Developer:ย Rebel Wolves
Publisher:ย Bandai Namco Entertainment
Reviewed On:ย PS5
Available On:ย PS5, PC, Xbox Series X|S
Release Date:ย September 3, 2026
Review Copy Provided By:ย Bandai Namco Entertainment
What is it like to be half of something? To be both sides of the same coin? You’re not quite one but not quite the other. You gain the best of both worlds. To be both vampire and human at the same time.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is developed by Rebel Wolves, formerly key veterans from CD Projekt Red. If you’re wondering why this game shares similar DNA with the Witcher games, that’s most likely why. Published by Bandai Namco, this is Rebel Wolves’ first game, but with such an impressive resume, it’s hard not to hold them up to a high standard.
The question now is whether it can live up to the hype and break out of the shadow of its spiritual predecessor, or will it leave you disappointed at its huge potential? Read this review and decide for yourself.
The Blood of Dawnwalker lets you know right from the start that your time is limited. During the tutorial segment, Coen is overwhelmed with a good amount of potential quests to partake in. However, he needs to finish the main task before the sun goes down.
Once you finish the tutorial, you’re given just thirty days to complete the main objective. This sort of gave me the wrong impression. I honestly thought that the time mechanic would be more important and force me to be more strategic with what quests I focus on and which to ignore. However, the time is actually very generous with what you can do.
It’s more of a matter of choosing to take on a quest as a vampire or just an ordinary man since the game has a day and night cycle that affects gameplay. Weirdly enough, this doesn’t even matter story-wise. People don’t really react to you being a vampire at all. Which is a bit disappointing, as I thought there would be more consequences to regular people seeing me whip out my claws, teleport around, and turn into a wolf.
To be honest, I found the combat to be lackluster. It’s not bad, but it’s only serviceable. In fact, combat did feel rather repetitive, especially once I got used to the directional blocking mechanic. On standard difficulty, the game is almost a bit too easy, with almost all enemies fighting predictably and most moves being blockable.
This leads to Coen becoming a one-man army almost immediately. Even early in the game, I was able to take down outposts without careful planning or consideration. And that’s without his vampire powers and being underleveled. I didn’t really feel the need to take some of the game’s underhanded options, as brute force was almost always the best possible route.
Because of this, Coen kind of feels disconnected as a character. At the start, he’s an ordinary big brother with some sword training under his father. A couple of days later, he’s single-handedly destroying military outposts by himself.
It’d be a bit more believable if the game leaned more into his Dawnwalker powers becoming a crutch mechanically. Have him struggle and be more defenseless in the morning while making him nigh invincible during the night. But as it stands, I don’t feel like Coen even needed to be a vampire to begin with.
Most of this really comes from the fact that the combat is too easy. On the intended difficulty, fighting most enemies can feel repetitive. The Blood of Dawnwalker has a similar mechanic to Kingdom Come: Deliverance in that you’re able to choose which direction you block and attack from.
You can just hold the block button to do so from all sides, but this will cost you stamina. If you block correctly from a specific direction, you consume no stamina at all. But if you time it just before the enemy hits, you’re able to parry their attacks into a riposte, which deals extra damage and can even temporarily weaken enemies.
While this feels like it should make combat more engaging, the issue is that it’s way too forgiving. The enemy attack indicator comes in way too early, letting you know seconds ahead of time where they’re about to strike. Enemies also show a surprising amount of honor, taking turns to attack you one at a time. Because of this, positioning isn’t really crucial. I just stood in the middle, parrying all their attacks and then countering until all were no longer a threat.
This isn’t even touching Coen’s arsenal of abilities. The issue is that they’re just sort of there. I never felt the need to utilize these skills because the basic attacks already took care of most of what I needed during combat. Sometimes I forget I even have active abilities.
Much like its spiritual predecessor, The Blood of Dawnwalker allows you to invest in skill points through three different skill trees. You have Witchcraft, Swordmaster, and Vampirism. What’s interesting here is that certain skills also take time and points to learn. Since you’re operating under a time limit, you’re forced to think twice about which skills you want to invest in.
Normally, this would be a really interesting mechanic if only the skills were more enticing. The majority of these skills don’t really feel all that game-changing. You basically get this skill that lets you do something a percentage better than you’re already doing.
One of the major skill trees, Witchcraft, has no reason to exist. On paper, it primarily inflicts debuffs on enemies. The advantage is that, unlike vampirism, witchcraft can be used during the day. However, compared to his other skills, using Witchcraft feels underwhelming.
Even with the gameplay being a bit lackluster for me, I really love how The Blood of Dawnwalker gives you the freedom to handle its quests on your own terms. You get a lot of different options on how to go about things. And the dialogue you pick can be very significant.
I was playing The Blood of Dawnwalker with a friend and discussed how a few quests went on his end. We both made entirely different choices that resulted in vastly different outcomes that affected our gameplay down the line.
Difficulty-wise, the game does give you a few options. I played on the Fair difficulty, which is Dawnwalker’s version of normal. However, you can also play the game on Duelist, which is the hardest difficulty. Surprisingly, enemies actually have less health here, but their attacks are also more lethal. This setting also takes away all the helpful UI, such as the directional attack indicators, forcing you to read the enemy attacks through familiarity with their attack animations instead. If you want a more hardcore experience, then you should go for that.
Coen’s main objective is to save his family and dismantle the cruel Brencis’ control over the people. How he goes about doing it is up to you. Brencis has three lieutenants, or boyars as the game calls them, which you can take out in any order. You’re even given the option to skip the bulk of the game entirely and just head for the final boss himself.
If you choose to play the game normally, you’re given a set of quests which allow you to interfere with Brencis’ operations. This will raise your notoriety with them, causing stronger enemies to appear on the map. Raise it high enough, and Brencis will start imposing serious penalties such as curfews, which prevent you from doing business with NPCs at night, and his guards will recognize you and attack on sight, making it almost impossible to go about normally.
His lieutenants will also take notice of you as you raise your infamy with them and unlock quests allowing you to directly challenge them. Funny enough, I accidentally encountered one of the boyars when I was roaming around and exploring. So it’s possible I could’ve hunted all three down without raising my notoriety at all or disrupting their operations.
I have to admit that I wasn’t too invested in the story. The overall themes and aesthetic of the game did catch my attention, but the overall tale just didn’t do it for me. Mostly because the characters themselves aren’t too interesting. I personally felt Coen to be a bit underwhelming of a character, and everyone else around him wasn’t any better.
The Blood of Dawnwalker had a very strong start, and it felt promising, but it quickly loses direction once the world opens up to you. I didn’t feel particularly motivated to save Coen’s family, and I can’t say any of the characters left a lasting impact on me. I just didn’t care what happened to any of them, even as I tried to get into the story and motivations.
It most likely has something to do with the 30-day time limit for Coen. Because he’s in a rush to save his family, you’ll never really get to see him letting his manbun hair down. It wouldn’t make much sense for him to relax, but because of this, he winds up kind of stiff as a character. Dialogue in the game also feels stiff and lacks any sort of charm or humor to them.
Outside of combat, you’re also able to partake in Witcher-like quests. You can come across certain areas requiring you to investigate your surroundings. And much like the Witcher, you can hold down a button for Coen to highlight clues on the screen for you to interact with or follow.
Time itself doesn’t progress by merely standing around and exploring. Doing quests, getting into specific events, and investing in some skills will consume time, and certain quests even have multiple stages where time progresses. There was a quest where I started with my vampire powers, but then daylight broke, and I was back to being an ordinary man before it finished.
The day and night cycle is tied heavily into Coen’s abilities. As a dawnwalker, he doesn’t have the same weaknesses as the other vampires and is freely able to walk in the sun. But at night, he turns into a vampire able to use his claws to rip enemies to shreds, teleport short distances, and even turn into a wolf. Night is the only time Coen is able to tap into the Vampirism skill tree.
I kind of wish that his vampire side was more important because, besides its traversal abilities, it never really ties into any of the quests. Coen doesn’t need to access any of his vampire abilities to complete quests or reach certain conclusions. His ability to investigate, for example, is the same when he’s a normal man.
I played the game on the regular PS5. The performance was fluid, and there was never a moment when I felt the game wasn’t optimized. You can select from three different graphical settings. You have Quality mode, which gives you only 30 FPS. Performance mode gives you 60 FPS. And you also have Balanced, which offers 40 FPS.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is gorgeous. It’s a bit of a bummer that the user interface feels a bit dated. Not the design, but how it works. It would’ve been better had Rebel Wolves implemented a contextual UI where your health and consumables don’t appear unless you’re in combat. You do have the option to turn off the user interface entirely, but it’s almost impossible to play the game normally like that.
I think The Blood of Dawnwalker is a decent game that has its fair share of ups and downs. It has an interesting idea and concept but feels undercooked in its execution. Had the gameplay taken a bit more risks, the score would’ve been much higher. I couldn’t help but leave feeling that my time with the game was mostly forgettable.
The Blood of Dawnwalker (PS5)
I think The Blood of Dawnwalker is a decent game that has its fair share of ups and downs. It has an interesting idea and concept but feels undercooked in its execution. Had the gameplay taken a bit more risks, the score would've been much higher. I couldn't help but leave feeling that my time with the game was mostly forgettable.
The Good
- Multiple options with lasting consequence
- Infamy system makes the game feel more alive
- Tackle the main story how you want to
The Bad
- Repetitive combat
- Stiff and forgettable characters
- Central theme of being a Dawnwalker feels flat
- Skill tree feels underwhelming
