Vampire’s Fall Origins Review (Xbox One)

by Jim Smale · November 9, 2020

Vampire's Fall Origins

For countless years the villagers of Vamp’Ire have enjoyed a life of peace and happiness. But now, rumors are spreading about a wielder of dark magic – a Witchmaster. Fearing the rumors to be true, the village musters a militia to prepare for the worst.

Pros:

Nice graphics.
744.1mb Download size.
1000 Gamerscore.
Character creator-name, hairstyle, skin color, hair color, face, and eye color. Pick one of four human lineages-Magistrav, Ranjeni, Equides, and Nosferatu. Each lineage has a perk like a better dodge or more money.
Can skip cutscenes.
Action RPG gameplay.
An initial tutorial area showing the controls and combat then ongoing prompts.
Turn-based combat that takes place in a 2D setting.
3D overworld.
Diablo 2 style font.
Shops to buy and sell gear.
Earn EXP, level up, and use the skill trees for anger/vitality and deceit.
Earn ability points again with 3 separate trees-control/instinct and might.
The map fills in as you explore and you can place personal markers.
Has a Diablo look and feel to it all.
Multiple choice interactions.
Combat-simple press a direction to do an attack, all attacks are based off focus to cast as it were. You can line up a combo of attacks if your focus allows.
End of fight breakdown with exp earned along with any loot found.
Random encounters happen when navigating the world and you cannot see it beforehand.
Focus is regained by 10 every round of combat.
Quick easy potion crafting menu.
Can dual wield weapons for more damage.
Damage and status effects pop up as you fight.
Death-lose cash percentage and respawn at the last town.
Anvil-use gems to upgrade your gear.
Buy/sell items and gear.
Gear has rarity levels.
Huge map with many cities and villages.
Find off the beaten path encounters.

Vampire's Fall Origins Review (Xbox One)

Cons:

No screen size setup.
Low-quality voice work.
Controls are awkward and a weird choice.
No in-game voice work with NPC.
Crafting gems and potions is good and all but it does on a real-time basis and for example, a weak potion is 2 minutes and 2 gems are 40 minutes.
The story is stop-start and quite dry in its delivery.
Little voice and instead is just text.
Feels very RNG even for missions.
Low res images and character models.
Slow-paced.
Constant difficulty spikes.
Text overlaps in places.
No way to pin quests.
No easy way to compare gear when in the shop.

7/10
Graphics - 7/10
7/10
Sound - 7/10
7/10
Accessibility - 7/10
7/10
Length - 7/10
7/10
Fun Factor - 7/10

7/10

Summary

Vampire’s Fall Origins is a game that initially looks like a Diablo 2 style game, it’s got the font the color scheme, and the same isometric view. It’s actually nothing like that as it does have the open-world exploration part but the combat is not in any way like Diablo, it’s actually a turn-based combat affair where you build focus and spend these on your attacks. The open-world harbors hidden chests and randomized encounters and missions to find. All this sounds fine and it’s alright and I did like how it used a quick craft button but it’s such a mobile game approach to it by having them craft in real-time, that kind of sets the tone overall as the game adds all these weird little parts and makes a very incohesive experience. I mean the difficulty is so up and down thanks to random encounters, some quests I still have outstanding from the beginning of the game because I just haven’t encountered the needed enemies, it just feels like a load of ideas pushed together, and that in turn diminishes the games fun factor. I saw glimmers of hope but then a new quest would come in and the problems arise again. Overall I just found Vampire’s Fall Origins to be a mixed bag and mixed ideas that never fully gels into a cohesive and flowing experience.