The Blood of Dawnwalker PS5 review: A vampire RPG

That said, the limit is more forgiving than it first appears, and it allows players to move the story forward. Coen is supposedly racing to rescue his family after all, and the game makes that urgency part of how you play. It also means that you get to replay the games differently, perhaps picking a quest that you ignore previously and see how the game branches out.

Speaking of quests, the strong ones make good use of Rebel Wolves’ so-called narrative sandbox. Information gathered elsewhere can open new dialogue options, people you meet may become allies, and decisions can close off parts of another storyline. Some apparent side stories feed back into the larger conflict in satisfying ways, frequently making me wonder how differently a scene might have unfolded had I arrived at another time or made a less charitable choice.

Coen himself is less interesting, however. He is an effective vehicle for the player’s decisions and his concern for his family is easy to understand, but his personality can feel muted besides the more colourful characters and vampires around him. The main story also sometimes keeps Brencis and his inner circle at too great a distance, weakening a rivalry that should have felt more personal.

Human by day, vampire by night

Coen’s split nature changes more than his appearance. By day, he relies mainly on a sword, witchcraft and human abilities. At night, he gains vampiric powers, can use his claws, regain health by feeding on enemies, move up walls and leap across huge gaps. Buildings or routes that are inaccessible to the human Coen can therefore become accessible after dark, while daylight presents different conversation options and dangers. This gives exploration a pleasing puzzle-like quality. A location that appears ordinary during the day might reveal another way in after dark, encouraging you to think about how and when to tackle an objective.

Combat is where I’m less impressed. The directional system requires you to read an opponent’s attack and block from the correct direction before responding. It feels deliberate and suitably dangerous during early one-on-one fights, and perfect counters feel very satisfying. The difficulty settings are also unusually flexible, allowing you to adjust enemy health and aggression, widen the timing for perfect blocks or enable automatic blocking without dropping everything to an easier preset. But problems emerge once you engage more than a couple of enemies. Targeting can become incredibly challenging, attacks can happen from outside of your view, and Coen does not always respond with the precision the system demands. Enemy variety is limited too, so battles that initially feel tense can become routine after you learn the familiar attack patterns.

The supernatural abilities add spectacle and tactical options, but the two sides of Coen never feel as different as they should. Oddly, human swordplay is often more satisfying than fighting with vampire claws. There is fun in combining abilities and building Coen across the skill trees, but I wanted night-time combat to feel wilder, liberating…and “animalistic”, I supposed?

Vale Sangora is dense with convincing detail in its villages, castles and ruined churches, and the art direction sells a region collapsing under disease, war and supernatural rule. Yet there is too much conventional busywork between the layered quests. Bandit camps, supply gathering and scattered loot do little to strengthen the vampire fantasy. The game is not as bloated as some open worlds, but trimming these activities would have made its distinctive ideas stand out more clearly.

Final thoughts

The Blood of Dawnwalker is easy to admire and occasionally difficult to love. Rebel Wolves has not made another The Witcher 3, but it has built the foundations of something worth building upon. Its best quests are truly fun and its time system gives choices a real cost. It is just frustrating that these strengths must share space with repetitive combat, routine activities and, in my experience, a PS5 version that still needs some better optimisation.

Still, I did enjoy the game and its bold ideas are truly refreshing in a sea of open-world game games with tedious, unimaginative, quests. There’s not a lot of games that let me deal with the consequences of my own decisions.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.