V Rising Review – Bloody, Yet Fun Survival

V Rising is a game that requires little introduction. Originally released as an early access title back in 2022, its balanced mix of action role-playing games and survival mechanics made it an instant hit and a game that fans of both genres would like.

After two years of updates, which refined the experience and added more content and mechanics, V Rising is finally out of early access with the 1.0 update. While the update doesn't introduce any critical change to the core experience, the additional content, open-world improvements, and quality-of-life enhancements make for an even better game that will likely become even more popular.

Newcomers won't have any trouble getting into V Rising following the release of the 1.0 update, as everyone will start from scratch due to an expected early access progress wipe. Even if progress wouldn't have been wiped, the 1.0 version of the game is extremely welcoming, thanks to some on-point tutorials that teach the basics competently, as well as new difficulty options - Relaxed, Standard, and Brutal. Veteran players who mastered the early access version will want to go with Brutal, as it will offer the definitive V Rising challenge with evolved enemies that will give them a run for their money. Or blood, given the game's setting.

Speaking about the setting, for those not in the known, V Rising puts players in the shoes of a newly awakened player-created vampire. After centuries of slumber, the vampire is weak and will have to rebuild their strength by hunting living beings for their blood, creating their own stronghold, and surviving against all sorts of creatures, including other potentially not-so-friendly vampires. While the story is rather basic and doesn't see much development during gameplay, the lore is quite interesting, featuring a clash between Dracula and several vampire clans, a war against humanity, and the fall of the Church of Luminance, the backbone of human society who managed to destroy Dracula back in the day and protect the land for a time. In some ways, how the game presents its lore is not too dissimilar from what FromSoftware does with its Souls series, so those who enjoy analyzing every little piece of information and putting everything together will find plenty to like in V Rising.

The lack of an intricate narrative may be a potential issue for some, but it doesn't impact the experience a whole lot. V Rising did not need a well-developed or deep story to be engaging, as its gameplay mechanics make it an addictive game that is difficult to put down, even for those who aren't particularly keen on the survival game aspects, although they are absolutely central to the experience.

As mentioned, the gameplay combines top-down action role-playing games like the Diablo series and survival game mechanics, such as resource gathering, headquarters building, and so on. Both halves of the experience are not only very well-crafted but also tightly connected, and it is not possible to ignore either of the two and succeed.

After awakening from the long slumber, the player-created vampire will find themselves thrown into a big open-world setting and will have to build their strength back. To do so, they will have to find a suitable location to build their castle, which will serve as their base of operations. Inside the castle, players will have to build many different facilities that will grant them the ability to process all sorts of materials that can be used to craft more powerful items to take on even more powerful enemies. As V Rising doesn't feature traditional experience points, the vampire's level is based on the equipped gear, so without crafting powerful items, it will become impossible to take down the many targets scattered all over the world.

While V Rising only tells players to increase their power so as to be able to survive enemies and potentially other players in PvP, the gameplay loop is defined pretty early during the experience. To recover their powers, vampires will have to hunt down powerful enemies that carry V-Blood. Once absorbed, V-Blood will grant access to various powers, including shapeshifting powers and Spell Points that can be used to unlock new magic spells. These spells, divided into different types, are extremely varied and elevate V Rising's combat system.

While the game features several weapon types, both melee and ranged weapons, and different special techniques with a short cooldown, their behavior is nothing we haven't seen in similar games, so it is the huge selection of spells that sets combat apart. Alongside a typical ranged/projectile option, V Rising features a counterattack spell that offers a second defensive option besides a dashing maneuver that temporarily leaves a shadow behind to confuse enemies and offers light healing. All these techniques are important to master, especially for boss battles, which can get quite intense thanks to a great enemy design and their relentless assaults.

Alongside different gear options, V Rising offers a unique twist on customization with the Blood Types mechanics. Being a vampire, your character will need to suck blood out of its victims to power its abilities, including regenerative abilities, and depending on the enemy whose blood is drained from, the vampire will get different perks. The Creature, Brute, Rogue, Warrior, Worker, and Scholar Blood Types grant different perks depending on the Quality Level, which is assigned randomly to enemies, so you will always have to be on the lookout for enemies with blood of the highest quality to enjoy the best bonuses. These perks, however, are not going to be permanent, as you will eventually be forced to acquire more blood and may not be particularly picky if you are in a bind.

Exploration also makes up for a big part of the V Rising experience. As mentioned, the game features a decently sized map to explore featuring multiple biomes, resources, and different enemies to defeat. Speeding up traveling from one part to another of the map are Vampire Waygates that cannot be used to teleport with certain items in the inventory. As such, creating multiple headquarters scattered all over the map becomes almost necessary to cut down travel time, although it also makes their upkeep more complicated, as Blood Essence is needed to keep them up and running. Making exploration more tense, alongside the presence of powerful enemies like vampire hunters that roam the map, is that vampires cannot stay in the light for too long, forcing players to seek shade while out in the world during the daytime. Despite the setting, the open world feels surprisingly alive, with groups of enemies roaming around even far from settled areas and cargo travelers (one of the additions of the launch build).

As can be gleaned above, V Rising can sometimes feel a little overwhelming since players need to keep track of many different things at a time. The onboarding process is solid enough, thanks to some simple quests that define the loop, but soon enough, you will be left to fend for yourself, and it may not always be easy, especially playing solo, though it is entirely possible. Playing solo, however, will prevent you from experiencing some of the best aspects of the V Rising experience, such as the MMO-lite experience offered by public servers, where you can play together with up to 40 players at once and collaborate with them as needed, although there will be times when someone will inevitably get in your way, such as when killing one of your tracked targets, forcing you to wait for them to respawn. V Rising also features an intense PvP mode where vampires can go after one another, invade their castles to steal items, raze them to the ground, and so on.

While, as mentioned, solo play is completely viable, it is most definitely not the way to play V Rising. The gameplay loop is definitely engaging at the start of a campaign, but it becomes a little stale after a while, as gathering resources and waiting for facilities to process them gets a little annoying. One of the game's best features, the castle building, also feels a little wasted when no one can visit (or attempt to destroy) your castle, so you should definitely consider playing on the public servers to enjoy V Rising to the fullest. Those who are into the typical action role-playing game, however, will probably not mind, considering the new post-game offering of the Ruins of Mortium, which introduces dynamic conflict events against Dracula's Legion of Noctum that reward players with exclusive resources.

With its simple yet pleasing stylized visuals that give the game a unique visual identity, enhanced further by the 1.0 version with a new light engine, V Rising is not particularly demanding. During a benchmark session held in the game's very first biome, the Farbane Woods, the game's 1.0 version ran with an average of 130 FPS, 85 1% low, at 4K resolution, max settings on the machine used for the test (i7-13700F CPU, RTX 4080 GPU, 32 GB RAM). Even on less powerful machines, however, the game should run more than fine, thanks to a wealth of graphics settings to tweak, including ambient occlusion, shadow, volumetrics, texture and visual effects quality, and more. The game only supports AMD FSR 1.0 in terms of upscalers, which I don't recommend using unless absolutely necessary, given its low quality compared to more recent versions of the upscaler. A DLSS/FSR2.0 mod was released for a prior version of the game, so the option to use other upscalers is out there for those that need them.

The 1.0 update also introduces controller support to V Rising in preparation for its PlayStation 5 release later this year. With so many actions to support, proper controller support was most definitely a challenge, but Stunlock Studios delivered, although building and rotating the camera does feel weird at the start, especially the latter since the right stick is used for aiming ranged attacks, instead of rotating the camera as in other games.

Enriched by many additions, including endgame activities that promise to challenge even veteran players' knowledge of the mechanics and fighting skills, the 1.0 version of V Rising is the culmination of two years of hard work. While the experience is not particularly innovative and can get a little stale in solo play, the number of options and activities the game offers to those willing to delve deep into its complex yet satisfying mechanics make for a survival game like few others on the market.

Review code provided by the publisher.

9.0

Wccftech Rating

V Rising

V Rising

V Rising may not have the deepest survival game mechanics around, but that is hardly a problem. The experience crafted by Stunlock Studios manages to masterfully weave together mechanics from very different genres to provide an experience like any other on the market. While solo players may find the experience becoming a little stale over time, everyone else will find plenty of reasons to remain in this world, whether it's to perfect their characters or build the most haunting vampire castle ever seen.