V Rising

Great game that's worth the price. Your progression is based almost entirely on bosses. Want to start collecting iron? Time to go kill the boss that allows you to start smelting iron. Not only that, but the boss also gives you an ability you can use. The base building is awesome, the combat feels great, and the overall aesthetic is really appealing.
The only negatives for this game are:
- Pacing is really great until you're about 15-20 hours in and things become quite a bit Grindy.
- Things take real-life time to be completed. Converting a villager into a vampire spawn? Okay, it will take you 5 hours. This can be changed in your own custom server if you wish
- PVP can be a negative for some people, especially since progression is based around the bosses you need to fight. The bosses are in the open world and therefore, are free game for anyone. It can be annoying when a really high level player is in the beginner zones farming resources, because they'll just kill you while you're trying to kill a boss. It can be very frustrating. However, there are also PVE servers if you aren't a fan of PVP. I personally enjoy PVP, but I can see how it might be a negative for others

Host your own PvE server, remove Castle Decay and Teleport Restrictions, halve the farm needed from items, and reduce the waiting time for crafting items.
These changes turns it into a whole different, actually fun, game!

Word of advice for new player:
Start the game with normal world settings n play it to getting know the mechanic, if u feel like it's tedious n don't like ur current settings, start a new world n tweak whenever u like. Day time is too long? Sure, make day time shorter n make night time longer. Cant teleport with certain item? Turn off that settings. Feels like the game is too grindy? Increase the resources gathering multipliers. Feels like the tiles limit is stupid? Increase it. Boss is too hard? Increase ur damage multipliers.
Play with whatever settings u comfortable with, enjoy guys.

I lost my best friend before we even finished playing this game together. I can't bring myself to launch the game to see our castle right now, but in the hopefully near future, I will. Just to remember him and all the fun we had gathering resources, and (sometimes) cheesing the harder bosses so we could get better loot out of it.
I'll remember to feed your horse too.
I miss you man. Hope you're casting your fave blood spells somewhere in the Beyond.

Basically if ARK: Survival Evolved and Diablo had a baby and that baby was big into Anne Rice novels.

I recommend this game due to multiple aspects:
+ Unique Combat Style
+ Can be played competitively or casually
+ PvP enthusiasts can enjoy it as well as sims addicts by creating your dream vampire castle
+ They added fashion with 1.0 (RP content woo)
+ They made the spell concept look more complex, however it is simpler then before
Boss fights are fun, fighting is fun. Game is more enjoyable if you have a team. If you want to enjoy this game solo, you have to either be a tryhard and flex for PvP servers OR you have to enjoy sandbox and creating your dream castle. Apart from that the PvE aspect of the game won't take long to finish even with the new added content. You can find yourself a server that is to your liking OR you can create one. Aesthetics of the game is on point. There's enough RNG on this game for you to grind but not burn out. Progress feels like a progress. You grow out of areas which feels like a progress, however also feels like you are losing content as you are continue growing.
Bads:
- This game has no end game content. PvP is the only content. PvE content is too straight forward and when it ends, it ends. There's no reason to continue playing PvE after killing the final boss. Let me get this straight: PvE and sandbox are not the same. You can build you dream castle in different spots etc. However if you are looking for a long term PvE content, there isn't one in this game. PvE is there to gate keep some stuff that's all. No PvE raid, no PvE ambushes etc. You can add those with mods, however main game is too banal after finishing the PvE content. Which doesn't take long by the way. As a long time player (700h or so) it took my team and I less than 1 day to finish our first -blind- 1.0 playthrough in a PvP server.
All in all, I do recommend the game. There's no other game like that around in my opinion.

This is a wonderful vampire fantasy adventure and base building and crafting game. There is an impressive game map, oodles of enemies and items, and lots of fun thematic elements. The music is pretty nice too. The overall soundboard is great, and there are fun voice lines for all the enemies. The game world feels alive in a way, and it's pretty immersive for a top-down game. The graphics and visuals are a somewhat unique cartoonish style that I find both lighthearted and grim at the same time. There is a day-night cycle, critical to a vampire's concerns for obvious reasons, in which you find yourself managing activities based on time. The base building is fun and role immersive, meaning you can make your castle spooky and strange, utilitarian, silly, or whatever suits you. For PvP, it's obviously more about defensive and offensive strategy.
As a small disclaimer, I enjoy this game casually, having spun up my own PvE server. I've not taken part in PvP. I hear it gets pretty intense, I just frankly don't enjoy PvP in this sort of game. I've never played on public servers!
PvE is often challenging, especially all the mini-bosses you must defeat to earn various powers and crafting recipes. Combat in general is fun because it does require some effort, with each enemy type and each boss having their own mechanics to learn and play around. There are many different weapons and spells, each with their own unique abilities, flavor, and preferred enemy effectiveness. I find I have one main setup that I usually enjoy, switching to different weapons or even changing spells on occasion if a particular enemy is difficult or calls for a wildly different strategy.
There are a huge number of recipes and crafted items. As you go along, you unlock more. These items range from base parts, crafting stations, storage boxes, weapons, armor, potions, and the list goes on. All of the things are interesting and unique, and you find yourself excited to craft the next new thing.
I really enjoy all the transforming abilities. It's pretty fun being able to turn into a bat, bear, wolf, toad, rat, or even don a 'human disguise' for trading coin for goods with the locals. The various forms unlock the ability to traverse the landscape in new ways, or even aid in combat. I also enjoy the horse riding method of getting around the map, especially once you can 'dominate' a horse to make it into your own special spooky vampire horse hoopty.
There's also an interesting facet of play involving the magical capture of NPC's. They can be taken as servants and sent on supply missions or even used to defend your base from PvP attacks. You can also capture and keep various NPCs you find in game, imprisoning them. You must feed them and balance their health and misery gauges to keep them alive. You do this because they can supply your character with blood of various types depending on whom you've imprisoned, each NPC type is also blood type and will have a random quality percentage. These can weakened in combat and then fed upon in the field, killing them, to receive temporary relevant bonuses to your character. However, capturing them means you can choose to have an ongoing supply of a desirable bonus. While adventuring, simply identify an NPC with a blood type conferring the desired bonuses that is of high quality. You weaken them, then "dominate" them magically to lead them to your prison. It's a pretty interesting system in my opinion.
You will eventually have legendary items and armors which confer various bonuses, as well as modifier items to 'tweak' spells in various ways. Through these, you can create custom "builds" to play in a way that suits you. There are so many that I couldn't begin to guess how many possibilities there are. I love that level of deep customization in any game, though at first it's a bit overwhelming perhaps. I started just using whatever I found until I got a few items which seemed to play well together or combo in fun ways.
As far as end game, well that remains to be seen for me. I've got 139 hours in at the time of this review. I've build a few different bases across two character runs. I'm currently only about 3/4 of the way through the bosses I think. I do believe there are some extra hard challenge bosses at the end. I think the only real end-game beyond that is just playing around with base building, perfecting character builds, collecting the cosmetic helmets, or perhaps moving onto trying PvP- but from what I understand that really requires a team of friends to accomplish successfully and have fun doing so. There probably are solo/no-teaming servers for PvP, but as I mentioned I'm not personally interested in PvP in this sort of game.
There are a couple cosmetic dlc's you can purchase. These in no way at all enhance character power or ability, nor are they required in the least to play and enjoy every item and area of the game. This is a huge plus to me, as so many other games have gone a bad direction with dlc's.
Negatives?
Well, it can be a bit boorish alone if you aren't into this sort of base-building/crafting/harvesting game. Best to play with a few friends, as is often the case for many games. Controls are a bit hard to master at first, with mouse cursor position dictating attack direction independent of WASD, all while using right mouse button to rotate the camera around. And it can be a bit hard for some- I wouldn't let the cartoonish graphics fool you, this game can be brutal. Steering the horse was a pain at first too, but eventually you'll get the hang of it. (not sure if there's controller support or not, I use keyboard/mouse) And lastly, I feel that while the character creation options are mostly sufficient, the armor 'looks' cannot be changed. This bothers me. You can customize the character, and collect dozens of different capes and hats, but you cannot currently change your armor appearance or color. The armor just is what it is. Not that it looks bad, but I really feel they missed the bar by not creating a customization option for the armor colors. It's not a deal breaker, but it does bug me. A role-playing game of any sort in 2023 should have all kinds of character customization! Maybe they'll add that in the future? Let's hope. ** EDIT** 2024 now, and there is customization for outfits, and they've added Castlevania items and boss! AMAZING!
I hope you enjoyed my review! It's not very in depth, but I feel you can watch gameplay on youtube to get a better sense of the visuals, combat, and crafting. I do highly recommend this game overall, and especially so if you enjoyed Valheim, 7-days, Ark, or other base builders.
Cheers,
Luckymod13