i purchased the Deluxe edition so i'll talk about the physical copy primarily.

this game is... interesting, in the wrong reasons. on one hand, it is accessible to new players to get into, as a ST it is a nightmare to find information, but that's par for the course for WoD books. mechanically the blood hunger mechanic is solid! i like the potential for my players to lose themselves to the beast.

the complaints that fans have about V5 have some merits to them. the discplines aren't unique, i'm not sure its to streamline them from V20 to not make your vampire a marvel superhero, or streamline for the sake of streamlining unintentionally creating singularity, no one stands out and everyone blends into one.

the art is a mixed bag, subjectively, my biggest pet peeve is how the nosfuratu are pretty, which defeats the purpose of playing a vampire that wears its curse. while you can roll your eyes on this and say, well that's subjective. true, however when the text say you're hideous and the art says otherwise, one of these things are not like the other. this goes back to my point of vampire singularity. the deluxe edition alternative cover is pretty cool which i prefer.

if you're a new player and are intimidated by V20, this is a good starting point, and slowly homebrew some mechanics from this game to V20, as V20 is the definitive vampire game. the issue here as well, and this is due to it being a supported edition, that all of the clans and more merits are in different books. in theory, that can work, however, if you have Banu Haqim in the Camerilla book, and Lasombra in Chicago by Night, that's like what? it's really weird. i rather have like a Clans handbook with the other missing clans than one here and one here, just weird.

overall, as i said, the complaints of this edition are legit, and while it has solved one problem for the blood pool, it created more by not having vampires stand out based on their clans and power, and unintentionally created a vampiric singularity, everyone is equal yet no one stands one. sure you can roleplay your flaws and take merits with those flaws, the text some times doesn't support that. that's my opinion on that.