Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York is a visual novel that follows in the footsteps of a previous game dedicated to a vampirical story and this new chapter on the Nintendo Switch is a marvel when it comes to its gorgeous art style, a skillfully-written plot and its incentives to play again once finished, in order to discover its world with different characters. While its experience is rather short and ends abruptly, fans of visual novels will have plenty to wrap their minds around in the form of Coteries of New York.

Coteries of New York does a good job being a Vampire: The Masquerade game. The developers have captured the essence of the property, crafted an appropriate aesthetic and narrative environment, and avoided any inclination to try and "change" what Vampire: The Masquerade is. Playing this game feels every bit like playing the tabletop pen-and-paper experience with a good GM weaving the story. Sadly, by nature pen-and-paper RPGs are about fun stories rather than anything meaningful, and Coteries of New York doesn't really have anything meaningful to say. Throw in some confused mechanics and this one won't be remembered as a classic of the genre.

I suspect once the text skipping patch is live, that’ll be what draws me back into the Masquerade. It’s still an intriguing world, and it’ll help me to see more of it once I can get past the redundancy quicker. If you like darkness and blood in your visual novels, take a bite out of Coteries of New York.