Going into The Blood of Dawnwalker, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Stylistically, an action RPG in a grungy medieval fantasy setting is right up my alley. However, with so many already drawing comparisons to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt because they share the same game director, among other staff, The Blood of Dawnwalker already had a lot of expectations to live up to.
Truth is though, aside from the similar settings and a brooding protagonist who hunts monsters, the two games don’t have all that much in common. There’s a sense of familiarity while playing, but The Blood of Dawnwalker is a unique story with intricate gameplay and a combat system that deserves to be enjoyed as a fresh new experience, regardless of who worked on it.
You start as a normal human man named Coen, but before you know it, you’re stalking the night as a new type of monster known as a Dawnwalker. A Dawnwalker, as the game will eventually explain, is a creature that is human by day and Vrakhiri by night, so closer to what you’d expect from a traditional werewolf transition cycle than the vampire-like creatures they are.
Not long after Coen’s change into a Dawnwalker, he learns that his family has been taken and is now being held by Brencis, a leader among the Vrakhiri, for a special ceremony scheduled 30 days from now. From that point on, Coen has until the end of the countdown to save his family and bring Brencis down, which is where the game really begins.
When I first realized I would be facing a 30-day deadline for a key part of the game, doubts began to creep in. That amount of time didn’t seem long enough to encompass a fully fleshed-out RPG, and I worried the game would feel rushed.
Thankfully, while I did feel a tad stretched for time, I’m pleased to say the game has excellent pacing, so that 30 days feels like plenty. Additionally, 30 days doesn’t end up being the hard deadline in the way you’d expect, especially if you don’t really plan to worry about your family, which is completely up to you.
Since Coen is a Dawnwalker, he can take advantage of both day and night cycles without ever needing to sleep. These days and nights are broken down into eight time segments each that, once full, transition to the next day or night.
So, while you only have 30 days to save them, the lack of sleep helps stretch the time significantly, especially since time only really passes when you complete a quest or learn a new skill. If you're running around exploring, you won't need to worry about time passing. To put it in perspective, it took me about 15 hours to get through the first ten days and cover about a third of the map.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review/
