I'm surprised no one made a topic about this game already, perhaps it got shoved aside with all the excitement with Half Life 2 and Halo 2. Anyway, I've been playing it non-stop since I beat HL2. They both use the Source engine so I got to compare the two. Half Life 2 utilizes the engine much better of course, Troika made little use of the physics and the graphics can look amazing sometimes and like crap at other times. Most notably, clothes and hair. The face looks pretty good with good animation and facial expressions but the hair and clothes usually looks pretty bad. Overall, it's a pretty game but HL2 has spoiled me in the graphics department.
With that aside, the gameplay and story is great, very engrossing. You play a vampire "fledgeling" who has been sired illegally and your sire is killed. The "masquerade" from the title refers to the vampires' efforts to conceal themselves. If you let a human see you feed or use supernatural powers, you lose a masquerade point. As you lose more masquerade points, vampire hunters start stalking you and if you lose 5 points the game ends but there are quite a few quests that redeem masquerade points so it's not a huge deal if you're careful. You start off working for the prince of the Camarilla, one of the main groups of vampires. They are also split into a number of clans, I think 7 are playable. Each clan is unique and has their own areas of expertise and disciplines (disciplines are basically vampire spells). The nosferatu are so deformed from their vampirism that they can't even reveal themselves to humans and are forced to use the sewers to travel everywhere. Another interesting clan are the malkavians who happen to be insane. They hear voices of "insight" which may or may not be helpful. The amount of dialogue in this game is staggering and it's all voiced with facial expressions and such which does wonders for immersion.
The combat is pretty bland, the melee combat is a bit like Fable, you can combo up a few swings and pressing different directions while attacking lets you use different attacks. The ranged combat is like Deus Ex, your skill in firearms determines how accurate you are, how much damage you do and how quickly the crosshairs return to "normal" accuracy. In the beginning though, you will suck with firearms. I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with the pistol with my melee guy even though my firearms skill was 3 or so.
It really is a great game, lots of fun to play. Only other problems I have with it was some choppiness in the city and occasional stuttering. Oh and some npcs/locations can be hard to find, I spent 10 minutes looking for this one bum. They hid him behind a dumpster in the darkest part of the alley.
I highly recommend it for any rpg fans out there and now it's time to play some more. Here are a couple of screenshots I took.
http://s94772067.onlinehome.us/img/bloodlines1.jpg
http://s94772067.onlinehome.us/img/bloodlines2.jpg
Enjoy!