V Rising Review (Steam)

For this V Rising Preview, we awaken as a weakened vampire after centuries of slumber. Hunt for blood in nearby settlements to regain your strength while hiding from the scorching sun to survive. Explore a vast open world together with friends or hunt solo as you pillage villages, raid bandit camps, and traverse the territories of supernatural beasts. Rebuild your castle and convert humans into loyal servants in a quest to raise your vampire empire. Make allies online and wage war against other players in a world of conflict.

V Rising Review Pros:

• Decent dark Gothic graphics.
• Download size.
• ARPG survival gameplay.
• Three ways to play – online, private, and dedicated host server.
• Graphics settings – graphic quality preset, resolution, window mode, brightness, ambient occlusion, bloom, shadow, volumetric quality, anti-aliasing, AMD FSR 1.0, v-sync, motion blur, depth of field, high-quality vegetation, low-quality atmosphere, blood effects, screenshake, cloth quality, and cloth update rate.
• Accessibility options – vibration, vibration intensity, motion blur, depth of field, blood effects, and screenshake slider.
• Can rebind controls for both keyboard and mouse.
• Streamer mode option.
• Game types – PvP, PvE, full-on PvP, and duo PvP.
• Maximum of four vampires in a party.
• Server browser support.
• Character creator – skin color, male/female, face type, eye color, hairstyle, hair color, features, accessories, and name. Does have a randomize button for those less creative and one for the name.
• Opening tutorial section with on-screen prompts and pop-ups.
• You see enemy health bars and names.
• The tutorial is a set of rotating quests that have a claim button upon completion, the best part is you can play the game and ignore or take part in the tutorial tasks.
• The building is a huge part of the game, the base heart is placed and then you place boundaries (unlocks the land to be used by you) and within these, you can craft and build walls, doors, coffins (respawn point), and many other options.
• Farming resources is done via hacking down trees, smashing rocks, and so forth. using the correct tool yields more resources and is quicker.
• Handy mechanic whereby when you try to cast an ability or attack but it’s on cool down, the game will tell you how long you have left in real-time.
• Sunlight for a vampire is deadly and that is most certainly the case here, the day is your enemy and night is your friend. Use the shadows to stay alive during the day.
• Loot and resources can drop from enemies.
• You can choose what to loot from corpses, chests, etc, or press the loot all button.
• Basic crafting of low-tier loot and gear can be done through the menu.
• Healing can be done by feeding off animals and monsters, using blood vials, and using your own blood.
• Death is dependent on the mode you are playing as there is a drop in everything on death, drop a percentage and drop very minimal. Revisiting your body will allow you to loot it back.
• The locations are as gorgeous and add a ton of atmosphere and life to a game all about the undead.
• On-screen prompts for picking up materials and resources.
• It’s a living world if you are online, you can see and interact with other players, resources like trees and rocks will grow back, enemies respawn, etc.
• It’s a blend of survival, base building, and Diablo.
• Enemies will have skill levels shown above their heads alongside their health bar.
• The sunbeam will take a short while to hit you so you have time to quickly dodge and get back to the shadows.
• Hauntingly brilliant soundtrack.
• Big boss battles.
• Enemies and bosses can fight each other.
• Damage and healing numbers show.
• When attacking trees, rocks, etc you get a pop-up of the materials you are gathering.
• Gain new powers and transformations.
• A handy unstuck button.
• You can lower a creature/human health and then drain the blood from them which can give you buffs.
• Different tools make farming easier like axes for trees and picks or axes for stone. By easier I mean it gives you more resources/materials per hit.
• Mist brazers let you block the sun out in a small area.
• Chests built into your home allow you to Store items.
• Death means you drop everything you had but mark it on the map so you can go and get it back.
• At the start of the game, you get to choose your starting place for building your castle.
• Even on the controller, you can have an autorun set.
• Follows the formula of building new things like sawmills and workbenches allowing you to build bigger and better structures, refine materials, and more.
• Anything in the game that involves time is real-time.
• The game world is quite destructible as you can smash down walls, and clear spaces out.
• Obvious but it has full day-night cycles.
• Full clan support.
• The map fills in as you explore and adds in places of interest etc.
• Radical menus for emotes and vampire powers.
• The building is so deep and allows you to build these massive sprawling castles with multiple floors, grand furniture, and amazing Gothic-looking architecture.

V Rising Review Cons:

• A very daunting set of on-screen menus.
• The opening of the game does little in terms of telling you the basics of the game or how a lot of the mechanics work.
• Just having to decide what style of game to play can be a huge obstacle with minimum information and no clue on how the game even plays initially.
• Slow starter.
• You don’t always get tutorial pop-ups to help.
• The server browser refreshes in real time so it’s constantly moving.
• You can have problems with the controller not always working but turning off steam settings for the controller or resetting the layout can help.
• Lacklustre accessibility options.
• Having to manually press a button to pick up resources is a pain as you will be doing it a lot.
• Movement can sometimes go a bit sluggish like there is a delay in registering.
• Combat takes some getting used to.
• When online the game doesn’t actually pause, more an FYI.
• Being a dark game, it’s easy to miss enemies/interactions, etc.
• When creating a male character sometimes the graphics blow out causing a weird glow and making it impossible to create or know what you are creating character.
• The first few hours are the roughest part of the whole game.
• It always feels like you need a guide or YouTube video open as you play because you never feel like you know anything or everything at one point.

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V Rising:

Official website.

Developer: Stunlock Studios

Publisher: Stunlock Studios

Store Links –

Steam