The Blood of Dawnwalker Review: Witcher as a Vampire

The Witcher 3 but with Vampires? This pretty much describes most of the Blood of Dawnwalker really well. However the developer Rebel Wolves does dare to try new things with this new IP. Most of them pay off but sadly they didn't go far enough to achieve true greatness.

A dark new World

The Blood of Dawnwalker takes place in the 14th-century of Europe. You play as Coen, a young man from a small village in the forest. The area is ruled by a cruel king and haunted by the plague. At the beginning of the game the Vrakhiri take over the rule of this area.

Vrakhiri are pretty much the Vampires of the Blood of Dawnwalker. A small drop of their blood can heal a human from any sickness or injury. Shortly after they take over they reign with terror and fear. Humans have to go to mass once a week and donate their blood to the Vrakhiri. If someone is too old or weak they get outright killed.

However the Blood of Dawnwalker isn't just a simple black and white game. For some people life is better under the rule of the Vrakhiri. Since they are in charge, the plague is gone and for those who follow the rules of their new leaders, life is mostly stable and good.

This is one of the strongest aspects of the Witcher series and of Dawnwalker as well. Most of the time when you do a quest there are no good or bad decisions. It's usually grey and you're often forced to make decisions where you can't be 100% sure what the outcome is gonna be.

Coen the Dawnwalker

Now as I don't want to spoil anything else about this game I will keep this short. Your main character Coen becomes a Dawnwalker. This pretty much means you are a vampire by night and a human with magic abilities by day. Your main quest is to save your family who got captured by the Vrakhiri at the end of the prologue and will be killed within 30 days.

Those 30 days are pretty much the core feature of the Blood of Dawnwalker. Each action you take costs time. Doing a quest, learning a new skill, looting a big chest for a reward and so on. When enough time passes the game switches from day to night.

During the day Blood of Dawnwalker feels a lot like the Witcher 3. You mostly fight with your sword and use certain magic abilities to help on your quest. At night however you change into a Vrakhiri. It's here where the game was the most fun for me.

As a Vrakhiri you have superhuman powers. You can climb up on walls, transform into a wolf for faster traveling and of course suck out blood from your enemies. You do have to be careful however to not interact with people you like when your health is low, as Coen might lose control over himself and simply eat them without you getting a say in it.

For the most part this mix of two playstyles worked well for me. If I knew I had a bigger combat encounter before me I would wait till nightfall to deal with it more easily. During the day I would mostly talk with people and investigate.

The time mechanic itself also gave me some kind of urgency in the beginning. I always thought twice before I took any action. Would this really benefit me or does it take up too much time? In the prologue this feature worked outstandingly. There was for example one person I really wanted to help but in the end the quest took more time than I thought and I wasn't able to finish it in time and got punished for it.

However what started out as a brave new feature, quickly kinda became pointless in my eyes. Sure you can't do every single quest in those 30 days, but you can do a lot and this great feeling of urgency quickly disappeared for me.

Brave but not brave enough

After the first 10 hours of hype for this game and its world and lore I quickly started to wish Rebel Wolves would have dared to be even more brave. For example for me Blood of Dawnwalker shouldn't be a Witcher like RPG.

Sorting the inventory, getting new loot, checking out stats. All of those elements never felt impactful enough to me to truly matter. I never got excited about finding a new sword or armor. Combat itself also feels sadly a bit dull after some time.

Dawnwalker uses a 4 directional block system for its combat. Meaning if your enemy does an attack from above you have to use your stick to block in this direction. At first this system was fun and felt a bit engaging. You can also use your abilities during combat like biting your enemy as a vampire, or charging in with your sword as a human.

However the big issue of this system is that pretty much every encounter plays the same way. I wish they would have dared more and moved fully away from an RPG like system and instead would have made this game more like an Action RPG, with truly dynamic combat.

In many aspects of Dawnwalker you can also feel the lower budget this game had. Climbing up on walls is such a cool feature but it often feels clunky and frustrating. I really wish they would have decided against an open world.

If the Blood of Dawnwalker would be much smaller in scale, maybe just 20 hours long, really focused on its time mechanic, that would force you even more to make hard decisions, this could have become an all time great.

Is the Blood of Dawnwalker worth playing?

Now as you can tell I did have a lot of issues with this game. However I don't want to just gloss over the fact how much I enjoyed my first 15th hour with Dawnwalker. The lore of this world feels great. There are tons of secrets about the Vrakhiri and the past that feel really intriguing. I also really liked the writing for the most part, at times Dawnwalker really felt like Witcher 3 which is a huge compliment.

It just sadly can't keep all the promises it makes in those first 15 hours and for me Dawnwalker feels like somewhat of a Frankenstein. On one side there are those brave new ideas like the time mechanic, but on the other many elements like the inventory or RPG parts that just feel extremely old.

Still I'm very curious to see what Rebel Wolves will make out of this IP in the future. A second Dawnwalker game is already in the works and if they learn the right lessons from this game then we might be in for a truly outstanding game next time.

Rating: Recommended

Rating System Order: Masterpiece | Essential | Strongly Recommended | Recommended | Mixed Feelings | Disappointing

Vaulted: Games that make it into the Kasur Gaming Vault have a special place in my heart and are games that define my gaming taste.