In V Rising, you're a teenage vampire on a mission to become the absolute bossferatu of a Gothic open world. You get a Diablo-like combat system, the ability to transform into a spider, and a whole castle to zip around in while singing to the moon. I love this premise almost as much as I don't love the fact that V Rising is also a survival game, in which you have to chop down trees and master a crafting system like a regular turnip farmer.
What do we expect when our interest in a game is almost perfectly balanced with our disinterest? We hope that developers will treat us to a free-to-play weekend, where perhaps our unfounded reservations can be strategically balanced by the endorphin rush of not having paid any goddamned money. V Rising creators Stunlock have now nailed it. The game is free to download and play on Steam from now until Monday, September 16th, at 5pm UK time or 10am PST.
Watch on YouTube
Here are a few things that intrigue and fascinate me based on what I’ve been told about V Rising. First, you have to worry about sunlight, a traditional vampire weakness that’s been swept under the rug in many Hollywood adaptations — I’m looking at you, Gary Oldman. You’ll need to drink blood regularly, and it’ll provide different benefits depending on your victim, encouraging you to develop a palate rather than just indiscriminately pounce and suck. You can summon things like death knights, and you can teleport your castle like in the Castlevania series (at least once you level up).
Still, it's hard to ignore the taint of a survival game that seems completely at odds with its vampire premise. “To become a more powerful bloodsucker, you must craft leather pants and copper swords and raise your gear rating, per Destiny,” Edders wrote in our V Rising 1.0 review. “To gain power is to build things, until the thing you want to build asks you to build something else. And to build that something else, you need something else.”
Dracula didn't do it that way, Edders! Vampires are supposed to be hideously rotten aristocrats! If Dracula wanted new leather pants, he'd hang them around the tanner's neck and turn him into a ghoulish slave. Please, Edders: Tell me that's possible in the game.
If you’re interested in the non-free version, V Rising is currently 30% off, and its cosmetic DLC (including a Castlevania-themed DLC pack) is 20% off until September 24. You can find it on Steam . I think I’ll give it a shot, but I’m not making pants.