Here goes!
I played the game in 2 parts because I got bored upon arrival to Hollywood. And I'm glad I resisted the urge to try Nosferatu, I would have sooner killed myself irl than finished the game using the fucking sewers.
I dislike the graphics, it's strange how HL2 looks so much better and the game just reeks "unfinished". Nevermind that shit; I overall liked it and I can see why it's so highly praised. Even though I bitched about the writing, I must admit that I was wrong and was remembering it wrong and I liked it. The dialogues were realistic, often allowed me to say: "Fuck you!" where I felt that I was being toyed with, but at the same time I was not allowed some choices I wanted to make because the fuck yous were just cosmetic and the quest went on.
It was somehow hard to decide which dialogue option was the one I wanted to take based on the outcome I wanted. I don't know if I'm that retarded but it seemed like half the time I said yes when I wanted to say no and went on to work for the assholes I didn't want to work for. I remember where I told the Prince to go fuck himself and he told the sheriff to kill me and I was like "fuck yeah, I've been saving 160 rounds for my automatic shotgun just for you, come get some!" and I get only one dialogue option saying "oops, sorry, I take it back". So while the dialogues were great, I often found they presented less choices than they seemed to, which I wouldn't have minded if they had just not put those dialogues there. But the VA and writing were good and enjoyable. Not memorable, I don't remember a single voice 2 days after completing the game.
Because so much time passed between my starting and finishing the game, I had serious problems with who was who. I remember I had wanted to work for LaCroix at the beginning but later changed my mind and couldn't quite get out of it even though I was trying to pick every dialogue option that seemed to lead to splitting off off that faction.
The character development was strange. I played torreador I think, because I wanted to do a talky-sneaky playstyle. I liked the point allocation instead of stupid lvl ups. There were some problems, like I had decided at the very start to level up my gun skill but later found the game was filled with trash mobs and since you get no xp for killing them, it mostly felt like a waste of ammo. The horrible fucking floating controls and aiming and jerky and shitty enemy movement didn't help either.
I invested the rest of my points into 2 social skills and hacking and sneaking and lockpicking. At first it seemed cool that I could solve quests via dialogues but soon it became apparent that I'd need to fight a lot. I also read here that the game declines into a shooter in the later parts, so I started to put all my points into fighting skills and saved the automatic shotgun and steyr aug for the tougher enemies and I was glad I had by the end. It was stupid that out of I think 4 social skills I leveled up 2 of them to the middle and it was enough to get me through the majority of their available uses... I think the options were often shown even if I didn't have the skill high enough, right? I seem to recall some skill check fails, dunno. The same goes for the lockpicking and hacking.
The combat was annoying as shit with the guns but unarmed it was way worse. The enemies would fly upon various objects and stand on them while shooting at me and I couldn't properly hit them. The fake physics were cool, when I would punch someone and he'd fall at someone else and they both would get knocked out, but everything felt unreliable and clunky and a chore to play with. It was also disappointing that you'd get no new moves for unarmed as you got more levels of the skill.
HOWEVER everything was solved when I found out that the sneak lvl 4 was probably bugged so I could sneak absolutely everywhere and just simply snap everyone's neck. It was hilarious and retarded at the same time how I would stand in front of them and if I touched them, the enemy would notice something was wrong and walk around me so I would just wait until the quick kill was possible. I'm glad this happened because there was so much fighting that bullets wouldn't have been enough and I hated using unarmed.
Below are some random points about the game that were of interest to me.
1) I really dislike that this is the sort of game where you are constantly unsure whether you did something wrong or it bugged the fuck out so you have to spoil it and look at a walkthrough.
2) For how old that game is, the loading times were too long.
3) Claustrophobic feel to the locations when it apparently tried to look like a big city. Or maybe it was intentional? I don't know, I didn't like it.
4) The game is riddled with horrible bugs. Upon rescuing the nosferatu from the japanese corporation, he got fucking stuck in a door. The game crashed sometimes. Swimming or any vertical movement or movement in narrow spaces was tedious because the camera would fly around and get stuck in things or just keep flashing and spinning uncontrollably. I was using some community patch or something, the first thing I found that apparently was to be used to make the game even playable. And the inventory bugs. And the wireless camera bug, And the general tendency to get stuck on objects.
5) I hated running from the stupid invincible werewolf because I'd keep getting stuck in grass if he hit me and when I finally managed to survive till the cart arrived, it wasn't there on time and I died.
6) I didn't like how almost all the locations were empty until the story or quests were triggered in them, making exploration almost pointless or at least unrewarding most of the time.
7) I desperately wanted to keep driving away from L.A. in the ending sequence and it seemed like I would be able to but no, I had to go fight LaCroix and the demon cunt only to get blown up by the stupid sarcophagus at the end.
8) I wish I had managed to solve the murder mystery but I forgot what I had done before quitting and I was lost.
9) Too much backtracking for my taste, but whatever.
10) The story was intriguing with some cool sets, like the scary hotel or the crazy Jeanette, flesh eating vampire and the film crew, the Santa Monica beach and some more.
11) The game just gets worse the further you progress. Any semblance of alternative approach to quests seemed to have vanished by the end.
12) I hated the fucking sewers.
13) The sheriff boss was shit. I didn't mind for all the other bosses, I was glad to just riddle them with the automatic shotgun but this was one fight I had been looking forward to and it was over in like 20 seconds.
14) I couldn't solve some quests and they seemed bugged. Like wtf should have I done with the food critic?
It was fun and I liked the ending sequence of Jack sitting with the stupid mummy. I deleted the game immediately and will never play it again.