Vampire Regent keeps adding reviews at a steady clip for something that is no longer the newest kid on the block, and regained the top spot for this week, which plenty of new releases never do once they get knocked off of that mark the first time. Kiss from Death lost the top-selling spot pretty soon after its release, but it has stayed in the top 10 and often top 5 for numerous weeks. Neither one was a huge splash from the start, hitting the ground running like a release from a big existing series or certain super-popular first outings like Soul Stone War or War for the West (or Breach, as a non-war example). I think both Vampire Regent and Kiss from Death are looking like they have similar release trajectories as well. But if you're willing to wallow in some dark, corrupt, and gruesome places, this is a game you'll want to play again and again until you've wrung every last drop of blo - er, mystery out of Mordhaven. If this were a movie, it would be rated a hard R - it's not for the delicate of spirit or the faint of heart. And as dark as it is, there are some genuinely comedic moments throughout. Even when there's downtime, there's never a dull moment. There are about three major action scenes throughout the story, and the rest consists mostly of negotiations, manipulations, and political machinations. (If you liked Marvel's Netflix series, especially Daredevil or Luke Cage, you'll find a similar tone here.) There's an enormous cast of characters, each with their own agenda - and you can explore any direction you like, in as much depth as you like, building relationships or destroying them, approaching issues with force or diplomacy or simply blowing them off altogether. The worldbuilding is tight, the mythology complex, the prose ever so slightly elegant, and the setting so gritty you'll want to take a shower when you're done. There's just so much going on in Mordhaven, the city over which the PC presides as the titular Regent. Whereas Kiss from Death has a scope of centuries and nations, however, The Vampire Regent takes place over the course of about two months, almost all in the same city - and yet it's just as broad, just as rich, and even longer and darker. Both take a strong central premise and spin it out into a world full of possibilities and random encounters, with so much going on you couldn't possibly do all, or even most, of it in a single playthrough. If I had to compare The Vampire Regent, Lucas Zaper and Morton Newberry's sprawling, ambitious urban fantasy, to any other game, it would have to be William Loman's Kiss from Death.
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