Every so often, a game comes out, and it just takes forever for the gears to start moving and the experience to actually click. If I am being honest, I thought that 007 First Light was a process for me to get it, though in that case I knew exactly how I was playing it wrong. 20 hours into The Blood of Dawnwalker, I wasn’t truly enjoying myself. I teetered between something scathing, focusing on all the parts that even now still irk me. Or I could focus on the positive. It wasn’t until a little while after this, wandering through a forest at night, that I went into beast mode and killed what I think was an entire battalion of soldiers. Focusing on the positives stopped feeling like a compromise.
I was happy to turn that corner from what was obligated progression into an enjoyable growth, but I still stand by the beginning of the game having its issues. Similar to one of my favorite franchises of all time, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, there is this painful grind to figure out what the hell you are doing in the first place. It’s a double-edged sword because, on the one hand, The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t really feel like anything I have played before. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel like anything I have played before. I love the idea of that, though at times it’s hard to tell if I actually loved it or secretly hated it.
This all starts with the omnidirectional combat that you learn early on is going to be half the struggle. Four cardinal directions that you can block and dodge in for what feels like a precise system when it is working. When you have a group of enemies surrounding you, coming at you from every side, and you are repelling them back before the counterattack, the whole thing might be second to none, and there are windows to take that control.
It took a while before the system really became compelling for me. Thankfully, The Blood of Dawnwalker has a leveling system that feels very comfortable and goes beyond just needing new armor or skills. Leveling increases your stats, and you feel this when going back to a location that kicked you down with three additional levels under your belt and tearing through every one of the soldiers who were holding you back. It can be hard to gauge; that is the thing, with you entering a location thinking, ok, let’s clear these four, only for you to be fighting 11 before you know it. In these cases, no amount of levels can really save you; only perfection.
There is an issue I had with the leveling that I will get to in a bit, as it ties to the time progression system, but on a base level, they are really useful, divided into three categories: Witchcraft, Swordsman, and Vampirism. If you were aware of the game, you would know about the latter two; the witchcraft one caught me by surprise. It’s an interesting addition because it serves the purpose of splitting the difference between the more powerful Vampire version of the protagonist, Coen, and his human form. Unfortunately, so many key abilities are tied to this, which adds some annoyance to actual completion.
Anyway, the thing is, once you upgrade skills, you have more survivability; this is expected. Through a combination of upgrades, you begin to see regeneration of your health during combat, and this was my turning point and realization. Enemies don’t just deal damage; miss a block, and you can lose all your health in one or two hits, making most of the combat experiences frustrating, given that you are rarely fighting more than four, especially on important tasks. I would also like to note that the reticle in the center for direction is a little small. It is VERY hard to read if you are playing the game on a PlayStation Portal, like I was while trying to rush through Snowfall so I would be prepared for the series premiere of The Drop.
Compounding all of this are the issues with the combat, such as it being frustrating as hell in small rooms where the camera gets smashed against a wall, and enemies might not even be trackable. In large fields, on more than one occasion, the camera started freaking out and spasming, which was disorienting. If it goes behind a texture, it is hard to read the omnitracker. There were also several moments in which my blocks weren’t even being registered despite fully adopting the defensive stance to focus on it. And these are just my technical gripes.
The lock-on function in combat is just bad and bizarre. One of the first special abilities you get is a simple one, allowing you to throw sand in an enemy’s eyes. Even in the description of this move, it is implied that the point is to open them up to free attacks. However, in practice, the game always took to using it as a cue to switch to another target, sometimes on the opposite side of the killing field. This forces you to quickly switch targets, which is a less-than-precise process, or attack the enemy that might require not getting hit by the three closest enemies to do so. A good ability actively feels like it punishes you.
There is a soft lock and a hard lock as well, with just fighting snapping you to square up against one opponent. This can be slightly floaty, as the real point of doing this is so Coen can instinctively switch targets, which isn’t always the case. The hard lock was a nightmare, as I found it so much harder to control where enemies were. You are often even trying to manage a few off-screen, which can be frustrating as well. You know what the most enjoyable feeling in the world is? Landing a perfect parry to open up an enemy, only for all your attacks to be blocked because another enemy is standing so close that they block you for them. And this sucks because landing a perfect parry is actually satisfying!
Part of the narrative is that Coen is a daywalker (ohhhhh, that’s the title. How are they doing that?), which means he has two forms. He is more or less human in the day and a vampire at night, and this becomes a strange disparity, as in human form he can be next to useless. You get a crafting system for items, which you desperately need to use, as eating food is this frustratingly slow health regen. I understand that the vampire is, you know, a vampire, but it becomes frustrating during the early hours that the human form has some trouble walking any path, on the off chance they get jumped. The vampire form gets a healing ability from the jump, something I feel the witchcraft ability should have started with.
The time management system is also slightly frustrating, though once you get used to it, you will overcome this. Coen is basically trying to rescue his family in 30 days, and to accomplish this, he has to make every choice count, or at least that’s the idea. This is done similarly to Persona, with the day and night periods having several blocks, and LITERALLY everything eats into this. And when I say that, I mean it. Most missions require time to start, time to finish a goal, and more time to end. You need to pay time and skill points for new abilities or upgraded abilities—that grip I had earlier—or, and this is true, any random group of enemies might eat a time block if you fight them.
When starting the game, I didn’t realize Coen’s father wanted me to come back to him with some herbs he asked for, so my narrative started with my mom getting torn apart by vampires—fun times. This is because everything runs on this time system, and choice is required. Again, I love this in sheer theory, because obviously I felt the weight of my action (or inaction in this case). In practice, though, it can be frustrating to work through. I will say I reached the ability to take on the final mission around day fifteen but also forwent buying skills out of fear; like in that intro, I would lock myself into something that required time I didn’t realize and come up too little too late.
The thing is, the game doesn’t tell you what matters and what doesn’t. This can be fun in a game like Elden Ring, where you just head out and do it, maybe locking yourself out with active choices. With the added mechanics here, you have no real idea just how much you can impact your game just by playing. The big bad of The Blood of Dawnwalker, Brencis, will issue decrees as you disrupt him and your face becomes more known. This is a fairly welcome feature. While I took a mission in the main city, one of the leads involved recognized Coen and laughed that he was getting into bar fights while everybody and their grandmother wanted to kill him. This is such a great detail.
Then the shoe dropped, because at this point in my infamy, the main city started keeping its gates closed, so to leave, I actually needed to start waiting until night to escape with my vampiric powers. There are side access tunnels that you CAN get, but if you didn’t get up to this point, you really, really can’t. And this can happen a lot, cutting off routes you never knew you had and being punished in the process. That said, the city is the best playground for vampiric powers, as blinking across rooftops is fun as hell, and it doesn’t work nearly as well in the rest of the map. Furthermore, the game has a lot of semi-invisible walls where you can climb a mountain, but it wants to slight you, which is frustrating when you have a teleport ability made for exactly that.
Another big issue is how easy it can be to get into a semi-softlock situation, so be careful and remember to also save. Save scum too, but that’s unrelated. A few tasks take you off the map and are so lengthy that autosaves will fill up with moments past the point. Even if the enemies you are dealing with are scaled above you, this is fine, you might say to yourself. Right up until you hit the boss, whose two shots you take while you need to play death by 1000 cuts. This happened once, and I needed to revert to a point about an hour back. Yes, you can drop the difficulty, which is why it’s not a true softlock, but it remains a frustration.
Taking on tasks does carry a weight most games fail to offer. Even events that have nothing to do with toppling Brencis and his minions lead to something of note or an interesting revelation. The ones that do concern forward progression are meaty and meaningful and genuinely open up additional routes, giving the player a plethora of ways to ultimately complete their task. And, because the game, once it opens up, pushes you towards nothing, there is freedom in how you explore and accomplish these things. There is also some frustration, as much of the early game can lead you right into enemy encampments scaled much higher than you, with way more soldiers than you can handle. My first, maybe six, tasks went that way, making progress feel nightmarish.
Coen also proves a capable lead for the duration of the game, though it is not the most enjoyable I have ever had. He has this soft-spoken way about him that works in certain situations and less so in others. Getting to see him during the missions, trying to solve people’s problems, manages to hold attention. The biggest complaint I have is I don’t think there was enough growth there. Even when he is declaring he is Coen of Leaslea to intimidate his enemies, he still comes off as the character being reprimanded by his old man we met at the beginning of the game.
It’s when everything comes together that you see how good the design is. At one point, I was destroying Xanthe’s operation when I saved a girl being escorted to a castle, as Xanthe had chosen her. She was very ungrateful, by the way. Doing this caused a person to approach me, unlocking a mission to sneak into her castle. I had planned to as well, but wanted to complete this other mission first, which eventually had me break into the Svartrau City chapel as a vampire through a bell tower. Who else was there but Xanthe, praying with her minions? Now, I planned to be stealthy and stay on the scaffolding, but I messed up and fell right on top of her; then the boss fight began. It was epic, and my victory was the talk of the town; the point being, these little individualized moments are fantastic no matter how they happen.
The most annoying thing about bosses, and there are more than just the three obvious ones, is that they really require perfection in your blocks to make progress. Even then you might need to be perfect on every attack in a three-hit combo to come back with two hits of your own. These moments actually get crazy with how fast you might need to jump from blocking to attacking and back again, then back a third time. These are epic moments, and when you are in that flow state, my freaking Ifrit, it’s good, but it’s also a lot of work.
The good news, though, bosses have an epic orchestral soundtrack to accompany these blisteringly fast exchanges. In fact, the whole soundtrack is great, but there is something to be said for the hype you feel when those battle tracks start playing. You might get so into it YOU FORGET THEY USE A BLOCK OF YOUR TIME TO DEFEAT THEM! While the world has some lack of polish in it, vistas and landscapes are beautifully sweeping, and you can really take it in with your vampiric powers.
Verdict
The painful part is I really wanted to love The Blood of Dawnwalker, not have this lukewarm emotion towards it. The best aspects of the game are so unique compared to everything else out there and, with enough commitment, are very fun to play. It’s the other side of that coin that muddies the water. That great combat has to contend with technical hiccups, and those are the only things where maybe I would feel differently. Progression is the best example of how great Ideas just keep having minor directional choices hold them back profusely. There is a series here; developer Rebel Wolves has a great concept here that works when it works but doesn’t when it doesn’t.
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Developer: Rebel Wolves
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Release Date: September 10, 2026
Pros
+Omni Directional combat grows on you and offers precise and intense swordplay
+Great Narrative with weighted decisions to make and an enjoyable soundtrack to accompany it.
+Meaningful progression system for both character forms
+Great world to explore, with several way of interacting with everything and not limit on where and how to do so.
Cons
-While combat is great when it works, it boasts a lot of design and technical flaws.
-Everything costs time, which can create some choices more frustrating than weighted.
-Very easy make game harder or progression frustratingly complex without and real awareness.
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The Blood of Dawnwalker
