Stunlock Studios' V Rising is a mix of survival/crafting/building game, and action RPG, all set in an evocative gothic atmosphere. A plot is almost non-existent. We're a vampire, a ghoul, not the modern rampaging kind, but undead Nosferatu possessed by a thirst for blood... and power. We awaken from our slumber as a stunted nothing who can barely kill a deer, and our only concern is to grow stronger, build a proper nest, or why not a castle, and one by one take out all who stand between us and the top of the food chain, with the ultimate goal of dethroning Dracula himself.
I want to make it clear that V Rising offers PvE and PvP multiplayer gaming capabilities on either official or private servers, which is probably the most complete, as meant to be played (no sue, Nvidia, please) experience. However, I honestly wasn't in the mood for that, and since single-player sessions are offered, I focused on that part. The technical section doesn't even attempt to impress with ultra-high resolution textures or advanced lighting techniques that bring graphics cards to their knees, but instead invests in creating atmosphere through the art direction, which it does brilliantly, aided by a good soundtrack.
The gameplay is divided into two distinct parts, survival/crafting and action RPG. Survival/crafting doesn't present anything innovative compared to other games of the genre in terms of mechanics. We begin our wanderings in the outside world without having a head bed, and we quickly realize that as vampires, we have a particular problem surviving during the day, as a few seconds of exposure to sunlight are enough to kill us. So we are forced to run from shadow to shadow until we find a way to build a shelter in some corner of the map that doesn't catch the eye too much until we get stronger (this is more important in PvP mode), a hut at first, and then we see, as there is no vampire lord without a triple castle full of servants.
As we roam the outside world, we can gather a huge variety of raw materials by killing animals, chopping down trees and boulders, searching for mineral deposits, gathering all kinds of herbs and herbs, and even fishing. I can't help but wonder if Dracula was also sitting around picking cotton and nettles on his way to the top.
All these materials are used to build the two distinct pillars of survival gameplay, on the one hand building (buildings and workbenches), and on the other hand crafting (weapons, armour and some specialty items like explosives) that are necessary for the action part of the game. Especially in building aspect there is a further important distinction between utility and cosmetic items, with a huge relative variety. Some cosmetic choices are available for armour as well, but the options per power level are counted on the fingers of one hand. Obviously as we progress through the game, more complex and powerful items become available, requiring resources that are more scarce or located in much more dangerous areas.
These are pretty much expected in any game of this genre. Where V Rising mostly stands out in this area is a number of design choices and Quality of Life features that make this part of the game relatively easy and streamlined. V Rising doesn't want to infantilize the player in this regard at least. Just the fact that harvesting materials is done by simply bashing the corresponding source with your normal weapons, instead of needing fifteen different tools, is pretty shallow for the genre. Beyond that a number of other features, such as the fact that to craft a recipe you only need to have the materials in your inventory and don't have to transfer them to the workbench first, give the feeling that V Rising isn't meant to bore you with obsessive obsession with intangible realism. It may sound small, but it's just one example, and when it comes to actions that will be repeated hundreds or even thousands of times in a playthrough, the cumulative effect is significant and enough to make you wonder "but why doesn't everyone do it that way".
The action RPG part of V Rising on the other hand, is very carefully designed, but also wants and manages to make things difficult for the player. Without being design related to Soulsborne games, it clearly expects and requires the player to "git gud" in order to progress, which I'll explain in detail later, because I want to explain how character progression works first.
As a vampire, we have two main ways of dealing with opponents, the usual weapons (mostly melee, with some pistol options that give a moderate range) and spells. Spells start out very limited, but as (or rather "if") we beat strong enemies, we can learn new ones and slowly gain access to a very wide variety of offensive, defensive, and more exotic spells, as well as some particularly powerful skills, what in MOBA terminology (DOTA 2, League of Legends) are known as ultis - if the reference to the genre surprises you, I assure you that it's no coincidence, and that I'll explain in detail soon.
The element that affects our overall fitness (damage, speed, partly mana for spells) is of course blood. Being a vampire, we need blood to live, as if we run out completely our health penalty will start. A minimal amount of blood is consumed all the time, unless we are in our coffin. Blood can be drunk from any opponent (who has blood themselves, meaning not undead or constructs) that we have beaten up enough, somewhere around 25% of their total health. The blood of ordinary opponents has a quality of percent, and the boost it gives us is proportional.
So blood is necessary, but the true strength of our character is determined by his power level alone, which power level in games like Destiny 2 and Warhammer Vermintide 2 is actually the sum of the strength of our equipment. That and nothing else, no xp gain, no attribute allocation, no training, the only way to make our vampire stronger is to learn new schematics for stronger armor and weapons, build them and equip them.
I referred to the blood of "ordinary opponents". Despite what I mentioned about the power level being solely related to equipment, scenario-wise we are supposed to be empowered by consuming V Blood from boss enemies after we track them (by smelling their strong blood, of course) and manage to kill them, which is often not a simple task. Each of the 50+ V Bloods offers a strong challenge, with the battle against them ultimately resembling not a Diablo-type action RPG (really no relation), not some kind of Soulsborne (although there are some influences, such as bosses having phases with different attack patterns), but 1v1 battles in some MOBA-type game, where utilizing the right skills against those of the opponent, and especially managing cool down timers, is crucial. It is certain that many of these enemies, will cause many deaths (respawn at the coffin or waypoint of your choice) until you decipher their attack patterns and skills, pick appropriate counterspells and manage to suck their blood in the end, something that may not practically empower our vampire directly (we said, only power level equipment) but gives access to many new recipes and possibilities to craft many useful items, sometimes (unfortunately few) directly better equipment.
I've exhaustively mentioned the mechanics of V Rising, and I still haven't covered everything, but some things are left for those who choose to play to discover for themselves. It's time to describe my overall experience with the game.
The experience was a real rollercoaster of frustration and stubborn rage against some V Bloods, pure OCD burning in some of the gathering/crafting loops without understanding why so many hours were spent, but also intense irritation against some design choices, as well as frustration against some dead ends in the progression paths that at least at first glance seem to require either a real miracle in RNG or hundreds of hours of meaningless grinding.
The first issue that I'm still having a hard time digesting is the empty inventory requirement for using teleporting waypoints. The distances we're asked to cover during exploration are considerable, our vampire speed is relatively limited, and useful resources can be a quarter of a clear footpath away. Not being able to gather resources by utilizing the teleport artificially adds many, many hours to the game, with a limitation that ends up causing pure frustration for the player. In my opinion the most needlessly pointless design decision, and the shame is that V Rising has over a hundred hours of meaningful content anyway and has no need for such padding tricks. I should note that the urban legend says that although no relevant in-game option is offered, there is a way to disable this restriction in single player at least via ini file editing, but I never managed to get it to work even though I followed the instructions.
The other problem I encountered turned out to be not as important as it seemed at first, although I almost gave up because of it. At around 40 hours and having reached the halfway point of Act 2 (out of 5), I found myself in need of stronger equipment to progress, with no option that didn't rely on either an RNG with extremely low chances of success (it doesn't help that the research desk has a common chance of giving weapon/armor or building cosmetics) , or harvesting resources in quantities that would require dozens of hours of grinding. Maybe my mistake is that I saw the requirements, did calculations of the probabilities on paper, they didn't add up and I shopped. And I did not calculate erroneously, but in the end I guess the developers know what they're doing and the "dice" are a bit rigged in the player's favor, because when I made the decision that I would gather the necessary resources to do random research at least once and no matter what, eventually after 2-3 hours of dedicated grinding, the RNG had given me most of what I needed to keep eating my face off in the next V Bloods.
So, I've logged 60 hours and I'm halfway through Act 3, where again I've encountered an equipment wall that will take some hours of grinding to overcome, but now I know and I don't get overwhelmed. I'll keep going until I get to Dracula, sooner or later, because the high that the final victory over an annoying V Blood induces is powerful.
I always try to complete the games I present, but in the case of V Blood this was not possible within a reasonable time frame. I consider 60 hours to be enough to have an informed opinion.
V Rising can provide strong thrills with its feuds against V Bloods, and at the same time has a robust building system with which a dedicated player of this strand can build real palaces, with a building/crafting system that manages to combine depth and customization, with ease of implementation of our architectural inventions. At the same time, it has some design flaws that give the very unpleasant feeling that it doesn't respect the player's time - as much as my initial impression on the subject was overreaction, the progression wall is real and the hours of grinding it requires are thankfully not dozens... but they are hours, and they are many.
Ultimately, we are left with the positive impression of how well thought out each of the very different and distinct systems on which it is based is, but also the satisfaction of finally prevailing against the unusually and very challenging combat encounters. But there are also flaws that can cause justifiable and intense frustration, and prevent it from becoming the so-called greater than the sum of its parts, and claiming a top rating.
RATING - 82%
82%
The blood is the life.
V Rising does almost everything right to offer satisfaction to the player who wants both solid action gameplay, and opportunities to unleash their architectural talents. Unfortunately, the few things it gets wrong are significant enough to keep it from receiving rave reviews.
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