V Rising developed and published by Stunlock Studios is now available on Steam and PlayStation 5.
V Rising is a survival open-world RPG that took the PC community by storm in its early access days, the game was full of content already in early access the big question though is what is V Rising? V Rising puts you in the shoes of your own created Vampire, sadly the vampires aren’t what they once were which means you’ll have to go it alone or with friends online and start the game pretty weak after all you’ve just woken up from what seems like a very long slumber. You’ll begin by collecting resources and working up to build a castle, a place where you can rest safely from the many different human, animal and otherworldly creatures all out to destroy you. In the castle you’ll be tasked with various objectives to unlock new recipes from decorations, base building parts, crafting devices and more, it almost acts as a tutorial with some great rewards for completing each task. Through each task, you’ll learn of the ingame systems like the blood type that gives you buffs depending on the strength of blood and what class you have decided to drink the blood from, for example, if you drink warrior blood, you’ll start earning perks that make you stronger, although if you drink someone else’s blood you’ll lose those perks and gain others. I found this system quite fun as you can experiment by drinking different types of blood and finding which suits you best. The V Blood mechanic is vital in learning new recipes and growing as a vampire, you’ll learn all sorts of new abilities as well which aid you on your undead conquest. The V Blood section will have you tracking different tiered bosses that each provide spell points, recipes for crafting and more, taking these bosses down is vital in your playthroughs and also quite a lot of fun. Once you select the boss and track the blood you’ll be set on your way to finding them and taking them out, however, each boss has unique attacks and personalities so it is wise to learn about it as much as you can before barreling in, I learnt this the hard way.
The gameplay loop of V Rising is very addictive, once you log on, it’s quite hard to stop especially when each time you beat a new boss and progress you get incredible rewards throughout that make you want to keep going. Another great aspect is the base building in some games I find the base building can be quite difficult to learn and be fully creative, whereas some like V Rising have a great system in which you can easily create some amazing designs. I spent most of my daytime sessions building while waiting for the moon to rise. Each part of the game has unique segments, from its sandbox parts of taking the world at your own pace and often using trial and error with the surroundings to figuring out useful new things, the RPG side of building up your very own vampire and the base building in having the ultimate evil layer for you to plan your next trip at, it’s all blended in a perfect meld to form a great game with an addictive formula. Whether you take the world on your own or with friends it feels like there is so much to do and interact with it’s a world that truly feels alive and that each part of the environment is beneficial to your survival, especially when using the shadows of the trees to hide from the sun.
In V Rising as mentioned earlier, not only are the graphics beautiful and the environment well thought out, but its design aids the gameplay so creatively. Before you get any sun protection items, being out during the day is bad for a vampire, so the shadows cast down by trees, rocks and cloud cover are used to protect yourself it’s all such a well-thought-out system and designed so incredibly well. I really enjoyed exploring all the environments within the game interesting maps from undead-laden graveyards all the way to different types of bandit camps and more, a lot of thought and effort has gone into all the design choices to make it all stand out from one another and never get repetitive. The sound design and voice acting are on point with great enemy lines, your vampire does sound almost like Dracula and the NPCs also have lines you’ll hear throughout. The design in everything here complements each other very well, you do feel like you’re one of the last rare vampires in a land where you are both predator and prey.
V Rising on the PlayStation 5 converts well, I had played a couple of hours on the PC years ago and it was a solid experience in early access back then some folk may worry that some games don’t convert to console very well however, V Rising does so almost perfectly. The game runs smoothly with only the odd bug, though each bug seemed to get patched so quickly during the review process it was great to see the support leading up to the global launch. The UI while it takes a bit of getting used to after a few fumbles is pretty well done and was easy to get used to once the game was kick-starting into gear I feel the team has done a fantastic job converting it all over to the console. Overall the game runs really smoothly without many hiccups along the way.
Verdict
V Rising is a fantastic experience that I felt you could pop on for around 15 minutes or 2 hours, all the time you put in is rewarded plentifully. I rarely ran into any bugs and as said earlier, the PlayStation 5 version converts well from the PC version. V Rising is so full of content and put together in such a beautifully crafted and interactive world that I found it hard to stop playing. From base building to boss killing, every part of V Rising was well put together in a wonderful Sandbox RPG Survival blend. At first, the game can feel like quite a lot but, the way you are guided from the very start and can earn rewards that aid you in the game from doing so is a perfect way to teach new players how to engage with the world around them, and for someone who finds taking in information from walls of text difficult, V Rising pulled it off really well with their tutorial choices. Feeling like both predator and prey in this often beautiful yet brutal world is a joy and one of those rare experiences where you really are in control of how your playthrough unfolds with all its RPG mechanics and more. I can’t wait to see more from this developer in the future.
9.5
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