Reviews - VexVane

I cant give it higher simply due to bugs and bad optimization. Suggestion to Argikt would be to stick to smaller pieces at a time and play through them to test them properly.

Romero is broken. Ladder to get out of Nossie Hideout also broken. Beach house set to "Masquerade" so you lose humanity for every thug you kill.
Expanding z idea. You just cause whole zone to lag doing that. Instead think smaller zones. Less junk all over the place. Fewer NPC's walking around.

There are other issues like navigation in place with spirits, where you need to jump on objects not well suited for it. Bad translation, but it was playable.

Really lacks polish. There is decent potential, but it still falls short.

Look at CQM 4 to see what we have to compare all other mods to. If I was rating effort, I'd give most mods here a 10/10, but I am rating it as it actually is, lot of fun potential, but not really in more than demo state at this time.

Really this would be 10/10 were it not for just too many bugs and terrible optimization. I have pretty powerful rig which runs latest AAA titles at 60 fps minimum with no issues, yet in some places my fps in this mod dropped to 14.

I also took off 1 point from my rating for NO MAPS in game. That should not have been something difficult to add and would have simplified getting my bearings.

Still, it is am amazing mod, and I did enjoy it. Its intro is epic level, mod is bit stingy on xp, and they really should include walkthrough of some kind as too much is easily missable.

Review is for version 1.5. Perhaps earlier version is better. Originally I rated TFN 5/10, I would rate it 1/10 for Samedi after just finishing it on Hardcore Mode, so I reduced rating to 3/10. Quite frankly, amount of bugs involving Samedi is unacceptable. For example, you cant do Ash, because its in Elysium, and you get Criminal Violations all around him, so you cannot even initiate conversation. Obfuscate obviously does not work in Elysium. I also had Tseng, Arthur, Yukie all attack me for no reason as Samedi. Thats utter nonsense to release something, have it at version 1.5 and just never playtest.

It has maybe 3-4 new mini-quests. Two new NPC's (and 3rd one which is not really there just on phone). And they replaced default clans with 7 new ones. That would be all positive things one can say about it.

Negatives are far too many, but major ones would be:

- Perhaps I expected too much from this mod, but having played CQM 4.1 which had easily 4 hours of extra content and never claimed anything as ridiculous as "this mod is so different it can no longer be called Bloodlines", and then playing this and it only has maybe 30 minutes of extra content, max, it was a huge letdown.

- Clans they added are really weird choices. Almost all are from some obscure African derivative lines.

- Clan disadvantages are ridiculously bad. One clan loses humanity if blood pool is below 50%, another gets gain +1 xp every time you get 3+ xp at once, but then there are only three or four instances of that in this mod. Put simply Clans they have are done to be BORING.

-XP is nerfed to a point where game ceases to be fun.

- Costs for Disciplines went from Vanillas 5/10/15/20 to 6/12/18/24, that means it will run you 10 extra xp per Discipline you want to max. Even under normal XP rate that is bad, but with their nerfed rate its ridiculously bad.

I actually probably gave it bit higher rating than it deserves as I do know massive amount of effort was put into it, ... sadly it was misguided effort, misspent in all the wrong places, and by folks who apparently do not play their own mod or do not get that average player is not interested in being xp-starved while playing boring Clan.

-I beaten it on Hardcore Mode, using Assamite BlackHat, and ran into some bugs I really think should have been caught and fixed (unhackable Bertram Tung and Museum Computer, both of which are listed as hackable in both xp table and other files, so its obviously a bug).

- Stealth did not need to be nerfed that much. You can actually go up to 16 Stealth in this mod, but they did not change Stealth table, so game will only see 10 max as far as calculating it (your sheet shows 16, but game only counts 10 in calculations). At max stealth you can still be seen from too far away compared to 5 Stealth in Vanilla.

-They get a 5/10 because compared to their previous effort Camarilla Edition (which is just terrible mod in every way) it is an improvement, but if point is to make mod people will want to play, they need to lay off on making each version even less fun than previous one.

This mod is ... just wow. Quality is easily what you would get at $40 Expansion/DLC price point. And it would be worth every penny. I should mention that I am rating version 4.1. I played version 2.1 with POP's and PNP for 'Nightmare Mode', version 3.12 with Argikts Mod, and several times through 4.1.

Really it only gets 3/10 because effort should account for something, even tho it fails on pretty much everything it tried to do.

As far as new content goes, you got one NPC, and its recycled for TFN. So basically its just plain old VTMB, but without any books. In first 10 minutes of VTMB you usually have 3 books, and at expenditure of $60 total they give you 18xp (or simplified, you get Firearms 2, Stealth 2 and Computers 2 for $60). In this mod, valuation is $250 per 3 xp. How exactly do you come up with such ridiculous valuation? You cannot farm money in this game. In total you get maybe $8000 total, over course of full playthrough, and have to spend portions of it on armor, ammo, weapons, blood, ...

The readme states you can get 45 'lessons' each worth 3xp, at cost of $250 for 3xp. Basic math says that 45 x $250 is $11,250. I am pretty sure that there is no $11, 250 in this game in total, and that is without us ever buying ammo, armor, blood packs or anything else.

So I'd summarize this mod as simply buggier version of plain VTMB, in which you play with less overall xp. And if that is what you want, only reason to play this over TFN is if you want it on base 7 clans.

My overall feeling of this mod is that its developers do not play this game much. Very bad design decisions. Very low fun factor.