Choice of the Vampire

I first played Choice of the Vampire a long time ago, and was astounded by the sheer quantity of content on offer. With a large selection of character creation options, plenty of branching, and plenty of little secrets for players trying venture off the beaten path, it was an outstanding game for its time, and an experience which has still aged well.

Compared with its other early "Choice of" counterparts (Dragon, Broadsides, Romance, Zombies) it had much more in the way of stats, branching and overall content. The prose was much more heavy however, which makes it a little less suited to casual readers than the other games. Still, the writing here is solid and really conveys the historical setting.

In this game, you get to pick your background, your strong stats as well as language proficiency and literacy. I think this was a good touch, building the experience from a gameplay and storytelling perspective. It is certainly worth it to try out different character builds and see how things could turn out.

The game has two main branches for the first part, each packed with little nuggets of extras if you try to venture out. I was often finding new content on replays, and the work here is certainly impressive.

One thing I didn't quite like were the random stats. I would have preferred more control over my character build. Not to mention, this game can be pretty hard in terms of stat checks, even after some updates which have reduced the difficulty.

I bought this game and Fall of Memphis a long time ago. Still, I'll probably not be writing a review for the latter as the story and prose was much more heavy, and I had a harder time keeping up. Still, Choice of the Vampire was a great game for its time, and remains one today.