Unless you check the file manual.pdf in the game folder, you cannot guess most of the controls. For example, Shift plus left-click does a heavier slower attack. Using a Discipline (once selected), is done by right-clicking.

Thou hath been warned ! Read the holy manual, at least the controls.

NEW CONTROLS were added in version 1.1 which are not in the manual
- They are listed in ReadmePatch.rtf. Here are a few I find more important:

• Stances: keys A / N / E act as if you pressed the Attack / Neutral / Defense button on the User Interface. Though clicking on stance buttons will change entire party to that stance, if you hold SHIFT or CTRL with those buttons, only the selected member will adopt that stance!
  
• SHIFT+Regroup button or R key will ungroup all, but G key toggles one character out/in...
  
• "pause break" on the keyboard will toggle the Pause Combat feature on and off.

Combat in VTMR is not about aiming or just slashing, but more about being tactical or using your party (coterie) and disciplines well. Knowing the keys to quickly switch orders or to pause will help.

Even if pausing is not very immersive, you will find it often a blessing. When paused, you can switch your weapon (eg. bow to melee), take the time to select the proper Discipline, and activate one (1 only) action (heal, attack, move, potion...) for each character in your party.

HOW - toggle "pause break" on your keyboard.
- do not use pause during cut-scenes. This freezes / bugs the game.

First, there are basic setting that tells characters to only use the powers placed in the Discipline Quick slots.* If you empty those slots, and use pause when you really want Disciplines (Blood) used, you can micro-manage your coterie a bit like a tactical game (well, to a certain extent, but the AI will still continue using many actions in combat without your consent).

- In the controls named above, note how you can tell a specific character to be in a Stance that is different from the group (ex: one character aggressive while the others wait for orders). In addition, un-grouping a character (g key) allows to order them to stay put instead of following the leader.

- If you use the AoR mod, you can set the AI Discipline Use to None (under Player tab), turn off AI Fully Aggressive and turn off AI Hunts For Blood if you want to really control which powers they use.*

* Exceptions : though, no matter what settings you chose (both vanilla and AOR), they will use their healing ability and use items to heal themselves even if they are not placed in the quickslots (this is a vanilla minor bug in my opinion). Brujah vampires will also often use Awe anytime no matter your settings.

TEST - Pressing ESC in-game, try to Save over a used save slot and use a different name for your new save. If you can see the new save, all is good.

If not, this will cause game-breaking bugs. You must fix it before playing more.

WHY - With Windows Vista to 10, the game may fail to autosave, overwrite past saved games, and fail to save related world events, if it is not "Run as administrator". This can cause dialogues, items and cut-scenes to disappear or be buggy when you load a past saved game.

When you launch the un-modded game from Steam, the game will normally request administrator elevation. If not, or if you are using the AoR version, you MUST make sure the game is set to "Run as administrator".
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Other possible fix on Windows 10 :
(I greatly doubt this fixes anything, but the source was credible)
Open the Properties of the folder for your saves (normally inside the game folder). Make sure the options under Advanced > "Archive and Index attributes" are checked on (check them off, apply, set them back on, apply, and accept the dialog box about setting all files the same).

The game was originally designed with a screen ratio of 4:3. When playing with the wider screen resolution of today (ex.: 1920 x 1080), the UI and menu are overly stretched and become blurry ; and take up a lot of space away from the action screen.

The following mod/fix stops the UI from over-stretching and becoming too big and blurry.

Place the folders named Miles and UI inside the game folder:
http://e-mods.net/downloads/mods/redemption/VTMR_Widescreen_By_behar.zip
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Nb: For resolutions beyond 1080p, there are other guides and fixes, but that I have not tested.

The in-game setting for brightness/darkness (gamma) will not work for techical reasons.

Some missions are in dark interiors and therefore are very dark.

SOLUTIONS :
a) The very immersive option: use the torches in-game during the first mission ;
b) The vampiric option : later, you have some abiltiies to see a bit better in darkness ;
c) The Path of Geekness : your graphics card certainly has a Control Panel. It allows you to modify the brightness or gamma and this will work in-game. Changing the brightness directly on your monitor might not work so well.

This very popular mod for VtM:R ...

• improves the game logic of some actions
  
• fixes some game-breaking and minor bugs
  
• adds some Disciplines
  
• rehauled weapons*
  
• allows you many game configuration options. You can make the game easier or harder. For example, I dislike quick un-immersive respawns, so I set the respawn timer to the maximum (8 hours).

Important : make sure you launch AoR from the shortcut it installs. The shortcut includes required command lines. Set that shortcut to "Run as administrator".

* Mild warning : the weapon damages are very steep or high. It makes the game more challenging. If you feel it is over-the-top (eg. two-handed weapons can almost one-shot an elder and other extremes), the mod offers you rather complete configurations, notably decreasing Damage Resistance for the player side and/or enemy side (Yes, decreasing seems wrong, but it reduces all damage. The term "Damage Resistance" is wrong and should be called "Damage Output").

That said, I wish AoR 2017 was much closer to the tabletop rules. It makes it closer to the tabletop on many aspects (feeding rules, Disciplines, etc.), but be warned the 2017 version has extreme damage values for many weapons, that you can change in the user-friendly AoR Config window.

https://e-mods.net/

RESULT - When I play the AoR version, Steam shows that I am playing VtM:R and counts my playtime. Ok, this bit is not really fundamental.

HOW - In "Set Launch Options..." (Properties) on Steam for the vanilla game, add this line:

"C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Age of Redemption 2017\Run Age of Redemption Mod" %command%

Of course, adapt the path if it is different on your PC. As you can see, we run the AoR shortcut as it contains proper commands for the mod to work well.

This is version 1.2c of this guide (nov. 27, 2019). For game version 1.1
Your feedback may help improve it.

TO DO : offer a summary of the controls in this guide directly.
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See also -3xA'Lu©κy guide that names some of the controls:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=909946411