V Rising Review - Soulsucking Children of the Night

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After being in early access for two years, V Rising was finally released, giving us the ultimate vampire simulator. You play as a newly awakened vampire who must evolve your abilities and work towards becoming strong and deadly by defeating bosses and traveling across five biomes. The addictive gameplay, paired with the overwhelmingly positive changes made after its time in early access, leads me to believe that V Rising is one of the best vampire-centric games in recent years. However, it isn’t all blood drops on roses with issues like bland storytelling and long wait times when it comes to crafting different items. The life of a vampire is long and complicated.

Gameplay: Freshly Squeezed Repetition

Fighting a vampire hunter. V Rising game.

The top-down roleplaying gameplay gives you the chance to customize your vampire to feed how you want them to and fight how you feel is most strategic. You can choose from different weapon types, spells, abilities, and even animal forms you will learn as you progress across the expansive world. After a while, you’ll discover which combination of weapons and powers are best used across a range of enemies, including an army of skeletons, bandits, and even the famed vampire hunter Simon Belmont.

Vampires crave power, so you can also use your abilities to track down vicious bosses to learn new tricks towards defeating the ultimate vampire, Dracula, the Immortal King. However, this gets old after a while. The fighting starts to get incredibly repetitive as you need to fight against more and more enemies to get stronger and find items that can be used to craft workbenches and coffins. It doesn’t help that you’ll find yourself waiting for several hours to craft certain items. I found myself AFK more times than I’d like to admit just because I needed to grind up stones or turn wood pieces into planks. Fortunately, the many biomes and areas you can explore have monsters and creatures that are unique enough to mask the repetitiveness slightly.

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Graphics and Audio: A Brutal Symphony

V Rising is an incredibly attractive game. Its art style mimics early 2000s indie comics from Image Comics or Dark Horse Comics while catering to the gothic background that people associate with vampires. This is embodied in the game’s atmosphere as well with abandoned stone structures and strong, towering trees used to hide those who wish to be hidden. I was also incredibly impressed with the design of many enemies and locations I encountered. The only fault I could find was with the character creator. I wouldn’t exactly call it stellar, but I can excuse it since you’re never really focusing on what your vampire looks like.

The beauty doesn’t stop at the art style. You’ll be serenaded with a gorgeous soundtrack as you fight enemies or traverse across the different biomes. Every moment in-game is breathtaking to both look at and listen to; even the parts where you’re dying due to sun exposure or garlic debuffs. It’s clear that there was a major focus on how players would feel about being a vampire as well as how they would learn to grow as one.

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Story: A Vampire’s Tale

There really is no story that you’re following in V Rising. That being said, that doesn’t mean that the game is about nothing. It is very much about how a newly awakened vampire would react to suddenly having a thirst for power. You’re not only able to create your vampire, but you can choose which powers make them unique, which animal form is the most useful, and which spells will be the last that your enemies see before you smite them down. In many ways, you’re creating what you think will be the most formidable foe against the immortal Dracula and those who came after him.

Beyond that, you can gather several other lore aspects of the world by the monsters and creatures that inhabit it. Even the different V Blood bosses you can fight each have lore that is also told via the environmental storytelling of where you find them. They aren’t just there for you to fight for no reason. Even though the story isn’t front and center, it’s definitely there for those who wish to find it.

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Exploration: And Everywhere That a Vampire Went…

V Rising’s game map is massive. The five biomes give you a lot to explore and tons of places to place castles down. However, I was not a big fan of how territories were handled. I found myself either consistently moving castles I already had established or creating almost exact duplicates of them just to avoid fast-traveling everywhere. Since the major disadvantage to using Waygates is not being able to carry crafting items, fast travel hardly ever seems like a viable option for traversal. That being said, the only real downside to having so many castle territories is finding the time to find and craft the materials necessary to actually build and furnish them.

There’s still fun to be had, even with these issues. Eventually, you’ll default to what I like to call the Main Manor, which is the castle you glam and customize to look better than all the rest. Progressing in the game also means unlocking new items to decorate your castle with and other things like light fixtures, wallpapers, and coffins for your servants. If you aren’t wasting hours of your time picking out the best wall colors and floor types for your castle, are you really a vampire?

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Conclusion: It’s Raining Blood… and Fun!

V Rising is one of the most unique and fun vampire games that I have played in a very long time. Given the time that it had in early access, it’s clear that the development team took all of the feedback that they received to heart. Not only is the UI flawless, but there are so many combat possibilities and ways to progress that make for fun an engaging sessions every time you open the game. Unfortunately, there are many times when the gameplay feels repetitive. When paired with the length of time it takes to accomplish very simple tasks, it can feel like the game is primarily spent waiting for things to be completed rather than living your vampire self. However, even with this issue, the pros still outweigh the cons.