Reviews - VtM: The Final Nights mod for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

I think the claim that the mod is "so different it can't be called Bloodlines" is dubious at best. There aren't any meaningful changes to the game. I found the blood loss system- not unique to this particular mod, I know- to be pointless and in conflict with canon. I truly don't see the point beyond making the game slightly harder. I think it was a poor choice, as it added nothing to the game but aggravation.

I did enjoy the ability to play as a Salubri, although that was the only clan I had an interest in. I thought the addition of the Laibon bloodlines was a weird choice, but that's more of a matter of personal taste. Some of the additional quests were interesting, but- and I come back to this point again- this is NOT a different game from Bloodlines. I wouldn't belabor this point if the makers hadn't made such a point of it. It IS Bloodlines. The major quests, plot, and endings are identical. This is Bloodlines with a little flavoring, but don't be fooled. If you're looking for a completely new experience, this isn't it.

The mod works well- I didn't have any mechanical problems with it- but I wouldn't really recommend it. I found the Clan Quest one more enjoyable, although not because it was a "radically different experience." I just thought it worked better.

Yes, the majority of my problem with this mod was the blood loss system, but I'm not sure if I can accurately convey what a huge waste of my time it was. I found it so offensive that I felt no need to respect it, so I cheated. But hey, if it sounds good to you, by all means try it out.

Promising that this was a completely different game from VTMB was an outright lie. Pretty much every mission that mattered was exactly the same. The storyline was the same. Even the powers that you get don't really bring much of anything new to the table. They mostly just bring in buffs and debuffs, instead of doing anything interesting.

Also, I cannot condone you claiming that White Wolf Publications, Inc's copyrighted discipline logos are your own original work and sending cease and desist letters to others when a) you don't own the copyright, and b) you CAN'T own the copyright because White Wolf already does, so you committed blatant copyright infringement against White Wolf by claiming that their Serpentis logo was your own original content. Pretty sure you could get sued for claiming that.

I love this mod! For a while, I felt burned out on playing VtM:B until I found this gem. :D

The gameplay difficulty is slightly amped up, which I appreciate, due to all of the modifications. The Camarilla Edition changes to the Blood Healing system, the fact that Haggle is almost necessary, increase in difficulty to Inspection/Seduction [the latter being virtually useless, anyway, but it forces you to "fend for yourself" which seems more realistic]... And I am in *love love love* with the fact that I got to play as a Baali. That was awesome -- the new disciplines are great!

My biggest complaint is about the bugs. I didn't really experience any on my Baali character, but I didn't even reach Downtown LA before my Salubri was totally unplayable... After I freed Lily & the game tries to walk you out of the room to see Vandal, I run into the wall & can't move or use any keys except to the menus. So that was really disappointing!

All in all, I adore it so much I chose not to take off too many points for the bugs. Once those are fixed, I'll likely go back & give my Salubri another go!

The Final Nights has a great premise: to make a landmark game from 2004 feel fresh and exciting again, as if it was just released. Did Team Camarilla, widely known for CE series of mods, succeed with The Final Nights, their magnum opus?

To make this review possible, I decided to play it from A to Z with at least two different characters. Eventually I ended up with three complete playthroughs (as a Salubri, Assamite and Baali) over the last couple of years, using the 1.4 and 1.6 versions. The long writeup I prepared can't be posted here - 5000 characters limit - so I will stick to the bullet points.

NEW CLANS & DISCIPLINES
The biggest draw of this mod, hands down, is the new set of Clans we get to play. The semi-legendary Salubri, devious Followers of Set, diablerie inclined Assamites, filthy Samedi and demon worshipping Baali come with brand new Disciplines mixed in. We also get less known bloodlines from Africa (Osebo and Ishtarri), but these come without new powers and feel like revamped Brujah.
Still, all Clans have new Histories, unique bonuses & drawbacks, new bits of dialogue and pretty looking skins. Of course there is a strong resemblance between these models and original ones - but nonetheless, I loved my Assamite chick in her final, denim-clad look, even if she shared that vibe with female Gangrel.

ABILITIES & ECONOMY CHANGES
I'm afraid they're too numerous to mention in one paragraph, but it all boils down to "more balanced gameplay". Lemme explain.
First we have "bloodloss" timer. You simply lose a blood point every 4 minutes or so, prompting you to feed more often. It can be slightly delayed with good Stamina and Humanity, but on the other hand, brutal vampires with low Humanity values lose blood even quicker. This is where good bloodpack economy, upgraded Haggle or Seduction feats can be used to your advantage. Speaking of Seduction, now we have many more "blood dolls" strolling the streets of LA - just look around and try your pickup lines! Other underrated skills also get a boost. How exactly?
You see, TFN wants you to care about blood, but also forces you to manage your wallet. You don't find fire axe for in Santa Monica or artifacts lying around every corner. Books - yes, those valuable SKILL BOOKS - are nowhere to be found; if you want one, save up and find yourself a vendor! Prices will be steep, I assure you - it's not uncommon to see a manual for $1400. That's a very substantial amount of money in a game with $100-200 rewards on average... especially if you're used to getting them for free (not to mention the infamous book selling trick).
So perhaps this time you'll look closely at Haggle, and cut prices in half. Manipulation also ups your Intimidate, see: better rewards. Or maybe you'll invest XP in Inspection - to find more loot and grab hi-end firearms early. Some computers can be hacked for money and experience, so that's a premium choice (especially that many passwords changed since vanilla).
More incentive to use the wide array of skills is another selling point of TFN - at least in theory.

EXPERIENCE & COMBAT
We need to finish soon, so hear me out: killing is harder now, for real. Supernaturals pack a punch, mobs are tougher, and some boss fights are redone completely. In this environment every bit of XP counts.
But while vanilla game gives you 290-300 XP on average (even 320+ with CQM), my last completionist TFN playthrough got me (spoiler) 236 XP, thanks to nerfed rewards from Hollywood onward. This includes ~5 new sidequests, 11 XP from Hacking and quests requiring high Inspection and Persuasion. Oh, and did I mention Disciplines are more costly (60 instead of 50 XP to master)?
Long story short, Melee types require much more XP to flesh out, and all builds are going to look wimpy next to their vanilla counterparts.

WHAT DO I THINK?
There was much work put in TFN, and it shows. On top of all the changes we get new music, backgrounds, bits of lore (yes!) and visuals. Well done!
New Disciplines are fun to try, but the ones I checked feel underpowered. It's neat to get a +3 Melee bonus (Quietus 4), but is it worth 36 XP in these circumstances? Or Daimoinon 5 that renders you a blazing demon - AWESOME to see, but should I bother if bush hook works better?
All playstyles are viable, but it's hard to resist the impression that TFN pushes you to play in a certain way. With potent firearms, painful Frenzy penalties and plenty of cash earning skills, quick-witted sharpshooter types are more attractive than axe-wielding monsters of yesteryear.
But no matter how fun it is to pick up chicks or hack some $$$, in the end you still have to kill entire hordes at Hallowbrook, Golden Temple and Venture Tower. So it takes a little game experience to balance things out and mix cool tricks with skills that actually get the job done.

Having said that, figuring out your build is half the fun. Bloodlines veterans usually suffer from burnout, and for that, The Final Nights works like a charm!

While the original VTMB might feel tiresome and repetetive, this mod creates a lot of changes to make it refreshing again. The new classes and diciplies are fun to experiment with, for instance, and that makes it worhwhile to re-install VTMB. That is, when the buggs and glitches have been removed; and there are many of them in the 1.0 version i played. New problems ranging from new quests impossible to finish, areas repeating a older save even if you have made progress, sometimes not loading any A.I in the Hub areas, and the game crashes when attempting to speak with Imalia (Fear of the wicked?).

Simply put: Many nice changes, but Many nasty new buggs. A patch would make the mod wonderful.

I like new Vampire The Masquerade The Final Nights 1.0, I wonderful if they have new creat for Vampire: The Masquerade (new name) for future sell?

I do like how the mod up the difficulty a bit and the (very limited) additions are actually really good.

That being said this mod is broken to hell. To begin with investigate is a totally worthless skill... I think I had to get to level 7 just to find the watch in my initial haven.

Second all of the drops have disappeared, the skill books, one of the artifacts. Yes you can still buy everything but now the game can be beaten by upping your haggle skill and focusing on grabbing all the cash you can get. That is literally the only winning approach.

Seduction is practically useless. I've got a 5 but I can't chat up a woman in a bar for a quick feed? THEY ARE MORTAL! Seriously broken.

I've just finished fighting the Tzimize (second encounter). It was absolutely arbitrary, my active disciplines just disappeared whenever the mod felt like it and since that was the whole of my character build I had to sit around and wait for a clipping bug to snipe the thing to have a hope of winning.

This is a W.I.P. at best. Honestly, give the extra content to another modder because that is the only redeeming aspect here. Sorry :/

No ! Simply NO !
Disciples of set is tolally useless, the game is way too much unbalanced, finishing the game is impossible with my character, first time in all my PT i can't finish the game.
Only thing to do with the disciple ? Put all point in ranged, buy the shotgun, the rest is totally useless !
Playing with sword ? Even with 9 you're dealing weak damage !
Palying with fists ? The same, but more excruciating.

Obfuscate ? everybody see you in the end !
Serpentis ? Every power are way too weak in the end game, even the "you're practically indestrucable" BS !
The beast form ? What a joke.
The storm ? What a joke².
Phobia ? What's the point ?

Really disappointed, the beginning was OK, there is some things that are interesting indeed, but in the end ... this mod is crap and don't compare with Clan Quest Mod.

(As of this review, I've progressed to just before the Giovanni Mansion, meaning that the remainder of the quests are just story combat segments with the odd email quest here and there, this is basically a takeaway of my first blind playthrough of TFN)

TFN brings a lot to the table. I could spend a lot of time going over what I like about the mod, so I figured I would go over the things that place the mod a bit lower for me, this is of course subject to my personal tastes, so keep that in mind as you read.
In TFN, Money and Experience are harder to come by, even though you need more of both, with disciplines costing 6(+6) per rank and there being more disciplines to level in the first place, and stuff like inspection being very important, quests generally give a maximum of 4 exp between all of the tasks in my experience. On the money side of things, you usually only get around $50 for quests with a few exceptions, you CAN mug people in the mod, or steal from peoples' lockboxes, but you'll very quickly end up with 1 humanity, which is very ungood in TFN. The problem is, the mod adds vendors that sell skill books for a base price of $500, $1000, or $1500 a pop, so not only do you need to upgrade literacy and whatever stat the book increases with your limited XP, you also have to spend a fortune on the books themselves. This may be to insinuate leveling the haggle feat, but having leveled it minimally myself, the increases seem so incremental that it's hardly worth regardless, this averages out to it never being worth it to use the skill book vendors, as having to invest a ton of experience ruins the point of skill books in the first place, there are also other opportunities to drop a ton of money that are seemingly not affected by haggle either way. This all also connects to quest rewards and loot being deprecated in general, having just done Chinatown and going through the disappointment of getting a whopping $125 between both quests in The White Cloud, when in the vanilla game you get 2 reasonably powerful artifacts. You also get screwed out of a lot of loot if you don't go all-in on inspection, you need at least 6 or so to get a decent amount of stuff in my experience, this also greatly reduces the value of exploration, which I was hoping would be made more rewarding rather than less rewarding in TFN.

This whole tirade about cost/reward, loot, etc basically sums up my biggest issues with the mod, there are a couple of small things here and there that irk me, but that's the brunt of it, and like I said before, I do like the mod overall (hence the above average rating), but rewards not being rewarding detracts from the enjoyment significantly for me.

I've been working on this review on and off for like 2 hours now and I think it's time to bring it to a close. If you want to freshen up the vampire experience, I can definitely recommend it; it's **** easy to install and play so you lose virtually nothing from giving it a shot.

First of all I must say thanks to the team for keep up the development for a game that has 16 years behind it.

I love the new clans, new textures, the really hard effort you have to put in to solve a quest or just getting around.

But I also feels it lacks of new content, it still feels like I'm playing VtM:B but on HC mode with new clans. In the beginning of the game you can really focus good on RP aspects, like using persuasion, intimidate your way around. But in the end it all comes down to the same hack and slash, even as early as Downtown. There is no way to get around mid-end game without a ranged weapon or extremely min/maxed melee character.

But as it is now, I still think that this is by the best mod if you want to play VtM:B again.

For those that are new to the game I would rather recommend just the Unofficial Patch(+).