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Great Game I've been a fan of troika since the founder's worked at Interplay to develop Fallout. Since their departure from Interplay and their creation of Troika, the studio has had two projects that, while great, have fallen short of their potential. Arcanum had a compelling story with great development but had a lackluster combat system and was very buggy. Temple of Elemental Evil fixed the combat system but forgot the story. With Vampire: Bloodlines, Troika hoped to take the best of their past efforts and combine it with the Half Life 2 engine for sure fire success. And for the most part, they got it. The game starts out showing you one of its best points. The character customization in Bloodlines is incredibly deep. There are plenty of races of Vampires to choose from with a variety of magical abilities and skills to develop. These abilities can be leveled up as the game goes on through experience. Experience, unlike in most games, can not be earned by combat. Instead, it can only be earned from quests. This is definitely a plus as it makes the player more willing to experiment with other ways to achieve success in a quest. You don't need to hound down every monster in hopes of leveling up. Since quests are such an intricate part of the leveling up process, I should probably address them. Quests are very abundant in the game and can be of quite a variety. You might need to break into an apartment and plant an object, scope out a haunted house to solve a murder, or assassinate the leader of a gang. These quests are all interesting for the most part, though I do have one gripe on them. It can get very annoying when you need to get information from a person, and get sent on a goose chase, doing quest after quest for various people just to finally get the information from the desired character. On the note about the haunted house, you will discover one of the greatest levels ever to grace a video game in this game. The Ocean Beach House is easily the scariest place I've visited in a game and has an amazing ambiance. The level itself justifies the price of admission for the game. Combat in the game, is immensely fun, though at times very challenging. Characters can battle in various forms to succeed. Characters can sneak up on opponents and murder them, utilize magical abilities to blast their opponents, play at a distance with guns, or get up close and personal with sledgehammers and claws. All of these combat types are viable, making the game playable from various perspectives. Many reviewers (if not here, in published sources) griped about the poor use of guns. However, I don't see many problems with them. I used them in many sticky combat situations and found the controls fine. While the machine guns and sniper rifles were often hard to control, it improves as your skill does. They act more realistic than in most games and are hardly the mountain people make them out to be. Overall, this game is much better than many sources will lead you to believe. I believe it more to be a 4.5 but as I don't have that choice, I feel it is closer to a 100 (5) than an 80 (4). I recommend this to any fan of RPGs and suggest FPS fans to give it a try as a break in to the RPG genre.