Throughout its first 5 hours or so, The Blood of Dawnwalker got here very near convincing me that it may very well be the subsequent genre-conquering RPG.
The vampiric debut from developer Insurgent Wolves, Dawnwalker begins surprisingly sturdy, flaunting the entire intrigue and role-playing promise that you just’d count on from a workforce 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 in the end scuppered by various points, though I do assume that it is a stable story-led expertise total — particularly should you’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 offers a morbidly grounded foundation for the story’s beginnings, and it is arduous to not be caught up within the horror of all of it.
To make issues (a lot) worse, Coen’s neighborhood, and the encircling valley of Vale Sangora, is beneath the rule of an historical vampire and his ruthless military.
The twist right here is that the undead overlord, Brencis, is broadly 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 happening after darkish, Coen and his household are anticipated to attend — however his mom’s ongoing sickness places her beneath intense scrutiny. In spite of everything, the vampires haven’t any want of “weak” blood.
For those who’re sat there pondering “rattling, this feels 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 certainly one of Dawnwalker’s most essential programs: 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 always ticking down within the background, and the sport all the time makes it clear when a choice’s going to eat up a couple of hours.
For those who’re involved about feeling the sort of stress that is usually related to deadlines, do not be. If something, Dawnwalker simply makes use of time as a way 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 aim is solely as much as you.
The great thing about Dawnwalker’s quest system is that you will hardly ever hit a lifeless finish. In some unspecified time in the future, your present quest will tie again into your total aim, that means that facet quests, at the least within the conventional sense, do not actually exist.
Once more, it is all about the way you resolve to progress. You’ll be able to observe down potential allies, or disrupt the valley’s steadiness of energy by putting at Brencis’ most trusted lieutenants.
The thought is that you will carve your individual distinctive path by means of the sport, with the “time restrict” pushing you in the direction of making huge 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 towards the title’s seemingly meant construction and eventual replay worth.
For reference, I accomplished Dawnwalker in roughly 40 hours. And by the tip, 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 though the sport’s time-based construction finally ends up being a little bit of an phantasm, choices nonetheless carry a lovely quantity of weight. That is all the way down to a mix of excellent character and state of affairs 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 critically take into consideration what was greatest for the individuals concerned — and that is a transparent signal of immersion.
In the meantime, Coen himself is a superb 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 skills.
Nonetheless, Coen struggles to come back to phrases together with his newfound powers — which, naturally, should be fuelled by blood — in an endearing and plausible means.
Nonetheless, because of this you are by no means in a position to correctly embrace Coen’s vampiric facet. Irrespective of what number of harmless NPCs you suck dry, Coen will all the time 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 searching for a deeper role-playing expertise will in all probability be left disillusioned by the overall lack of management.
Nonetheless, Dawnwalker is not attempting to be Baldur’s Gate 3. It is rather more of an open world RPG that gives a smattering of key selections, versus a constant trickle of character-defining choices.
That mentioned, I do nonetheless want that there was a bit extra meat on the sport’s role-playing bones, as a result of it might have helped distract from Dawnwalker’s extra outstanding points.
Let’s begin with the open world, which is beautiful to have a look at, however annoyingly empty. There’s simply nothing of curiosity occurring between areas, and so it is no marvel which you can unlock traversal skills to cowl floor sooner.
It all the time rubs me the fallacious means when a sport asks you to cough up treasured talent 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 most important 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 effectively in idea, as Coen can assault or defend from completely different angles to open his opponents up — assume Kingdom Come: Deliverance and also you’re heading in the right direction — however mentioned system merely by no means evolves.
As soon as you’ve got bought the timing down, and you have discovered to learn your foe’s intentions — which is not troublesome, contemplating the extreme lack of enemy varieties — you may be going by means of the very same motions for the subsequent 35 hours.
Questionable fight steadiness compounds the issue, too. Within the early hours, Coen’s harm output is laughable. Even essentially the most fundamental of foes — rabid wolves or wild boars — really feel like they’ve means an excessive amount of well being.
It bought to a degree, about 10 or 15 hours in, the place I thought-about reducing the issue — 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 over and over. In hindsight, I ought to have.
However then you definitely get in the direction of the tip of the sport and should you’re something like me, you’ve got stacked an insane variety of harm 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 steadiness at play right here. Because it stands, you spend tens of hours hitting foes with what appears like a moist noodle, solely to develop into grossly overpowered for the final 5 p.c of the sport.
Now then, a fast phrase on efficiency. The assessment 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 you probably 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 course 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 somewhat disappointing.
Happily, Insurgent Wolves has mentioned {that a} ‘efficiency’ mode, concentrating on a way more agreeable 60fps, will probably be added by way of a day one patch. Nevertheless it clearly stays to be seen whether or not this mode can keep constant.
