If the fantasy goal of this game is to "Become a Vampire Lord", then this game nails it. The two aspects of this are being the "Vampire" (combat & RPG mechanics) and the "Lord" (survival/building mechanics).

On the "Lord" side of this, compared to other survival games, V Rising definitely adds a ton of QoL features (really long durability, really forgiving base decay with essences lasting for a ton of hours, no weight tracking). All of this prevents the phenomena of a lot of survival games (which some love, some don't ) where in order to acquire resources, you have to sometimes bring multiple pickaxes, and possibly end a supply run short because you're low on weight. V Rising makes the supply run loop way more accessible and forgiving compared to other games. This in turn allows base building to feel relatively simple (though of course, the deeper you want to go into the aesthetics tree, the more you will have to grind for resources). Once you get the patterns done, it takes maybe 30-60 minutes to get a cool Vampire style castle up and running, which is super super feels good and hits the "Lord" side very effectively, due to the supply runs being more accessible.

On the "Vampire" side of the fantasy, the combat evokes a feeling that you ARE this badass vampire. The execute mechanic & blood draining mechanics especially enhance this. Blood Draining & Types is one of the unique RPG elements to this game, which I won't go into super detail- Alls I will say is that it definitely builds up the Vampire fantasy because basically you're incentivized to suck everyone's blood and feel like a badass. The execute mechanic especially feels SUPER snappy, which definitely evokes the feeling of being this "scary monster of the night" vibe, because you literally turn into an untargettable shadow, zip all over the place, then execute and kill the NPC. Feels great. Also, the Blood Tracking aspect where you hunt Named NPCs in the world to take their skills also evokes the sort of "I take your blood and your powers" which also hits the "Vampire" fantasy.

All in all, this is a great and well founded early access game. Can't wait to see where they go with it next.

Reviewed on Jan 03, 2023


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