Vampire Therapist Review

That’s a cognitive distortion right there, pardner.

I know I said this for my demo impressions, but I’ll say it again here. Vampire Therapist was one of the many games where I didn’t look up much about it, but one of the scarce few that I only knew the title of. All I knew was that this game probably has you play as a vampire who is a therapist or perhaps a therapist to vampire or both. Admittedly, this is not a good habit to have, but luckily there was a demo that was released during Next Fest. I loved the demo and I was so hyped to play the full game. Especially since the protagonist was a cowboy vampire. You guys have no idea how much I was waiting for the moment of being able to play a cowboy vampire after being able to play a cowboy zombie in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare 14-ish years ago. Now there needs to be a game where you play a cowboy werewolf.

Anyway, so how was Vampire Therapist after being able to play through its full release?

Vampire Therapist takes place in a universe where vampires exist, and possibly other supernatural entities. We, in particular, follow a vampire named Sam who has been alive for over 200 years and was turned during the Wild West. Sam has done a lot of terrible things in his past, which caused him to leave his old gang, but he was luckily able to meet some kind humans that set him on the path he is on now. When the game starts, Sam is just coming out from wandering the wilderness for 90 years, which has let him find himself and come to some realizations. This made him want to help his fellow vampires and even though his old gang didn’t take too kindly to him, he was able to get into contact with a 3,000 year old vampire known as Andromachos on the internet. Andromachos, intrigued with a vampire asking his aide to help others, invites Sam to his club in Europe to learn from him.

Once you get through the bouncer, help a goth couple maybe get in the club, and passing the test from the bartender, you get to meet with Andromachos. Here, we get to learn that Sam was able to figure out a couple of cognitive distortions just based on examining how vampires think, though he didn’t know they were called cognitive distortions. Andromachos is quite impressed with Sam and goes to teach him the right terminology for the cognitive distortions he figured out himself (rip Sam’s original names) and tests him on detecting and correctly identifying them. Andromachos obviously agrees to teach Sam his ways, but on the condition that Sam will receive therapy as well. After all, can’t have the therapist have terrible mental health himself. Sam is also told that he’s going to have clients of his own. This starts the narrative loop of Vampire Therapist. Sam will have a therapy session with Andromachos where he gets to talk about his struggles and his past, as well as learn some new cognitive distortions (to a total of 13) to use when he’s the therapist. Sam will then do sessions with his clients, one per week with them coming in a month, and then repeat.

Throughout the game, Sam will be a therapist for four clients who are also vampires. Each of them is from different areas, from different time periods, and struggling with different problems. However, it soon becomes apparent that the problems they came in wanting help in are just the surface layer. Sam starts with Dr. Drayne, a researcher that comes in wanting help dealing with an addiction to the very thing he’s researching. However, it turns out that while his research is honorable, it reveals an underlying problem in the form of another side of him. Next is a woman who used to be a powerful matriarch by the name of Isabella d’Este. She will not take anything less than proper manors and speech, but she comes in feeling like her life (and unlife as this game calls the life they live as a vampire) was meaningless due to a particular movie she felt wasn’t art. Though, it does seem this issue runs deeper than it originally seems. Edmund Kean is next and he is a Shakespearean actor who wishes to return to the stage, but starts therapy to work on his anger at the mere thought of critics reviewing him poorly. As you can guess, he hides some deeper truth that he seems to be aware of, but hides from it using the roles he plays. And, leaving the best for last, is Meddy who I believe is actually older than Andromachos. She’s an elder vampire who seems to be the only vampire here to know the internet and has spent the majority of her time online or doing things to put online. She is basically an influencer. However, she comes needing help after her many, many followers are demanding more and more content. Meddy is pretty set in her ways, even when she wants to get better, but Sam nonetheless tries to help.

While Sam slowly works his way to helping his clients with what they originally came in for, you’ll soon find yourself learning about your client’s past and present; as well as the cognitive distortions they hold within. All four the clients are pretty unique from one another and interesting to learn about. When you’re not in a therapy session or seeing a client, you’ll be able to interact with some side characters such as Crimson, the bartender who has a personal relationship with Andromachos, drinking your fill of blood, and doing some late night reading or watching some oldies in your coffin before resting.

Gameplay is pretty simple here, even more so since there is no fail state. Once the client exhibits a cognitive distortion, Sam will catch it. You will then be asked to identify it, using one of the five cognitive distortions listed underneath the text box, before you’re able to move on. There isn’t any penalty for getting it wrong, but you are given a hint and set to try and identify it again. Once Sam knows more than five cognitive distortions, which is early on, you’ll then be asked to pick out the cognitive distortions you want to keep in mind. You do have to determine what their core cognitive distortion is, which is the one that’s always locked in, and then pick four that you believe they’ll exhibit during that session. You don’t have to stress too much on this as you aren’t meant to point out every cognitive distortion and there is no fail state here so you’ll always have statements that will have exhibit cognitive distortions you picked.

There are also choices that pop up every so often, which range from changing up Sam’s line, being a list of questions Sam has to/can ask, and a question where you have to pick the answer (though, with no fail state, you are set to try answering it again if you get it wrong).

There are also two minigames here, which I ended up pretty neutral on. The first one you’re introduced to is the feeding minigame. After every therapy session Sam will go down to the club to get some blood, but every so often he’ll get the chance to get it fresh from the source. The minor characters here are all human and they’ll come to Sam, consenting to him drinking their blood and bringing him to the kink room to feed in private. After a quick conversation, you’ll be in the minigame where their neck is displayed and a icon of vampire fangs moving up and down. Here, you have to line up his fangs with the veins and most of them do have a collar you need to avoid. There’s also the meditation minigame, which happens at every therapy session Sam has with Andromachos. Here you have Sam breath in and out as you hover over the various phrases that pop up. However, while there is a tutorial for the meditation minigame now, as well as updated prompts, I was still pretty confused. I did understand having Sam breath in and out, but I didn’t know what I had to do to deal with the phrases and I had to look up a gameplay video to see what I was supposed to do. This is due to the tutorial being written in-character and thus can’t really tell you what you need to do. Considering it also has screenshots of the minigame to visually show what to do too (which I honestly didn’t get until I was looking at it in my second playthrough trying to get the achievements I missed), it would probably be better to have something like a pop-up breaking the fourth wall so the directions could be more direct.

Overall, I really enjoyed Vampire Therapist’s story and gameplay. I already did like the premise, but I really liked how it was handled overall here. I really liked Sam’s journal and being able to read the definitions of the cognitive distortions in his writing style, see his cowboy-centric examples for them, his notes on his sessions, and reading his journal entries of what he was up to. You can also imagine how much I loved Sam’s alternate names for the first three cognitive distortions. Despite most of the characters here being from different time periods and locations, I like how all of them had relatable struggles. I liked how they came in with a surface level problem and Sam naturally dug deeper to see what the core of it actually was. I liked that Sam was also called out on this by a client or two, despite being smooth about it (so smooth even I wondered a few times how they even got to the topic they were on). Vampire Therapist also does a good job in naturally having you learn the backstories of both the clients, Andromachos, Crimson, and even Sam. You can also tell how Sam and his clients are reacting to their therapy, whether they’re being positively being affected, not so much, or subtly getting worse due to interpreting it wrong.

I loved how all the patients were at different stages the most. While it drove me crazy how they either didn’t do their homework or only did it once; I really liked how one patient would be moving forward or one would be just stubbornly unmoving or another would be taking one step forward and two steps back. The game even ends at them being at different stages of their therapy, which I liked that they did that. Most of the clients do clearly still need therapy, and one maybe two of them needed one or two more sessions to make their breakthrough feel more natural, but I like how the game made it clear that they will still get therapy after the ending. Although, I don’t know how I feel about Andromachos listening to the entirety of every therapy session or Crimson being vaguely told about them (even though I heard therapists do talk about their clients in vague terms). Especially with Andromachos listening in since the clients didn’t consent to it and he doesn’t stop when a client tells Sam a secret she wants no one else to know.

However, I was really annoyed with Meddy’s last few sessions. I’ll try to keep this as spoiler free as I can, but Sam and Andromachos reads way too much into a particular thing that it was so annoying that the game didn’t try to course correct them. It makes sense why all three of them wouldn’t really know, but I was dying for Crimson to be told and her being like “You dummies, it’s not that it’s this”. Especially since this game takes place in 2024. The game also points out that vampires can have powers they subconsciously activate, directly with Edmund and implied with Sam, and I thought it was so obvious that Meddy had one too. I was expecting it to come up, as not even being basically a vampire influencer explains all that she says her followers do for her, but it never did. These two aspects were driving me up the wall as it felt so obvious to me and dangerous with how they play into what Meddy says affirming her fears.

While you can’t fail, I did also like the gameplay of determining which cognitive distortion the client is exhibiting. It was also a nice surprise having to pick four cognitive distortions (out of 12) you’ll be using during a session. It was a good decision as I was worried on how the game would handle having more than five cognitive distortions when Sam learned two new ones and I do like the framing of you not being able to point out every one and how it would feel like it’s too much or that you’re attacking them. It makes sense and it feels like you’re making a big choice…even though you’re really not. I honestly didn’t mind the choices not having any real impact since I did hear about there being no fail state before release and my expectation was already set with that into account. Plus, I still felt that satisfaction of getting the cognitive distortion right. The minigames I was neutral on, like I mentioned. I did like biting necks and seeing the thoughts Sam had during meditation, but it is annoying enough (especially when you’re doing another playthrough to grab missed achievements) that I wouldn’t have minded if they weren’t in the game.

No game is perfect and Vampire Therapist is no exception. Mine are partly personal annoyances and inconsistencies. This game really runs the joke of Americans being shy about sex and obsessed with guns to the ground and I was so done with it before the game ended. We get it already. It was even more annoying when you’re at the end of the game when Sam says some sayings that reference guns and/or bullets like “locked and loaded” after picking your cognitive distortions you’ll use during the last sessions and Andromachos can’t seem to get they’re only sayings, not that Sam was so obsessed with guns he sees cognitive distortions as bullets. It also does ruin what I thought was a subtle Danganronpa reference (which funnily enough is a Japanese game that stylized its evidence into Truth Bullets that you shoot at weak points in an argument). This game sure does overgeneralize Americans. Aside from that there are just some lines that felt awkward or a bit stilted. During therapy sessions, I did run into instances where the cognitive distortion answer didn’t seem like it fit, which I feel is mainly due to it being required to progress. Sam’s notebook also had a couple instances where what Sam wrote in the session summary was wrong and there is at least one instance where it preemptively had info Sam didn’t know until the next session (Meddy’s).

This also doesn’t have the staple visual novel features clearly set to a button and/or have a quick menu like many other visual novels do. That being, the text log, skip text, and auto mode. I did end up finding the button for the text log, skip mode, and to hide the UI by seeing what all the buttons did (I played this on mouse and keyboard), but I could not find the button to put it in auto mode, which I really wanted to do since the game was fully voiced. I really think these buttons should have been clear. On that, I did find it confusing what the two skip modes (“Skip line” and “Reveal Text”) meant in terms of which one skips all the text or which one only skipped read only text. I also don’t know whether it was my computer or a quirk of the Unity engine, but having it in skip did also speed up the minigames, which was a bit weird.

Other than all that, I did wish there was more here outside the therapy sessions. I do understand that the focus is on the therapy, but I can’t help but wish we got to know the side characters more and that we got to see what Sam got into during the free days he had between each session. We get to know Crimson, Maxi, and Reinhard pretty well (Crimson more than the other two), but Ciaran and Panoptibella didn’t get a lot of time and I felt there was still more to them.

I’m still going to say this despite playing the demo, but I was not expecting Vampire Therapist have voice acting, let alone be fully voiced. Everyone did a wonderful job and really brought the characters to life. I certainly wouldn’t have read the text with the accents the characters were envisioned to have and there are a lot of lines that are elevated by the way they’re voiced. Like Maxi and Reinhard were two characters that I didn’t like at first, but they honestly did grow on me very quickly (like a few lines in quickly) due to them seeming really fun due to how they’re voiced. And they are really fun, minor, characters. It also does help show that all the characters are originally from different places and time periods. I loved all the clients’ voices, but I particularly like Meddy the most with how unique her voice lines are spoken (and, more importantly, is in line with Sam saying how he never heard anyone talk like Meddy before). Though, I absolutely loved Sam’s voice direction the most. I loved that he’s a cowboy and that he has a lot of lines that reference it. Every time I had the chance to give some cowboy wisdom, or calm down a client like how Sam would calm down a horse, I just had to do it. I guess I love and miss Red Dead Redemption more than I thought.

There is also some music here, mainly framed as the music from the downstairs club. I think the music choice was done well as it was music that I didn’t mind listening to all throughout the game. It also certainly helps that it’s muffled when you’re upstairs during the therapy sessions. The club music walks the perfect line where you’re aware of it, but not too much aware of it that it becomes distracting or annoying due to hearing it constantly. Though, I’m sure your music taste also plays a part.

Verdict

Vampire Therapist definitely met my expectations that I developed after playing the demo. There are some aspects that I got annoyed by, but this is a great, solid, game that I’m so glad I played. Vampire Therapist managed to implement the real concepts of cognitive distortions in a way that was fun to learn and use. The writing style is great, and adding the wonderful voice acting brings more life to all the characters, and all the characters were all written very well. The game does a great job in bringing us along on their therapy journey, giving us their backstories naturally, and shows how each of them change over time. I honestly could not bring myself to end a play session until I did everyone’s session for that “month” and could barely stay away from the game for long. Not to mention that you play as a cowboy vampire!

I’d say if you’re interested in playing a visual novel where you’re a therapist, uses real cognitive behavioral therapy concepts, and fine with it only focusing on the therapy; you’ll most likely like Vampire Therapist. The game is actually priced perfectly and is worth playing if you’re interested in what this game is offering. Though, you might get disappointing if you’re expecting to get scenes that aren’t focused on being a therapist and you’ll of course not like Vampire Therapist if you’re not at all interested in the premise.