Thread by @secretsofvtm

#vamily! So I finished Coteries of New York by @DrawDistanceDev twice over, different #clans for #vampirethemasquerade, different routes. There's some positives, and of course, I'll keep this thread spoiler free.

On the plus side, there's no DLG going back and asking back the same questions, so there's no loops (which is good), the Log to scroll is good, the conversations feel a little more organic. Sound/Music is ok. Font sizes and text speed are good. The art is ok (esp background!)

I did like how out of three clan/characters options, the female one isn't the Toreador. Bummer is she is instead the "career oriented woman with no friends and no family". Black PC isn't the Brujah, so good!
But truth is, it almost never matters which character you play.

The Clan has some influence in specific dlg, and the gender/ethnicity only matters in one (1) interaction that I've seen. It's so unimportant that most of the game is written with the neutral They.

I did appreciate the whole "can't do it all" mentality; with the scheduled events, you simply can't dig into every option: you just don't have the time. But Vlad the Impaler does it better for one full dollar. Let alone Long Live The Queen and the likes ;)

Almost all female kindred look exactly the same. Seriously, I mistook the Prince for Sophia for the Scourge more than a couple of times: they have the exact same face and hairdo. Only WoC Gangrel and the Regent look a bit different (and the Regent is canon so no choice)

Two others do look a little bit different because 1. one of them has a different angle to it (not full frontal drawing), 2. one is bloodied and has different bangs (think goth micro-bangs). There's also more variety with mortals but you only see their sprite once or twice.

It's SUPER linear. There's no agency, no choice, nothing really matters and it's frustrating because that's not what we've been told it was. Honestly if it had been sold as a true visual novel to follow along, fine. But it's half that, and half CYOA, and the soufflé fell flat.

There's no "Coterie" stuff going on (except at the end, like, once, and it just doesn't matter), which is a huge bummer for a game named COTERIES. Why?

There always seems to be "a right choice" in the DLG, instead of having really different options. The Dictionary is a god damn fucking mess that makes no sense, has no search function, has no order, and sometimes has articles (The) sometimes not.

One character is described as dark skinned, but the art shown just plain doesn't match. There's plenty of hooks thrown around, but there's no payoff. There's no "go hunting" option, ever, you just have to hope you picked the right character to have an acceptable feeding option.

And despite some things going on, you just don't have the option to mention them to anyone (think how in #vtmb you tell Beckett about the Ocean House, Thin-Bloods, etc... nodding to what you did before).

There's a few text bugs; dlg being written as narration in some cases. Honestly it's not a true problem, been there done that, and the log helps clarify, so no biggie. There's three save slots too, which means you can have three runs at the same time (good!)

Is it better than We Eat Blood? Yes.
Is the main story itself interesting? I found it boring and anti-climatic, there's some good ideas, but poor execution.
The individual stories are more interesting but they lead nowhere. So yeah. Still Thirsty for a good #vtm game!

(note that male characters do have more interesting features and personalities in their design than female ones.)

So you got diversity in PCs, but they don't matter. You have same face/body syndrome for all the twenty something looking women. Choices don't matter. Storylines that aren't main go nowhere. It's neither a good visual novel nor a good CYOA.

I’m.. I’m even going to go off and say that Clan Quest Mod’s fanmade Sabbat Questline has more Coterie stuff going on that Coteries of NY.

Adding: DLG means dialogue. Sorry for the confusion lol.