{"id":42463,"date":"2026-08-31T16:33:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/?p=42463"},"modified":"2026-08-31T16:33:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:33:03","slug":"review-of-the-blood-of-dawnwalker-a-noteworthy-addition-to-top-rpgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/?p=42463","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Blood of Dawnwalker: A Noteworthy Addition to Top RPGs"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

**The Blood of Dawnwalker Review**<\/p>\n

*The Blood of Dawnwalker’s a vampire RPG with plenty of Witcher DNA, but also enough in its time limits and criss-crossing narrative threads to set it apart from CD Projekt’s work.*<\/p>\n

– **Developer:** Rebel Wolves
\n– **Publisher:** Bandai Namco Entertainment
\n– **Release:** September 3rd 2026
\n– **On:** Windows
\n– **From:** [Steam](https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/3751260\/The_Blood_of_Dawnwalker\/)
\n– **Price:** \u00a359.99\/\u20ac69.99\/$69.99
\n– **Reviewed on:** Intel Core i7-12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, Windows 11<\/p>\n

The moment I knew [The Blood of Dawnwalker](https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/games\/dawnwalker) had *it* came when, not far in, one of the local peat diggers fell into a big hole. Tasked with finding him by his brother at the start of what seemed a fairly mundane early fetch quest, I rolled my eyes a bit as I slid in to try and locate the poor sod. He was, predictably, cowering in a corner of the cave complex. Right, now to get out of here and claim a lifetime supply of partially decayed vegetation.<\/p>\n

Wait, what was that noise? I\u2019ll not spoil the rest of the quest, but suffice it to say that it provided the first taste of Rebel Wolves\u2019 vampire RPG offering the same sort of memorable adventure as the series many of its devs cut their teeth on – CD Projekt\u2019s Witcher and [Cyberpunk](https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/games\/cyberpunk-2077) games.<\/p>\n

The Blood of Dawnwalker\u2019s Witcher DNA is obvious. It has a detective-style focus mode that highlights things in the world you should investigate or follow in yellow, just like Geralt\u2019s witcher senses do. Its daytime combat mixes sword swipes that only do damage if an enemy isn\u2019t blocking with parries, dodges, and recharging magical abilities that provide an extra edge in a similar fashion to a witcher\u2019s signs. One of those magical abilities also allows Coen to briefly reanimate corpses in order to interrogate them, much like Yennefer does in that [Witcher 3](https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/games\/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt) quest about the cursed garden in Skellige. Dawnwalker also has vampires who rip and tear through foes with long claws and can zip around or climb unassailable structures as clouds of mist.<\/p>\n

If you told someone watching you play it that it\u2019s a CD Projekt spin-off called The Witcher: Blood of Dawnwalker, developed because someone there fancied making an entry in that series without a cat-eyed medieval fantasy pest controller as protagonist, you\u2019d have no trouble convincing them. Aside from not being totally ancient, the game’s bright-eyed 14th-century peasant hero, Coen, plays like you might expect Witcher 3 Blood and Wine vamps Regis and Detlaff to if they were the lead. He does have a chink in his armour compared to those two, though. In the daytime, Coen\u2019s human, with his vampiric powers only kicking in once the sun goes down. Thus, the game splits itself into a day and night cycle, with each made up of six segments of time which tick away a certain amount on completing a quest or activity, some of which are only available while the sun or moon are out.<\/p>\n

By night, you move like a supernatural force, warping and whipping around terrified foes in a frenzy of blood-fuelled power fantasy. So throbbing are you with crimson vigor that you face the peril of having your destructive craving for the red stuff overwhelm you mid-conversation either because you\u2019ve chosen that option or simply because you\u2019ve let your health dip low enough that your body decides it needs a sanguine boost. That said, I\u2019ve found it pretty easy to avoid having this result in accidental drainings of friendly NPCs – both by regularly snacking on animals in the wilderness whenever my segments of life force were close to empty and by leaving a lot of the talking-heavy activities to daytime Coen. As such, aside from the few times guards have spotted me teleporting onto a rooftop and a chase through the streets has ensued, I\u2019ve never felt much like Coen\u2019s dark gift comes with much of a curse. Well, I say that, but sometimes the teleportation can lead to rather janky-looking climbs, especially while warping up jagged cliffs – though I\u2019m not sure if there\u2019s a way the devs could have filed this away without adding guardrails that blunted the fundamental fun of whooshing about.<\/p>\n

Instead<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/div>\n

The moment I knew The Blood of Dawnwalker<\/a> had it<\/strong> came when, not far in, one of the local peat diggers fell into a big hole. Tasked with finding him by his brother at the start of what seemed a fairly mundane early fetch quest, I rolled my eyes a bit as I slid in to try and locate the poor sod. He was, predictably, cowering in a corner of the cave complex. Right, now to get out of here and claim a lifetime supply of partially decayed vegetation.<\/p>\n

Wait, what was that noise? I’ll not spoil the rest of the quest, but suffice it to say that it provided the first taste of Rebel Wolves’ vampire RPG offering the same sort of memorable adventure as the series many of its devs cut their teeth on – CD Projekt’s Witcher and Cyberpunk<\/a> games.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}