Vampyr

This action role-playing game pulls no punches with philosophical moral dilemmas, resulting in one of the more original tales to be released in a long time. Vampyr's focus on moral choices drives the story. As Reid, players are constantly struggling to balance their good and evil natures. On one hand, you'll want to feed to build up your vampiric abilities to gain the power you'll need to survive the onslaught of supernatural creatures. On the other, the person you feed on now might be essential to the story later. Adding to the dilemma, feeding on humans delivers more experience than your garden-variety enemies. Plus, the more time you spend observing, listening to, and learning about your potential prey, the more valuable their blood becomes. It might be easy to drain a nameless face, but once you learn their story and they become more person than prey, can your conscience overcome your temptation for power? Who deserves to live and who deserves to become a late-night snack?

Vampyr has a fantastic and engaging story, personalized by the choices you make and the different possibilities those choices open up. But this is still an action-based game; there's a lot of fighting and bloody encounters on your quest for salvation (or damnation), and here, the game loses a bit of its bite. Combat breaks down to stringing together button presses to combine moves effectively, but the timing can feel off, making it difficult to land successful hits. This is somewhat true with the Switch version, where some slowdown and stuttering can hamper some battles, and the lack of visual fidelity compared to other systems can make it harder to see what you need to avoid in some fights. But eventually, through practice, you'll get a decent rhythm going, but it's hard not to feel like you're just going through the motions. Things get substantially easier if you're willing to give in to your bloodlust and drink up extra XP from civilians to enhance your vampiric powers. But by doing so, you risk taking Reid further down a darker path. While it adds a certain challenge to the overall experience, it's also a little frustrating to feel penalized for wanting to make the most of your supernatural situation. Then again, it's that temptation to take the easy road that makes Reid's struggle for his humanity more personal to the player as well.