It’s been 11 years since the launch of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and no fantasy RPG has quite been able to match CD Projekt Red’s magnum opus yet. We’ll be reminded of that on Sept. 29 when a remastered version of the 2015 game lands, but developer Rebel Wolves may have just stolen a bit of CD Projekt Red’s thunder a few weeks early. Reviews are in for The Blood of Dawnwalker, and critics are digging the bloody new vampire RPG. (And that should come as no surprise considering that the studio behind it was founded by The Witcher 3‘s director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz.)
The Blood of Dawnwalker review scores are finally in
As of this writing, The Blood of Dawnwalker is sitting at a respectable 83 on Metacritic and an 84 on Opencritic. While that might be a bit too low to get it into Game of the Year conversations, reviews suggest that Rebel Wolves’ debut is a strong RPG custom-made for people who crave games like The Witcher, but want to try a new flavor.
IGN’s Travis Northup had nothing but praise for The Blood of Dawnwalker in his glowing 9/10 review. Northup said that it quenched his thirst for an open-world fantasy RPG that lived up to The Witcher 3‘s legacy, specifically shouting out the game’s innovative time systems, which give you 30 days to complete as many quests as you can.
“At first I thought I might find this limitation irritating, since I quite enjoy taking my time to smell the roses and mark every checkbox off my list in these kinds of open-worlds, but I quickly realized how treating time as a currency makes just about every aspect of Dawnwalker better,” Northup wrote. “No matter how hard you try, you won’t have enough hours to complete every side quest, buy every skill, or tie up every loose end as well as you’d like, which means you’re forced to compromise, pick your battles, and make hard but impactful decisions almost constantly.”
Eurogamer’s Robert Purchese added onto that praise in his four-star review. Purchese specifically gave credit to the game’s day/night cycle, where you play as a normal human during the day and turn into a superpowered vampire at night. That dynamic creates some unique gameplay opportunities as your blood-sucker powers can really change how you tackle quests.
“This approach not only uses more of the game’s world than if rooted to the ground, opening up a rooftop playground for you, it gives the game more layers of activity to pursue,” Purchese wrote. “Some things you can only do at night because they require your enhanced movement capabilities, whereas some things you can only do in the day because you need to be a part of the waking world for it.”
While these ideas hit for many critics, other parts have left reviewers torn. Game Informer was more critical in its 7/10 assessment, noting that the good ideas never fully come together to form a cohesive game. Critic Diego Nicolás Argüello took issue with Dawnwalker‘s combat, which is one of the weaker elements of the game according to reviews.
“The combat backbone also falters. It starts off with a similar promise, with blocking requiring you to follow directional cues to effectively riposte attacks,” Nicolás Argüello wrote. “Yet, enemies tend to repeat movesets. Aside from the main boss fights, confrontations are repetitive Simon Says sequences.”
On top of that, Dawnwalker is launching with some technical issues, according to Gamespot’s Phil Hornshaw. His 8/10 review noted that the performance was a little shaky during his playthrough, and there are a lot of visual glitches to be ironed out. If you’re the kind of person who is bothered by technical problems, you may want to wait for a patch or two.
gamexplore’s own Marloes Valentina Stella is still working through the game, testing alternate playthroughs to see just how much decisions can shape the story, but she has been blown away by the level of freedom the RPG offers so far. If you love systems-rich RPGs that will make you feel like every choice you make matters, The Blood of Dawnwalker sounds like a must-play despite some warts.
