Throughout its first 5 hours or so, The Blood of Dawnwalker got here very near convincing me that it could possibly be the subsequent genre-conquering RPG.
The vampiric debut from developer Insurgent Wolves, Dawnwalker begins surprisingly robust, flaunting the entire intrigue and role-playing promise that you just’d anticipate from a group that was as soon as closely concerned with The Witcher 3.
However as a lot because it pains me to say it, the sport by no means fairly maintains its early momentum; its potential is finally scuppered by quite a few points, though I do suppose that it is a stable story-led expertise general — particularly for those who’re within the temper for some emotionally-charged vampire fiction.
You play as Coen, a younger village lad who’s being suffocated by his household’s plight. Haunted by previous traumas, his mom’s weakened psychological state supplies a morbidly grounded foundation for the story’s beginnings, and it is exhausting to not be caught up within the horror of all of it.
To make issues (a lot) worse, Coen’s neighborhood, and the encompassing valley of Vale Sangora, is beneath the rule of an historic vampire and his ruthless military.
The twist right here is that the undead overlord, Brencis, is extensively hailed as a saviour. Not solely did he overthrow the land’s earlier ruler — an simple despot — he additionally used his cursed blood to treatment the plague that was ravaging the inhabitants.
However when Brencis involves city, you higher be prepared to supply up a few of your individual blood in alternate for his continued safety. With an unholy mass going down after darkish, Coen and his household are anticipated to attend — however his mom’s ongoing sickness places her beneath intense scrutiny. In any case, the vampires don’t have any want of “weak” blood.
In the event you’re sat there pondering “rattling, this appears like one hell of a story setup”, then you definitely’d be proper. So far as prologues go, it is deeply intriguing, and on a mechanical degree, it does a pleasant job of instructing you the ropes.
Specifically, the opening illustrates one in all Dawnwalker’s most vital techniques: time. Or extra particularly, time administration.
Time is actually a useful resource that is spent when progressing by means of quests. There isn’t any timer continually ticking down within the background, and the sport at all times makes it clear when a call’s going to eat up just a few hours.
In the event you’re involved about feeling the sort of stress that is sometimes related to deadlines, do not be. If something, Dawnwalker simply makes use of time as a method to trace your overarching progress.
You see, post-prologue, Coen has 30 days and 30 nights to finish his one and solely goal: to save lots of his household and fellow villagers from the clutches of Brencis and his cohorts. The way you attain that objective is completely as much as you.
The great thing about Dawnwalker’s quest system is that you’re going to not often hit a useless finish. In some unspecified time in the future, your present quest will tie again into your general objective, that means that facet quests, a minimum of within the conventional sense, do not actually exist.
Once more, it is all about how you resolve to progress. You may monitor down potential allies, or disrupt the valley’s stability of energy by putting at Brencis’ most trusted lieutenants.
The concept is that you’re going to carve your individual distinctive path by means of the sport, with the “time restrict” pushing you in the direction of making large choices.
Nonetheless, in actuality, it is best to have greater than sufficient time to exhaust the overwhelming majority of Coen’s leads, which does, to some extent, go in opposition to the title’s seemingly supposed construction and eventual replay worth.
For reference, I accomplished Dawnwalker in roughly 40 hours. And by the top, I nonetheless had just below every week of in-game time to burn. What I am attempting to say is that you just actually should not fear about it.
However regardless that the sport’s time-based construction finally ends up being a little bit of an phantasm, choices nonetheless carry a delightful quantity of weight. That is all the way down to a mixture of fine character and situation writing, the previous specifically being one of many launch’s biggest strengths.
Certainly, Dawnwalker’s bought some nice characters, all of whom are backed by improbable voice appearing. There have been moments, throughout character-specific quests, the place I truly needed to cease and severely take into consideration what was finest for the individuals concerned — and that is a transparent signal of immersion.
In the meantime, Coen himself is a wonderful protagonist, though he isn’t very malleable from a role-playing perspective.
As a titular Dawnwalker, Coen is human by day and a vampire by night time. In gameplay phrases, nothing a lot adjustments between the 2 existences; you simply get entry to completely different talents.
Nonetheless, Coen struggles to come back to phrases along with his newfound powers — which, naturally, should be fuelled by blood — in an endearing and plausible manner.
Nonetheless, which means that you are by no means in a position to correctly embrace Coen’s vampiric facet. Regardless of what number of harmless NPCs you suck dry, Coen will at all times revert to being a comparatively good man throughout dialogue. That is simply who he’s.
This is not essentially an issue given the context of his journey, however these of you on the lookout for a deeper role-playing expertise will most likely be left disenchanted by the overall lack of management.
Nonetheless, Dawnwalker is not attempting to be Baldur’s Gate 3. It is far more of an open world RPG that provides a smattering of key selections, versus a constant trickle of character-defining choices.
That stated, I do nonetheless want that there was a bit extra meat on the sport’s role-playing bones, as a result of it could have helped distract from Dawnwalker’s extra distinguished points.
Let’s begin with the open world, which is gorgeous to take a look at, however annoyingly empty. There’s simply nothing of curiosity occurring between areas, and so it is no marvel you could unlock traversal talents to cowl floor sooner.
It at all times rubs me the flawed manner when a recreation asks you to cough up treasured ability factors in alternate for making its design much less tedious — and that is precisely what Dawnwalker desires you to do right here. Vale Sangora’s map may have been half the dimensions and little or no of worth can be misplaced.
However the specter of a tiresome open world pales compared to the specter of combating one other pack of wolves. Or one other group of troopers.
Enemy selection is massively missing all through Dawnwalker. You may be battling the identical sword-wielding guardsmen from starting to finish, simply barely reskinned. The identical canines, wolves, and undead wolves. The identical demonic spirits. The identical malformed vampires.
Solely the sport’s principal bosses are blessed with something that resembles a novel set of strikes, and so they’re extremely few and much between. And sadly, that is only the start of the title’s combat-related woes.
Dawnwalker’s motion is past repetitive. The sport’s direction-based system works nicely in idea, as Coen can assault or defend from completely different angles to open his opponents up — suppose Kingdom Come: Deliverance and also you’re heading in the right direction — however stated system merely by no means evolves.
As soon as you have bought the timing down, and you’ve got realized to learn your foe’s intentions — which is not tough, contemplating the extreme lack of enemy sorts — you will be going by means of the very same motions for the subsequent 35 hours.
Questionable fight stability compounds the issue, too. Within the early hours, Coen’s injury output is laughable. Even essentially the most fundamental of foes — rabid wolves or wild boars — really feel like they’ve manner an excessive amount of well being.
It bought to some extent, about 10 or 15 hours in, the place I thought-about decreasing the problem — from the default setting — so that each combat wasn’t lasting a number of minutes. A number of minutes of the identical parry and counter patterns again and again. In hindsight, I ought to have.
However then you definitely get in the direction of the top of the sport and for those who’re something like me, you have stacked an insane variety of injury multipliers on Coen with the assistance of legendary gear.
Admittedly, it was fairly humorous to see the final boss die in simply three sword swings, however come on — there must be a greater stability at play right here. Because it stands, you spend tens of hours hitting foes with what looks like a moist noodle, solely to turn out to be grossly overpowered for the final 5 p.c of the sport.
Now then, a fast phrase on efficiency. The overview construct options simply two choices: ‘high quality’ and ‘balanced’. The previous is capped at 30 frames-per-second, and the latter at 40 — however solely if in case you have a 120Hz TV.
On PS5 Professional, each modes maintain up just about completely, exterior of some very particular conditions, like combating a bunch of guards proper in the midst of the sport’s bustling metropolis.
However on PS5, the drops do appear to be a bit extra frequent, significantly when roaming across the aforementioned metropolis, which is quite disappointing.
Happily, Insurgent Wolves has stated {that a} ‘efficiency’ mode, focusing on a way more agreeable 60fps, shall be added through a day one patch. Nevertheless it clearly stays to be seen whether or not this mode can keep constant.
