Should you play Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York? That’s the question I’ll answer today in both short and long-form for you.
If you’re a fan of vampires or visual novel games, I recommend trying Shadows of New York. The compelling narrative along with an assortment of odd characters and vampires you’ll meet along the relatively brief journey make for an enjoyable romp.
But what exactly is Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York, what other details should you know, and is this an experience worthy of your time?
Continue reading to delve deeper into this game. *The Steam PC version of the game is the basis of this article*
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What is Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York?
Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York is a vampire visual novel about a freshly turned vampire journalist tasked with solving a vampire murder mystery.
What’s a visual novel?
A visual novel is a game that primarily plays out as if you’re reading a book and occasionally has choices for the player to makes as if it is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” title.
The player takes control of Julia, a bitter and self loathing journalist, as she gets fired from her freelance job and becomes a vampire in a sequence of events that transpire at the start of the game.
TRIVIA: Shadows of New York takes place in the over-arching World of Darkness universe that started as a tabletop game.
Where can Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York be played?
At the time of publication, Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York is available on
- Steam PC
- Xbox One
- Windows PC
- GOG PC
- Linux
- and macOS
The game released on September 10, 2020.
What kind game modes and options are available in Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York?
Shadows of New York provides 5 options on the main menu:
- New Game
- Load
- Settings
- Credits
- Exit
New Game allows you to start a new playthrough of which you can have three save files.
Load allows you to load a previously saved game.
Settings allows you to tweak various game settings (more on this below).
Credits allows you to view the credits of those who created the game.
And Exit takes you out of the game and to the desktop.
What kind of settings does Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York offer?
You have a few options under Settings.
- Text
- Video
- Audio
- Controls
Text option allows the player to adjust text size, dialogue speed, whether the dialogue choices selection appears in the middle of the screen, and the text language.
Video allows the player to change their resolution and whether dynamic backgrounds or fullscreen mode should be turned on.
Audio provides players to tweak master, effects, music and ambience volume levels.
And Controls provides the game’s controls, showing you what action is tied to each button.
What is Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York about?
Shadows of New York is Julia’s journey of navigating New York’s vampire underworld society as a freshly turned vampire.
At the same time, she also has to figure out who killed a well-known vampire lord.
This story takes place in a fictionalized modern-day New York City in the year 2020 before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What is Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York gameplay?
The game consists of reading dialogue between characters, making choices, and sometimes choosing what mission you want to accept.
Being a visual novel, almost the entire game consists of reading pages and pages of text.
ATTENTION: This game won’t be for you if you don’t like reading.
You’ll also come across terms unique to this world and the game supplies a handy dictionary with definitions.
A prompt to read the definition appears on screen whenever a unique term appears during conversation.
With a tap of a button, you’ll be able to read what the term means via Julia’s colorful perspective to better understand what’s happening.
Also, you’ll occasionally make choices that’ll affect gameplay.
Some choices will slightly alter the course of a conversation with another character while other choices will affect the ending of the game.
You must play through the game at least twice to get both endings as Shadows of New York provides a good and bad ending.
How long does it take to beat Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York?
It’s a good thing that Shadows of New York does not take long to beat if you are looking to complete both endings and take part in multiple playthroughs.
This vampire visual novel should take you about 4 to 5 hours to complete a single playthrough, maybe a tad longer depending on your reading speed.
My first playthrough (in which I got the “bad ending”) took me about 4.7 hours.
This includes me restarting the game after about 30 or 40 minutes because I died due to picking an incorrect choice.
3 Things You Should Know About Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York
This leads me to three noteworthy details concerning Shadows of New York.
1) You must restart the entire game from the beginning once you reach an ending.
Some visual novel games let the player restart from a prior choice making decision or where the game has ended, providing an option to redo events and continue onward.
Shadows of New York does not allow this.
If you fail and select the wrong decision 40 minutes in like I did, you must start over and your file will be erased.
Once you finish the game and realize you got the “bad ending”, the credits roll and your file is erased to ensure you’ll start over.
There is no way–to my knowledge–to redo certain events.
Each playthrough must be started from beginning to end so make your decisions wisely.
2) The game has beautiful artwork and music.
Every scene is hand drawn and crafted to perfection. New York has a dirty gothic feel that looks like it belongs to a world of vampires and night dwellers.
Backgrounds are mostly static but come to life with shifting lights and animated flourishes.
And large, detailed portrait artwork gives a visual to each main character you come across.
Furthermore, the music is creepy but alluring yet never intrusive. The soundtrack serves to remind the player the world is full of creatures of the night, darkness, and death.
The art and music direction combines to make an enjoyable experience that brings Shadows of New York to life.
3) The game has very little to no technical problems on the Steam PC version.
I never experienced a glitch, crash, slowdown, or problem during my multiple play sessions booting up the game.
Additionally, the game also has very little loading.
I’m playing this game stored to an external mechanical hard drive via a USB 3.0 connection with a relatively mid-end 2019 computer and only experience a single moderately long load before the game begins.
Should You Play Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York?
So should you play Shadows of New York?
I haven’t played a lot of visual novels. In fact, the number I’ve played in my lifetime can be counted on one hand.
I’ve also never experienced anything in the Vampire: The Masquerade series or the World of Darkness universe.
With that said, I never felt confused or at a disadvantage when playing this game.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York is a self contained, wholly enjoyable experience from beginning to end that left me wanting to know what happened next.
This is the sign of a truly good novel.
Personally, I want to play the game again to get the good ending and to try out other missions I missed out on during my first playthrough.
You should play this game and give it a try if you’re a fan of
- Vampires
- Deep lore
- Reading
- A well crafted story
- Murder mystery
- Gothic, modern setting
Ask yourself if you enjoy any of the points listed above.
The more points you do enjoy, the more likely you’ll have fun playing Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York.
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(Screenshots taken by me. Images sourced from product pages, websites, or social media and are credited appropriately. Logos, images, etc. belong to their respective owners. All information current at time of publication.)
