Rebel Wolves, a new studio formed by former CD Projekt Red developers, set out to do what many new teams can’t. They set out to build a new franchise and, in their planning, spawn a new series of games for years to come before knowing what the audience would think. Last year at The Game Awards, we learned they plan to take their Dawnwalker series across centuries of storytelling, and many wondered if they were putting the cart before the horse. After completing The Blood of Dawnwalker for review, they were right to have confidence in the world they’ve created.

As Coen, the eldest son in a peasant family in southeastern Europe, your homeland comes to be run by Brencis, a vampire, and his deadly clan. Brencis promises protection from things that plague this area, like the literal plague, but soon the villagers find themselves being drained like cattle and miserable. Coen gets wrapped up in a plot to overthrow Brencis and his leadership, and is nearly turned into a vampire himself. However, the turn doesn’t complete, and he is only a vampire at night, free to walk the world during the day as a human.

With your family captured and 30 days to save them, Coen must quickly learn the extent of his powers. The player, too, has to figure out how on Earth a single person, Dawnwalker or not, is supposed to lead the charge to overthrow undead fascists. Immediately, the story and acting tightly grip you, and you’re hooked. Once the game opens up to a massive open world with tons of icons to explore and things to do, it’s full speed ahead in what turned out to be about a 22-hour experience for me.

There’s certainly a lot of quests I missed as well. As you play through the game, your main goal is to overthrow Brencis’ court, led by three vampire leaders. To get their attention, you do things around the map to anger them, like ruin their brewery operations, hunt down their promising soldiers, or simply kill off the guards stationed around the world. These result in a big quest for each court member, all three of which were wonderfully done and harkened back to the best storytelling of games like The Witcher 3 or The Elder Scrolls.

Your combat encounters are a bit to get used to, as the attacking and blocking are carried out on a high-low-left-right grid of sorts for directionality. The moments where I found myself surrounded by vampire soldiers immediately reminded me of my favorite combat moments in the Batman Arkham franchise. You’re seeking to time out blocks and parries as best as possible to keep the upper hand. You’re also using witchcraft abilities, swordcraft tactics, and vampire abilities at nighttime, all of which you unlock through experience points, finding books in the world to read and learn skills, and even by drinking the blood of the evil vampire court.

Decision-making is present in much of The Blood of Dawnwalker in what feels like a meaningful way. For example, once turned, you’ll have the option to drink blood and kill quest characters you encounter. It slowly contributes to Coen’s sense of inhumanity, no matter how well he can walk during the day in sunlight. Every quest I played through, from massive operations to form a militia to Red Dead Redemption 2-style encounters that happen by accident as I move from one waypoint to the next, felt well thought out and progressed the story.

There does come a point where taking on quests to anger the court makes things feel a bit repetitive. I think with a variety of quest types in the next entry, The Blood of Dawnwalker could really shine. Around the 15-hour mark, however, it started to feel like I was buying time until I could face Brencis head-on. The court quests are wonderful, and storytelling is top-notch throughout, but that stagnant feeling so many open-world games face around the midway mark is definitely present here.

Another drawback is some odd in-engine moments throughout my experience. Things like falling through rocks I should be able to stand on, and twitchy cameras that get caught on the environment, do make it obvious this is a small team’s first game. What I appreciate, however, is that none of these intricacies take away from the overall experience. It’s more or less like the Bethesda jank we’re all so quick to forgive in favor of the overall experience.

My wish for the next entry, since Rebel Wolves plans to keep developing games in this franchise that follow Coen through the centuries, is to see more variety in quests. I also wouldn’t mind removing the 30-day time limit. It’s not necessarily something that tainted my experience, but watching the clock while you make decisions that pass time in-game does put stress on the player, which will likely lead many to rush through things faster than they need to. My best advice: just play the game as if you’re not working on a deadline. It has a way of playing out in your favor so long as you’re checking off quests.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is the type of success story we wish every new game development studio could experience. From a memorable new character and world to incredible storytelling, there’s much to love in this game as an action RPG fan. Very much in the vein of The Witcher 3, it asks the player to immerse themselves in a well-developed world, and the experience couldn’t be more fulfilling. A few tweaks to the formula, and its next entry could be an all-timer for both open-world games and the third-person action genre.

An Xbox Series X review copy of The Blood of Dawnwalker was provided by Bandai Namco for this review.

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The Blood of Dawnwalker

69.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Storytelling is top notch
• Fun abilities as a vampire and swordsman
• A great open-world experience

Cons

• The in-game time limitation forces players to feel rushed, even if they don't have to
• There's in-engine jank that can be a bit distracting