V Rising GBAtemp review
Computer
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): May 17, 2024
- Release Date (EU): May 17, 2024
- Publisher: Stunlock Studios
- Developer: Stunlock Studios
- Genres: Action, Adventure
- Also For: PlayStation 5
Game Features:
Review Approach:
V Rising is a survival action RPG experience where you assume the role of a lowly, weakened vampire, who seeks to claim the world as your own through building, adapting and evolving. Initially released in 2022 as an early access title, V Rising has become somewhat of a monster hit amongst PC players, and a PS5 version is on its way on June 11th!
Rise From Your Grave
The beginning of the game allows you to create a character from a massive selection of hair-dos, skin colours, face types and accessories, but the most fun is either generating a random name for them or naming them yourself. It came up with some of the most ridiculously outlandish random creations and the name suggestions were equally as bizarre: there are extensive vampy name lists for male and female characters.
Bursting out of your coffin you leap into your first introductory missions which include leaving the crypt and collecting 30 bones. Doing so unlocks new crafting recipes for a bone sword and bone ring. Using the Bone sword your reach is increased, as well as damage, but you now have a short cool-down meter on your combination attacks.
To control your character with the keyboard, you use WASD to move, shift to jump, left click to attack, the tab key for inventory and crafting, C to counter and F to interact or pick things up. If that's all too much you can plug in or connect a controller and use the onscreen prompts for this input method.
I found early on that playing with a controller felt more natural for me, as a predominantly console player. The bindings are easy enough on the controller, with prompts firing off repeatedly to hold your hand through the opening segments.
Kill or be Killed
The aim of the game is simple, kill or be killed, but you must choose your targets with finesse and cunning. Not only is there a huge time crunch, but the time of day is also your enemy with the sun beating down on your night-walking skin and burning you to a crisp in seconds.
The crux of this title is to become the apex predator, an unstoppable force that can conquer anything you come across, and you will come across some insane enemies throughout your jaunt around Farbane woods. From wolves to bears, giant man (vampire) eating Venus fly-trap plants, to mythical level creatures and magic-wielding evil antagonists that will overpower you in seconds if you don't keep your wits about you.
Smashing up the immediate scenery gives plant fibres, gems, and stone, whereas smashing skeletal guards, human adversaries and zombies gives bone, paper, metals and more. Using these materials you can craft upgraded gear and upgraded weapons and increase your abilities and weapons very swiftly. Look out for recipes to build more expansive and powerful items!
As you progress you unlock more slots for spells, including a fleeting dash manoeuvre, the ability to regain health through "blood mend", and a powerful ranged blast attack that can damage your foes from a distance.
The combat basics are very hack and slashy with timed parrying with RB and evading with B to clone yourself and dash you the way of trouble. Sometimes it is not possible to overcome some enemies immediately, and the beauty of this game is in the building of your core character to deal with specific adversaries.
You have many --MANY-- power-ups at your disposal within the skill trees, and I will only cover the main few that you will encounter within your first few hours because there are a lot!
Drink Blood, Control the Weak, Evolve as a Vampire!
There are six different types of magic to be earned and learned, including Blood, Chaos, Unholy, Illusion, Frost and Storm varieties.
Each, as you can imagine, is useful in its varied forms, but mainly elemental vs diametric-opposite-elemental and the rest are typical supernatural vampire hooliganism such as unholy tricking the weak into becoming a minion or causing plagues to ravage them, illusion causing hysteria with visions and spectres, and blood magic essentially converting your enemies into fuel to keep you alive and hungry for more.
Drinking animal blood refuels you but affects your blood pool, and therefore mutates you to be quicker, more resilient to the sun and take reduced damage for example. Depending on the state or species of the animal in question you could be sucking the claret from a wolf, a bear or a deer and gaining animalistic instincts and traits as well as speed and strength. On the other hand, drinking the blood of other creatures or undead enemies can either taint your blood pool into something more interesting. For example, draculin blood increases healing and boosts damage against weak enemies, while mutant blood reduces blood drain or enhances shape-shifting abilities.
There are so many possibilities that it becomes intoxicatingly addictive to try to craft a more deadly cocktail for your character to consume. I went all out for bears and wolves at first, but later on, I found that Mutants were my favourite pool to drink from because of their range of enhanced supernatural abilities as opposed to base wild specialities.
The blood pool is a fantastic mechanic in-game, and I was really impressed with the diversity of effects it produces each time.
There are also shape-shift abilities that enhance your traversal of the lands. These come in varied forms such as wolf, bear, rat, spider, bat, and even human form. The former imbues you with abilities such as enhanced jump skills, burrowing, smashing and crushing, and slinking through the night undetected. The latter, assuming the form of a human, allows you to infiltrate human settlements without raising alarms or attracting unwanted heat.
Plenty of Modes to Buddy up and Slay
The game runs in three main online modes, PVE where you battle for resources and domination though you cannot fight each other, PVP where you can kill each other for domination, and Duo PVP with up to two clans playing together, meaning there is no danger of one single clan dominating the servers.
As mentioned before the game has a build mechanic within it, though you have to complete the first six missions in the game to unlock this feature. The build features range from small temporary storage camps to full-blown vampire castles, and the main point of this is to have a base from which to persist throughout the server. Everything you do, have and build is stored on the server, so it persists on the server even when you aren't online. So lock it up tight and don't leave yourself exposed else you'll return to scenes of destruction and heartache. You can build yourself a cosy little coffin too, to keep yourself safely tucked in away from harm and the damned sun as well!
Overall there are roughly 40 hours of core gameplay, which encapsulates the necessary quests you will need to follow in order to progress more swiftly. Outside of this, there are a lot of things to see and do, and most involve shredding hoards of enemies and facing off against found bosses where you should expect around 80-90 hours of pure vampire bliss.
The bosses can be particularly taxing and incredibly hard; so prepare for long battles and stock up on nourishing replenishment items. You'll also need to get ready for a kind of strategy element of gameplay as opposed to the hack and slash of general world traversal.
Brilliantly Well Rounded, Constantly Being Updated
V Rising is a diverse, captivating and all-encompassingly well-made vampire simulation. Every aspect of the game oozes with quality and style, so much so that I think it's even made the age-old trope of the blood-sucker even trendier.
The developers Stunlock have seen fit to release a slew of updates up until now where they have brought the game up to its 1.0 release candidate. Hopefully, this will continue, with new level caps above the current 80-85 level (with specific armour sets buff combinations), and introduce yet more biomes and further bosses to slay.
This one is a must-play for any fans of the supernatural because it looks and plays so incredibly well.
Verdict
- 40+ hrs of core gameplay, 80+ for completionists
- Excellent crafting and upgrade systems
- Varied buffs and nerfs across all abilities
- Lots of bosses, spells, recipes and weapons to unlock
- 49 achievements on steam
- Big learning curve at first, but the game guides you through nicely.
- Exceptionally unforgiving throughout
- The sun keeps getting me!
