VTMB is simply FANGtastic!
Puns aside, it's genuinely one of the best games generally, one of the best RPGs and the best vamprie game ever made.

As much as I wish I could recommend this game, even with the community patch it's just too broken to give a shot to.

I've actually played through it twice now; it's a cult classic for a reason! It's an interesting world to inhabit, and I love the setting overall. The gameplay has really shown its age though, and the combat is a boring slog with completely bizarre difficulty scaling.

If you have a lot of patience for old games and want to relive the era, there's better options that run nicely on modern hardware. If you want to play a Vampire: the Masquerade game, and you're really, REALLY okay with bugs... install the community patch and quicksave often, you're going to crash a lot.

This game is peak. I don't know what I was expecting but I really wanted to enjoy some Vampire content and this game provided MORE than what I was expecting. Its based on a table top game fictional universe like how Baldur's Gate is based on Dungeons and Dragons. The game did a great job introducing me into the setting and its combat was good for a 2004 game. It is clanky and very buggy but if you follow the proper procedures you can download a patch and play it. I was ADDICTED to this game while playing it.

The combat and gameplay is open world main quests and side quests heavy, with a lot of walking and then talking to characters. For the most part I was not bothered by the walking as there are a couple different maps with fast travel between them. However there is no fast travel once you're in the maps themselves. The combat was okay, not the best but for a 2004 game I was honestly kind of surprised. You can do melee, ranged, abilities, and stealth. Some boss battles are fun easy and some are stupidly hard. You will have to cheese some of them, so have all kinds of weapons on you at all times. To powerup your abilities and gain health, you have to SUCK the blood from your enemies. Either mid combat or find citizens walking around in alleyways. You must NOT get caught as that would break the "Masquerade."

The game did a great job introducing me to the setting. At first you have to pick a faction from the given 6 and I didn't really know much about them. The game offers you a quiz to see which faction is best for you. I decided to skip that and join the most pretentious faction. The whole point of the game is conflict between the factions and their support of the "Masquerade." Which is the veil protecting the Vampires from the wrath of the humans by keeping their supernatural abilities and actions as hidden as possible. Its VERY interesting and makes sense. However the faction in charge of keeping order sometimes gets tyrannical and needs to be checked. The characters have... character. I'm not sure how to describe it but they didn't feel bland in any way. Each one was unique in their personality and had dialogue that was top notch. I was literally NEVER bored during the game.

TLDR: GREAT GAME, GREAT STORY, 2004 graphics... Third or first person style open world story game with a VERY interesting modern Vampire setting. Do your best to be a good vampire that protects the community or go blood hungry crazy. "The Beast… it’s always there…”