The Blood of Dawnwalker review: "Despite clear Witcher 3 DNA, I wish this vampire RPG was messier"

Time is always passing in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Time is also always static in The Blood of Dawnwalker. In this vampiric RPG (vrakhiri in the parlance of the game), recently-turned half-vampire 'Dawnwalker' Coen is less concerned with managing his supply of blood from the living than he is thumbing his time tokens like chips at a casino. With 30 days on the clock until his family and village are slain in a blood magic coronation by Vale Sangora's new, invasive vampire overlord Brencis, you have to consider which quests you want to spend time on.

Coen's task is urgent, but nothing in the world is. With so many side-activities boiling down to running into groups of enemies, unceremoniously offing them, and handing over a chunk of your time meter, I'm constantly left wondering if what I'm doing is worthwhile and usually thinking it isn't. The Blood of Dawnwalker directly asks me to question what's worth my time in an open-world RPG, and I'm not sure it's going to like the answer.

Sucking dry

A tight prologue leaves a better impression than the game that follows. Set on the day of a perverted vrakhiri mass, Coen's fellow villagers must gather to swap blood with their vampire overlords like cattle. With you and your neighbors struggling, and desperate to fight back, you have to juggle a single day's worth of tasks to alter how that night plays out. Though, ultimately, fate will always see Coen accidentally changed into a Dawnwalker and his village wreaked, its population enslaved.

Cue an almost The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild style loosening of the leash. Leaving the prologue and his village at the Northern tip of Vale Sangora, greater civilization and the province's castle from which Brencis rules is deeper in the south – enemies growing more deadly the further you explore. Nothing is gated off. Run all the way down avoiding murder boars to grab all the fast travel points if you want. A few leads at the village give you quests to pull at like a thread in order to grow more powerful and destabilize Brencis, but you don't need to do those right away or, indeed, ever. There's a dedication to letting you run wild I have to respect in The Blood of Dawnwalker.

Yet, without the focus of the prologue's tighter structure, there's every risk of The Blood of Dawnwalker quickly becoming a fairly aimless RPG as I poke and prod at what's worth spending time on. Curiosity leads me to follow will o' wisps through a series of combat encounters with angry wildlife, spending an hour opening a chest; clearing bandit camps and dedicating another hour to stuffing their loot into pockets; investigating the dead body of a woman near a pack of wolves to discover she was killed by wolves for… three hours. I only need so much loot, so once I've got solid gear I end up avoiding many of these activities that stack on time completing basic tasks for meager rewards. When leveling up beyond Coen's very basic skill upgrades costs both time and upgrade points as well, time isn't something I want to waste.

Before long, I find that while time is important to Coen, for most of Vale Sangora it stretches on forever. Civilizians may cry out for aid throughout the map, but will do so endlessly until you choose to loop back and help them. Prisoner transports march up and down roads in a loop. Brencis' army ransacks the houses of those he has declared enemies for days and days.

Time is at a premium, but simultaneously there's very little sense of urgency, of true immersion that'll have you naturally wanting to plug in more time. Instead, I circle waypoints to determine if they're worth my time, backing off all too often when I discover it's a bandit camp, monster den, ancient circle, or haunting site, or any of the game's many tasks that involve killing a group of enemies and then opening up a chest. If I need some more loot, I can come back later. Often, I never do.

Despite some interesting worldbuilding with a historical folklore hook, and interesting supporting characters to match, questlines usually don't make the most of them. Even then, I'm sometimes left struggling to feel like they're worth Coen's time. One of the longer quests has me investigating a supernatural murder – it's one of the best in the game – but I still let out a little groan when all it got me was a new amulet to equip that was several degrees worse than the one I was already wearing. Unlike The Witcher 3, where almost every side-quest is a joy to complete just for the story, the presence of the time cost here undercuts the narrative addition. The Blood of Dawnwalker has turned me into a miser.

The role-playing itself is a bit confused. Coen may have powers that use his mastery of blood, but the vampiric roleplay fantasy isn't a major factor in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Instead, I'm role-playing a careful market customer, walking the Vale and weighing up what's worth Coen's dwindling time. Coen is always well fed and thriving. Mention in the story is made to his urgent need to feed, but rarely backed up by gameplay mechanics. There's an interesting element that can replace his dialogue options with the urge to feed on blood when on your last segment of health, something that only happened to me once when circumstances forced it, because otherwise healing is so plentiful.

Sure, regaining health by feeding on foes in combat instead of using blood-based healing potions is a mechanic, but I'm never asked to consider that as making a moral compromise. There's a corruption meter that rises, unlocking the ability to upgrade vampire powers, but in my unreserved playthrough no downside to this is ever felt. There's simply no need for Coen to feed on innocents in the streets of Svartrau, no downside in play to the half-vampire he's become despite all the talk to the contrary. Something like Vampyr with its dense urban setting was constantly making me weigh up the moral decisions of bloodsucking. Here, it often just feels like Coen has superpowers without any negatives.

Dark gift

Using supernatural powers in fights are where these dark gifts are mostly felt. During the night, Coen can swap his sword for his claws if he wants, and unleash a variety of vampiric powers –from bloodsucking itself to a creepy blood scream or, my favorite, exploding an enemy like a crushed bloodbag. In daytime, he has access to witchcraft using runic symbols carved onto his skin (which are healed when he becomes a vampire at night, limiting them to this time of day), such as cursing foes with damage over time, or sending spirit birds flying at them.

Swordcraft abilities, meanwhile, can be used in either block of time, and are just as effective on any type of enemy, meaning even a ghoulish spirit or the final boss is humorously vulnerable to 'Dirty Trick', which has Coen hurl pocket sand at an opponent to blind them for a few free hits. Both vampire powers and witchcraft come with a health cost to use (and both can be upgraded to allow you to get health back), meaning outside of there being different skilltrees to spend points and precious time on, they don't actually feel that different to use. Especially as the best weapons seem to be swords anyway.

Omni-blocking without a direction input always works, but reduces Coen's stamina, whereas perfectly timing a block in the incoming direction – displayed on a marker – makes that block free while opening them up to damage. Similarly, Coen can direct his own strikes, mix-ups making it tougher for enemies to block, and an early unlock meaning perfect blocks then display a perfect strike follow-up direction that deals critical damage. This can all get a bit muddled in fights with large groups thanks to a tetchy lock-on, and the fact that you're both blocking and moving with the same analogue stick.

In duels, directional combat can work well, though once you get used to the timing and input it makes even tough battles very doable at the cost of your own time as you wear down big health bars in a war of attrition. And expect to do a lot of fighting – they form the bulk of most quests. Even when I thought I'd be smart and knock out some key enemies early from appearing later on, the major questline in which this was a factor just replaced those boss battles with waves of regular enemies instead, which to be honest are just as tiresome to deal with and maybe more annoying.

Much of The Blood of Dawnwalker feels like The Witcher 3 to control through combat, exploration, and even navigating its weight-based inventory (developer Rebel Wolves includes veteran staff who worked on The Witcher 3, so that makes sense). Curiously, Coen's heavy movement feels closer to Geralt's pre-patch movement (which remains in that game as a toggle if you want it).

At times, this can be annoying as Coen's rooftop maneuvers with his vampire powers mean it's easy for his heavy momentum to have him jog off a ledge or wall. It's hard to get too irked, though, thanks to quick saves and a janky vibe to all supernatural traversal that you just have to accept. Walking on walls is a nice idea, but this is sluggish and best avoided except for when you absolutely need to bamf Nightcrawler-style up heights to progress. A handful of activities, in the city mostly, are locked behind this nighttime traversal style by virtue of an epidemic of unlocked balcony doors.

For an RPG that keeps telling me that it matters I've been cursed to be a vampire, and constantly has a clock hanging over my every move, The Blood of Dawnwalker feels too frictionless and forgiving once you get used to its almost theme park-like static nature. Disco Elysium is also an RPG with limited time that passes as you take actions, but there those small increments and its dialogue make you conscious of it slipping through your fingers. The Blood of Dawnwalker's larger increments, and clear signposting of insubstantial rewards, instead turns me away from getting lost within it.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is an ambitious concept, but the implementation is so straightforward, activities and quests so basic, that it feels like an all too simplistic approach to getting it all to work on paper. Games like Gothic 1 Remake, Disco Elysium, or Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 revel in a weirdness and unfriendliness that make them memorable and interesting, the act of trying to figure out what they even are is a compelling hook for a first playthrough. All too soon after Coen takes his first steps out of the prologue I get The Blood of Dawnwalker, I know exactly what to expect from its skilltrees and rudimentary activity icons across its map, even if it's up to me to thread those simple adventures into a shape of my own. What I don't get is what Rebel Wolves want me to take away from that, bending unexpected design choices into an RPG shape that's all too expected.

So much of this RPG is repetitive I can't imagine having much fun playing it again for a different build, or to make different choices, as it often feels like you'd just be doing the same thing anyway. There's plenty of time to sample most of the main questlines before you reach a point of no return. Like a vampire's victim I feel compelled to say the obvious – enough works in The Blood of Dawnwalker that I'd be thrilled to see bigger swings taken with a sequel should it prove immortal enough. As it stands, there's not much reason to lift the coffin lid just yet.

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