Reviews are in for The Blood of Dawnwalker, the debut RPG from Polish studio Rebel Wolves, and the early verdict is a good one. Scores landed broadly positive, with the aggregate sitting in the mid-80s as reviews continued to come in.
The praise is remarkably consistent. Critics single out the writing, quest design, characters, atmosphere, and exploration. The dark-fantasy setting, a 14th-century Europe under vampire rule, gets particular credit, along with the way decisions actually stick.
The game’s headline feature is its time system. You get a limited number of in-game days (the game is built around a 30-day structure) to save protagonist Coen’s family, and every major action costs time.
Time doesn’t tick down while you walk around. You can stop, explore, and poke at the world freely. But finishing quests, taking part in certain activities, and, controversially, learning new skills all push the calendar forward.
That means you can’t do everything in one run. One review estimate suggested a player who explores and invests in skills might see roughly 50%-60% of the content inside the deadline. Ignoring a quest is a real choice, and that subplot can move on without you.
Running out of time doesn’t slam a game over screen in your face. According to one reviewer who played a review build, you can keep going past the deadline. You just end up with a worse ending.
Not everyone loves how it’s implemented. The most repeated complaint is that spending time to learn skills feels like an unnecessary tax, creating friction between getting stronger and actually saving your family.
Combat is the weak link. Reviewers describe it as anything from serviceable to awkward, with animation quality and general jank coming up often. Nobody’s calling it broken, but it clearly doesn’t match the standard set by the writing.
PC performance is the other flag. Multiple reviews mention stutters, frame drops, and freezing, with the main city hit hardest, familiar territory for Unreal Engine 5 releases. Reports vary a lot, though. Some reviewers described frame pacing as unusually consistent and praised the XeSS implementation, while others hit crashes and 30fps cutscenes. Wait for launch-build testing before drawing conclusions.
Reported playtime sits around 30 hours for most reviewers, though you can apparently beeline the ending far earlier if you want to.
Rebel Wolves was founded in Warsaw in 2022 by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, game director on The Witcher 3, alongside other CD Projekt Red alumni including Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz. Bandai Namco is publishing. Comparisons to The Witcher 3 were inevitable, and reviewers made them anyway: strong story, strong quests, and combat that gets a shrug.
