Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 released last month after a lengthy, difficult development, one that saw the project taken off original developer Hardsuit Labs by publisher Paradox Interactive and handed over to The Chinese Room. When it finally burst from its coffin, the critical reaction ranged from mildly positive to firmly negative, with our own Fraser Brown giving it a respectable score of 78 in our Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 review.
Yet whether players liked it or not, pretty much everyone agreed that The Chinese Room's sequel wasn't really a successor to Bloodlines at all, lacking the ridiculous roleplaying depth that makes Troika's original the brilliantly broken bloodsucking adventure it is. In fact, PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens pointed out that the biggest problem with Bloodlines 2 is that it is called Bloodlines 2.
