The Blood of Dawnwalker review: a tightly-focussed vampire RPG with bite

The Blood of Dawnwalker is a wildly compelling vampire RPG buoyed by a clear and interesting vision, layered combat, and a strong story that should rightfully lead to more.

It’s a game that won’t escape comparisons to The Witcher 3, given its development team is comprised of veterans from developer CD Projekt Red. There’s also plenty of shared sensibilities and an innate vibe that connects both projects. But with its own ideas about freedom in gameplay and storytelling, The Blood of Dawnwalker carves a distinct identity across its runtime.

Beneath the surface, it also diverges from its Witcher roots in surprising ways, for a more compact story of punchy, bloodthirsty drama.

Making your mark in Vale Sangora

The Blood of Dawnwalker is the tale of Coen, a young man trying to help his family survive through the rule of an oppressive vampire overlord. Where once the realm of Vale Sangora was peaceful, it’s now ruled with an iron fist and villagers are treated as blood bags to serve their vampire monarchs.

Coen is a rare family-oriented protagonist – rather than the more typical ‘lone wolf’ type – whose decisions are all in service of protecting his family. So when they become threatened, he has no choice but to strike out and stand up for what’s right. His righteous course inevitability leads him to conflict, as the villainous overlord Brencis inflicts a severe punishment for his disobedience: he’s unwillingly transformed into a vampire, and Brencis attempts to force him to join his armies.

Somewhere in the process, under circumstances which are not dwelt on in this particular game (but may be in future entries, should this become a franchise as intended), the transformation goes wrong and Coen instead becomes a Dawnwalker, a vampire who becomes human during the day.

So initiates the duality of The Blood of Dawnwalker, as Coen harnesses new human / witch and vampire abilities to chart a strange and uncanny world, searching for justice and the death of the entire vampire monarchy within a 30-day time limit where all activities (exploring, fighting, levelling up and questing) pass the hours.

The Blood of Dawnwalker offers a layered approach to taking down Brencis and the rest of his flock, with players able to tackle quests in any order and attempt to defeat Brencis in any manner, day or night. There is no linear narrative here, but rather a string of narrative clues and quests that eventually haul you along into direct conflict with each vampire overlord and Brencis himself.

The game’s sense of freedom is very well done, as the entire purpose of your being is to weaken each vampire in turn, and then figure out the best ways to defeat them – whether that be catching them off-guard, systematically forcing them to make less careful decisions, or just grinding in the overworld until you feel powerful enough to fight them outright.

But it’s worth noting the game’s structure isn’t flawless, and this loosey-goosey approach does come with its own quirks.

The structure of The Blood of Dawnwalker

Vale Sangora is a wide open world with lots to explore. After a tense prologue that sets up the overarching conflict, you begin your core Dawnwalker journey in the ruins of your childhood home. Coen grapples with new and uncanny urges as a vampire, and must figure out his sense of purpose and strength in time to save his family before a major vampire coronation.

The game begins with the clever decision to have Coen be relatively powerless to his urges at first, with strength built up only through resilience and coming to grips with a well-designed but tricky combat system. As well as traditional strikes and defence, combat in Blood of the Dawnwalker is also directional, so if you want to make the most impact you’ll need to be striking left, up, down, and right, then doing the same for defending.

Pair this system with a variety of nifty vampire and witch skills, and you’ve got a complex but entirely rewarding combat system that helps to spice up some of the game’s more repetitive battles against soldier fodder.

Eventually, you’re able to build these skills to the point where they all flow with each other. Focus on the vampire skill tree and you can build up health by performing blocks, and ensure regeneration within each health segment. Focus on the witch skills and you’ll have a full raft of daytime magical combat abilities that let you strike out with great and terrible strength.

That expertise does come with a warning: if you over-level in The Blood of Dawnwalker, the game’s structure does mean you can actually skip over important parts of the game and thereby reduce some of its drama and its intended timeline. This was a mistake I made in facing off with Xanthe, one of Brencis’ ancient allies.

I got so head-down on combat and recognising the flowing patterns of it that I was able to stumble onto Xanthe prior to embarking on her dedicated quests and destroy her without much second thought.

It was while I was investigating another quest that I found her vulnerable with her guards. Thinking it might’ve been a trick and there was no way I’d be able to defeat her without levelling up more significantly or going through her specific quests to weaken or anger her into action, I strode forth and initiated a multi-part battle that ended in surprising victory.

I suspect it was an issue with difficulty for me, that I should’ve notched it up prior so I was less able to defeat her in this particular meeting – but perhaps it’s also an issue with the structure overall. You should have to go through hurdles and experience more of her quest to put her away, but with the open world allowing you to explore freely, and exploration encouraged by non-linearity, surprises can happen.

It’s also worth noting I didn’t have this trouble with the other members of the vampire monarchy, and they felt far more structured and fair in approach.

The best ways to strike down Brencis

Away from Xanthe and her surprise appearance in my playthrough, which left some narrative threads dangling and several quests non-completed (saving me many days of the in-game clock and letting me speed to the fight with Brencis), I found tackling the rest of the vampire crew much more logical.

Ambrus, the golden-hearted dandy, was particularly fun to bully. His quests largely concern the proliferation of a network of blood barrels and alcohol, and taking down each while discovering the dramas of the humans involved is juicy. It’s particularly good to see the anger metre of each vampire rising as you destroy more of their network, becoming a thorn in their side as you grow in power and gather more allies.

Bakir also offers a great hunt, with his primary quests leading to explosive drama and a worthy final battle.

The network of whispers that results from you tackling the operations of these overlords and causing chaos in regions across the map gives The Blood of Dawnwalker an extra edge. With its world so connection by its vampire rulership, anything you do has a ripple effect which can eventually be seen.

Towns become more dangerous as guards will recognise you and our deeds. Prices at the shops get more expensive as proprietors fear your business. Eventually, it becomes more and more difficult to travel without being set upon, with these smaller battles preparing you for your final task.

A crew of allies guides your hand

Also key to this task is engaging more widely in the Blood of Dawnwalker universe by reaching the furthest corners of its maps. Brencis is the big, bad overlord at the heart of the adventure but even as you uncover new ways to approach his castle and take him down, you will need to consider greater preparation and strength beforehand.

You must engage with plot threads as they unravel, exploring odd mysteries to find new and more interesting ways to weaken Brencis, from discovering ancient weapons to gathering the support of new and secretive allies.

As with other elements of the game structure, it’s up to you how you engage with these allies as they arrive. You can, as with Xanthe, also skip their presence entirely and maintain a singular focus on saving Coen’s family.

In some ways, the game’s timer encourages this approach. There’s a real tension any time you have to devote ample hours of the in-game lock to one activity or another. You worry about whether you can become strong enough in time, or gather the right allies.

At first, this fear led me to skipping over some of the more intriguing plot lines, thinking I would have to skip them over as the game warns you can’t do everything in a single playthrough. Eventually, this timing system revealed its true purpose: to create tension and a sense of impetus for Coen’s journey.

In other games, you may be able to waste time by wandering freely, but this may ruin some of the immersion. If someone tells you a quest is urgent and you can simply ignore it for weeks at time, that can impact the overarching storytelling and make everything in a game feel lower-staked.

The timing system in The Blood of Dawnwalker is not meant to limit the number of activities you can do, but give you the sense that your quest is urgent, and that there must be meaning and purpose to every quest you undertake, and every lead you follow.

You can finish the game with ample time left on the clock. In my particular playthrough, and with the removal of Xanthe from the board, the pressure of the timer was simply an encouragement to get along and focus on the quests that really mattered.

Eventually, you’ll come to grips with what the timer means to your playthrough on your chosen difficulty level, and how much else you can get done to aid your fight against Brencis. At that point, you may revisit quest lines and gain new allies, safe in the knowledge that you have time to save your family and to see what’s next.

A sharp and compelling new addition to the vampire video game canon

With its sense of storytelling and lore, and in Coen’s journey to harnessing his vampire strength, there’s a real richness at the heart of The Blood of Dawnwalker. The world of the game is well-built through its dialogue and events, and while the non-linear structure does make it difficult to tell a story of reasonable pace – and one that allows its best characters to shine consistently – the threads here eventually tie together neatly, in a way that leaves you wanting more.

My own experience of The Blood of Dawnwalker is likely to be different to yours. That’s in the nature of the game and the freedom inherent in its many paths. Some people may speed ahead to the game’s finale and skip over its finer parts. Some may use the full extent of the allowed time to see everything on offer, and to glimpse the complete vision of Rebel Wolves.

The wayThe Blood of Dawnwalker puts the power of choice in the player’s hands is novel. While it does lead to some complications where battles may be tougher or easier than expected, and it can mean certain narrative beats don’t quite land, the strength of the overarching lore and housing narrative paves over many of these concerns.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is an ambitious game by design.

It’s not without its flaws, but it manages to tell a lush, dramatic story, all while giving players a satisfying sense of choice, freedom and adventure. As the first chapter planned in a wider narrative, it encourages hope for everything to come.

A PC copy of The Blood of Dawnwalker was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.

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