"Troika Games"

2004 · RPG · PC / Steam

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is a broken masterpiece that earned its cult following through sheer force of writing, atmosphere, and role-playing depth. The first half of the game, set in Santa Monica, Hollywood, and Downtown Los Angeles, offers some of the finest quest design and character work in RPG history. The Ocean House Hotel is a standout horror sequence. The dialogue is sharp, funny, and dark in equal measure. Then the final act collapses into a combat grind that the game's mechanics can't support, and the bugs that Troika never had time to fix remind you why this studio couldn't survive. The Unofficial Patch is mandatory. But even in its roughest state, Bloodlines has a personality that almost nothing else in gaming can match.

2001 · RPG · PC

Arcanum is one of the most ambitious RPGs ever attempted and one of the most flawed. Its world, a collision between industrial revolution technology and traditional fantasy magic, is unlike anything else in the genre. Character building is extraordinarily deep, offering technology trees, magic schools, and social skills that all fundamentally change how you interact with the game. But the combat is poor across both real-time and turn-based modes, bugs persist decades later, and the late game rushes through content that deserved more development time. For players who can tolerate mechanical roughness in exchange for creative ambition, Arcanum offers an experience that nothing else has replicated.