// PC GAMER — GAMING
The Blood of Dawnwalker review
The Blood of Dawnwalker is a resolutely miserable horror RPG with some great ideas of its own, though it doesn’t always have the courage to follow them through.
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What is it? A Witchery vampire RPG with a dark heartRelease date September 3, 2026Expect to pay $70 / £60Developer Rebel WolvesPublisher Bandai NamcoReviewed on RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAMSteam Deck TBC, but unlikely to be a good experienceLink Steam
35 hours into The Blood of Dawnwalker I'd already witnessed the aftermath of many barbaric slayings and village razings. I'd cleared out a site of industrial-scale slaughter, and partaken in an obscene medieval take on The Running Man. I'd sucked countless kiloliters of blood from humans, rats and monsters alike. But somehow, this exceptionally morbid horror RPG still had another novel way to make me wince.
I was exploring the depths of a troll-infected cave deep in the Carpathians. Coen of Laslea—me, the player-character—and his sketchy companion were looking for someone important. I hardly expected them to be living well, but the way I found them, pinned to a wall and half-consumed, exceeded my expectations for mainstream videogame cruelty.
For two years this human-shaped creature had been constantly eaten alive by grotesque kobalds. By dint of being a vampire, their flesh always grew back. They were a wall-mounted, self-replenishing feast of human meat, lost in a network of caves where they were unlikely to ever be found.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is one of the best blockbuster action RPGs I've played for years, probably since Elden Ring, but it's unrelentingly violent and bleak to the point of sometimes being unintentionally funny. There is no hope in Rebel Wolves' blood-slurried take on 1300s Romania, where brutal feudalism has been supplanted by populist vampirism. The Witcher 3 feels like daytime melodrama by comparison. I respect its severity, but I did yearn for a gutful of the Transylvanian white wine crowding my inventory.
When we meet him, Coen is an everyman peasant working the land in Laslea. Years ago, Skender Dragosti, the murderous lord who formerly ruled over Laslea and the greater Vale Sangora region, had been conquered by Brencis, a century-old warfaring vrakhir, or vampire, sick of watching all that blood go to waste.
I can boil the Brencis' blood, temporarily extract their souls, scream at them until they're immobile, or possess them, all the better to turn them to my side.
Brencis is not as outwardly cruel as Skender but his manner of industrially harvesting the blood of Sangora's peasants is frowned upon by some, while for others it's a reasonable price to pay for the execution of their former oppressor. But when the slightest hint of resistance is detected in Laslea, Brencis and his men swoop on the village, raze it, and abduct Coen's family. The Blood of Dawnwalker is about trying to get them back and, to varying degrees depending on your choices and temperament, also taking the fight to the vrakhiri.