The Blood of Dawnwalker is a captivating vampire RPG that insists you don’t need to see it all, and largely succeeds in that bold approach.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is a brilliant debut for Rebel Wolves. It inflicts weight on every decision with its time mechanics, yet still lends you enough freedom to embrace those small moments that make us human. It pushed me into agonizing situations, uncomfortable choices, and ridiculous asides, all interwoven with a simple yet tremendously satisfying combat system. Small gripes about overused enemies and dated animations aren't enough to keep this from being one of my favorite RPGs in years.
Every second counts in The Blood of Dawnwalker. You have 30 days to save your family, and those precious moments tick away with every meaningful action you take. I shouldn't be 'wasting time' - but I do. To make tea for a dear friend after a stressful outing. To share a story with an old lady giving directions, rather than brushing her off. To provide company to a man beyond redemption. It's an RPG where your decisions matter, and consequences linger, yet I find myself making choices against my natural instincts. It's a world where I question my beliefs, my morals, and who I trust - and where I wonder whether even those are enough to alter my actions. It's one of my favorite games in quite some time.
The Blood of Dawnwalker drops me into 14th-century Vale Sangora, a fictional region loosely set in the Carpathian Mountains. It's been two years since the area was abruptly taken over by four powerful Vrakhiri - vampires with full sets of razor-sharp teeth and claws (garlic fine, sunlight absolutely deadly). Now, protagonist Coen and his family live under the rule of Kynaz Brencis and his three subordinate counts. His only demand is a regular exchange of blood: that of the populace, taken in small amounts 'willingly' from every adult, in return for a sip of his own, which clears all diseases, including the increasingly prevalent bubonic plague.
Unfortunately, Vrakhir blood can't fix everything. Coen's mother, Esme, has retreated into a shell following the death of your brother, and refuses to eat. My early hours are spent mixing a concoction to give her enough strength to attend the monthly Blood Mass (you can read my preview if you want more detail there). Doing so correctly is enough to keep her alive - not a guaranteed outcome - but still earns a snide remark from Brencis that "this herd shall soon need culling." Desperate for a solution, Coen and his father Pieter turn to local rebels, who are planning to break into the closed-down silver mines and spark the fuse of revolution.
It's a pitiful attempt at an uprising - the last glimmer of hope from a people on the point of breaking, marred with shaky voices and a fear that things will inevitably go wrong. Inevitably, they do. When the dust settles, Coen's life is in tatters. His family is in the cells of Greifberg Castle, where they are being kept for the grand coronation in 30 days. He has been turned by Brencis himself - but the transformation hasn't taken completely, leaving him human by day and Vrakhir at night. A "Dawnwalker." With only local witch (and close confidant) Anca by his side, Coen must set out to find a path to rescue his loved ones. Gather allies, forge equipment, train his own abilities in battle - the choices are all mine, but the clock is ticking.
This is the debut game from developer Rebel Wolves, but many members of the studio, including Game Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, are former CD Projekt Red staff who worked on the likes of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. That heritage is immediately present in the foundations of Dawnwalker, visible in everything from the conversation colors to Coen's clue-finding 'focus mode' that highlights key objectives, and it would be strange not to mention it. I don't want to belabor this point, however, because The Blood of Dawnwalker is worthy of standing on its own two feet.
The key hook to Dawnwalker is that 30-day deadline, which doesn't progress in real time but instead ticks forward, segment by segment, with each completed quest. Outside of the main objective, your path is entirely yours. It's both freeing and terrifying. What if I miss something great? The answer is that you probably will. Suddenly, helping every troubled bystander on the side of the road feels like less of a quick checkbox to fill. It lends weight to everything you choose to spend time doing. Yet as often as I make the obvious choices - to seek out the rebel group's base of operations, or pursue a rogue Vrakhir slinking the streets of Svartrau for help - I make ones that feel fulfilling, or comforting, or supportive to those around me. Human choices.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/dawnwalker/review
