The Blood of Dawnwalker is a dark, moody, ambitious RPG that's brilliant one minute and broken the next

There's a particular weight to a debut made by veterans. New studio Rebel Wolves is staffed by several developers who built The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and The Blood of Dawnwalker never lets you forget it. From its opening scene, this dark vampire RPG carries the DNA of one of the greatest games ever made, setting a bar almost nothing could clear.

It doesn't clear it. What's surprising is how often it gets close, and how compelling it stays even while stumbling. You play Coen, a peasant in the plague-ravaged 14th-century valley of Vale Sangora who's turned into a Dawnwalker, human by day and vampire by night, then given 30 days (and 30 nights) to save his family from the vampire lord Brencis.

Around that hook sits some of the sharpest writing and bleakest atmosphere I've seen in an RPG this year, alongside a barren open world, clunky combat and a pile of technical rough edges.

The result is a game I spent hours wanting to defend and, minutes later, wanting to throw a controller at. It's ambitious to a fault, flawed in ways a debut studio can be forgiven for, and stuffed with ideas worth celebrating. Whether it's for you comes down to how much jank you'll happily wade through for a great story.

The Blood of Dawnwalker: The Basics

• What is it? A dark-fantasy action RPG set in a 14th-century valley ruled by vampires. You play Coen, a Dawnwalker who's human by day and vampire by night, racing a 30-day clock to save his family and topple the vampire lord Brencis.
• Who is it for? Fans of sprawling, story-driven RPGs first and foremost, along with anyone who prizes atmosphere and morally gray choices over polished, fluid action. Witcher fans will feel especially at home.
• What’s the price? The Blood of Dawnwalker is $69 at Amazon. There's also a Collector's Edition for $199 with physical extras.
• What other games has the developer made? None yet — this is Rebel Wolves' first game. The studio was founded by CD Projekt Red veterans, including director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
• What games is it similar to? The Witcher 3 above all, with directional combat reminiscent of Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

A land worth getting lost in

Blood of the Dawnwalker’s setup is the easiest thing to love. Vale Sangora has traded one horror for another: its old despot is gone, overthrown by Brencis, an ancient vampire hailed by many as a savior even as he drains the people he 'protects'.

The game commits fully to that bleakness, and it's better for it. Instead of a power fantasy, this is a story about fear, compromise and the slow rot of living under monsters. It subverts vampire mythology rather than leaning on it, which makes the whole thing feel fresh and memorable.

Character work is where the writing really flexes. Nearly everyone has a story to uncover through conversation, and the side threads you follow while recruiting allies are often more interesting than the main quest. Many play out as small mysteries you unravel using Coen's Focus ability, this game's take on Witcher senses, which casts you as a kind of fantasy detective.

One character lets the side down. Cohen himself. For a lead surrounded by such vivid people, he's a bit bland, for lack of a better term: too self-serious. To be fair, if I'd been through what he has, turned into a monster with his family torn apart and a whole valley of horrors to trudge through, I'd be miserable too, and the game earns that gloom.

But there's a difference between a character who's understandably grim and one who's simply underwritten, and Coen too often feels like the latter. He'll head somewhere, a crypt for example, and mutter that the place makes his skin crawl, which lands strangely coming from a literal vampire, and a Dawnwalker at that.

What frustrates me the most is the awkward middle ground he occupies. He's not quite fleshed out enough to stand on his own as a fully realized protagonist, yet not customizable enough to work as the blank slate you can pour yourself into.

I kept waiting for him to grow an edge beyond his vampiric abilities, or a point of view worth following, and, ultimately, I wanted more from him than I got.

Powers, time and the art of making a villain angry

Coen's toolkit is the moment-to-moment highlight. You can bite an enemy's neck to claw back health, unlock satisfying swordsmanship skills, use haste to transform into a wolf and tear across the map, or compel a corpse to relive its final moments and reveal what happened before it died. These powers are inventive, and they make Coen feel distinct even when his dialogue doesn't.

The infamy system is the other pleasant surprise. Disrupt Brencis's operations and you provoke him. Push far enough and you'll bait the old monster into confronting you before you're ready. It gives the recruit-and-sabotage structure a real pressure valve and makes the villain feel present.

The headline mechanic, time, is harder to judge. You spend days and nights as a resource on quests, travel and leveling. In principle it's a smart rebuke to open-world bloat. In practice, I'm not yet sure what it's for. The pressure hasn't bitten, and since I haven't reached the endgame, I can't tell you whether it pays off, feeds replayability, or mostly exists to flip you between day and night.

A chess match with the pieces glued down

Combat is where I'm most torn. The directional system, where you read an enemy's angle and block or riposte to open them up, can feel like a fun little chess match. When it clicks, prying a foe apart is satisfying, and that tactical core does a lot to hold the game together.

But it never evolves. Enemy variety is thin, so you're solving the same handful of puzzles for dozens of hours. Movement is jagged and imprecise almost all the time, turning what should be fluid duels into a clunky arcade brawl.

I lost count of how often I got wedged into a corner mid-dodge while enemies swarmed me, or ended up fighting the camera. At its worst, the combat can feel a step behind the modern RPGs it's competing with, which is a shame given the talent behind it. The foundations are here; they just need more time in the forge.

When the polish flickers

For all the care poured into its world, the game hadn't quite ironed out its technical creases during my playthrough. Some of this may well improve with patches.

As it stands, though, the technical side can be rough: textures load in halfway through cutscenes, frame pacing stumbles in busier areas, and bugs are frequent, including swords floating in mid-air with nobody holding them.

My least-favorite moment came from using the vampiric teleport to reach a rooftop, only to rematerialize stuck against the wrong side of the building, not on top of it.

The frustrating part is how good it looks when it holds together. Once textures fully load and everything turns glossy, certain vistas are a treat, and the strange little dungeons dotted across the map are consistently cool to explore.

The polish is in there. It just flickers in and out too often, puncturing the immersion the writing works so hard to build.

The Blood of Dawnwalker review: Verdict

The Blood of Dawnwalker is a game of loud highs and frustrating lows, and where you land depends entirely on what you want from it. If you're after a fluid, polished action RPG, the jagged movement, repetitive combat and technical issues might grind you down. But if you're here for a dark, uncompromising story packed with fascinating characters and surprises that keep you guessing, there's plenty to sink your teeth into.

It's the kind of game that inevitably becomes a cult classic: undeniably flawed and still capable of winning over players willing to look past them. It needs a lot of post-launch work from Rebel Wolves, particularly on the performance front, before it lands where players will be fully happy. But I keep wanting to come back to it, and I'll be seeing it through to the end. For a debut this bold, that counts for a lot.