |
05-21-2022 |
Despite some interesting situations and engaging puzzles, Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong fails to get off the ground, much less stick the landing. It’s slow and obtuse where it should be visceral and emotional. The writing is pedestrian and the characters are the dullest vampires imaginable. Whether or not they drink your blood, they definitely suck your ability to enjoy the game. |
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| Cultured Vultures |
Stephen Wilds |
5.5 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Swansong boasts an incredible world with intriguing characters and a deep story that does the source material justice, but the gameplay is long in the tooth and irritating at times. |
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| Destructoid |
Eric Van Allen |
7 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Solid and definitely have an audience. There could be some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun. |
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| Digital Trends |
Giovanni Colantonio |
3 / 5 stars |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade — Swansong is an intricate narrative adventure game that can be too dense for its own good at times. |
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| EGM |
Michael Goroff |
6 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| FingerGuns |
Greg Hicks |
4 / 10 |
05-19-2022 |
Whilst it may seem like an intermission before Bloodlines 2 comes out, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong isn’t engaging enough to fill the gap. Lacklustre gameplay, unsightly character models and a sense of “You should know this already” are enough to put off the new players. Maybe for the fans, but that’s only if they’re coffin up the money for it. |
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| Game Informer |
Andrew Reiner |
8.5 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Rarely have I played a game where I wanted to restart a scenario to undo bad decisions as I have here. Swansong makes you pay for your missteps and should be an excellent game for watercooler discussions with others who have played it. |
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| Game Rant |
Sarah Fields |
3 / 5 stars |
05-19-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| Gameblog |
Unknown |
6 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire The Masquerade: Swansong, offers a deep gameplay, a rich universe and real consequences to our actions. Unfortunately, the game is counterbalanced by a sluggish pace and technical flaws. |
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| GameMAG |
Unknown |
7 / 10 |
05-21-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong offers a fascinating story and great characters, but pixel hunting and insipid puzzles are really dissapointing. |
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| Gamer Escape |
Laura Borrayo |
7 / 10 |
05-19-2022 |
While I do think that my teenage self would have been way more hyped about getting to experience a vampire-filled adventure of Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong’s caliber, I can confidently say my adult self was also quite amused. I really liked what this game’s story had to offer, and to be honest it has been a while since I had to think so hard about the hows and whys of the choices I wanted to make in an RPG. |
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| Gamers Heroes |
Blaine Smith |
6.5 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong tells an incredible story, one the player can truly influence, but it falls short in many of the efforts to translate the World of Darkness into video game form. A must-play for fans of the universe, but fans of the narrative-driven RPG may find more frustration than enjoyment. |
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| GameSkinny |
Thomas Wilde |
8 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Is it actually fun to be a vampire? Let’s find out together, in the latest attempt to export Vampire: The Masquerade to video games. |
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| GameSpew |
Kim Snaith |
8 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
For fans of vampiric tales, dark narratives and grizzly visuals, there’s a lot to love about Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. |
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| GameSpot |
David Wildgoose |
4 / 10 |
05-20-2022 |
Vampire The Masquerade: Swansong is a dialogue-driven RPG that stakes everything on writing that isn’t up to the task. |
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| GamesRadar+ |
Rachel Weber |
2.5 / 5 stars |
05-18-2022 |
A bland and occasionally baffling return for the Vampire: The Masquerade series |
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| Gaming Nexus |
Elliot Hilderbrand |
8 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
While the visuals and voice acting didn’t sell me, there was plenty else to sink my fangs into. Choices. So many different, split second choices that made me feel that what I did mattered. A story that kept me searching out clues to find what was really afoot, and great RPG elements too. I was a bit unsure how a game would handle three main characters, and while they’re all kinda jerks in their own ways, they’re my jerks. I was able to overlook any issues I had without having to sacrifice much to do so. |
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| GamingTrend |
David Flynn |
80 / 100 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| Geek Culture |
Jake Su |
4.9 / 10 |
05-26-2022 |
A less-than-ideal cohesive story and poor systems design make Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong a game that perhaps should not have seen the light of day. |
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| Generación Xbox |
Alejandro Serrador |
7.5 / 10 |
05-29-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a bloodthirsty adventure with a conglomeration of various dialectical aspects, focusing on the essence of self and power. |
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| God is a Geek |
Chris White |
8 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire |
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| Guardian |
Phil Iwaniuk |
3 / 5 stars |
05-26-2022 |
Moral murkiness helps preserve the tension across Swansong’s duration. There’s always something at stake – your life, the masquerade, your integrity – and that does a lot to infuse some meaning into all the talking and scouring rooms for notes. I doubt that Swansong is set to become a vampire RPG of legend, like 2004’s Bloodlines, but it nonetheless makes vampires scary again. |
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| Hardcore Gamer |
Chris Shive |
3.5 / 5 stars |
05-26-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong has players step in the shoes of three different vampires to solve a mystery, building upon the wealth of Vampire lore, but doesn’t have much bite. |
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| Hey Poor Player |
Kenny McKee |
3.5 / 5 stars |
05-26-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong does wonderfully with creating an engaging atmosphere and has some legitimately creative ideas, but its overall execution still leaves much to be desired. I can appreciate an entirely combat-free RPG, but I think that you’re going to have to do more than occasionally let players unlock certain dialogue choices or bypass locks by leveling up specific skills. I’m not too worried, though. This series has been going on for a long time, and while this game may have Swansong in its title, I doubt it’s the last Vampire: The Masquerade game we’ll be seeing. And, hopefully, the next one will have just a little bit more polish. |
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| IGN |
Gabriel Moss |
5 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong falls short of its ambitions as a story-focused detective RPG due to a dense but uninteresting plot, bland characters, and unintuitive puzzles. |
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| IGN Italy |
Davide Mancini |
7.7 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| Impulsegamer |
Chris O’Connor |
4.5 / 5 stars |
05-18-2022 |
Another entry in the Vampire: The Masquerade world, this time bringing us some RPG detective work with three new characters. |
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| Metro GameCentral |
GameCentral |
4 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
A complex, vampire-centric role-playing game where conversations replace violence, but whose boring puzzles and undercooked script suggest its budget didn’t stretch nearly as far as its ambitions. |
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| MonsterVine |
Shannon P. Drake |
3 / 5 stars |
05-26-2022 |
But if you’re looking for Vampire: The Masquerade and you are also old and you don’t want to play a janky battle royale, Vampire: the Masquerade – Swansong is…kinda interesting. |
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| New Game Network |
Alex Varankou |
55 / 100 |
05-26-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| NoobFeed |
Azfar Rayan |
60 / 100 |
05-24-2022 |
Despite its many flaws, Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| PC Gamer |
Rick Lane |
50 / 100 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong offers an impressively flexible story, but that can’t save it from its mediocre writing and scattershot game design. |
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| PCGamesN |
Phil Iwaniuk |
7 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Gripping supernatural subterfuge meets perfunctory mechanics. Worth it to explore the World of Darkness, though. |
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| PlayStation Universe |
John-Paul Jones |
8 / 10 |
05-19-2022 |
In the end, despite its penchant for occasionally boring puzzles, rough character animations and wildly varying voice performances, Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| Polygon |
Alexis Ong |
Not Recommended |
05-18-2022 |
My relationship to Swansong has become almost like my ritual appointment with Passions — until I fully exhaust the entire story, I need my dose of ridiculous people making ridiculous decisions, and the nuclear fallout of their mistakes. |
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| Push Square |
John Cal McCormick |
7 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Swansong’s biggest problem is that at times it’s perhaps not as clear as it could be about what you’re actually meant to be doing or how to bypass certain problems, and you’ll find that it’s trial and error that gets you through. There’s also a couple of technical issues, including one in which we spent ages wandering around trying to solve a puzzle only to reset the game and discover that the solution to the problem hadn’t loaded the first time around. Not cool. |
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| Rectify Gaming |
Unknown |
7.5 / 10 |
06-14-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong has excellent source material and can definitely be a fun experience at times. It might just take too long to fully embrace you. |
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| Rock, Paper, Shotgun |
Alice Bell |
Recommended |
05-18-2022 |
Mystery and intrigue at a vampire court is fun, and there are some great puzzles and conversation battles. But Swansong also has a lot of walking in between them |
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| Screen Rant |
Scott Baird |
4 / 5 stars |
05-18-2022 |
It’s possible to restart each chapter of Swansong if the player wants a do-over, but that’s not the best way to experience the game. Swansong should be treated like an ironman experience, as it is tough on player consequences. Swansong tells an excellent story about betrayal and bloodshed, which can play out in a number of different ways, and the player has a staggering number of options for how they want to proceed. Vampire: The Masquerade |
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| SpazioGames |
Gianluca Arena |
6.2 / 10 |
06-06-2022 |
Vampire The Masquerade Swansong sticks to the source material very closely, adding very little to distinguish itself from many other adventure games, except for some bugs and inconsistencies. Only suited for long time World of Darkness fans. |
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| TechRaptor |
Tyler Chancey |
6 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong has some novelty as a dialogue focused RPG but is hampered by mid-production jank and subpar level design. |
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| The Escapist |
Jesse Galena |
Not Recommended |
05-29-2022 |
Video Review |
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| The Games Machine |
Nicolò Paschetto |
6.4 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong follows in the vein of narrative games like those of Telltale and Quantic Dream, but cannot reach the same level of quality. The narrative has a tendency to feel too linear and technically wise the game is far from impressive. |
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| TheSixthAxis |
Steve C |
7 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Swansong is a good investigative adventure dressed up in vampire finery, but doesn’t quite live up to my expectations due to some overly restrictive design and a disconnect between the third person perspective and the largely text and table top mechanics. Once some of the bugs are patched and there are resources available to support the build choices you make, there is a solid adventure to be found here. It’s not the new Bloodlines, but it’s an authentic Vampire: The Masquerade experience nonetheless. |
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| ThisGenGaming |
Justin Oneil |
7.5 / 10 |
05-21-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a fun and intriguing third-person investigation game but one that is also a tad disappointing in certain areas. The visuals leave a lot to be desired, the voice acting from a lot of the characters is poor, and some patches need to come along to fix some of the more annoying bugs. Outside of those things I really enjoyed how different each of the three Vampires felt and the number of ways situations could play out depending on information you found or how your skills are leveled. If you’re looking for a new game to play that has a lot of player choice then you’ll likely enjoy your time with Swansong. |
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| Twinfinite |
Andrew McMahon |
4 / 5 stars |
05-18-2022 |
If you’re looking for a solid, story-driven adventure, then Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a must-play in 2022, even if you haven’t played the original. |
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| Video Chums |
Mary Billington |
5.5 / 10 |
06-08-2022 |
As a newbie to Vampire: The Masquerade, I wasn’t impressed with Swansong. There were moments when I found myself enjoying the investigation aspect but these were still marred by technical issues, graphical inconsistencies, and an unsettling atmosphere. |
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| WayTooManyGames |
Kyle Nicol |
6.5 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
Vampire The Masquerade: Swansong is a flawed game for sure, with some rough visuals and a gameplay loop that certainly won’t be for everyone. However, if you are looking for a compelling vampire mystery and don’t mind quite a few annoyances that are usually present in modern AA games, then there is a lot to like about this flawed, but certainly captivating detective adventure. |
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| Wccftech |
Francesco De Meo |
9 / 10 |
05-18-2022 |
With its intricate and well-realized setting, engaging story, compelling characters, and well-implemented RPG mechanics, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a truly groundbreaking game that no fan of narrative-driven games should pass on. |
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| Worth Playing |
Chris “Atom” DeAngelus |
8 / 10 |
05-19-2022 |
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a really engaging romp into the world of the masquerade. I really appreciate that it focuses on the less combat-oriented elements of the tabletop game, something almost every title in the franchise puts on the backburner. Some glitches and a relatively unimpressive presentation drag it down a little, but if you were looking for something focused more around politics and investigation instead of tearing people in two, Swansong is the game for you. |
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| Xbox Achievements |
Richard Walker |
50 / 100 |
05-19-2022 |
Should you manage to look past the shoddy presentation and dodgy visuals, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong will reveal itself to be a mildly engaging tale of hidden. |
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