To say the vampire sub-genre had its moment would be putting it lightly. Just ask Stephanie Meyer’s accountant. The world was enamored with her glittery iteration of the pale scourge. But before the modern wave was Dracula, Nosferatu, and The Count who lives over on Sesame Street if you want to get a little silly.
But, despite the mass appeal of the fanged and ferocious, there has been very limited success in the field of video games for the blood lusting brood.
‘Good, not great’ has always been the glass ceiling waiting to be smashed. Vampire: The Masquerade has largely produced flawed gems. Vampyr was a surprisingly competent affair, albeit not a world-beater, and while a little dated, Kain somewhat justified having his own legacy back in the day.
But, there remains a gap in the market. A space for a truly top-tier vampire epic to shine in the spotlight. Something that The Blood of Dawnwalker aims to do. So, we aim to answer, does this game have bite, or does it burn up in the hot morning sun?
The Splendour Of Vale Sangora
The discourse surrounding Dawnwalker in the days before launch has been that the game doesn’t have a quality mode that can achieve 60FPS. Something that has since promised to be remedied with a day one patch.
I just want to be the Neanderthal in the room amongst frame-rate obsessives here and say. Regardless of whether this game had this update or not, it would still look absolutely fantastic.
The world of Vale Sangora is a intimidating task, especially for those prone to open-world fatigue amongst us, as the map is huge, it’s packed to the gills with content, and you’re on the clock. But, even with that in mind, we would wager you’ll spend plenty of time stopping to smell the roses.
This is because the landscape is gorgeous at almost every turn, from the marshy swampland, to the mountains with streams running straight from the source. From the built up city of Swartrau, to the dingy caves where all the gory secrets hide. The game looks the part in almost every way.
Vocal performances are beautifully delivered. The game’s score and atmospheric background Foley helps create an ambience that makes the world feel lived-in and belivable.
But above all, the game manages to create a setting, and a unique vampire-focused setup which allows you to immerse yourself under the oppressive rule of Brencis’ with all the hatred, spite and dreams of freedom that come with that.
The bewilderingly big initial prologue envelopes you into the storyline perfectly. A lowly peasant boy, merely existing in a world where vampires replace the traditional monarchy, serving as deities of the realm, and asking for tithes of blood. Humans are cattle, you are all second rate citizens, and by happenstance, you are given a dark gift that can break their reign of tyranny once and for all.
All of this had me utterly sold on Dawnwalker mere hours into the experience. But, as with any vast open world with a complex story to tell, it’s about keeping that fire burning from beginning to end.
Never Beating The Dawnwitcher Allegations
It’s perhaps time to address the Geralt of Rivia shaped elephant in the room. It’s very clear that The Blood of Dawnwalker has taken more than a few leafs out of The Witcher’s playbook. From the way the game looks and feels, to the overall art-style, quest design and fantasy setting, it’s inescapable that this feels like a game shooting to be the next Witcher.
Something that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise considering the sheer amount of the Rebel Wolves team that is made up of CDPR alumni.
That’s quite the albatross to place around your own neck. But, credit where it’s due, this absolutely is the closest thing you’ll find to an experience like Wild Hunt.
When Dawnwalker is at its best, the quest design and storytelling revels in how bleak and unsettling the world is. The subject matter of each quest rarely offers the player a truly positive outcome. Plus, the world is steeped in lore, with books, notes, random events and so much more that help create the sense of place that makes an open world work.
Something that is all the more impressive considering that The Witcher has always had the strong foundation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s writing to build upon. Dawnwalker has no such luxury, and actually goes out of its way to avoid tired vampire tropes in a lot of cases.
That absolutely deserves praise. But this doesn’t paint the full picture.
You see, where the game falls down in its clear stab at emulating The Witcher is partly down to its quest design as a whole, and partly down to the ambition of it’s open world.
In terms of quest design, I found it utterly staggering just how many choices the player could make, which seemed to be billed as very important, simply don’t have any impact at all. I heralded The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt over a decade ago for its ability to weave intricate standalone fantasy questlines, and offer impossible choices at every turn that always had weight.
By comparison, Dawnwalker very sporadically offers quests of this quality, which is all the more disappointing considering how many quests there are in this game vying for your attention and time notches.
Which leads me rather neatly to the open-world design. There are innumerable times where I loved being part of it. There were natural discoveries that only made me more keen to find others, and moments spent drinking in the atmosphere around me. But, the nagging feeling I needed to push away to get through this experience was that the game is simply to big for its own good.
To make another bold comparison, I had a similar experience with Hogwarts Legacy. A game that is truly magical when you’re witnessing it at its best. But, when you’re not in the castle chowing down on the immense amount of fanfare packed into the game, the generic nature of the open-world bleeds through.
The same can be said of Dawnwalker, as there is a lot of filler to pad out the experience. The lack of enemy variety makes random combat encounters feel like a chore. There are huge stretches of this vast map that are completely devoid of landmarks, points of interest or questlines to justify their existence.
But, above all, I think the biggest offense is the box ticking activities I tend to associate with Ubisoft open-worlds. The towers to discover new areas on the map. The masses of camps you need to clear to gain infamy. The shrines you need to repair. It’s this busywork that bloats the experience and makes it a tough one to stomach for those who don’t have infinite time to pour into a game such as this.
Plus, the time the player needs to spend sprinting through the vast landscape, climbing mountains and traversing harsh terrain somewhat showcases how poor the traversal can be at times. Shadowstepping and Planeshifting can feel very cool at times, and you would argue that the game integrates utility vampire powers like this, shapeshifting and bloodlusting, very well.
However, the flipside of this is the hillsides that feel like walking up a bar of soap, or rigid platforming that doesn’t involve shadowstepping. It was when I fell from a height and Coen’s animation mirrored that of a character in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion jumping, that I knew this would be a pain point.
In short, an ‘all-killer, no filler’ approach would have really helped make this game an undeniable, generational success. But it’s the uninspiring tasks in-between genuine gold that drags the experience down.
Savant By Day, Slaughterer By Night
The most standout feature of The Blood of Dawnwalker, by some distance, is the built-in timer, counting down the days to the demise of your family. Meaning that almost every action to take in this open world has consequence, and due to your dual-existence as a witch, and a vampire. The time of day which you choose to take on tasks can alter your approach entirely.
On paper, it sounds amazing, and to be transparent, it’s the aspect of Dawnwalker that made it a must-play title for me. However, it’s another example of a system that flatters to decieve. At it’s best, it’s fantastic, but it rarely gets utilised in a way that brings out the best of this format.
Some quests are designed incredibly well to offer so many paths to success. Such as an early quest ‘A Monk and A Saint’ that truly allows players to mix and match their daytime human approach, and their night time supernatural powers to get all the information they need to complete the questline in a creative way.
You can partake in side-quests within the almshouse, help NPCs with odd-jobs and explore the cathedral grounds by day to piece together enough info to get where you need. Or you can use your powers to scale the building by night, witness a secret ritual, and reach areas that simply wouldn’t be accessible by day to circumvent certain hurdles.
Design like this is brilliant, and very satisfying to experiment with. But, this is a rarity, as most of the time, quests essentially play out either entirely the same day or night. Or boil down to a very rudimentary ‘choose coercion and gather intel or embrace violence’ gimmick, depending on the time of day it happens to be.
It feels that the game’s core design is wrestling with the time-limit stipulation at times, needing to skip you forward in time dramatically to lock out of your vampiric powers for the sake of avoiding you breaking a quest. Or presenting you with a wealth of options that push time along that are utterly pointless, just to keep things moving along.
It’s a unique concept, and a big swing. One that does feel interesting to play around with, and offers enough standout moments that justifies it’s inclusion. However, having expected this to be the vehicle that would deliver us a bounty of branching and emergent questlines, it’s a little disappointing that so few truly get the most out of this system.
This Coen’s Got Claws
While the quest design born from this day/night cycle is a touch underwhelming, the varied combat that comes via this system is something to be admired.
Combat within The Blood of Dawnwalker is a glorious blend of The Witcher’s hacking and slashing, with witchcraft, swordmastery and vampiric abilities mirroring that of Geralt’s Signs. Combined with the directional blocking and striking that you would find in fellow open world juggernaut, Kingdom Come Deliverance.
It’s a combat system that, especially on higher difficulties, demands mastery and precison, and offers a fair challenge in just about every encounter you find yourself embroiled in. Perfect blocks feel satisfying, special moves can turn the tide of battle, and as they should, your vampiric powers feel like a step above anything your human form is capable of.
However, even this satisfying combat comes with a drawback, as it seems just about everything in Dawnwalker comes burdened with.
The enemy auto targeting is a huge issue, as this system only really works if enemies largely wait their turn to fight you, and group encounters can become a real pain as a result. As you may aggro several enemies at once, block inputs will likely not be visible on screen, and you’ll be quickly overwhelmed by the swarm of enemies.
This creates a bit of artificial difficulty, but really, the major issues with combat is that it soon becomes repetitive and far too easy.
Boss fights are mostly comprised of beefy standard enemies with large HP bars, never really offering a varied moveset that makes the fight standout whatsoever. Leading to almost every encounter feeling like the last. If you enjoy the combat, this might not be too much of an issue, but even the most cathartic systems grow stale without development over the course of the game. You just need to ask an OG Assassin’s Creed fan what that might be like.
Plus, quite soon in the adventure, due to the wealth of skills, buffs, health items, and regeneration skills on offer. The game, even at the highest difficulty becomes rather trivial, somewhat taking away from the uphill task of dethroning Brencis.
All in all, combat is fun and frenetic, and feels unique in its own right. But, perhaps some more careful mid-to-late game balancing, and more enemy variety could have led to more long-lasting combat satisfaction.
Reviewed on a PS5. Review Code provided by the publisher.
While the bar isn't exceptionally high bar, it's worth saying that The Blood of Dawnwalker is undoubtedly the best vampire game ever. Some systems perhaps promise more depth than they can actually deliver. But, as a whole, Dawnwalker is an intriguing open-world RPG, with more than enough unique ideas to sink your fangs into.
Pros
- Gorgeous World & Fully Realized Setting
- Cathartic directional combat
- Leans Into The Vampire fantasy perfectly
Cons
- Day/Night Cycle & Time Systems feel like shallow gimmicks
- Suffers From Open World Bloat
- Far Too Easy By Mid-Game On Any Difficulty
