Developed and published by Stunlock Studios, V Rising flips the idea of the survival crafter on its head in an aggravatingly fun way. From the moment the game opens on a decrepit coffin, you can tell things are going to be very different. The world is dark and dangerous and you’re entering it in the shoes of a bloodsucker having hibernated for centuries. An unfamiliar-to-the-genre isometric camera angle provides you with a sweeping view of the dank crypt you’ve awoken in and the rats and bones available to loot.

From Dusk to Dawn

As you might expect, the first day, or night in this case, of V Rising focuses entirely on finding safety and creating shelter to protect you from the harsh rays of sunlight cresting the horizon. Complete the introductory missions and the quest will direct you to place a ‘castle heart’, fill it with blood to keep it powered, and start expanding your domain.

Don’t be fooled by the opening of this new take on the genre, V Rising very much contains that traditional survival crafting gameplay. When your new base of operations is set up, you’ll make some axes to cut down trees, and a mace to mine some rocks. Where this differs, however, is that new technologies are locked safely behind 64 bosses of massively varying difficulty.

These 64 bosses are split between four acts, all taking place in 8 different named zones, each of them presenting unique difficulties and new mechanics. Act 1 of V Rising serves to essentially introduce you to the gameplay and mechanics you’ll be spending the next 100+ hours perfecting.

The Dangers of Day

As a vampire, everyone sees you as a target, all boasting different means of harming you. In your adventures in V Rising, you’ll come across enemies wielding your typical swords and bows, as well as magic users and specific vampire hunters using items that deal fire, silver, garlic, or holy damage. On top of this, you’ll need to watch the clock carefully. When the sun rises, it will burn you to a crisp in a manner of seconds unless you find a heavily shaded area.

Don’t trust that shade forever, though. The dynamic lighting system used by Stunlock ensures that as the day progresses, the shadows move, and safe areas along with them. Not to mention, if you happen to get in a fight in the shade, the swings from both you and your enemy are likely to knock down any trees in the vicinity, leaving you openly exposed to the light of day.

To combat these dangers, you’ll spend the copious amounts of resources you gather to craft new weapons, armors, and enhancing gemstones. As you work your way through the list of bosses, you’ll also get spell points. You can use these spell points to unlock spells in 6 different schools, each of which provide different bonuses. Are you losing your health too quickly? Try out some blood magic. Enemies overwhelming you frequently? Maybe the summons in the unholy tree is more up your alley. V Rising gives you a solid number of playstyles to use against your enemies, but it doesn’t always tell you how to utilize them.

Monarch of the Damned

Throughout my time with V Rising, I frequently felt overwhelmed by the various mechanics and how they synergize with each other, if at all. This was often exacerbated by the inability to create better gear until you continue fighting bosses. V Rising is up front in telling you when a boss fight is fair, but it’s not always accurate.

I don’t pretend to be incredible at difficult games. I think I’m squarely in “good enough” territory when it comes to difficulty. I’ve beaten several difficult roguelikes after much trial and error, but V Rising hit a nerve I didn’t know I had.

Maybe it was the necessary runs to recover your inventory after every death. Maybe it was the drastic difficulty spike in the final act of the game. Whatever the cause, I was firmly 5-7 gear levels above bosses that I absolutely could not beat, and that got me stuck more than once.

At its core, V Rising is a gear rush. You need stronger gear to beat higher level bosses. When you beat those higher-level bosses, you unlock the ability to craft stronger gear, lather, rinse, repeat until you’re finally victorious over the infamous final boss.

What that means is that if you’re completely stuck on a boss, draining your blood reserves, going through dozens of elixirs and potions and materials for repairs, there’s no other way to go. Likely every other boss you could fight is as strong as or stronger than the boss you can’t beat. That leaves very few options aside from tinkering with server settings and lowering the difficulty, which Stunlock did thankfully include many options for.

Lost Souls

To help you along in your journey to rule over Vardoran, you’ll need to use all the resources available. This includes humans, beasts, and monsters living throughout. If an enemy has blood, that blood has a type and a power. Your vampiric abilities differ depending on the strength and type of the blood you’ve last fed on.

For example, feeding on a weak wolf will give you a bit of increased maximum health and health regeneration. A higher-level wolf, on the other hand, will give you that, and a number of other effects, including the ability to use your bite attack to heal and buff yourself. These combinations are just another way to customize your play style. Do you want to focus on your critical chance? Look for rogues. Your weapon abilities, look for warriors. Spellcasting, go for scholars.

It’s an intriguing premise that can and will trigger any analysis paralysis you might have. On paper, it should be simple, but you won’t know what each blood type does until you try it, so you’ll need to drink, and drink, and drink, and drink, until you’re sure you know what they do, and have enough stockpiled to last for a long time.

The Finer Points

V Rising excels in its base-building and gear crafting mechanics. A user-friendly interface and intuitive building mechanics lend themselves excellently to the crafting portion of the game. Sure, building multiple floors to your castle can get a little tricky, but it’s done in a way that allows for fascinating customization.

It’s a beautiful, if stylized, world that matches the vampiric aesthetic perfectly. Each zone is unique enough to tell them apart at a glance. Not once in my time with V Rising did I confuse one resource vein for another or witness the scenery blending into itself.

V Rising presents its story in quick snippets found throughout the world. Voice lines during boss fights are your primary source of lore information. The opening cutscene explains a bit, but V Rising could do with a more fleshed out world. What’s there is awesome, I just wish there were more.

Each stylistic choice made in its development has left V Rising a gorgeous, well-crafted game. Where this craft falls short, however, is in the drastic difficulty spikes that show up in the latter half.

A Constant Struggle

It’s not uncommon in games like this for the bosses to require a few tries to figure out their pattern, how to deal the most damage, which attacks to avoid and which to worry less about. That remains the case for the first three acts of the game. Up through gear level 65 I never encountered a boss that gave me too much trouble. Some were more difficult than others, sure, but I managed to get a system down and understand my abilities. I thought I ‘got gud’, if you will.

Act IV proceeded to laugh in my silly little face. As mentioned previously, I had several problems in my normal difficulty single-player game. I wanted to approach this with the game settings as close to default as possible, to give you all an opinion on the game as it felt the developers meant it to be played. Unfortunately, I failed at that.

At one point, what should be a fun way to relax and unwind began to feel like a chore. A slog of throwing myself against the wall over and over, completely unable to progress in any meaningful way. So, I dropped the difficulty. I tinkered with some settings to ensure my weapons did more damage, and my armor protected me more. Even with those changes, I had some difficulties, but obviously not as many.

The changes were necessary for my personal playthrough, but they cheapened the experience for me. Whereas I started the game feeling excited at beating a new boss, I ended it feeling relieved when a fight was over.

Upon defeat of the final boss, there was no celebration on my end. No joy or excitement at what comes next, just relief that it was done, and I could write this review.

The Eternal Night

V Rising is a fascinating study. It’s aggravating in a lot of ways. It’s humbling, and gorgeous, and exciting, and absolutely rage-inducing. After my extensive play through, I can say with certainty that it’s not the kind of game to play by oneself. If you’re curious, I highly recommend playing on the same server as a friend or two. Enlist each other’s help with the more difficult bosses. Play around with some PvP settings if you like, to add some extra depth to your experience. Just try to avoid approaching it as an entirely single player offering.

It’s a very well-built game. As I mentioned, it’s absolutely gorgeous, and the sound design is stunning. On a technical level, it’s an excellent, well put together game. However, it’s missing a certain accessibility. Even on the lowest difficulty and with settings adjusted to make the game as easy as possible, it can still be brutal. Playing cooperatively helps a bit, but if you don’t have people to play with, you’re left out in the cold.

V Rising is developed and published by Stunlock Studios. It is available on Steam for $34.99 and Playstation 5 for $39.99 now. Check out my video review on NeverMore Niche’s YouTube channel, too.