To be quite honest, I didn’t have too many high expectations for The Blood of Dawnwalker until a few months ago. That is, until I played a three-hour preview of it back in June. The nail-biting opening hours of our young lad protagonist Coen being turned into a human vampire hybrid immediately grabbed my attention, thanks to the well-thought-out writing from developer Rebel Wolves (best known for being former devs of The Witcher 3).
It quickly became one of my most anticipated games of the year.
I’m glad to say that The Blood of Dawnwalker really sticks the nail in the coffin here. With a charming cast of characters, this choose-your-own-adventure-style dark fantasy game is one of the best RPGs of 2026, if you can stomach some repetitive combat and annoying performance issues along the way.
In medieval Europe, Coen’s village lives under the rule of the Vrakhiri (vampire) Brencis, whose cursed blood miraculously cures the deadly plague going around. In return, he demands that the locals worship him. After a failed uprising, Coen is left for dead and turned by Brencis. Instead of transforming into a Vrakhiri who crumbles in sunlight, he’s transformed into a Dawnwalker, someone who is human by day and vampire by night. Now, Coen is out for revenge while rescuing his family from Brencis. It’s a really enticing setup that sets the tone for the rest of the game.
The Blood of Dawnwalker’s structure is an interesting concoction of Persona and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Coen has 30 days to rescue his family before Brencis sacrifices them, so during that timeframe, he’ll need to get stronger and recruit allies. Each activity, such as completing side quests or restoring broken shrines to activate new fast travel points across the open-world map, takes up certain segments of time.
This is where the Persona comparison kicks in, as similarly in that game, you have to manage your time going to school and attending extracurriculars, while fighting bad guys. I enjoyed having the freedom to decide what I wanted to do and where.
But where The Blood of Dawnwalker separates itself is Coen’s dual nature. He can complete activities during the day and night, whereas other social simulation games like Persona primarily have you conduct them during the day and then go to sleep at night. 30 days initially might not seem like a lot, but having the luxury of an entire 24 hours immensely helps alleviate decision paralysis.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is also reminiscent of Breath of the Wild in that you can take on the Big Bad whenever you feel ready. There’s no predetermined story or quest structure, but there are a few that open up different ways to approach his throne, and that impacts which allies will join Coen. You don’t even have to use up all 30 days! With the pick-your-own-path structure along with the open-endedness approach to storytelling, The Blood of Dawnwalker’s pacing is unique in that it doesn’t rush you, and you can flesh out Coen’s tale at your own pace.
Throughout the journey, Coen will meet other like-minded individuals who also want to take down Brencis, while also learning their backstories. Another Vrakhiri named Lacra has a tragic past involving Brencis, while Crake, the leader of a rebel group, is estranged from his family. Upon discovering why, it is heartbreaking as well. These interactions between Coen and his allies rely on him drawing from his own humanity and sympathizing with them, which is why he’s such a likable protagonist.
Another notably strong aspect of the writing is that despite having the day and night, and human and vampire dichotomy everywhere, The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t railroad players with a morality system like a game like Mass Effect or Infamous would. You’re given the freedom to respond as nicely or rudely in any given situation without the fear of negative or positive karma. Nobody is perfectly altruistic, and Coen perfectly reflects that.
In combat, Coen has access to three different ability trees: Witchcraft, Swordmastery, and Vampirism. While Witchcraft and Vampirism can only be used by Coen’s human and vampire forms, respectively, Swordmastery is shared. You have to learn how to master both combat styles, with Swordmastery providing some broad overlap. This way, the combat constantly switches up, keeping it largely fresh.
Since dialogue choices aren’t moralized, the abilities trees aren’t either, which is a smart approach. This provides unparalleled autonomy to pick the skills and abilities I want without having to limit myself. I’m able to simultaneously sprinkle magic pixie dust on my sword to reflect enemy attacks by day, while biting into their necks by night!
There is some repetition in the moment-to-moment combat, however. It utilizes an omnidirectional system similar to that of Kingdom Come: Deliverance and For Honor. You can move the control stick in four directions to determine where your attacks will land, and if you guard at the last moment in the direction of an enemy’s attack, you’ll parry it. Once you get used to this system, it flows well, but it gets monotonous quickly since that omnidirectional combat is a bulk of what you’ll be dishing out.
Thankfully, combat is mostly unabated by performance issues. I played on Xbox Series X, and some of the loading times were longer than I would’ve liked. I also stumbled across some glitches that ranged from amusing to downright concerning. There were a few instances where an enemy’s animation entirely froze. So I’d fight a completely still person or animal, but they were still swinging at me from different directions, and it was difficult to tell which, making it considerably harder to parry or block. Additionally, environmental assets like trees and rocks would often suddenly pop in during cutscenes, which was quite distracting.
Occasionally, the save system would randomly stop working too. Auto-saves wouldn’t trigger, and the option to manually save was grayed out in the menu. The only remedy I found was to reload a previous save, which would undo any progress I had made up until that point. It was frustrating, but I managed to live with it by obsessively saving my game every 15-20 minutes.
While the combat can be tedious at times, the bevy of moments with strong characters and sharp writing constantly overshadow any problems that The Blood of Dawnwalker may have had. And some post-launch patches should fix most of its performance woes. The exceptional flexibility the game offers that allows players to forge their own paths with a plethora of unpredictable branching narratives is truly compelling.
In an era of modern RPGs, The Blood of Dawnwalker is the alpha leading the wolf pack.
Review code provided by the publisher. The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on September 3 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam.
