The Blood of Dawnwalker Review: A Vampire RPG With Real Teeth

I went into The Blood of Dawnwalker with my guard up. "Ex-Witcher devs form new studio" is the oldest hype template in the business, and it usually ends in a Kickstarter apology post. This time it didn't. Rebel Wolves' debut, published by Bandai Namco and out since September 3 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, is the most confident first game I've played from a new studio in years.

What it actually is

You play Coen, a half-vampire in Vale Sangora, a fictional 14th-century kingdom in the Carpathians. A plague has gutted the land, a vampire lord named Brencis has taken over, and your family has been dragged off for sacrifice. You have 30 in-game days to get them back. The twist that makes it work: only story actions burn time. Exploring, looting, wandering the gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 hills - all free. Pick up a quest, though, and the clock ticks. I spent my first evening agonizing over which lead to chase, and that tension never really let go of me. When was the last time an open-world RPG made you feel like your time mattered?

Day and night, human and monster

The day/night split is the other masterstroke. By day, Coen is mostly human: you talk, investigate, find non-violent ways through problems. By night, the vampire side wakes up - wall-climbing, shadowstepping through gaps, feeding, powers that turn stealth sections into playgrounds. Some quests play out completely differently depending on when you show up. That's not a bullet point, it's the game's whole spine, and it holds.

Where the fangs get dull

Combat is the weak leg. It's serviceable dark-fantasy swordplay, but enemy variety is thin and by hour twenty I was running the same counters on the same three archetypes. The console builds also shipped with bugs - I hit a few broken quest triggers and one hard crash, and other reviewers report the same. Nothing save-ruining in my run, but for a full-price release ($70 / £60, full AAA pricing in our region too) you notice.

Verdict

The Blood of Dawnwalker is what happens when veterans stop iterating and start risking. The time pressure, the dual identity, the mean little moral knots the writing keeps tying - this is a proper RPG with ideas, not a Witcher cover band. If Rebel Wolves patches the combat depth into a sequel, we have a new major series. For now, we have a very good, slightly jagged debut that I'd recommend to anyone who misses RPGs with consequences.

Score: 8/10

Image: Paul Colin Hennig firstdorsal.eu / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bran_Castle,_Transylvania_(2023).jpg