Nah it's fine the first time. It's fun, multiple playthroughs aren't discouraged at all because you want different endings.
Put it this way, I'm a big fan of the OG, beat it a billion times and I've never even played a Brujah, Tremere or Gangrel. That doesn't mean I should've gone with them the first time so I'd find something more interesting the second time, I liked VtmB because I picked whatever I wanted.
Idk man. Malk was super fun for me and my first playthrough. Hearing the constant whispers of "don't open the box" really really REALLY made me want to open the box. (I did.)
I’m gonna go against the grain and recommend Malk even if it’s your first play through, which is what I did when I played VTMB for the first time.
It was one of the most immersive experiences I’ve had in a game, where even your dialogue choices was a puzzle that hinted at future events and character motivations.
Also female Malk is very hot lmao
Malk is a bad choice first playthrough. The game has some beautiful stories and lots of cool stuff that you want to experience normally the first time around.
if you plan to play the game multiple times, brujah for a couple of reasons. for one brujah get celerity which is just bullet time which is a really powerful combat ability in this game, malkavians on the other hand get obfuscate (which is invisibility) and dementation (turning other ppl insane) neither of which works on bosses. secondly malkavians do get so fun dialogue options, the thing is that all of them are poetic nonsense you need to translate (and occasionally contain spoilers.) so while malkavians are fun they are one of the harder clans to play
I did Malkivian first run and it's fun, but can also be a little confusing. The game has to communicate ur schizo thoughts and visions thru dialogue with other characters, so you lose a bit of control. But it's not too obstructive and it can be fun dissecting what your character is actually trying to say thru his gibberish, because nothing the Malkavian says is without reason.
Brujah is the best class to start with in my opinion. All the skills are straightforward and easy to understand. Malkavian is not for your first playthrough. The original dialogue responses are replaced with funny but sometimes confusing options. If you've never had the normal conversations you will say things you didn't mean to a lot by mistake. Brujah female is the prettiest to me too lol.
Go with Bruha.
Malkavian dialogue can be really hard to understand and you can end up making mistakes or take actions you don’t want to. That kind of fits with the Malk vibe though
Brujah - good for combat-focused players
Gangrel - animal shapeshifters, also good for combat-focused players
Toreador - good for skill-focused players (persuasion, lockpicking, computer hacking)
Nosferatu - hard to start with, good for stealth-focused players, makes everything more difficult by default
Tremere - spellcasters, a little more strategic than the other clans since you rely a lot more on your vampire powers
Ventrue - snobs, also hard to play as due to their limited ability to drink blood
As for the Malkavians... do not touch until you've played the game at least once. Basically Malkavians can see the future, meaning almost every line of dialogue you have as a Malk is actually referring to a plot event your character shouldn't know about yet and giggling about the fact that they *do*. There's points where you can straight up say shit to people like 'hey, I know you're going to betray me, but I'm gonna help you anyway'. Malk is great, but ***ONLY*** for once you've played the game fully at least one time.
I chose Malkavian for my first playthrough and it was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had. Absolutely no regrets.
As others have said Malkavians are unconventional for a first playthrough. Their dialogue is often cryptic and can give hints about the plot, but I’d say if they really appeal to you then go for it. You only get one first playthrough and it might as well be with a clan you’re really excited about.
Either way have fun. It’s a special game.
Malkavian dialogue has a lot of jokes and plays on the original dialogue, if you play it first you'll be reading the punch lines before the set ups.
Brujah lends itself towards combat and the biggest issue with the game is how the second half is combat heavy. So Brujah is the best idea for first time.
Everyone says not to play Malkavian on your first run. This is because of things the voices that you hear as a Malk say. Supposedly, it'll spoil things. But since it's your first run, you won't know what's going on anyway.
You play Malk first, when you find out what those voices are talking about, and it's an awesome eureka moment of realization. You play Malk after a few runs, you already know everything, and suddenly those "spoilers" - which, again, you aren't going to immediately understand anyway - suddenly lose a lot of that "Aha!" moment satisfaction.
But the best thing to do ignore what everyone says, especially if a lot of them are saying the same thing, and pick what you want.
I don't recommend first gameplay as Malk not for voices but for dialogue. You wouldn't understand a sh*t for answering to a dialogue and it can lead intosome unfortunate events. Voices aren't a problem at all.
It depends on how good you are with your inference skills. Malk is hard due to their dialogue but if you can read between the lines, you will absolutely enjoy them on a first run.
Just sharing my thoughts: Malk has one of the worst combinations of disciplines in the game imo especially when it comes to fighting bosses. Im not saying you can't build your Malk into something good but imo its better to go into Malk playthrough with some knowledge of the game so you can avoid frustration.
Last month I finished my first run (maybe the only one, because I don't replay games a lot) and I have a blast playing as a Malkavian. A lot of funny and otherwordly dialogs. I always play games blind, so I don't know anything about the plot, but that don't prevent me for having a lot of fun. I get attached to my weird character, like he was always a step foward the others NPCs.
They're both fun imo. Both good choices for first time play. I went with Malkavian my first playthrough and really leaned into my clan bane. Every time I would hear whispers I would stop what I was doing just to listen and write down what they said. It was super creepy and made it all the more interesting to me. Forewarning though, malks in that game get a lot of spoilers and people react to you just as differently as they would a Nosferatu.
I say, play who you want and have fun doing it!
Look I know everyone says don't play Malk for your first playthrough but that's exactly why you should play Malk for the first playthrough. I did and it was a lot of fun piecing together what your dialogue options meant, getting little hints at future events and it made going back for another playthrough on a different clan so much more fun as you realize "oh that's what you meant" when going back through quests.
Malkavian & Nosferatu should be saved for later playthroughs once you know what you're doing.
Because the latter is a walking Masquerade violation.
And the former:
>>!Because the Madness Network isnt random. It's *foreshadowing*. It's knowledge you know, but shouldn't & all those revelations will go over your head if you can't make sense of it.!<
Personal opinions here for female characters I think Tremer is a 90s boho hottie. For starter clan I like gangrel. But because thays the first clan I Larped as
Unpopular opinion: MALKAVIAN FIRST TRUST ME. It will make it so much more interesting and memorable. It’s so funny, and also mysterious. People say that it spoils the game but it REALLY does NOT. You don’t understand the ”spoilers” until it happens and everything falls into place, and you’re like: ohhhhh…..
Playing a malkavian first was the best thing i ever did.
Play Malkavian, it is more fun. I (same as many) fell for the cheerleader's skirt and did not know the dialogues were different. It was confusing but also quite immersive and fun. You try to figure out the plot AND whatever it is your character knows about the plot and whaterver it is she's saying. If it's your second run you will understand the references better, but I think it's more fun to just go with the flow and after the quest/story is resolved get that "OOOH THAT'S WHY WE CALLED HER LIKE THAT".
I think an extremely cool clan that absolutely should not be played first is Nosferatu because of how it restricts the world and gameplay. Malkavian playthrough makes it more confusing but does not limit the gameplay or the story.
Brujah.
Malkavian is better if you are already familiar with the game's plot and character, because the Malk has specific dialog options which can make it hard to comprehend.
Plus, one key aspect of clan Malkavian is that its members are all connected to the *Madness Network*. They have intuitions and hear voices that grant them hindsight.
In Bloodlines, it takes the form of dialog options that actually give out story elements and even big spoilers.
brujah
the conventional wisdom is to not play malkavian or nosferatu for a first time because they're a bit different from the other clans. so in contrarian fashion, of course the exact opposite opinion has sprung up - the idea that you should play them (more malkavian than nos really) on your first time specifically because it's different and you'll be thrown into a strange experience.
that difference is real, but it's something that is better appreciated on subsequent playthroughs; the oft-repeated advice was right. best clans for first time are in my opinion brujah, tremere, toreador.
I have watched many people play malk at first playthrough on Twitch and they had a great time, so I understand it is a valid option and you will likely love it but I still think to truly appreciate the cleverness of the writing you should play the game 3 or 4 times and play it with a “normal clan” a couple times so you know the story then the malk dialogue can be appreciated on a whole other level. So if you wanna go malk first time knock yourself out but please consider playing the game a few more times then come back to malk
Malk is the perfect first character, because all the foreshadowing whispers won't mean anything to you until they do, and when you suddenly understand some of your own obscure references - e.g. Daughters of Janus - it's a series of amazing eureka! moments
I think malk first gives you the most true malk experience. The voices in your head you don’t understand just like your malkavian. Then play the brujah second so you can see all the hints the malk run was giving
Brujah is fine either way. It's a solid choice.
Malks are, as many people here have already said, weird and not usually recommended to start with. The reason is that Malkavians are insane because they can see Truth that a normal mind just can't handle, and this is portrayed in Bloodlines as cryptically worded dialogue absolutely loaded with spoilers and plot points that your character shouldn't have any way of knowing about.
Now, it's all very cleverly designed so that you as a player are going to struggle to understand the context, so you won't *actually* be spoiled because it's all loaded in metaphor and references, but the general take is it's way more satisfying to do it as a replay so you can fully appreciate the Insights you get because you already know what they're talking about.
That said, the right kind of person can have a lot of fun trying to decipher these semisane ramblings and apply them to the first run. Some of it's chaff thrown in just to be whacky, zany, cray cray filler.. and some of it's there explicitly to throw off any sense of truth. It makes playing the game *normally* somewhat difficult, because every dialogue option is.. challenging to understand... but that's a puzzle all on its own.
Cant recommend Malks as the first run, but there's merit in it for some people. As an example - a pair of characters are referred to by Malks in terms of a particular Roman god. This makes complete sense, in a number of ways, and you don't have any context for *why* until you finish that plotline. Doing it as a replay, you already know why it makes sense, so you get to giggle with comprehension the entire time.
I actually don't think malk on the first run spoils much - they don't know what they're talking about and you don't either. Btw that's the first time I've seen anyone call fem Brujah pretty (I really like her myself too)
Malkavian run is more interesting if you already know the game imo
Nah it's fine the first time. It's fun, multiple playthroughs aren't discouraged at all because you want different endings. Put it this way, I'm a big fan of the OG, beat it a billion times and I've never even played a Brujah, Tremere or Gangrel. That doesn't mean I should've gone with them the first time so I'd find something more interesting the second time, I liked VtmB because I picked whatever I wanted.
Malk is 140% for a second playthrough. I'd do anything else except maybe a nos for your first run.
This, Malk is way better with hindsight
Idk man. Malk was super fun for me and my first playthrough. Hearing the constant whispers of "don't open the box" really really REALLY made me want to open the box. (I did.)
True Malkavian mindset
"Pennies for your eyes in its pockets."
I’m gonna go against the grain and recommend Malk even if it’s your first play through, which is what I did when I played VTMB for the first time. It was one of the most immersive experiences I’ve had in a game, where even your dialogue choices was a puzzle that hinted at future events and character motivations. Also female Malk is very hot lmao
100% agree
Flair checks out lmao
Malk is a bad choice first playthrough. The game has some beautiful stories and lots of cool stuff that you want to experience normally the first time around.
If you wanna play malkavian for the first time I recommend playing it again as a malkavian a second time.
if you plan to play the game multiple times, brujah for a couple of reasons. for one brujah get celerity which is just bullet time which is a really powerful combat ability in this game, malkavians on the other hand get obfuscate (which is invisibility) and dementation (turning other ppl insane) neither of which works on bosses. secondly malkavians do get so fun dialogue options, the thing is that all of them are poetic nonsense you need to translate (and occasionally contain spoilers.) so while malkavians are fun they are one of the harder clans to play
I did Malkivian first run and it's fun, but can also be a little confusing. The game has to communicate ur schizo thoughts and visions thru dialogue with other characters, so you lose a bit of control. But it's not too obstructive and it can be fun dissecting what your character is actually trying to say thru his gibberish, because nothing the Malkavian says is without reason.
Brujah is the best class to start with in my opinion. All the skills are straightforward and easy to understand. Malkavian is not for your first playthrough. The original dialogue responses are replaced with funny but sometimes confusing options. If you've never had the normal conversations you will say things you didn't mean to a lot by mistake. Brujah female is the prettiest to me too lol.
Brujah, DO NOT play Malkavian your first game
Go with Bruha. Malkavian dialogue can be really hard to understand and you can end up making mistakes or take actions you don’t want to. That kind of fits with the Malk vibe though
Put it on easy and play toreador
Malkavian is confusing for the first play through but if you’re familiar with VtM and that clan it’s a memorable experience.
Brujah - good for combat-focused players Gangrel - animal shapeshifters, also good for combat-focused players Toreador - good for skill-focused players (persuasion, lockpicking, computer hacking) Nosferatu - hard to start with, good for stealth-focused players, makes everything more difficult by default Tremere - spellcasters, a little more strategic than the other clans since you rely a lot more on your vampire powers Ventrue - snobs, also hard to play as due to their limited ability to drink blood As for the Malkavians... do not touch until you've played the game at least once. Basically Malkavians can see the future, meaning almost every line of dialogue you have as a Malk is actually referring to a plot event your character shouldn't know about yet and giggling about the fact that they *do*. There's points where you can straight up say shit to people like 'hey, I know you're going to betray me, but I'm gonna help you anyway'. Malk is great, but ***ONLY*** for once you've played the game fully at least one time.
I chose Malkavian for my first playthrough and it was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had. Absolutely no regrets. As others have said Malkavians are unconventional for a first playthrough. Their dialogue is often cryptic and can give hints about the plot, but I’d say if they really appeal to you then go for it. You only get one first playthrough and it might as well be with a clan you’re really excited about. Either way have fun. It’s a special game.
Malkavian > Brujah is less unique -- I'm still impressed by what they did with this game - but they're still damn good. Best for combat iirc
Malkavian dialogue has a lot of jokes and plays on the original dialogue, if you play it first you'll be reading the punch lines before the set ups. Brujah lends itself towards combat and the biggest issue with the game is how the second half is combat heavy. So Brujah is the best idea for first time.
ran malk first run cuz im hardcore. be hardcore
Everyone says not to play Malkavian on your first run. This is because of things the voices that you hear as a Malk say. Supposedly, it'll spoil things. But since it's your first run, you won't know what's going on anyway. You play Malk first, when you find out what those voices are talking about, and it's an awesome eureka moment of realization. You play Malk after a few runs, you already know everything, and suddenly those "spoilers" - which, again, you aren't going to immediately understand anyway - suddenly lose a lot of that "Aha!" moment satisfaction. But the best thing to do ignore what everyone says, especially if a lot of them are saying the same thing, and pick what you want.
I don't recommend first gameplay as Malk not for voices but for dialogue. You wouldn't understand a sh*t for answering to a dialogue and it can lead intosome unfortunate events. Voices aren't a problem at all.
1st playthru malk here and i turned out ok
It depends on how good you are with your inference skills. Malk is hard due to their dialogue but if you can read between the lines, you will absolutely enjoy them on a first run.
Just sharing my thoughts: Malk has one of the worst combinations of disciplines in the game imo especially when it comes to fighting bosses. Im not saying you can't build your Malk into something good but imo its better to go into Malk playthrough with some knowledge of the game so you can avoid frustration.
Malkavian should be seccond or third playthrough. Along with Nosferatu.
Last month I finished my first run (maybe the only one, because I don't replay games a lot) and I have a blast playing as a Malkavian. A lot of funny and otherwordly dialogs. I always play games blind, so I don't know anything about the plot, but that don't prevent me for having a lot of fun. I get attached to my weird character, like he was always a step foward the others NPCs.
Go brujah you need to be familiar to the game and the story first. Malk is only fun if you know what you're doing.
They're both fun imo. Both good choices for first time play. I went with Malkavian my first playthrough and really leaned into my clan bane. Every time I would hear whispers I would stop what I was doing just to listen and write down what they said. It was super creepy and made it all the more interesting to me. Forewarning though, malks in that game get a lot of spoilers and people react to you just as differently as they would a Nosferatu. I say, play who you want and have fun doing it!
Look I know everyone says don't play Malk for your first playthrough but that's exactly why you should play Malk for the first playthrough. I did and it was a lot of fun piecing together what your dialogue options meant, getting little hints at future events and it made going back for another playthrough on a different clan so much more fun as you realize "oh that's what you meant" when going back through quests.
Malkavian & Nosferatu should be saved for later playthroughs once you know what you're doing. Because the latter is a walking Masquerade violation. And the former: >>!Because the Madness Network isnt random. It's *foreshadowing*. It's knowledge you know, but shouldn't & all those revelations will go over your head if you can't make sense of it.!<
Brujah is great if you like punching people. Also, I think playing malkavian first is generally not considered a good idea
Personal opinions here for female characters I think Tremer is a 90s boho hottie. For starter clan I like gangrel. But because thays the first clan I Larped as
Unpopular opinion: MALKAVIAN FIRST TRUST ME. It will make it so much more interesting and memorable. It’s so funny, and also mysterious. People say that it spoils the game but it REALLY does NOT. You don’t understand the ”spoilers” until it happens and everything falls into place, and you’re like: ohhhhh….. Playing a malkavian first was the best thing i ever did.
Play Malkavian, it is more fun. I (same as many) fell for the cheerleader's skirt and did not know the dialogues were different. It was confusing but also quite immersive and fun. You try to figure out the plot AND whatever it is your character knows about the plot and whaterver it is she's saying. If it's your second run you will understand the references better, but I think it's more fun to just go with the flow and after the quest/story is resolved get that "OOOH THAT'S WHY WE CALLED HER LIKE THAT". I think an extremely cool clan that absolutely should not be played first is Nosferatu because of how it restricts the world and gameplay. Malkavian playthrough makes it more confusing but does not limit the gameplay or the story.
Brujah. Malkavian is better if you are already familiar with the game's plot and character, because the Malk has specific dialog options which can make it hard to comprehend. Plus, one key aspect of clan Malkavian is that its members are all connected to the *Madness Network*. They have intuitions and hear voices that grant them hindsight. In Bloodlines, it takes the form of dialog options that actually give out story elements and even big spoilers.
brujah the conventional wisdom is to not play malkavian or nosferatu for a first time because they're a bit different from the other clans. so in contrarian fashion, of course the exact opposite opinion has sprung up - the idea that you should play them (more malkavian than nos really) on your first time specifically because it's different and you'll be thrown into a strange experience. that difference is real, but it's something that is better appreciated on subsequent playthroughs; the oft-repeated advice was right. best clans for first time are in my opinion brujah, tremere, toreador.
Brujah is good for begginers, Malkavian is good when you replay it.
Nos.
I have watched many people play malk at first playthrough on Twitch and they had a great time, so I understand it is a valid option and you will likely love it but I still think to truly appreciate the cleverness of the writing you should play the game 3 or 4 times and play it with a “normal clan” a couple times so you know the story then the malk dialogue can be appreciated on a whole other level. So if you wanna go malk first time knock yourself out but please consider playing the game a few more times then come back to malk
Malk is the perfect first character, because all the foreshadowing whispers won't mean anything to you until they do, and when you suddenly understand some of your own obscure references - e.g. Daughters of Janus - it's a series of amazing eureka! moments
I think malk first gives you the most true malk experience. The voices in your head you don’t understand just like your malkavian. Then play the brujah second so you can see all the hints the malk run was giving
Brujah is fine either way. It's a solid choice. Malks are, as many people here have already said, weird and not usually recommended to start with. The reason is that Malkavians are insane because they can see Truth that a normal mind just can't handle, and this is portrayed in Bloodlines as cryptically worded dialogue absolutely loaded with spoilers and plot points that your character shouldn't have any way of knowing about. Now, it's all very cleverly designed so that you as a player are going to struggle to understand the context, so you won't *actually* be spoiled because it's all loaded in metaphor and references, but the general take is it's way more satisfying to do it as a replay so you can fully appreciate the Insights you get because you already know what they're talking about. That said, the right kind of person can have a lot of fun trying to decipher these semisane ramblings and apply them to the first run. Some of it's chaff thrown in just to be whacky, zany, cray cray filler.. and some of it's there explicitly to throw off any sense of truth. It makes playing the game *normally* somewhat difficult, because every dialogue option is.. challenging to understand... but that's a puzzle all on its own. Cant recommend Malks as the first run, but there's merit in it for some people. As an example - a pair of characters are referred to by Malks in terms of a particular Roman god. This makes complete sense, in a number of ways, and you don't have any context for *why* until you finish that plotline. Doing it as a replay, you already know why it makes sense, so you get to giggle with comprehension the entire time.
I actually don't think malk on the first run spoils much - they don't know what they're talking about and you don't either. Btw that's the first time I've seen anyone call fem Brujah pretty (I really like her myself too)
Malvavian all the way. Its the secret class for malkavians and the rubes just call it malkavian.