Developed by Dontnod and Saber Interactive
Warning that there will almost certainly be spoilers ahead! Skip ahead for my honest thoughts
I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed playing through this game. For context, you play as Jonathan Reid, a doctor turned vampire in the midst of the Spanish Influenza at the end of the First World War in 1918 London. You follow Jonathan from the very beginning of his transformation as he navigates what he is becoming and how it affects those around him.
The game divides itself into 4 Districts which you unlock throughout but you can travel to at any point. These are: Pembroke Hospital (your main hub for the game), The Docks, Whitechapel and West End all of which have a “Pillar” of the community who if he/she dies the whole District goes to pot (remember this for further down) you potentially lose some side quests or information from certain characters.
You have the option to upgrade Jonathan’s abilities which are pretty cool overall, however I did go a bit overboard and try and give him unlimited power. This didn’t work well for me.
I personally love the option of multiple endings in a game and this one has 4, two “good” and two “bad”, I somehow managed to get the second best ending which I was pretty pleased about.
Oh and you can also kill basically everyone you interact with.
From this point there will be incredibly HEAVY SPOILERS
Admittedly, I did fuck up. Quite a bit. However, I stand by my first play through of the game and I’m happy with the way it went. Now I did play this quite a while ago so apologies if my memory isn’t 100% accurate but I’ll try and relay the events as best as possible.
One of the aspects which did annoy me right at the beginning of the game was the “Tutorial” character who is Clay Cox. He is most certainly not a “Tutorial” anything and the game tried to teach you the game mechanic of embracing characters. That’s not as heart-warming as it sounds, essentially what it actually is, is Jonathan filling his little tummy up with blood. Clay Cox was lost forever to me (RIP his Flu-ridden soul). Don’t do that if you play it.
Second thing I messed up quite greatly on was the Nurse Crane thing. I got NOTHING, I don’t know a single thing about Nurse Crane. But I did save the district and no one turned into gross Skals (that’s what the bad boy feral vampires are called). However, Nurse Crane will forever remain a mystery to me, until my second play through that is.
THIRD THING WHICH I’M THE MOST ANNOYED ABOUT IS THE DOCKS!!! I really really fucked up at The Docks. I did complete all of the side quests which were pretty good, but I killed the priest who was the pillar of the district. I thought I was doing a nice thing by sparing him and being a good person just letting him be. That was very incorrect. He died and people go missing and you lose everything.
The most satisfying thing I did the entire game is go around and kill all of the characters I really disliked. One was the racist landlord for two reasons: 1) Terrible person who was racist and very annoying, 2) Landlord. The other was the father at the church, I can’t remember the exact reasons why I hated him so much, probably because he too was a terrible terrible person and definitely my least favourite out of all of the characters. I think there may have been a third but my brain doesn’t reach that far down.
All in all it is thoroughly enjoyable, I love the more open world aspect (even if it is a v small world), all of the upgrades though I would recommend sticking to a single upgrade path than do what I did and try and get everything. Though you can get the majority of items. The storyline was great with a pretty good twist which I will leave for you to discover.
I do want to re-play it to get the worst ending at some point so look forward to that and I’m defo saving Clay Cox and getting his side quests.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Feel free to like this post or leave a comment if you have thoughts on the game, or just want to say hi.
Images taken from IMDB and Game Guides Game Pressure
Leave a comment