Vigil: Blood Bitterness
- June 29, 2007
- Meridian4
Get on Steam"Vigil: Blood Bitterness" is a gothic horror adventure game with point-and-click playability and a dark, disturbing story. As the character Dehon, you must reveal the secrets of your past, exact revenge, and ultimately seek freedom in an ancient civilization filled with ritualistic killings and blood lust. The game features 3D graphics with a unique black and white art style, dynamic camera, and puzzle-solving.
PC
Windows
Reviews
- The art style is unique and visually captivating, offering an interesting aesthetic experience.
- The atmosphere built by the lore, music, and visuals is immersive and engaging.
- Some players find the game to be an intriguing, albeit flawed, artistic endeavor.
- The game is plagued by technical issues, including inability to launch, broken cutscenes, and poor controls.
- Gameplay is frustrating and poorly designed, with unclear objectives and tedious mechanics.
- Many players recommend watching a playthrough instead of playing, as the experience is often more enjoyable without the frustration.
- graphics36 mentions
- 25 % positive mentions
- 53 % neutral mentions
- 22 % negative mentions
The graphics of the game have received mixed reviews, with many players appreciating the unique and captivating art style, often described as high contrast and minimalist. However, technical issues such as poor resolution, frequent crashes, and graphical glitches significantly detract from the overall experience, leading to frustration and confusion during gameplay. While some find the visuals appealing, the game's performance issues overshadow its aesthetic appeal, prompting many to suggest watching playthroughs instead of playing.
“The atmosphere built by the lore, music, and visuals is pretty damn nice.”
“The art style is the reason I bought this game, nothing else.”
“It's too indie to understand, but the art in the game is good, combining contrast and minimalist concepts resulting in beautiful graphics.”
“The graphics are awful - not awesome - and are a real and violent insult to Frank Miller and Sin City (including all sequels).”
“The art style is so abstract that it is very difficult to understand what you're looking at, especially as the camera changes to extremely unusable angles with each new room.”
“The resolution is bad, the graphics are bad, and it seems it's meant for a computer made in the prehistoric era.”
- gameplay12 mentions
- 8 % positive mentions
- 50 % neutral mentions
- 42 % negative mentions
The gameplay has been widely criticized for its lack of progression, frustrating mechanics, and poor technical execution. Players report a confusing array of one-off mechanics, cryptic clues, and arbitrary solutions that lead to frequent, inexplicable deaths. Overall, the experience is marred by a lack of clarity and polish, making it more frustrating than enjoyable.
“No other game quite has the gameplay or graphical stylings that this does.”
“There's no sense of progression or accumulation of skills/knowledge; the only generally-consistent mechanic is doors, everything else is some weird one-off mechanic that you struggle to figure out and that never comes up again.”
“Gameplay is nothing more than an exercise in frustration, as clues are cryptic without being logical, solutions are arbitrary and often linked to timers tuned so short that anything less than following the developer's intended path and timing, without an angstrom's width of deviation, will result in certain death and banishment back to the last checkpoint.”
“Even the gameplay itself is badly polished with little explanation as to what to do and how to play the game!”
- story9 mentions
- 22 % positive mentions
- 44 % neutral mentions
- 33 % negative mentions
The story in "Vigil: Blood Bitterness" is criticized for being underdeveloped and difficult to engage with, relying heavily on lore and text dumps rather than environmental storytelling. While some players appreciate its unique atmosphere and potential, many find the narrative confusing and unrelatable, leading to frustration and a preference for watching the story online rather than experiencing it in-game. Overall, the minimalist approach to storytelling leaves much to be desired.
“Vigil: Blood Bitterness combines a unique art style for gaming with some interesting sounds and wraps it around a bizarre story.”
“A damn shame because it has such a promising storyline with a thick and unsettling atmosphere.”
“The story itself is not really amazing; the focus is mostly on lore and worldbuilding. The whole thing lasts like half an hour, if it's not breaking for you, of course.”
“Environmental storytelling is completely eschewed in favor of tedious text dumps.”
“Finally, the story is ridiculous, less than one-dimensional, and completely unrelatable in any way.”
- music6 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 50 % negative mentions
The music in the game effectively creates an ominous atmosphere that complements the setting, but the limited number of tracks leads to repetition and annoyance. Additionally, technical issues such as audible popping during transitions detract from the overall experience.
“The atmosphere built by the lore, music, and visuals is pretty damn nice.”
“Music is minimal and ominous, fits the setting.”
“Nothing worked and I just kept dying out of nowhere while this spooky volume-increasing music played in the background.”
“The small number of music tracks and audio cues quickly become repetitive and annoying.”
“Audible popping when music and sound effects are abruptly stopped or switched.”
“Nothing worked, and I just kept dying out of nowhere while this spooky, volume-increasing music played in the background.”
- atmosphere4 mentions
- 75 % positive mentions
- -25 % neutral mentions
- 50 % negative mentions
The game's atmosphere is praised for its engaging lore, music, and dark gothic visuals, creating a thick and unsettling ambiance. However, this strong atmospheric foundation is undermined by poor gameplay and technical issues, detracting from the overall experience despite the presence of nice puzzles and a promising storyline.
“The atmosphere built by the lore, music, and visuals is pretty damn nice.”
“It has nice puzzles, great atmosphere, and its overall dark gothic presentation is very good.”
“It has such a promising storyline with a thick and unsettling atmosphere.”
“The atmosphere built by the lore, music, and visuals is pretty nice; however, the gameplay and technical aspects are quite poor.”
“It's a damn shame because it has such a promising storyline with a thick and unsettling atmosphere.”
- stability4 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
The game suffers from severe stability issues, with numerous bugs affecting gameplay, video playback, and controls, leading to a frustrating experience for players. Many reviewers strongly advise against playing it, even for free, due to its broken state.
“Drawn in by the interesting high contrast art style, this hot mess of a buggy game fails to play its videos and offers nothing but frustration.”
“Don't touch this broken, buggy game even if you get it for free.”
“This game is extremely buggy.”
- grinding2 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- -50 % neutral mentions
- 150 % negative mentions
Reviews indicate that the grinding aspect of the game is characterized by tedious text dumps and repetitive gameplay, leading to a frustrating experience. Players find the environmental storytelling lacking, with cutscenes that contribute to the overall tedium rather than enhancing the game. While the unique art style is noted, it does not compensate for the monotonous grind.
“Environmental storytelling is completely eschewed in favor of tedious text dumps.”
“The game has a setting that becomes tedious within minutes, with headache-inducing cutscenes and nothing in particular to recommend it other than a unique art style that you can appreciate from the screenshots.”
“Grinding quickly becomes a monotonous chore that detracts from the overall experience.”
- character development1 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- -200 % neutral mentions
- 300 % negative mentions
Character development is largely criticized for being minimal, lacking depth and coherence, which results in an absence of a clear theme or message throughout the narrative.
“Minimal plot and character development, lacking a coherent theme or message.”
“The characters feel one-dimensional and fail to evolve throughout the game.”
“There is a noticeable absence of meaningful character arcs, making it hard to connect with anyone.”
