Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong

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Critics Recommend

Average Score

Total Reviews: 56

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Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong was created only for the die-hard fans of the franchise – if that isn’t you, safely skip this boring, bland and occasionally baffling RPG.

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Critics Recommend

Critic Reviews: 56

Critics Consensus

# Reviews: 56

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong was created only for the die-hard fans of the franchise - if that isn't you, safely skip this boring, bland and occasionally baffling RPG.

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Critic Reviews for Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong

Critic Reviews

Distribution

56

Reviews

High Score - 90/100

90%

Average Score - 66/100

66%

Low Score - 30/100

30%

5/10

Gabirel Moss (IGN)

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.

May 18, 2022 |

Full Review

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong offers an impressively flexible story, but that can’t save it from its mediocre writing and scattershot game design.

May 18, 2022 |

Full Review

50/100

Rick Lane (PC Gamer)

8.5/10

Andrew Reiner (Game Informer)

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.

May 18, 2022 |

Full Review

Gabirel Moss (IGN)

5/10 - (Read Review)

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.

Rick Lane (PC Gamer)

50/100 - (Read Review)

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong offers an impressively flexible story, but that can’t save it from its mediocre writing and scattershot game design.

Andrew Reiner (Game Informer)

8.5/10 - (Read Review)

**Read all 56 critic reviews on the desktop version of VSG.

Read the Reviews (56 total)

Outlet	Author	Score	Date	Quote	Read
33bits	Rubén Rionegro	65 / 100	05-26-2022	Vampire: The Masquerade	Read review
3DNews	Денис Щенников	7 / 10	05-29-2022	Slowburner detective about vampires. For those who values story and characters more than game mechanics.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
EGM	Michael Goroff	6 / 10	05-18-2022	Vampire: The Masquerade	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
Game Rant	Sarah Fields	3 / 5 stars	05-19-2022	Vampire: The Masquerade	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
GamesRadar+	Rachel Weber	2.5 / 5 stars	05-18-2022	A bland and occasionally baffling return for the Vampire: The Masquerade series	Read review
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.	Read review
GamingTrend	David Flynn	80 / 100	05-18-2022	Vampire: The Masquerade	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
God is a Geek	Chris White	8 / 10	05-18-2022	Vampire	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
IGN Italy	Davide Mancini	7.7 / 10	05-18-2022	Vampire: The Masquerade	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
New Game Network	Alex Varankou	55 / 100	05-26-2022	Vampire: The Masquerade	Read review
NoobFeed	Azfar Rayan	60 / 100	05-24-2022	Despite its many flaws, Vampire: The Masquerade	Read review
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.	Read review
PCGamesN	Phil Iwaniuk	7 / 10	05-18-2022	Gripping supernatural subterfuge meets perfunctory mechanics. Worth it to explore the World of Darkness, though.	Read review
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	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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	Read review
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	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
The Escapist	Jesse Galena	Not Recommended	05-29-2022	Video Review	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review
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.	Read review

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Game Info

Game Description / Storyline:

Based on the cult role-playing world and developed by specialists in the genre, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a narrative RPG in which your every choice determines the fate of the three main characters and of the Boston Camarilla.

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