The Blood of Dawnwalker

Not quite five hours in, but so far I've been having a great time. The time/task limit helps make choosing what to do feel more impactful, the story has been good so far, as well as the dialogue. I'm looking forward to seeing how things turn out.

The Blood of Dawnwalker has officially been out for 24 hours, and I have been playing it a lot, as you can see from my playtime. I wanted to leave a quick review. TLDR: This is the most fun I have had with a fantasy ARPG since my first time playing Skyrim. If your PC can run it, buy it! Everything that makes Dawnwalker so unique are its biggest strengths: the human/vampire day and night gameplay, time being a finite resource, and the directional combat. These ideas are all executed on extremely well in my opinion, and help Dawnwalker stand out compared to other similar games. You get two presets for armor and weapons, one for when you are basically Geralt during the day, and the other for when you are a vampire at night. Some quests can be completed in either form, and some require a specific form. Overall, I find this mechanic really fun. They play nearly identically, which I think is a good thing, because if they were so different to where one was objectively more fun than the other, it would drag the game down, as you have to engage with both forms. I have never played a game with directional combat, such as Kingdom Come Deliverance, but I think it works great here. I also NEVER play third-person action games with keyboard and mouse, but I have been with Dawnwalker, and it has been my preferred way to play compared to controller, surprisingly. The time mechanic works similarly to Persona, oddly enough. There is no actual in-game timer that punishes you for lollygagging, but instead time is broken up into 8 "points" that you can spend to do certain things, such as starting or finishing a quest, or learning a new skill, at the expense of not being able to do other things at that time. At any given time, let's say there may be 40 points worth of things to do in any in-game day, but you only have 8 to spend, so what do you do? Well, it is left to the player to decide, but some quests will not be open forever, making the player have to think about how they spend this resource wisely. I really like this, it makes it feel like there is actual weight to my decisions. As much as I love Skyrim, the fact that a Two-Handed Heavy Armor Nord can enroll in the College of Winterhold, the Dark Brotherhood AND the Thieves Guild simultaneously makes no sense, but it is allowed for the sake of letting the player experience the WHOLE game in one save file. Rebel Wolves fundamentally rejects that idea, and the game is better for it. For a debut game from a new studio, in a super competitive genre, The Blood of Dawnwalker is worth your time, and I am very excited to see what comes next.