The Blood of Dawnwalker is a confident dark-fantasy RPG from Rebel Wolves, and it wears its Witcher 3 influences right out in the open. A human by day and a bloodthirsty vampire by night, Coen of Laslea drags you through a miserable medieval world where you’ll never quite know which choice is the right one. The combat is barebones and the Unreal Engine 5 presentation is rough around the edges, but the writing and that clever 30-day timer are some of the best ideas in an RPG this year. It lands at 88/100, and with a sequel already confirmed, this fresh-blooded IP has plenty of room to grow.
What Is The Blood of Dawnwalker?
It’s an open-world ARPG that borrows heavily from CD Projekt Red’s Witcher formula. You get third-person action combat alongside deep RPG systems, letting you customize Coen’s arsenal, equip skills, and develop his vampiric and witchcraft powers.
The game is set in the 14th century, in a fictional region tucked away in the Carpathian Mountains of Europe called Vale Sangora. You follow Coen, a human turned into a Dawnwalker. That means he can shift between his human form during the day and a bloodthirsty vampire, or Vrakhiri, by night.
Made by former CD Projekt Red developers, the game blends mature, philosophical themes with ancient European folklore, including vampires and witches. The devs want you to jump through multiple playthroughs, because that 30-day time limit means the entire story and all of its outcomes can’t be experienced in a single run. Choices matter, the paths branch, and there are three romance options to choose from, plus multiple endings that carry over into the planned sequel.
A Fresh-Blooded RPG
When The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt proved there was still a massive audience for dark-fantasy RPGs built around branching choices, it showed what the genre could achieve when paired with real ambition. BioWare had already found success with Dragon Age, sure, but The Witcher 3 took the formula to a whole new level. It transformed Geralt’s linear stories into a grand open-world adventure that blended exploration with a well-written story full of moral ambiguity, giving players the freedom to shape both their character and their journey.
But that success story belongs to CD Projekt Red and them alone.
Rebel Wolves, on the other hand, has something fresh to bring to the table. The studio is made up of former CDPR developers who worked on the Witcher series as well as Cyberpunk 2077, so there’s a ton of pressure on them to live up to the giants that came before. With Geralt of Rivia out of the picture, the questions surrounding this new IP aren’t tied to anything written by Sapkowski. Instead, the game tells an original story centered on the vampire mythos, set during Europe’s darkest days in the 14th century, when plagues and wars were just a regular Tuesday.
Dawnwalker carries the same level of gravitas as the Witcher series, with an ambitious vision that proves a studio with similar experience can replicate CDPR’s acclaimed RPG formula while also, unfortunately, inheriting some of the familiar issues that once plagued it.
Rebel Wolves’ willingness to take bold risks introduces its own polarizing design choices, most notably the controversial 30-day timer. Safe to say, those risks paid off. It successfully set itself apart from its CDPR roots with its sprawling open world. After spending more than 50 hours exploring every nook and cranny of Coen’s story, I’ve seen firsthand the grand vision Rebel Wolves has for this new series.
A World That’s Not Always Black and White
The world of Dawnwalker feels very much like what you’d expect from a dark-fantasy version of Europe, with bloodthirsty vampires, swarms of spectral souls, and other ancient mysticism lurking throughout its feudal villages.
Vale Sangora is the game’s only playable open-world map. What was once a land ruled by a tyrannical king is now controlled by Brencis and his crew of Vrakhiri, immortal vampires who feed on the blood of the inhabitants through mandatory blood tithes while also providing free healthcare using their own blood.
What impressed me most about the story is how it drops you right into the middle of its dark and utterly miserable medieval world, where picking the lesser evil is often your only real option. Not everything is black and white. Coen encounters citizens who oppose Brencis’ rule, but also citizens who find comfort in it. When you’re making choices, it often comes down to what makes the most sense for you as a player, rather than what might be best for the world at large.
These moments are brought to life through a fantastic selection of side quests that shed more light on the struggles of the people here. Much like Geralt’s adventures on the Continent, you’ll stumble across unexpected stories that can leave you emotionally wrecked, like one involving a missing sibling searching for her long-lost brother, only to discover that pixies are somehow involved in their story. There are also moments when you come face-to-face with the other Vrakhiri themselves, leaving you conflicted over whether they were ever truly the enemy or if it’s just the Stockholm syndrome talking.
The vampire lore should impress even the most die-hard vampire fans, since it doesn’t just borrow from the age-old tales of Dracula or Nosferatu. It takes a much more personal approach, following Coen as he becomes a monster while racing to save his family before the Vrakhiri bleed them dry. What Dawnwalker brings to the table feels genuinely unique, and it’s all made better by the alluring mystery surrounding Coen’s newfound powers, with plenty of hidden lore waiting to be uncovered as the story builds toward its climactic moments.
Combat Doesn’t Have Enough Fangs
The gameplay is something I’m pretty indifferent about. As someone who found The Witcher 3’s combat system too unintuitive and barebones, seeing Rebel Wolves make the same mistake here is disappointing.
For starters, the movement is super finicky. Most of the time, Coen gets stuck on random objects or glitches his way around as I stalk across the rooftops of Svartrau looking for points of interest. It’s not exactly game-breaking, but it’s jarring enough that I’m surprised this is the same problem I had with Geralt and Roach’s movement in Wild Hunt. How it carried over into Dawnwalker despite running on a completely different game engine still baffles me.
In melee combat, you’re basically just waiting for your turn to strike or parry. Every encounter feels overly reactive, with barely any room for emergent situations, since you’re either waiting for cooldowns to reset or watching for the enemy to telegraph its next attack so you can land the perfect parry. It also doesn’t help that there’s a severe lack of enemy variety and most of them are bullet sponges. There were moments when I didn’t even wanna bother fighting a group of wolves because I’d been fighting the same enemies for what felt like half the game.
As for being a Dawnwalker, there’s also no truly distinguishable difference between playing as a vampire or a human. Most of Coen’s skills feel too similar to one another, leaving little room for buildcrafting or experimentation unless you’re focused on min-maxing. Sure, Coen may have bloodthirsty tendencies toward even his closest NPCs, but they’re not as restrictive as you’d think, unless you’re simply not paying attention to your controls.
It’s also counterproductive that the game makes progression unnecessarily complicated. Coen has to find specific manuals and recipes to unlock certain skills rather than just learning them on the spot. It’s an immersive form of progression, which I don’t necessarily see as a problem because it adds detail, but quality of life matters a lot in a game that already treats time as a precious resource. This gets worse when upgrading a skill point also uses in-game time.
So most of the time, I held off on spending skill points, leaving me with more than 15 unused by the end of the game. I only saved them for the most important parts of my playstyle, which mostly revolved around the overpowered Artery Strike and a couple of Witchcraft spells. Voracious Bite was also my only reliable vampire ability, with the others mostly serving as situational buffs. None of them were even fully upgraded, because I was still missing their manuals and upgrades scattered throughout the open world.
That said, this is Rebel Wolves’ debut project, and not everything it carried over from CDPR is a miss. Dawnwalker’s melee combat is an improvement over Geralt’s steel and silver sword maneuvers. The omnidirectional attacks make combat a little less tedious, and there’s something incredibly satisfying about perfectly parrying an enemy before slicing them to bits in a cinematic coup de grace. I just wish the cooldowns weren’t so frequent, especially compared to how Geralt uses his Witcher Signs.
30 Days of Dawnwalking
Now for the big elephant in the room.
Completing most side quests, upgrading abilities, and progressing the story all eat into a diegetic 30-day cycle. Unlike other RPGs where you can freely take on as many side quests as you want without worrying about consequences, this game treats time as a resource, similar to how modern Persona games use their day-to-day activities.
This is arguably one of the more polarizing aspects of Dawnwalker, but the criticism has been blown out of proportion by some players. Personally, it took a while to click for me, but now it’s one of my favorite RPG mechanics in a long time, because it actually punishes players for taking their sweet time doing god knows what. One of the biggest problems with The Witcher 3’s story was that Geralt had so many distractions, from finding question marks scattered across Skellige to playing Gwent, while his adopted daughter was out there fighting for her life. The Blood of Dawnwalker fixes that problem by putting a real time limit on your progression, giving your choices and actions a greater sense of urgency.
This makes every activity feel like a constant tug-of-war between “Should I do this now?” and “Should I save it until I have more time?”
But don’t let it scare you off, because the 30-day timer actually gives you plenty of breathing room to experience most of what the world has to offer. For starters, time doesn’t really move when you’re just strolling through the open world and killing random mobs of enemies. In my playthrough, I completed most of the major side quests involving characters like Anca and Lacra, and still had nine days left to tackle other activities I’d missed, like restoring broken shrines or upgrading my Witchcraft abilities, which admittedly weren’t a big part of my playstyle.
There’s an impressive amount of choice layered into these time-bound activities, and it’s one of the game’s most ambitious features. The intentionality of the system is so obvious because you can opt out of certain activities that don’t benefit your playthrough, like how I ignored most Witchcraft upgrades because I prefer swords over spells. That said, the system desperately needs more consistency, especially now that a sequel is already in the works. Improvements like clearly showing how much time each activity consumes would work wonders, because the amount of time certain actions take feels inconsistent. A simple act like Coen destroying a barrel of blood can cost three bars of time, while digging up a treasure only costs two.
It’s also worth noting that the progression isn’t entirely linear. You can technically ignore all these activities, hunt down none of the three Vrakhiri, and focus on one particular quest path toward the final boss, almost like heading straight for Calamity Ganon in Breath of the Wild. Doing that leaves you severely underpowered, though.
There’s a real Zelda-like progression to Dawnwalker, something I never expected to see in an RPG. The game pulls it off surprisingly well because most of the activities scattered throughout its world are optional, but taking the time to complete them gives you way more advantages than disadvantages.
Not the Best Game for Unreal Engine 5
One other thing I wanna bring up is how much Dawnwalker suffers in quality because of Unreal Engine 5’s wonkiness. Many of the game’s biggest problems, aside from its combat, come from how poorly optimized it can be.
Playing on my base PS5 in Balanced Mode helps a bit, since the visuals are much crisper and the atmosphere feels a tad more immersive at 40fps. The game does offer 30, 40, and 60fps graphics modes to play with. That said, visual glitches still yank me out of the experience. Light streaks not working as intended and shadows going haywire around Coen’s neck are so common that I don’t even blink when I see them anymore. They’re probably tied to Unreal Engine 5’s inner workings, though I’m no expert to say exactly what’s causing them.
Cutscenes also suffer from bizarre pop-ins that can ruin otherwise dramatic moments. Performance can tank when dashing through Vale Sangora using Coen’s speed powers, while menu navigation can also be a pain due to its lack of quality of life. There are even instances where icons get so low-quality that I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at.
Don’t get me wrong, Dawnwalker is a beautiful game, but Unreal Engine 5 isn’t doing it any favors compared to what The Witcher 3 managed to pull off with CDPR’s now-defunct REDengine. It’s disappointing because there’s so much promise in this dark-fantasy setting, and I can’t help but feel it could’ve been even more impressive if Rebel Wolves had more time to refine its mastery of the engine.
Letting the Right Characters In
While the combat and visuals aren’t anything to write home about, the writing and character work are far from disappointing. In fact, they’re the best I’ve seen this year.
These characters feel like real people struggling to find meaning in a world completely devoid of hope. Every major quest is dedicated to fleshing out the cast, each of whom plays an important role in your journey to take down Brencis. Anca helps empower Coen’s Witchcraft abilities, Lacra strengthens his Vrakhiri powers, and Crake focuses on his swordfighting mastery. While they serve as stepping stones for upgrades, their personal stories are deeply woven into these quests, giving you a clearer picture of who they are and why they matter.
This is also where Rebel Wolves seamlessly weaves romance into these stories. In between side quests, you can nudge Coen toward either genuine flirting or a more platonic relationship with each of the three candidates, which made me appreciate how his character develops. You get to see more of his human side when he’s not solely focused on saving his family.
Oddly enough, you can even spot traces of Witcher 3’s character work throughout the game, from Yennefer’s personality reflected in Lacra, to Triss’ softness with the witch, Anca. That shouldn’t take away from their originality as characters, since it’s already clear that this fresh cast has their own motivations.
The villains are also some of the most compelling characters in the game. Brencis’ Court of vampires, namely Bakir, Xanthe, and Ambrus, each parallel Coen’s allies rather than existing as mere fodder for his bloodlust. Getting to them takes a while, since you need to complete a couple of side activities that piss them off enough to earn an invitation to their audience.
That sense of choice, extending even to its villains, is another reason why I dig the story. Unlike Coen’s three romanceable characters, these three Vrakhiri also have their own unique options at the end of their questlines, letting you either use them as a means to an end or just take them down in one fell swoop.
It’s during these villainous encounters where I have to give credit to Rebel Wolves, because not every game can make me stop and think twice before saying, “Huh, maybe the villain isn’t exactly bad.”
Is The Blood of Dawnwalker Worth It?
Quality Eclipses Its Flaws, and I’m Hungry for More
The Blood of Dawnwalker isn’t afraid to embrace its freshness in the RPG scene, delivering an ambitious entry carried by its stellar writing and novel 30-day time limit. Yeah, there are clear design flaws that taint its otherwise impressive dark-fantasy setting, from barebones gameplay that could use more work to poorly optimized Unreal Engine 5 performance. But the level of quality coursing through Dawnwalker’s veins ultimately eclipses these issues, and a couple of updates could go a long way toward fixing them.
While it’s hard not to compare it to The Witcher 3 given their many similarities, Dawnwalker ultimately proves it’s more than just a shadow of its silver-haired peer. Coen’s journey leaves plenty of room for this new series to grow, and I’m genuinely hungry to see where this fresh-blooded IP goes next.
How Many Romance Options Are There?
Three: the witch Anca, the Vrakhiri Lacra, and Crake, the leader of the Manumits.
What Happens When the 30-Day Timer Ends?
When the timer ends, you can still finish the main story, since the game immediately pushes you toward the final boss and the endgame. Any unfinished tasks and side quests will be left behind, though.
Are There Multiple Endings?
Yes, four major ones: The Turncoat, Folk Hero, Patricide, and Knyazmaker. Which ending you get depends on the choices you make and which side you choose to support by the end of the game.
The Blood of Dawnwalker Recommended Guides
Final Verdict
The Blood of Dawnwalker delivers a great experience with a score of 88/100.