#vampo

Isaac Abrams, squaring up: You wanna catch these hands?

Fledgling: whoa whoa whoa whoa WHOA no, that was honest admiration

Isaac: ... sorry. Please go find me that tape now

A "cult classic" basically means it was good, or at least had good things in it, but it didn't make money at release. So, why did Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines become a cult classic?

Firstly, the game is a BIT of a mess right out of the box. The voice lines are weirdly echoey, there was a LOT of cut content, and especially the back half of the game is nearly visibly rushed. But the bones of a good or even great game were there, just not quite put together that well (most likely because Troika was pretty much in the process of shutting down). The Unofficial Patch deals with most of the problems above, and could reasonably be credited with a good amount of the fat on the long tail of sales, if you will. Kind of like Highlander at the box office vs Highlander on home video.

There is also another factor, and it may or may not have been a major one: it came out at the same time as HALF-LIFE 2. And if you don't recognize that as one of the most anticipated game releases of all time, you're probably too young to be following me.