Blood of the Dawnwalker brings a gripping story to the vampiric formula

Rebel Wolves’ Blood of the Dawnwalker brings a Witcher-like game to the vampire underworld. And while a vampire can charm many, I was left bored by the lack of enemy types, repetitive fights and what really makes The Witcher series special. Though the Blood of the Dawnwalker had a gripping story, an interesting take on combat and a unique time mechanic, after my 30th hour into the game, I just wanted to watch it like a movie instead of playing.

The creators of Blood of the Dawnwalker are CD Projekt Red veterans who worked on previous Witcher titles, and you can easily tell that when you enter the world of Vale Sangora. In my first hour of the game, the protagonist, Coen, made the choice not to beat up on some kid causing trouble, but instead beat up his father, who suggested that his son needed to learn a lesson.

I also solved a mystery of who stole a woman’s banner she made for the vampire overlords by tracking footprints and blood, with the world going gray and highlighting objects of interest, similar to Geralt in The Witcher series (though it’s worth noting I didn’t have vampire powers yet). I even went to the village herbalist (secretly a witch) and got some herbs to help my sick mother.

Lots of fun missions, but actions lack impact

There’s a lot to do and side missions you can easily take part in throughout the whole game, and some are pretty interesting. You can help a man find his pig, take down the bandit underworld, help a Uriashi (a type of orc-like goat person) become the bandit leader, go crypt diving to find its secrets with the aforementioned witch, and much more. These missions, alongside the main mission, pushed the story forward and kept me engaged when other parts of the game started to lose my attention.

Speaking of the main story, you’re turned into a vampire, and your goal is to save your family from your sire, Brencis, who’s taken over the valley. There are some twists and turns, and you make a lot of friends on the way; some you can even romance, depending on how you speak with them. Blood of the Dawnwalker has several endings on the path you take as well, which means there’s definitely some replayability. I found it odd that you couldn’t go back into the game after you were done. I was expecting something like Cyberpunk 2077 that brings you back into the world after you’ve finished the game so you can try out different endings, but Blood of the Dawnwalker only brings you back to the epilogue. You could load a different save file, though.

Blood of the Dawnwalker had many characters you could speak with, and you’d have different dialogue options. And while some were funny and others serious, they didn’t feel like they had a huge impact on the game overall, which I didn’t really like. I feel like it didn’t really matter what I did in the game, and people treated me the same.

There’s an odd reputation system as well, and even though I’d kill guards, it didn’t really matter until I progressed in the story and killed one of Brencis’ lieutenants. This would slowly raise my reputation in the game and would cause things like higher prices at some vendors, more guards on the road and eventually guards attacking you on sight. But this happened because I was making progress in the game, instead of my choices in dialogue, or if I went on a mini killing spree.

To raise your reputation, which was based on a scale of one to 10, you had to take on missions that would ruin Brencis’ plans. I think some people would find this good, as it doesn’t really affect your overall gameplay and decisions, but it took me out of the immersion of the game.

Interesting and unique time mechanic

There were other parts of the game that took me out of immersion, which I didn’t like. For instance, you’re something called the Dawnwalker; in the day you’re human, at night you’re a vampire, and you have heterochromia. I was trying to play a good character, and not lean into taking chomps out of enemies and focus instead on swordplay and witch magic that you can use during the day. However, every night when you’re a vampire, you can only heal by drinking blood, and drinking blood raises your ‘Corruption level,’ which was what I was trying to avoid. Even if I drank blood from a stag or an enemy, it didn’t matter, and that bothered me so much.

I guess I could have just waited until daytime, used rest stops and waited until the morning; the day/night cycle comes with a pretty cool time mechanic.

As I previously mentioned, the story focuses on you trying to save your family from the clutches of this evil vampire. But you only have 30 days, and every time you progress through the game, it takes up time. A small mission like finding that guy’s pig took time, and levelling up your character and moving up on the skill tree could take a chunk of time as well. I think I would like this mechanic more than in many RPGs; it’s cool, and it makes sense. These things take time in real life, and it helps with the immersion. Except when I turned into a vampire at night and was annoyed I couldn’t just wait until morning because I was on a ticking clock. Eventually, I just leaned into the vampire of it all and realized it doesn’t really have any consequence to the story. Despite it being called your ‘Corruption level, ‘ it didn’t seem to make you any more corrupt and just opened up the vampire perk tree.

I also ended up killing one of the big bads in the story pretty early, like before day 10. It was a difficult battle, but I managed to do it and realized the game didn’t really like it. It would speak about her like she was still alive, and her evil operations continued despite her being dead. I thought it would also raise my reputation level a lot; I killed Brencis’ top dog, and my reputation level still slowly ticked up. It was weird; I was expecting a notable change, but it didn’t really impact anything, and I found this disappointing.

Fun combat, but lack of enemy variety

I fell in love with the combat early on, as it required you to block in the direction you were being attacked from, and perfect blocks engaged a parry that would let you perform a counterattack from another direction. It was engaging and kept me involved in the title despite the somewhat boring magic spells and my lack of vampiric powers for most of the game (of my own choosing), until several elements of the game really impacted the combat and instead made the game feel like a slog by the end.

First, there weren’t many enemy types, so you’re often fighting the same sword fighter whether they were a human or zombie; they had the same movesets that became pretty stale. There was one or two variations of these fighters, but they kind of just annoyed me, as one could throw knives at you and the other had two swords, but these weren’t options for our character, and there wasn’t really a reason why I was stuck with a sword or my claws all game long.

Also, one of the most common enemy types was canine. Why Rebel Wolves? They were annoying to fight because they’d be low to the ground and had a strange attack that started with a wide berth. But mostly, who wants to fight dogs? Granted, some were “hellhounds,” others were wolves, but all sounded so sad when you sliced them up. Also, with all these canines, I really expected to fight at least one werewolf. I mean, werewolves are a common theme in vampire lore, and we fought so many other dogs; throw me a bone.

And my other gripe with combat was the enemy health bars. In a lot of RPGs, when you go back to the beginning section of the game after you’ve blazed your way through most of the title, you typically feel like a god, one-shotting the enemies you had problems with earlier in the title. In Blood of the Dawnwalker, enemy health adjusts to the player level. So while a simple forest boar won’t hit hard and take you out as easily as in the opening hours of the game, you can’t return to one-shotting the boar either and still need to parry, counter, repeat. Some people might like this, but I found it a bit tedious.

The perk tree was pretty interesting. Your swordplay and witch perks required that you find the ability in a manual. You could find them on dead enemies, vendors, chests and more. You read the manual, and then you’re able to obtain the perk in three, but of course, you’ll still need to spend time to actually attain the perk and use it, though. However, your vampire perk tree was pretty different, and you learned new abilities by increasing your corruption level.

I recommend Blood of Dawnwalker if you love a good story

I really enjoyed the voice acting that was put into the game, and thought that Will De Renzy-Martin as Coen and Andrew James Spooner as Brencis did a fantastic job and delivered a top-notch performance. Seriously, I really wanted to kill Brencis, as he was an arrogant jerk. Coen felt endearing and like a good son and brother to his siblings, and it made me really want to save my family. Graphics-wise, it looked good, but other titles like Demon’s Souls and Astro’s Playroom definitely blow it out of the water. However, I played on the base PS5, so it could be part of the reason.

At the end of the day, if you’re someone who enjoys a good story in your video game, this will be up your alley. And when you really dig deep into those vampire powers at night, you’ll definitely have a lot of fun teleporting around and turning into a wolf. If anything, I think I would have really enjoyed watching this game. Playing it was fun, especially at the beginning, but the combat and lack of enemy variety sort of made the game drag on a little longer than I’d like.

Blood of the Dawnwalker is now available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, and costs C$93.49 on all platforms in Canada.

Image Credit: Rebel Wolves