Having bought the game on sale for $20 CAD a few months ago and liking some of the other games Dontnod has release, picking up this game was a no-brainer.
The setting of early 20th Century alternative London I thought was well done. The art direction does a decent job of giving the player that feeling of being in a dark, depressing and gloomy world being ravaged by a plague with almost no hope in sight. Abandoned buildings, dead bodies wrapped up and pilled onto carts and vigilante patrols give a sense of dread and unease. There's a few interesting Sin City-esque scenes that I also enjoyed.
The story and concept I think are fine; it's a branching story with choice and consequences. You play as Dr. Jonathan Reid who returns home to London from the frontlines of World War 1 only to discover he's turned into a vampire and has to figure out why and what impact it has on the world around him. The NPC backstories of each district are presented well enough and there's a motivation to get to know them as well. The more you unearth about them, the more desirable their blood becomes, which results in a huge bump in XP should you choose suck their blood. This is valuable for stat upgrades. You also have to craft them medicine if they begin to feel sick; their sickness decreases the value of their blood. If you choose to feed on any of the NPCs, their death will have rippling effects on the health of the district, particularly if one of the district "pillars" goes down.
However, I thought the execution of all of this came up a bit short. As easy as it would be to just munch on a bunch of the NPCs for the giant XP boosts, I got by well enough with out having to kill anyone. Since you also get XP boosts from completing story missions, side quests, healing NPCs when they're sick and murdering thugs in standard combat. It left me a little bit under-levelled throughout the game, particularly in boss fights, but attack pattern recognition and a lot of patience are the keys to victory in that scenario.
The combat is very Dark Souls-like: melee-centric with light attacks (one hand/off hand weapons), heavy attacks (two-handed weapons), stun locking, parrying, dodging and stamina management, instead of resting at bonfires, you rest in a bed in a hideout which you need to seek out and enemies comeback if you rest or die. However it's not as fluid or as tightly designed as Dark Souls. There's also special vampire attacks that rely on your "blood capacity". Some of them I found effective such as "Blood Cauldron" or "Claws", other I didn't even touch like "Shadow Mist" or "Coagulation".
The dialogue flows a bit weird at times (Tell me more your job, tell me more about this city, tell me more about your relationship with... etc) and it sometimes makes it feel like a bit of drag knowing that this will the help the player get to know the NPC's backstories a little better. It also felt just plain drawn out at other times, especially after boss fights and towards the end of the game. There is a romance aspect of the story, but it feels rather forced and just seems to spring up out of left field.
Overall, I think i can recommend Vampyr at a discount for around $20 CAD, but less so as a full priced game.
3.5