V Rising: Game Review

V Rising is an open-world sandbox survival game with elements of action RPG. It was developed and released on May 8, 2024 by Stunlock Studios. Currently, it’s available on Steam and there will be a PlayStation 5 version at some point. Its early access mode was mainly meant for desktop devices, but they improved controller elements for the fully released version, so you can also play it on handheld devices (and presumably, on PS when it comes out). 

It’s priced at 34,99€, though Steam often has discounts — right now, you can get it for 31,49€ and in many different bundles (with DLCs and Legacy of Castlevania). 

Check out my thoughts on V Rising, how it runs on Steam Deck, what could be improved and more below. 

Gameplay

Considering the genre of V Rising, you probably know what to expect from the gameplay. There are bosses to beat, resources to gather, and settlements to build. But V Rising also comes with a few interesting mechanics, and I’ll go into detail for each of them below. 

Here, I’d like to briefly touch on the storyline. It’s pretty simplistic — you’re a newly awakened vampire and you have to build your empire. That’s it. And while stories can bog down a good game if done badly (cut it with the cut scenes, already!), I think V Rising could have benefited from one. Especially so in solo mode. Because you don’t have others to play with, it would have been more interesting if there was a story to accompany the gameplay. 

But since I’m not much of a storyline person in games, I really didn’t mind this aspect. The lack of storyline, while very noticeable in solo mode, suited me just fine because it allowed me to do whatever I want. 

Play Alone vs Play With Friends

When you get started with V Rising, the system will ask you to choose between three modes: 

1. Play online — In this mode, you enter a world where all the other vampires (real life players) are. You’ll be able to team up with others, fight them, or steal their resources. Pick this if you like MMORPGs or simply interacting with other people. 
2. Dedicated server (with friends) — If you don’t want to play alone but don’t want to fight against many others (for resources and otherwise), this is the best mode for you. You’ll be able to invite your friends and team up. 
3. Dedicated server (play alone) — This mode is perfect for you if you like solo play. You won’t have teammates to help you with bosses, but the world will be your oyster. 

Personally, I like solo play, so I picked a dedicated server where I can play alone. Some aspects of the game, like bosses, seem geared more towards team play because they do get really hard — but this just means you have to be smart about it. 

The world also feels a bit underpopulated when you play alone. There aren’t any NPCs and the characters you run into are technically your food, so you might get lonely. I didn’t, but again, that’s because I prefer to play alone and more casually. I’m not very competitive and like my games to be a relaxation method rather than something to stress about. 

If I was willing to go back, I would probably pick a dedicated server where I can play with friends I invite. It seems like the best middle ground — I’d get some help with bosses and have someone to show my castle off to, but I wouldn’t be in danger of stealing or fighting someone at every turn. 

But generally, the mode you’ll play should depend on your personal tastes. Like to interact with people while playing? Great, play the online mode! Have a few gaming friends that play V Rising (or want to)? Awesome, create a dedicated server. Are you a loner or just a casual player? Pick the solo path. 

Character Customization

At the beginning of V Rising, you can create your own character, which is always a great bonus for a game. You can pick a body type (male or female), different faces, hairstyles, accessories and so on. What I found most surprising (and fun!) is how many hair/eye/skin colors you can choose from. 

Often, games have a very simple range of hair and eye colors, but V Rising lets you choose from a whole range. You can have pink hair, purple skin and purple eyes (like I did) or you can go for any other color — it’s all available. 

And if you end up disliking whatever you chose, you can fix it later, once you can build a mirror in your castle. At that point, you’ll also be able to adjust the color of your gear and clothes. 

Gathering Resources

As soon as you start playing V Rising, you’ll need to start gathering resources. Here are just a few, and what they’re useful for: 

• Bones — This is the first resource you’ll gather and they’re useful for creating your first gear.
• Wood — Just slash and slam at any tree in the forest and you’ll get this resource. Useful for gear and building your castle. 
• Stone — Again, this is useful for building your castle. Not every stone in the forest can be gathered; you need to find free-standing, darker rocks. 
• Copper — You’ll notice orange-y stones in different areas and this is where you gather copper. It’s useful for better gear. 
• Blood Essence — Once you kill someone or drink their blood, you’ll gather blood essence, which you’ll need for your Castle Heart. Without it, your castle will die. 
• Hide — Whenever you kill an animal, you’ll get its hide. At first, it may not seem useful because you don’t get a production building for it immediately, but you’ll get a Tannery later so you can make leather (and you need leather). 

Other than these, there are many more resources to gather. Anything you can slash at will produce some sort of a resource, and all of this will come in handy at some point. There are flowers, paper, coarse thread, empty waterskins, tainted and pure hearts and so much more. Make sure you build plenty of storage!

Building a Castle

Your castle is your domain — and your safe place. So, make sure you build one as soon as possible. On the map, you can see all the possible places where you can do that, but I’d wager you’ll want to build one close to where you started. 

Keep in mind, at first, your castle will look like nothing much — just a Castle Heart and a few walls. But the more you progress, the more things you can add to it and make it really impressive. 

Blood Consumption

One of the main aspects of V Rising is consuming blood. Which makes sense. Because you’re a vampire. 

But it’s not quite so simple. 

First of all, you need about 10 liters of blood, so you have to make sure to keep up your levels or you’ll die. Considering that you use the blood to heal, this drops quickly, so you need to keep an eye on this. Drinking blood may seem easy at first, but you’ll end up in fights where you need blood, but you can’t take it because there are others trying to kill you. 

Then there are different blood types, qualities (and percentages of it) that give you different advantages. Here’s a simplified breakdown of what each blood gives you. Keep in mind, there are specifics, but I wanted to give you a general idea of what you can expect from different blood types. 

• Creature — This blood type gives you better sun resistance and more speed. With better quality, you can get better healing and damage reduction effects too. 
• Worker — This blood type is best for gathering resources because it gives you better yield. 
• Brute — This blood type makes you stronger with weapon attacks and has a chance to boost your healing and speed with better quality. 
• Rogue — This blood type can give you more chance to crit and also boost your speed. 
• Warrior — This blood type makes you stronger, more resistant and could increase your damage. 
• Scholar — This blood type is all about spells; reducing cooldowns or resetting them, increasing their power, etc. 
• Mutant — This blood type reduces blood drain rate and could increase your resistance and boost your speed. 
• Draculin — This blood type increases speed, strength and healing overall. 

Finding (and Beating V Bloods)

This is by far the hardest and most fun part of the game. V Bloods are people or creatures that will give you certain powers once you beat them. There are many of them and they give you a wide variety of powers. You’ll be able to find them in the forest or in different bandit camps. But you won’t have to work too hard to get to them because there’s a handy tracking system. 

Once you choose a V Blood to track, red mist will guide you to them, and there will be a notice in the corner of the screen telling you how close or far they are. That’s the easy part — the hard part is beating them. 

You can check the level of each V Blood and see how they match up to you, which is super helpful. But it won’t tell you all you need to know. 

A boss may match your level or be below it, but the problems arise once you get there. No boss is alone — there’s always a full camp of humans to fight or other creatures to fight. They can even summon them. 

If you’re playing with friends, then this might be easy. But if you’re playing alone, you’ll really need to strategize and build your gear up to be able to fight them. Check out my tips and tricks on smart boss-beating strategies. 

Game Mechanics

Sun is your enemy

One of the most unique game mechanics in V Rising is the fact that you can’t be out in the sun. And when I first heard about it, I thought it would be very restrictive — as in, you cannot do anything in the daylight. 

But this is not strictly true. While you can’t be out in the open in the sun (or you’ll burn faster than you can blink), if you slink around through shades of trees and rocks, you’ll be just fine. There’s also a bit of a window before you start burning, so you can, for example, cross a bridge in the full sun, but you have to find a shade as soon as you cross it. 

So, there’s plenty you can do during the day. I wouldn’t recommend trying to beat bosses or getting into any bandit camps. There’s no shade there (usually) and you might get stuck burning and fighting at the same time (which is bad news for you). 

I also wouldn’t recommend traversing through the map a lot during the day. If you need to get from one place to another, do it during the night because it’s easier and faster. This isn’t to say you can’t do it in daylight — because you certainly can (and I did) — but it’s safer during the night. 

Blood Moon

Blood Moon is the complete opposite of sunlight — it’s your best friend. You’ll see that your clock in the top corner turns half-red (in the night portion) and this is how you’ll know the blood moon is coming. It’s when you’re at your strongest and most powerful, so use it to beat tough enemies. 

Sleep mode

If you don’t want to bother with daylight hours (about a third of your day), you can just get into your coffin and sleep it off. This is great for when you need to pause the game or just heal up. 

Spells

As a vampire in V Rising, you’ll have access to some great spells. 

To begin with, you’ll have healing with blood essence. This basically transforms the blood you drank into healing power, and it’s super useful for fighting bosses. Though, make sure you move away from the boss territory and hide somewhere, because you’ll need to sit still while you heal. Slightly inconvenient, but what can you do. 

You also have blood letting, which basically means that you get rid of some blood. This exists because you may want the benefits of certain blood type, and you have too much of a different blood type. For example, you may want more resistance against the sun, so you’ll need creature blood — but if you’re too full of some type of human blood, it won’t work. 

Then you have dashing, which allows you to move faster from one place to another. There are a few basic spells as well, like aiming a blast at someone or blood rage when nothing can hurt you for a bit of time. 

The more you advance, the more spells you get. Once you kill the first boss, the Alpha Wolf, you’ll be able to transform into a wolf. Once you kill Keely the Frostarcher, you’ll get frost powers, and so on. 

Vampire servants

After a while, you’ll be able to get vampire servants. You’ll have to build coffins for them and charm them, but they’ll be useful in maintaining your castle, gathering resources and fighting. Keep in mind that you cannot transport them between castles. But you can choose which type of servant you want, so that’s great. 

Teleportation

V Rising has a teleportation mechanic as well — Vampire Waygates. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure this out, I’ll admit. But even when I did, I didn’t find them too useful, if I’m honest. 

The problem is that you can’t teleport certain things (see in your storage what can and can’t be transported). And if I need a quick way to get around, this is really bothersome. 

You can also teleport from castle to any waygate once you build a Castle Waygate, but the same rules apply.

Graphics and Audio

V Rising is a stunning game, I have to say it. Based on what little I saw on Steam before buying, I expected a more cartoonish art style (which would have been fine), but instead, I got these beautiful vistas that are almost realistic, but not quite in the best way possible. It’s an open-world game so there are tons of different areas with different ecosystems that you can explore. 

I didn’t notice anything buggy (other than some trees being see-through sometimes), so I really enjoyed this aspect of the game. 

And while I’m not much of an audio person (I prefer to listen to my own music while playing), the nature sounds and soundtrack were awesome in V Rising. I found them both relaxing and extremely helpful in some cases — for example, when you accidentally run into a boss you cannot beat for a long while yet without seeing them first. The music will alert you. 

There’s a bit of voice acting there as well, and it was also good — quite authentic to the Vampire vibes. 

How does V Rising work on Steam Deck? 

V Rising is not officially verified as a “Good on Deck” game at this point (though this might change in the future), but I decided to play the whole thing on my Steam Deck anyway. And after more than 30 hours spent in the game, I’d say it’s more than playable. 

…But there’s a learning curve. 

With certain moves and elements, you can just tell that they were built for PC. The game will require you to press “Space” or some button your device doesn’t have, and it will take you a moment to figure out how that corresponds to you. 

I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to transfer items from my storage to production buildings like Furnace, for example. But I figured it out (eventually). I still haven’t figured out how to reorganize my castles (move the furniture around), but that’s more of an exercise in laziness than anything else. 

The graphics are stunning and I didn’t run into anything buggy (outside of this home screen): 

If you own a Steam Deck and want to try V Rising on it, I would recommend it. 

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