{"id":13585,"date":"2026-08-31T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/?p=13585"},"modified":"2026-08-31T20:45:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T17:15:14","slug":"the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/2026\/08\/31\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blood of Dawnwalker Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Ever since I first got infected with Porphyric Hemophilia in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or ran amok in Los Angeles in Vampire: The Masquerade \u2013 Bloodlines, I\u2019ve been patiently waiting for an open-world vampire RPG that I could really sink my teeth into. Frustratingly, despite numerous attempts in all those years, I hadn\u2019t found anything that quenched that long-standing thirst. With The Blood of Dawnwalker, an RPG that shares a ton of DNA with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt made by some of its former developers, my hunt is finally over. Not only does it take the vampire fantasy to the neck-xt level, it also smartly finds workarounds for some of the limitations that can be a <em>bit <\/em>annoying (like having to stay out of the light), and introduces other interesting and clever ideas along the way. The day\/night cycle that has you switching between human and vampire consistently makes for compelling questing, the limited time you\u2019re given to complete your adventure makes even minor decisions carry enormous <em>stakes<\/em>, and the numerous ways to make its bloody tale your own have motivated me to rise from the coffin and replay this journey more than any game has in quite a long time. This is the vampire RPG I\u2019ve been waiting for and I find myself entirely under its spell.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">The Blood of Dawnwalker is a third-person action RPG that puts you in the shoes of a no-longer-fully-human protagonist with long hair and facial scars who runs around using swords and magic to kill monsters in a gritty, dark fantasy setting. Perhaps not the most original premise from a bunch of former Witcher devs, but hey, if it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t pull it off the stuffed unicorn. You play as Coen of Laslea, whose town is taken over by vampires, then through a series of unfortunate events, is infected with vampirism and begins practicing the dark art of witchcraft on the same day. Tough break! Naturally, you set out on a roughly 40-hour quest for revenge against those evil bloodsuckers, using your unique abilities as a Dawnwalker (someone who has all the strengths and weaknesses of a vampire by night but a human by day) to save the valley of Vale Sangora from the clutches of evil.<\/p>\n<p><span data-cy=\"slideshow-view-trigger\"><\/p>\n<div data-cy=\"slideshow-preview\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 slideshow-preview\">\n<h3 class=\"title5 jsx-62124236 jsx-1085005187\" data-cy=\"slideshow-preview-title\">The Blood of Dawnwalker &#8211; Skill Tree Menu Screenshots<\/h3>\n<div data-cy=\"slideshow-images-container\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 images-container\"><button type=\"button\" data-cy=\"hero-image\" aria-label=\"Open Slideshow\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 hero-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt aria-hidden=\"true\" role=\"presentation\" class=\"progressive-image jsx-2896921488 image aspect-ratio aspect-ratio-16-9 jsx-2605834259 jsx-2338608387 hover-opacity\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review.gif\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"><span class=\"button-text jsx-729543028 button button--primary jsx-3027214138 jsx-4266531355 row-pagination-button next contained centered round large\" data-cy=\"paginate next\" title=\"Open Slideshow\"><span class=\"ign-icon right-chevron jsx-2750866048 jsx-2919720488\" role=\"presentation\" aria-hidden=\"true\" data-cy=\"right-chevron\"><\/span><\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">While the premise is pretty basic, Dawnwalker excels in the telling, with a cast of extremely well-written characters across the board, a world that\u2019s filled with more mysteries than you could ever hope to uncover during your time-constrained journey, and some weirdly impressive arguments for why maybe vampires <em>should<\/em> be in charge of the world that made me pause to wonder if I was, in fact, the baddie. I instantly found myself eagerly spending time with Anca, the kind witch with a tragic past who split her time between either teaching me latin and magic or shamelessly flirting with me. Meanwhile, Crake, the rebel leader with a tendency to be heinously cruel in service of the cause, and Lacra, an allied vampire who casually committed war crimes half the time I hung out with her, managed to win me over despite being huge pains in my ass. Even the primary villains, like Brencis, who envisions a world ruled by vampires, and Ambrus, the footsoldier who revels in the displacement of the hierarchy of nobility and fancies a gentleman\u2019s duel, were all incredibly compelling figures.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Dawnwalker\u2019s best and most unique feature, quite appropriately for a game all about vampires, is its day\/night cycle and the time mechanics built around it. As a spell-slinging human by day who turns into a blood-sucking monster by night, just about everything you do changes depending on the time of day. For example, in your human form you\u2019ll guzzle down food and medicine to heal yourself, battle with swords and a fistful of witchcraft spells, and move around the old fashioned way by running, jumping, climbing, and whatnot. As a vampire, all that food and medicine is completely useless to you and your health can only be restored by consuming blood, plus you\u2019ll primarily fight with your bare claws and gain a whole bunch of neat movement options \u2013 that includes teleporting around as a cloud of smoke, walking on walls and ceilings like the creepy little creature you are, and even turning into a wolf. <\/p>\n<div class=\"display-title jsx-684634384 jsx-2659527929 quote-container\" data-cy=\"quoteBox\">Dawnwalker\u2019s best idea is its unique day\/night cycle and time mechanics.<span class=\"stack jsx-2959124702 jsx-326843967\"><span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">That means instead of building one loadout of armor, weapons, consumables, and abilities you\u2019re happy with, Dawnwalker requires you to maintain two separate builds, which gave my stat-obsessed brain twice as much to joyfully tinker with. My vampire build was an absolute terror on the battlefield, with all my abilities centered around feeding off enemies to continually restore my health, and I sought out as many items as possible that increased my claw damage to turn myself into an unkillable unarmed freak of nature. Meanwhile, my human build primarily relied on high risk\/high reward spells that put a whole bunch of nasty status effects on my foes at the cost of draining my own life and making me quite squishy. These two extremely different ways to play meant I was almost sitting forward during combat. Best of all, each of these loadouts is kept separate and automatically toggled between when you switch forms, so you don\u2019t have to manually swap out all your armor and weapons twice a day.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Speaking of fighting, you\u2019ll be doing quite a bit of that, since you\u2019ll primarily solve your problems in Vale Sangora with the pointy end of your blade. The combat is quite good, with the caveat that it has a bit of a steep learning curve I suspect will be equally divisive. The main way in which it sets itself apart from most RPGs of this kind is that it uses a directional parry system where you have to match the direction the enemy is swinging, which kinda reminded me of For Honor. You can also just block attacks like normal, but doing so is fairly impractical (at least on higher difficulties) since it drains your stamina and doesn\u2019t provide the openings for counterattacks that are so vital to success. <\/p>\n<p><span data-cy=\"poll-view-trigger\"><\/p>\n<section class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\"><\/section>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">It sounds simple, but it took me longer than I\u2019d like to admit to feel comfortable with it. The first handful of hours were fairly frustrating, and I frequently found myself fumbling through most combat encounters while cursing my ancestors. But there was light at the end of that tunnel \u2013 once I got over the hump and this system clicked, I grew to not only like it, but also feel pretty damn good at it. Now I\u2019m able to down even the most formidable hordes without breaking a sweat, and that mastery felt earned beyond my stats going up. (Granted, I insist on playing most games on the hardest difficulty, so it\u2019s quite possible I was just making things especially hard on myself and you\u2019ll have an easier time from the jump.)<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Aside from parrying, though, you\u2019ll be using a pretty familiar bag of tricks for an action game like this, with a combination of standard attacks, special maneuvers that are specific to whichever weapon you\u2019ve got equipped, and a bunch of abilities you can activate on a cooldown. Naturally, all of this will differ depending on whether or not you\u2019re in human or vampire form, which goes a long way toward keeping things from getting too repetitive. For example, as a human, I fancied status effect spells that drained health and stunned enemies at the cost of my own life force, but as a vampire, I\u2019d pummel things mercilessly with my bare hands and banshee shriek in my enemy\u2019s face if I was feeling cheeky.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">That said, these bouts definitely have some relatively minor but pretty obvious places they could improve. For example, the lock-on function consistently gave me trouble when trying to target a specific enemy, and it stayed annoying no matter how long I practiced with it. The camera could also get caught in odd spots in a way that was similarly aggravating. And while the variety of enemies you encounter is pretty good overall, the more common beasts you run into in the wild, like wolves and boars, appear way too frequently \u2013 by the end of my time with Coen, I was fully pissed off at the mere sight of the overpopulated canines.<\/p>\n<div class=\"display-title jsx-684634384 jsx-2659527929 quote-container\" data-cy=\"quoteBox\">Certain activities will change depending on when you choose to do them.<span class=\"stack jsx-2959124702 jsx-326843967\"><span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">While adventuring out in the world, certain activities are only available at specific times of day. For example, you\u2019ll need access to your vampire form\u2019s superior movement capabilities in order to climb to the top of lookout towers and add nearby points of interest to your map, while rituals that require blood magic are only available in human form. But even activities available at any time, like most side quests, can have drastically different outcomes depending on which form you take. Some characters will be less likely to trust you if you interact with them in vampire form, while some areas might be inaccessible if you choose to tackle it while human. If you really muck things up, your character might just straight up murder a super important NPC because you stupidly interacted with them while in a state of overwhelming blood thirst. Not that I ever did that at all, because I\u2019m super smart and very good at video games.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">The most interesting aspect of The Blood of Dawnwalker\u2019s day\/night cycle is how it ties the passage of time to specific actions you take, giving you a finite amount of time to complete your overarching quest. After the story\u2019s opening chapter, you\u2019ll have exactly 30 days to bring Brencis\u2019 rule to an end, and that deadline is stressfully enforced as almost every action you take costs a certain amount of time to complete. There isn\u2019t a ticking timer or anything \u2013 in fact, you can freely explore the world or just stand around idly as long as you want without time passing. Instead, time is treated as a resource: want to buy the next level in a particular skill? Well, in addition to the skill points required, you\u2019ll also have to pay the much more costly price of the hours it takes you to train in it. Want to help that old man with his minor problem because you\u2019re roleplaying as a good person? Fine! Go right ahead\u2026 but that\u2019s one fewer segment of time you\u2019ve got to potentially complete a more substantial sidequest.<\/p>\n<p><span data-cy=\"playlist-view-trigger\"><\/p>\n<section class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401 user-list-embed\" data-cy=\"user-list-embed\">\n<div class=\"card jsx-2310533475 jsx-1355461925 box\">\n<section class=\"stack jsx-806034919 carousel-section jsx-282394234\" data-cy=\"carousel\"><span class=\"stack jsx-3647836811 jsx-1304765713\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<h3 data-cy=\"title3\" class=\"title3 jsx-12333944 jsx-2321054750\">TieGuyTravis&#8217; Favorite Vampire Games<\/h3>\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to join (or kill) the sickening legions of the night, these are my top recommendations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"stack jsx-3647836811 jsx-2980091846\">See All<button class=\"button-text jsx-729543028 button button--secondary jsx-3027214138 action-button contained centered large\" data-cy=\"more-actions-btn\" type=\"button\" title=\"More Actions\"><span class=\"ign-icon icon-ellipsis jsx-2750866048 jsx-2919720488\" role=\"presentation\" aria-hidden=\"true\" data-cy=\"icon-ellipsis\"><\/span><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">At first I thought I might find this limitation irritating, since I quite enjoy taking my time to smell the roses and mark every checkbox off my list in these kinds of open-worlds, but I quickly realized how treating time as a currency makes just about every aspect of Dawnwalker better. No matter how hard you try, you won\u2019t have enough hours to complete every side quest, buy every skill, or tie up every loose end as well as you\u2019d like, which means you\u2019re forced to compromise, pick your battles, and make hard but impactful decisions almost constantly. For example, early on in my travels, I talked my way into a prison camp to get some intel from a prisoner there, one I would have gone out of my way to rescue under normal circumstances. But when I saw that it would cost me three pips of time to do so (each day has 16 total), I decided to leave him to rot instead. I was forced to make compromises like this every step of the way, all in service of ensuring I had enough time for the important stuff, and I regularly found myself surprised at my own decisions. Fittingly, it made me feel like I truly was letting the darkness of my new vampiric abilities compromise my humanity in my quest for revenge. It\u2019s brutal, nerve-wracking, and completely awesome.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">This harrowing time-crunch ultimately has a pretty enormous impact on how your journey ends as well. I won\u2019t spoil anything, but alternate endings will only open up to you if you\u2019ve met certain characters or taken specific actions. On my first playthrough, there were entire supporting characters and story components I completely missed out on, and I didn\u2019t realize the scope of what I hadn\u2019t seen until I took an entirely different approach on my second playthrough. In a third (much shorter) playthrough, I just went for a brute force approach to see what would happen if I rushed straight to the end without meeting anyone while leveling up as little as possible, and I was not disappointed by the hilarious result. This is one of those games where I not only wanted to play through multiple times, but it almost felt mandatory in order to see everything Vale Sangora had in store. I can\u2019t remember the last time I\u2019ve felt that way about an RPG.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">One thing I often worry about with open-world RPGs is just how bad their performance and technical bugs might be, and The Blood of Dawnwalker thankfully finds itself on the less egregious side of the spectrum. Sure, on a standard PlayStation 5 it\u2019s got the occasional framerate wonkiness, the camera sometimes clips through stuff in awkward ways, and an enemy will occasionally go right through the floor when you kill it \u2013 but almost everything I saw like that was pretty minor and uncommon, and I never had a single hard crash, broken questline, or anything else frustrating like that. The worst thing I encountered with regularity were blurry textures on characters\u2019 clothes (or sometimes detail in their faces), which would distractingly never smooth out from time to time. Importantly, the version I played did not include the 60fps performance mode that was recently announced, so I can\u2019t say just how well it holds up on that front, but I wasn\u2019t particularly bothered by the 30FPS quality mode since it usually looked and ran well enough anyway.<\/p>\n<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review.webp\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review.webp\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review.webp\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review.webp\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-13585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-49","tag-51"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13587,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13585\/revisions\/13587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}