‘The Blood of Dawnwalker’ Review
Developer: Rebel Wolves | Platform: PS5 | Playtime: 45:20 (55:35 total)
Hailing from Rebel Wolves, comprised of Ex-Witcher 3 Developers, comes ‘The Blood of Dawnwalker’. While I was interested before release, I almost dismissed it as ‘Vampire Witcher’ or ‘Blood and Wine 2’. In many ways, it is but that’s no bad thing since there’s a definite pedigree shining through here which helps elevate the ideas here in a great debut.
Taking place in ‘Vale Sangora’, a fictional valley in the Carpathian mountains, you play as Coen, the titular Dawnwalker. The valleys previous tyrannical ruler is ousted by the Vrakhiri (vampires) and while things are better for a time, the weekly blood lettings prove a step too far. A failed attempt at rebellion leads to Coen being turned into a Dawnwalker - a Vhakhiri who can survive sunlight and his family being kidnapped by Brencis, the big bad. You have to get them back.
Beyond its Witcher stepping off point, the game clearly has its inspirations; the potential instant finale rush of Breath of the Wild, the Trio weakening of Far Cry 5. In this regard, Dawnwalker only has one main quest – to save Coen’s family. Everything else you do is build up to that – weakening the Vrakhiri forces by beating the Boyers, gaining allies for the final push. This works on the grander scheme but means moment to moment gameplay stuff is more like Open World tickbox activities. To give the game some credit, it does make each of the individual tasks for the three Boyers at least somewhat unique with many of them having a micro storyline attached to them. The closest the game gets to having main quests is when you’ve done enough to annoy one of the three Boyers. You’ll get given a quest that is more involved with a story character and a dungeon to make your way through. These allies are just for these quests though.
I can’t help but compare this to The Witcher 3, of which many developers went to work on this. In Witcher, you always have some ally – Dandelion, Vessemir, Yennefer, Triss or other major character like The Bloody Baron or Keira Metz. In Dawnwalker, the three main characters (who are also your romance options) are limited to their own extended questlines – Anca the Witch, Crake the Manumit Rebel leader and Lorca the rogue Vhrakiri. I really enjoyed Anca’s mission, meh on Crake’s and messed up Lorca’s but regardless once they’re done, these characters are only around for an alternate version of the final mission (Anca doesn’t even get this with her quest, her tale ends long before credits roll). These final mission variants do offer a bit of variety but I’d trade it for more appearances of everyone. Dawnwalker is a lonely game at times.
I’ve gone a long time into this review without addressing the elephant - the games timer. It’s not a timer like the one in Dead Rising, instead it counts down when certain activities are completed. The timer is interesting and I understand why it’s there – to avoid the whole ‘The World is ending but here’s 20 hours of odd jobs and spelunking’ At the start, I did worry about the timer, thinking I best be careful. The illusion disappears somewhat when you get further into the game and realise that you can still do almost everything in the timer. In fact, it only takes 1/3 of your available time to do complete the ‘Main’ story as it were. The time economy is also very peculiar – beating a bandit camp and looting its treasure might cost 3 time segments but the entire final dungeon only requires 1 or 2. I’d perhaps argue that main events should take more time and odd things cost no time (General travel doesn’t cost time but maybe it should?). Learning skills in the three different skill trees also takes time which seems a bit arbitrary too.
In terms of gameplay, the Witcher 3 is the obvious framework but there are of course differences. Swordplay in Dawnwalker is direction based - attacks can be normal but in order to defend, you must block in the direction of the incoming attack. There is on screen indicators for this (that can be hard to see in certain scenarios). This is immensely satisfying when you get into the swing of things. It’s not too difficult to master given that nearly every enemy uses a sword - they do fake out attacks and there are different attack patterns to learn but throwing a shield or a spear in would have changed things up. You’ve got to be committed to the combat though since trying to leave combat is a pain since you’re locked into a fighting stance. The lock on is also absolutely rubbish, there’s no two ways about that.
There’s not just swordplay on the go, as Coen is a Dawnwalker he has powers both in the day time and the night. Depending on which time of the day you find yourself in, you have access to Witchcraft or Vampiric Powers. Witchcraft is a great idea for the story, meaning that the player can feel cool and powerful even when they don’t have the Vampiric powers of the night time. I’ll be honest, the Witchcraft powers themselves proved to be more interesting which isn’t great in your vampire centric game. I also just didn’t use the vampire claws at all since I didn’t really see the need when I still had access to my sword. That being said there was a series of perks in the Vampire tree that basically carried me through the game. By half way, I had a Rally on Damage (Terminology taken from Bloodborne, meaning when the player takes damage, they have a limited window to attack and regain the lost health), Heal on Parry and Overcharge health which meant I was practically immortal. This and the healing in the Witchcraft tree means that the game turns into a cakewalk on Normal.
Because of this, I didn’t use a single enhancing item like the claw grease. When it came to equipment, I went with the one that had the higher number and vaguely checked the +/- to see if it was a good fit. New loot was so common that I never bothered with the upgrading of equipment. The easiness issue extends further – the three Boyer fights (The main bosses, Brencis’ lackeys), the (Annoyingly repeated) Gargoyle fights and the final fight against Brencis I managed with very little effort. It’s a shame because there’s a lot of potential for the Boyers and they’re limited to just their quests. The game has the freedom to avoid these quests altogether – the Mage like Xanthe can be found elsewhere from her Dungeon, skipping a very cool area and some decent lore and the Hun Bakir can be spared in his quest just for you to hop the wall back into his dungeon and kill him without fanfare (Speaking from experience).
A massive let down and waste of potential is Welcoming the Boyers in. Drinking the Blood of the Boyers at the end of their boss fights brings you both to Anachora, a magical hellscape afterlife. Here you can have one last conversation with the Boyers and decide to let them stay here for eternity or bring them into your head. While this had the chance to be something really cool, it amounts to little more than odd lines of dialogue, generically given at random times. Also without subtitles and overlapping dialogue, for some reason.
The world is well designed taking place in historical Poland (but a fictional locale known as Vale Sangora) but with a suitable amount of mystical elements like the monsters, the history. This could so easily pass for a completely fantasy setting so I always get taken aback when Jewish people or Muslims are mentioned. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any other games (that I’ve played) mention religions other than Christianity so blatantly. Don’t really have a point here, just an interesting observation. There’s also plenty of fast travel points knocking about the world so you’re never too far away from being able to fast travel. There could probably be less of them given the super sprint you have in both forms. The vampire blink is also very helpful and is probably one of the few ways that being a vampire is better than human.
Voice acting and music is incredible here, protagonist Coen instantly being likable and believable. As for the music, everything fits it’s location but a particular highlight is the vs Supernatural fight music.
Before we finish, I have to ask: Why is it not Blood of the Dawnwalker? That rolls off the tongue so much better.
I had a feeling the game would be good but I was pleasantly surprised how good the game actually turned out to be. An interesting world and an intriguing story have me very excited for the next Dawnwalker title, which hopefully shouldn’t be too far away in the grand scheme. Once again, an incredible debut.
