Review – The Blood Of Dawnwalker (Xbox Series X)

A story to sink your teeth into

The Blood of Dawnwalker is an open world dark fantasy RPG brought to you by the developer Rebel Wolves. Set in 14th century Europe, the valley of Vale Sangora has been saved from the ravages of the Black Death, but at a terrible price. For the past two years the Vale has been under the rule of a small group of Vrakhiri, the locals word for vampires. Their blood cured the populace of the plague, but they demand blood in return.

You play as Coen, a young man with a dark future. Coen lives with his parents and three younger siblings in the village of Laslea in the north of the Vale, a short tutorial has Coen doing everyday chores, looking after his younger siblings and collecting herbs to help his mother. Sunday mass is approaching, where all residents are required to give a little blood for their overlords, but the Vrakhiri despise weakness and Coen’s mother is suffering from a mental illness. Unable to hide this from the leader of the Vrakhiri, Brencis kills Coen’s mother in front of them which sparks rebellion in Coen’s and his father’s hearts. This rebellion leads to the capture of Coen’s family and Coen being turned by Brencis, but he does not become a full Vrakhir. After realising that he cannot command Coen as he would a true Vrakhir, Brencis attempts to destroy him. Coen loses easily as you would expect and is saved only by the rising of the sun. While Coen is human by day and a Vrakhir at night, Brencis has no such tolerance to daylight and so leaves Coen for dead. With a little help from the local healer/witch and his own unnatural constitution, Coen recovers quickly and learns what is to be the fate of his people. The village has been destroyed and his family are to be sacrificed in a ritual in 30 days. Now he must set out on a path to kill Brencis and save his family, but will he be in time?

The biggest feature of The Blood of Dawnwalker is the time system, days and nights are split into 8 segments each and every mission or action that you complete will fill one or more of these segments. Once all 8 are filled, day changes to night and vice versa. Most of the side missions you do will only cost a single segment to complete but you will still need to be choosy about what tasks you take on as there simply isn’t enough time to do everything in one playthrough, especially as most of the main story missions will advance time by several segments. I wasn’t sure when I first heard about the time system but it actually works really well, and although it adds a sense of urgency to the story, the days don’t pass as quickly as you might expect. I am currently 20 hours into the game and I have only used up half of the 30 days that you have to save your family. The only thing I am not fond of concerning the time system is that upgrading your skills will cost a time segment per upgrade as well as ability points, with the exception of the two haste abilities (one for human and one for vampire) which allow you to move much faster when traversing the map, these will only cost ability points which you earn as you level up. 

Coen has three skill trees: Witchcraft, Sword Mastery and Vampiric skills. Interestingly, while your experience grants you ability points to spend, the skills are not automatically available to buy. Witchcraft and sword mastery abilities must be found in books after the first few that you start with, but this isn’t an issue if you happen to be like me and loot anything not nailed down in games like these. Vampiric skills are unlocked by gaining corruption levels which you gain by drinking blood, “sounds easy” I hear you say, but you’d be wrong. Depending on how you choose to play, most of your blood drinking will be done in combat to regain health, either from the blood drinking skill or consumables, but these will only fill the corruption meter a very small amount. Later on you will unlock a skill that lets you build corruption faster, but if you don’t want to wait and you are willing to embrace your dark nature you can level your corruption even quicker. When not in combat you can perform a voracious bite on mortals which will cause a blood meter to appear, you can drain enough to leave them alive, kill them or completely drain them dry, and this can be done on almost anyone in the game including main characters. One of the many wonderful things about The Blood of Dawnwalker is that the game adapts to your choices, so if you choose to kill someone important to the story there is no game over and reload, the story will continue just along a different road than it would have, the same is true if you do not manage to save your family in time. This along with the inability to do everything in one playthrough gives the game a huge amount of replayability, as does the seven different endings the game has.

Combat will feel very familiar to many of you that are old hands at the Witcher 3. Whether you are fighting with sword or claws, becoming proficient with blocking is a key skill in your dawnwalker career. When an enemy attacks, a shield will appear near them with an arrow indicating which direction the attack is coming from, you need to hold the LB button and the directional stick in the matching direction in order to block the attack, if you do this when the shield is yellow you will block the attack but your counter attack will usually also be blocked, if you block when the shield is red though, you will briefly stun the enemy and leave them open to your fury. Attacking is done with one button and you can of course dodge, which will be necessary to avoid unblockable attacks symbolised by a red skull where the shield normally is. This combat system is simple and easy to master, but this doesn’t mean the game isn’t challenging, most of the time you will be fighting multiple enemies at once and if you miss one block it can be easy to lose the flow and take multiple health-crippling hits. Healing items are available to buy or craft but most only heal a small amount or are regenerative. Later in the game you can unlock skills from both the witchcraft and vampiric trees that allow you a manner of self-regeneration. 

Enemy difficulty does not scale with the player in Blood of Dawnwalker, certain areas and missions will have much more powerful enemies from the very beginning, and as it is an open world you can find yourself fighting enemies you are not ready for if you choose to go exploring. No enemy is unbeatable at any stage in your development though, while they may swat you like a fly if they hit you, you can beat them by dodging and whittling away at their health. You can even assault Brencis in his castle as soon as you are free to explore if you choose to, unadvisable though that is. 

The three skill trees contain mostly passive abilities with a small number of skills that can be activated in combat, and some outside of it. You have 4 slots each to fill with active abilities, as both human and vampire. Sword mastery skills can be used in both sets and unlike many witchcraft and vampire skills, sword mastery skills do not cost you any health to use. The Dirty Trick skill is fantastic for fighting groups, you throw some dirt at an opponent which stuns them, leaving you with one less enemy to deal with for a short time. As a vampire you start with the blood draining skill unlocked, which acts as both an attack and a healing ability, almost all others for both supernatural trees will cost you a portion of health to use, which isn’t an issue later in the game with more perks unlocked and better gear but they can be risky to use early on. While combat remains the same no matter which state you are currently subject to, the various skills add enough of a different flavour for it not to feel too repetitive. 

Missions in The Blood of Dawn walker vary greatly, from simple tasks like killing a few enemies and destroying a blood cache to investigative story quests with choices to make, some of which only affect your relations with a character while some will affect the direction the main story takes. There are missions that can only be done during the day or night, but I would not use the wait feature, instead go and do a different mission to use your precious time wisely. Fast travel is available at shrines and doesn’t cost you any time to use, so if you want to do a mission on the other side of the valley while your current one is on standby, you can. As the game progresses and you kill more and more of the Vrakhiri’s soldiers, an infamy meter will slowly fill. As it does, Brencis posts more men to guard the city and villages who will often attack you on sight, but aside from giving you more sword practice, your infamy needs to reach certain levels to trigger some story missions.  

While the main story is a great tale of a hero’s quest to overcome a tyrant, what really makes The Blood of Dawnwalker shine is the rich array of well written characters you encounter along the way and the choices you can make concerning them. One particular choice as I previously mentioned is that you can kill almost everyone. During dialogue while you are a vampire, one of your options will be to give in to your hunger and drain that particular individual, which I absolutely love being able to do. I have only done it once to an ungrateful peasant who moaned at me for saving him from Brencis’s soldiers, so I unsaved him. I plan my second run through to be much more bloody. Another thing I love about this option is that it’s not always voluntary, if you haven’t drank for a while your thirst for blood can become overwhelming and whoever is unfortunate enough to be talking to you at that time becomes that night’s dinner. 

Adding to the blood drinking and vampiric combat skills, the ability to teleport short distances as a shadowy cloud of bats with shadowstep, and walking up walls with planeshift give the most complete feeling of being a vampire that i’ve known. The only thing that is missing, which is conspicuous, is that you can’t see any better in the dark as a vampire than you can as a human. Although I enjoyed all aspects of this game, playing as a vampire really was the best part for me, and what made a good game into a great game.