Blood, Dirt, and 14th-Century Quests
In the mid-14th century, the Carpathian Mountains were struck by a plague. But the Sangor Valley – a fictional state where vrakhyrs (vampires) seized power – suffered the most. The new ruler, Prince Brencis, destroyed the former tyrants but introduced a bloody tribute: now residents are obliged to donate blood once a month during mass.
One such levy proved fatal for the family of the protagonist – a young man named Koen. He and his father decided to challenge Brencis, but everything went wrong: the vampires learned of their plans and attacked the mine where silver, which the undead fear, was extracted.
As a result, the family and other villagers were captured and sent to the prince's castle, and Koen was turned into a vrakhyr. But the young man did not become a full-fledged vampire, but a hybrid – a creature called a Dawnwalker: by day he is an ordinary human and the sun does not scare him, but at night he turns into a bloodsucker. Now the young man must figure out what is happening in the valley, find allies, weaken enemies, and save his family from captivity.
The game is dark and at times creepy: blood constantly flows, there are many deaths and dirt. And sometimes jump scares pop up – though they are monotonous and you quickly get used to them. There's no shortage of gore either – Koen regularly tears enemies apart with spectacular finishers, which is pleasant to watch. At the same time, the camera often draws attention to various parts of human bodies in the plot, without censoring anything. There is a lot of red color in the game, which enhances the atmosphere.
The rest of the palette creates a sense of hopelessness: despite the technically simple graphics, the developers used many muted colors, making the world seem faded. The world is presented as depressing and hopeless, which perfectly reflects the protagonist's feelings. It reminded me of the Dark Souls series, where melancholy also lingered and the world seemed bleak.
Cutscenes and dialogue moments are well-staged: facial animations are very expressive – it's easy to determine the characters' emotions and believe them.
The story structure somewhat reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: you need to go to different places, gather allies, and find a way to get close to the villain, eliminating his followers if possible. But if you have enough skills, you can finish the game early by defeating Brencis in the prologue or attacking his castle immediately after the introduction.
Quests in the game are well-written and varied. Even at the beginning, you can influence the fates of several characters – from the protagonist's mother to an ordinary parishioner: if you choose the right potion recipe, the mother will survive, and if you manage to find the culprit of the church property damage, you can save the parishioner. And there will be many such examples throughout the main game.
Dialogues are written naturally: characters swear and use simple words, showing that these are living people, not literary figures.
Side quests perfectly reveal the characters and are on par with the main storyline. I especially note the stories of other vampires – Lakra and Vicho – which reveal Koen's inner world, the villain's backstory, and expand the lore. And some personal questlines unlock access to different endings. I would compare this to what happened in Cyberpunk 2077, where the personal quests of Panam, Judy, River, Kerry, and Johnny were on the same level of quality as the main plot.
Although some assignments are situational and meaningless, you learn a little more about the world from them. For example, you can stumble upon a mysterious incident, follow a trail, and find the body of a person from a clan whose residents can turn into wolves. This story will give you nothing but world lore, you will spend time, but perhaps it will play a role in future games – after all, a sequel is already in development.
Many tasks are also interconnected. If you help a character named Ocha in the capital, then when you are sent on another assignment to her native settlement, her mother – the elder – will recognize you and call you a friend. If you arrive there earlier, she will send the player to look for Ocha. And since both missions have several completion options, there are plenty of situational dialogues. The game remembers many of your actions and decisions and reminds you of them when possible.
The thirst system is also well-thought-out: if Koen's health in vampire form is very low and a dialogue suddenly starts, he may not be able to restrain himself and kill an NPC during the conversation without your intervention or ability to stop it, which will affect the story. That's how I lost Vlad – joining the rebels became a little more difficult.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is dark fantasy with many different creatures and a fictional race of half-human, half-goat beings, but it also references real elements: nationalities, conflicts, historical events. I was amused by the moment when the protagonist meets a Tatar and a Jewish rabbi, about which the latter awkwardly jokes.
Time – the Main Currency?
The gameplay of The Blood of Dawnwalker boils down to battles and open-world exploration.
The project borrowed a lot from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: the equipment and crafting system, fast travel, open-world logic, an analogue of Witcher senses, the ability to loot houses, and so on. The origins are immediately visible!
The time system spurs the player on: you have 30 in-game days and nights to complete the story. Each day consists of 16 time segments (8 for day and 8 for night), and some actions consume them. If you exceed the limit, the villain will kill Koen's family.
Experts online have already calculated that it takes 38 days to complete all activities. However, the game is full of activities that consume time but offer nothing valuable – no stories, no equipment. If you ignore them, you'll have plenty of time to complete all the main quests. Therefore, it's more of a marketing gimmick than a serious mechanic: it doesn't limit the player, but makes them think and concentrate on their actions.
Even if you exceed the limit, the game won't end: the protagonist's relatives will die, Brencis will become stronger, and Koen will focus on revenge rather than salvation. Simply put, it's just a separate ending, not a full game over.
However, the project allows for creativity and rewards exploration. For example, you can find one of the main bosses in the world and fight him immediately, without fulfilling special conditions. This way, you can save several in-game days, even if you sacrifice interesting quests.
But at the same time, The Blood of Dawnwalker can punish for inattention. For example, if you explore the ruins with Anka before nightfall in her personal quest, she will ask you to return in the morning, because vampire powers are not compatible with witchcraft. If you leave and do not clear the neighboring rooms of monsters, as she asked, then upon your return you will find her lifeless body, and the quest chain will be interrupted.
Some tasks can be failed: they have a separate timer that is easy to miss. This will close access to some assignments and also affect the game world. For example, the inhabitants of some location may suffer. This is another reason to think through your actions.
Combat: Reaction, Swords, and Claws
The combat system is a mix of The Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. You can strike, use active abilities, dodge attacks, or parry them. But you constantly need to choose directions for defense and attack, which means good reaction time will come in handy.
I found the battles controversial: the game often corners Koen in awkward positions or narrow spaces, making it difficult to react to enemy lunges. Moreover, there are often too many enemies, and stamina drains quickly. Therefore, you have to maneuver wisely, but even that doesn't always save you.
You can hone your skills and constantly parry attacks: this doesn't consume, but even restores the character's strength and opens up enemies for attack – pure profit, but the cost of error is commensurate. If you adapt and get into the rhythm, you'll get a peculiar sword dance – almost like in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Fortunately, the game allows you to "customize" the difficulty in the settings. You can create a real hell for yourself or storm through a crowd of enemies, leaving them no chance.
Day and night, we see a different Koen. Fighting is easier under the moon: the protagonist can drink enemy blood, attack with claws, teleport short distances, and so on. In daylight, the protagonist fights only with a sword, but can use magical abilities – thanks to magic, the protagonist can talk to the dead.
The leveling system is deep. There are both active and passive talents from different branches: sword fighting, vampire, and magical skills – a lot of room for build-making and combining different abilities.
Some talents greatly simplify the game. You can learn an ability that will automatically restore your vampire health within a segment, which simplifies battles. This skill reminded me of the "Gourmet" ability from The Witcher 3, with which I easily completed the game on the hardest difficulty.
But there's also a price for development: for each talent learned, you spend one segment of the time scale. And if you decide to fully upgrade, you can say goodbye to several days at once!
You have to carefully plan your build. And unlocking skills is not easy: for vampire skills, you need to drink blood often, filling a special corruption scale, and for human skills, you need to find and read books. And yes, if you drink human blood, succumbing to your inner beast to increase the corruption level, it will affect the character and the ending.
The equipment selection is extensive, and you can set up two different sets with the necessary bonuses: night and day. They will change automatically with the time of day.
Vampiric Flaws
The graphics in the game are beautiful, but the color scheme is too dark, and sometimes it's hard to see what's happening on the screen. Especially if you're playing during the day and the sun hits the monitor. And if you increase the brightness, it will feel like you've switched from OLED to LCD.
The world in the game cannot be called lively: no random events, only repetitive activities and a meager set of enemies – after five to seven hours of gameplay, you'll be sick of the boars and wolves that infest the local forests.
The music in The Blood of Dawnwalker is weak. The compositions resemble Slavic motifs and will seem familiar to anyone who played The Witcher, but there's nothing memorable here. It's as if the authors picked melodies from a free catalog, just to fit the style. (Editor's note. A matter of taste and preference – I recognized Marcin Przybyłowicz, who wrote the soundtrack for The Witcher 3, from the first notes. Here, the composer remained true to himself and delivered one of the best soundtracks of the year, and the duo of Mikołaj Stroiński and Piotr Musiał supported their colleague perfectly.)
Although the combat is interesting, there's too much of it: almost every activity in the world boils down to battles. There's hardly any stealth or unique situations – just knife fights, which can get tiring after several tens of hours of gameplay.
The final part is completely filled with very tedious battles against monotonous enemies: after your "fame" reaches a high level, the number of enemies will increase many times over, and those who were there will start recognizing and attacking you.
There are also technical issues: visual bugs, freezes, frame rate drops. Often, after exiting the menu, the game runs in "six frames" mode for several seconds. Several patches have already been released, but problems still exist – taming Unreal Engine 5 is not that easy.
And if you have two monitors, the game often jumps from one to another during dialogues: at this moment, the sound disappears, and the mouse flies to the other screen. You will have to switch every time, which is very inconvenient.
Because of all this, the game feels like a good, but very low-budget project that was developed in a hurry. Paying five thousand rubles for such a product is overkill. Why the publisher set such a price in Russia, given that prices are lower in other regions, is an unanswered question.
And there is no official Russian localization either, for which the developers get a separate minus in karma. Fortunately, enthusiasts have already fully translated The Blood of Dawnwalker completely free of charge.
Verdict
The Blood of Dawnwalker is a direct successor to The Witcher 3. The game has similar game design and engaging combat, although it can get boring towards the end of the playthrough.
Quests are the main distinguishing feature of the project. They are magnificently written and immerse you completely in this dark world, revealing characters, lore, and opening up different endings. It is primarily for them that you should play The Blood of Dawnwalker, and then wait for the sequel.
I'll say something heretical: the game's script is so good that after the Tomaszkiewicz brothers left CDPR, I have serious concerns about the new Cyberpunk and The Witcher 4. After all, they are being developed by other people.
The time management system in the game is a marketing deception. If you ignore unnecessary activities, such as helping people, destroying monster nests, or clearing soldier/bandit camps, and choose your skills correctly, you won't miss the main content. And even if you do, you'll just get a different ending.
The combat system is a mix of classic "Witcher" action with the directional system from Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Battles (especially on high difficulties) require skill from the player, but towards the end, they can become tedious and make you consider switching to "story" mode.
If the game cost around two thousand rubles, and not five thousand, I would strongly recommend buying it, despite the lack of Russian localization. In the current realities, I advise waiting for patches and discounts.