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The Blood Of Dawnwalker Reviews Are Divided On Whether It’s A Great New RPG Or Repetitive And Janky
Rebel WolvesReview RoundupRPGThe Blood of Dawnwalker
The Blood of Dawnwalker is a third-person action-RPG in which you play a good vampire fighting the bad vampires. It’s the debut game from Rebel Wolves, a studio headlined by some of the senior talent who helped craft The Witcher 3 at CD Projekt Red. Does it live up to the pedigree or are RPG fans in for a letdown? It depends on who you ask.
The game is currently hovering around an 83 on Metacritic, while rival review aggregator Opencritic has it sitting at the 91st percentile for games scored on the site. On the positive end of the spectrum are reviews praising the dark storytelling and vampire abilities. At the negative end are critiques of the combat and rehashed gameplay elements that some say make Dawnwalker feel predictable.
You play as Coen, a villager-turned-vampire who must rescue his family. By day, he’s a sword-wielding warrior. By night, he’s monster with access to supernatural powers. Euorgamer‘s Robert Purchese called this cycling day/night split one of the best parts of Dawnwalker. “Nowhere is this [great contrast between night and day] more apparent than in the game’s central city of Svartrau, which has densely packed houses and therefore rooftops, which night-time Coen can run around on and hunt from above on, whereas day-time Coen has to explore on foot below,” he wrote. “I love this.”
But other reviewers were less impressed with what Rebel Wolves is offering. “The problem is that actually getting through some quests can feel like a slog because the gameplay is essentially the same in every single one of them—every single one,” wrote GameRant‘s Josh Cotts. “Talk to a character, go somewhere, inspect something, gather clues, fight some enemies, go somewhere else, gather more clues, fight more enemies, and so on. The dialogue never made me impatient, but the gameplay certainly did.”
Kotaku did not receive an early review copy of Dawnwalker and will be covering it once it releases on September 3. In the meantime, here’s what the rest of the early reviews are saying:
The Blood of Dawnwalker is my new favorite vampire game and one of the best story-driven RPGs I’ve played in a long time. The day/night cycle that has you juggling human and vampiric forms is awesome, and the constraints placed on how you spend your limited time end up being one of the coolest, most wonderfully stressful parts of the adventure. Combat has a bit of a learning curve to it, but gets under your skin in all the right ways once you get the hang of it. Combine that with a story filled with memorable characters, gut wrenching decisions, and more endings than I’m ever likely to see, and this adventure kept me firmly in its thrall. Even if you aren’t particularly into the vampire fantasy, this is one that any RPG fan should absolutely not miss. – Travis Northup
Dawnwalker is composed of what feels like a ridiculous number of quests. Due to its structure, they seem haphazardly constructed at first, with no dedicated throughline; only a story you construct by taking on whatever tasks you think are worth your limited time. What’s shocking is that these quests, from the intricate stories of rebels fighting to free the valley and vampires following shadowy agendas, to the momentary tidbits of setup from a group of soldiers by the side of the road before you start hacking them apart with your sword, are so well-written. To the game’s credit, there’s a good chance you’ll want to do everything in Dawnwalker. The fact that you can’t is part of what makes it so compelling. – Phil Hornshaw
At the moment of writing, I’m 18 hours into my main playthrough and have spent about 12 hours replaying quests for narrative comparisons, but honestly, this game had me in the first hour. After introducing the main problem (mom needs medicine) and dropping me in a confined section of the open world, Dawnwalker‘s prologue gave me an excellent taste of what the game is all about. I could explore to my heart’s co