Well.
Trying out a couple of the biggies: Clan Quest Mod [CQM] and The Final Nights [TFN].
CQM adds new quests attached to your clan, and it adds the ability to join the Sabbat -- including fully-voiced NPCs, complete with an entirely new area and associated quests -- and to even diablerize main characters (Jeanette, Strauss, etc.).
TFN replaces the standard clans with different lore-based clans. Baali, Oseba, Samedi, and so on. There are also additions, reworkings, all that stuff.
I guess you could say that both of them are...and I hate the term, but I'll use it anyway...overhauls of the basic game. Both are based on different versions of the Unofficial Patch (CQM: 6.5, I think; TFN: 9.?), so if you've played those versions without these mods, you might see familiar things, such as how NPCs are arranged in The Last Round.
I didn't exactly test them thoroughly...I mean, my patience only goes so far. But I did mess around with them somewhat.
I should point out that both feature a Blood Loss Timer (as it implies, you lose blood over time due to various factors, and you need to feed a lot), which I find quite irritating. I disabled it in both mods. I don't need that shit on top of everything else.
Anyway, both are pretty much The Game Itself, but with added stuff. If adhering to The Path Previously Blazed, there's not much difference. In the case of CQM, however...
CQM didn't really make much of an impression on me. Didn't play much. Not even enough to trigger the titular clan-based quest for my Tremere. There's a walkthrough of the new quests available on their site, and idly browsing through them, I couldn't say that they interested me enough to make the attempt. (Plus, their idea of an apocalyptic fight against the Anarchs in some weird-ass nightmare dimension seemed somewhat dumb.)
I admit that I may not be giving the mod a fair shake, so if anyone with an actual reason to live wants to make the attempt, feel free.
TFN, however, seems to be a little more polished. Of course, I played as Baali. Because Tremere weren't evil enough, right? Right. However...okay, so while I couldn't raise my Humanity more than 6 -- clan weakness -- apart from some nicely diabolical dialog choices (that, plus a low Humanity makes you more of a jerk in conversations), I didn't really feel all that evil.
Okay, yes: you need to adhere to the game's plot at some point, but really...
...to put it in context, this is my Tremere/Baali:
A bit over the top, I admit. TO BE CLEAR: This is my own personal retex/recolor and NOT part of the main game, the UP, or the various mods. Okay? Okay.
Evil, but constrained to Good Guy Evil by the plot. Oh, well.
The worst part is that the signature Discipline of the Baali, Daimoinon (sp?), is somewhat underpowered. I suppose I could dig into the system files and tweak the living crap out of it, but...I don't know. Maybe later.
I guess I was looking for something that would unleash suffering and misery upon everything in a ten mile radius on whim, but it's not gonna be like that. Sure, I can make Samantha (in Hollywood. the woman who recognizes you from your old life? her.) disappear in a fine red mist, but no one nearby dies. Not like with Thaumaturgy's Blood Boil, which is truly one of the great joys of Blood Magic. All they really had to do was take Blood Boil and slap a glowy orange pentagram on the ground while the victim's gearing up to explode, but did they? No. They didn't.
So I suppose that this is where imagination steps in. Go back to the UP-enhanced VTMB; play a Tremere; imagine that you're killing multiple people in a single ritual for the Devil; try to ignore the silent, yet all-too-loud ticking of Mortality's Grandfather Clock.
Or, again, I could dig into a few game files and make Diamoinon great again. Depends on how bored I am.
But besides that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
TFN:
- On the plus side, there's new music. On the minus side, there's new music. The music in the various menus is quite nice. That's a plus. The club music now cycles through several custom tracks so that you don't hear the same stupid song over and over again (for example, I had a particular dislike of that song from The Asylum). That's a plus, too. Most of the songs aren't quite to my taste, however. That's a minus, but then again, I'm a complete weirdo when it comes to music and the selection thereof.
- The "new" clans are really just retextured base game PC character models...but the retextures are pretty good, though. However, they haven't finished the female Samedi, so you can only play that clan as male.
- Gameplay is, as someone in a random reddit thread pointed out, appealing mostly to the number crunchers out there. More emphasis is placed on the financial aspect, as well as the necessity for putting points into better lockpicking skills, and so on.
- Also of note: while higher-end weapons are available early on, you'll have far less money than you need to stock up. I guess that's one of those real-life tweaks.
- And there aren't any skill books just laying around. You can buy them via a minor quest that makes them available from a couple of new vendors. The prices of these skill books are ridiculously high.
- I did like the addition of the ninjato, which is a slightly less-lethal version of the katana that gives a bonus to the sneak skill. So it's perfect for those who like killing things stealthily.
- Having a high Inspection feat is nice, as you won't notice some things without it. Things such as money and weapons just laying around. Or occult items.
- Thanks to the game's handling of how easy it is to violate the Masquerade -- here I am thinking of the ambush in the Santa Monica diner -- there's a fun new twist to the penalty system. TFN reworks this by adding increasingly stronger hunters the more you kick up a ruckus. There's more to it than that, but I grow weary of typing.
To remedy your unwanted notoriety, there's an NPC, Silvia Black, who emails you after your first violation with an offer to make the stigma go away...for a price. I never had all that much cash, so I just lived with the thing. Besides, there are ways to get Masquerade Redemptions for free, so I guess it's for those who are really desperate.
- The Humanity system is also somewhat curious. As before, low Humanity adds somewhat callous dialog options (for example, having a Humanity of 4 left me with only one option when I freed Lily from the clinic, and that was an attempt to extort money out of her...!?!), but it also means that when you are near a murder/killing that you're not responsible for, there's a greater chance for you to Frenzy, leading to FURTHER Humanity loss...
...blech. I don't really like that. On the bright side, buying Humanity is really cheap (2 XP, I think), so it's easy enough to keep calm and carry on.
Playing as a Baali, however, means that my Humanity is capped at 6. So I have to be careful.
There's more, there's always more. But my fingers hurt and it's way past lunch, so it's time to stop typing and see what's disappointing in the fridge.
