I keep thinking about the scene where you first meet your daughter again after centuries. She's not scared, not exactly. She's disappointed. That hits harder than any fang scene in this whole bloody mess of a game. The First Beings isn't trying to be your typical vampire smut, even though it definitely has the graphic violence and the sex scenes that'll make you glance at your door.

The writing is deliberately rough around the edges, like someone's actual journal rather than a polished novel. Sometimes the dialogue loops weirdly, and I got stuck on one choice screen for way too long because the options were basically "be a monster" or "be slightly less of a monster but still pretty terrible." The fear/love system sounds clever on paper but in practice it feels like you're just picking which flavor of trauma to inflict on your progeny. I don't know if that's intentional or not.

The lore dumps about The Hidden, your secret lineage or whatever, can get tedious. I found myself clicking through paragraphs about ancient bloodlines while waiting for the next actually interesting bit. But then there's this moment with your former equal, the one you raised children with before everything fell apart. The sexual tension there is thick enough to choke on, and the game doesn't shy away from making it properly explicit when things finally boil over. Full nudity, detailed acts, the works. It's hot in that uncomfortable way where you're not sure if you should be enjoying it given the context.

The monster designs are genuinely unsettling, which makes the romance options feel even weirder. You're supposed to be this ancient terror who shaped civilizations with blood and fear, but now you're just... tired. The game asks if redemption is possible for something like you. I kept choosing the brutal options because honestly, the restraint path felt fake. Like putting a leash on a hurricane. But maybe that says more about me than the game. The mystery elements work better than the relationship stuff, which is backwards from what I expected going in.