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I just finished Blood of the Dawnwalker on Duelist, and I genuinely loved it.

Narratively, the story worked incredibly well for me. I would have liked the city to feel a little more alive and some of the quests to be more complex, but overall I was completely invested in the story and the characters.

My biggest disappointment is probably how little some of the systems affect the narrative. Letting vampires inside you feels like something that should have much bigger consequences. Same thing with blood: drinking human blood, sticking to animal blood, or refusing to drink should have affected Coen, relationships, quests or even some events much more significantly.

I also think the enemy variety needed more work. You basically fight soldiers, witches/nuns, beasts, kobolds and a handful of other creatures. Considering the setting, they could have gone much crazier with the bestiary and made encounters more varied.

Combat, though? I had a fucking blast with it. I played on the highest difficulty and treated it almost like a parry game, and for most of the game I found it genuinely satisfying. My only real complaint is that by the end I became ridiculously powerful, especially after upgrading the sword abilities, and the difficulty basically collapsed.

But as a whole, this game is only slightly below The Witcher 3 for me. And considering this is Rebel Wolves' first game, that's kind of insane.

The concept is fantastic, I love the world, I love the story, and it gave me pretty much everything I always wanted from a Vampire: The Masquerade-style RPG mixed with some Witcher DNA.

And that final epilogue scene in the modern day? Holy shit. That genuinely left me staring at the screen. I desperately want to know more about the Augurs and what happens to Coen and Lunka from here. And, for obvious reasons ehehe, I'm really hoping Lacra remains part of Coen's future.

I also somehow finished the whole thing without encountering any meaningful bugs. Maybe I got lucky, and I'm playing on a very good PC, but technically my experience was surprisingly clean.

For me it's a 9-/10.

There are absolutely things they can improve, but as a first game from a new studio, I think this deserves a ton of praise. More than anything, I really hope it sells well, because I want to see where this story goes next.

P.S. I managed to finish around 98% of the narrative content with 10 days still remaining. The trick was skipping almost all the witchcraft activities and the Urash stones. So the time is NOT a problem at all.

TL;DR: Loved the story, world, characters and combat. I wanted more enemy variety, a livelier city, more complex quests and much bigger consequences for the blood/vampire systems. Endgame combat became too easy, but overall it's only slightly below The Witcher 3 for me. The modern-day epilogue completely sold me on whatever comes next. 9-/10.

Blood of the Dawnwalker gave me *almost* everything I wanted from a dark vampire wulitcheresque RPG – 9-/10

Blood of the Dawnwalker gave me almost everything I wanted from a dark vampire wulitcheresque RPG – 9-/10