Stunlock Studios immerses us in a medieval fantasy world in which we will embody a vampire to feed on our enemies, build castles and form alliances to face a greater evil.
With the amount of survival games on the market, we started V Rising with the fear that it would be just another one. But it didn’t. It may not be a revolution in the genre, but it does manage to differentiate itself from the rest with a differentiating element: vampires. The work of Stunlock Studios is admirable in creating a title with its own identity, fun, and very appealing. It’s a textbook hour-eater and we assure you right away that you have content to bore.
A vampire never rests
We’ve had great online survival games like Rust or Minecraft itself with great servers. These two did great and managed to expand a market with brutal demand. So much so that new titles came out as a result of these two and V Rising is one of them. They are alike in nothing other than the norms of the genre themselves. The title has identity and finds the perfect balance between resource management and action. Your castle is just as important as gathering materials and fighting your enemies.
Prior to the release of the game, we were able to experience its online component on dedicated servers and the interaction with other players in the world was minimal until its release. In fact, we teamed up with people we knew to see how important it was to interact with other players as allies and enemies. We focused the vast majority of hours on collaborating in order to discover as soon as possible what V Rising was hiding and we found a very collaborative title. We had hopes for many things and they all came true.
Cooperation as a fundamental pillar
By forming a clan with 3 other companions we were able to visit their castles, investigate their chests due to lack of materials, help with the decoration or fight together against a common enemy. In fact, since you can place your castle in many specific areas, we even had the possibility of moving our partner’s entire castle! It was a really fun collaborative relationship in V Rising, and we were able to quickly move through the story as well as create new weapons and structures.
As the combat is pure action, the player versus player is very frenetic. We have skills depending on the chosen talents, a large arsenal of weapons, and basic skills that we will improve as we increase in level. This is not achieved with experience, but with the equipment we have in place at the time. For example, if in V Rising we hide our weapon before starting the fight, our level will be lower. In this way we can deceive the enemy into believing that he has a higher level and take out the entire arsenal at the right time. You can also lay siege to enemy castles while they’re not on the server, since life goes on even if you’re not playing.
In terms of talents, there are few magics that we can equip compared to all those available in V Rising. But that’s where we must decide which ones to equip depending on which enemy we have in front of us. There are magics that weaken the opponent so that, once dead, they become your minion temporarily or others in which we will freeze our enemies. In fact, they can modify their attributes with gems that we will find, so there is quite a lot of customization (yes, also in clothing and appearance). Weapons have abilities as you upgrade them, so we encourage you to use as many as possible and adapt to them depending on the type of enemy you’re facing.
A survival Diablo, both in quality and mechanics
We were expecting a Diablo with vampires and found much more. The first few hours are crucial to understanding the mechanics of V Rising, and blood is one of them. As good vampires we must feed on the blood of our enemies, but there are several details to keep in mind. It is not the same to absorb the blood of a bear as it is to absorb the blood of a wolf or human. Each one gives you specific abilities and the higher the purity of this blood, the more and better benefits they give. Of course, the purest ones are scarce and a sought-after good by the rest of the players, so the best way to get them is usually by killing other players and getting their precious blood. However, blood levels decrease over time, so we won’t always be able to keep your blood down forever.
Apart from the basic bloods in V Rising, we have the V bloods. These are the ones that make all the difference in progress by unlocking new skills, talents, transformations, builds, or materials. All V-bloods are held by unique enemies that, although they respawn, are a very succulent prey for all players. These are usually the main source of conflict between players if you are on a player-versus-player server. But it’s also a challenge to overcome with other players.
These unique enemies have very different abilities from each other (the further we advance, the more different) and they are not fought in the same way apart from their gradual but adequate increase in difficulty. They have their characteristics to take into account and adapting to their combat style is crucial. It is true that the AI is not very clever and they are easy to fool and dodge, especially the first ones. In V Rising, for example, there is a fisherman who has few attacks because the vast majority are aquatic reinforcements that he will summon with his fishing rod. All these prey can be tracked through a menu depending on how far away they are and they will show the unlocks if we manage to get hold of their blood.
Build the castle of your dreams (including minions)
In terms of building, gathering and generating resources, we have found more obstacles in V Rising. The demand for materials is very high to be able to improve the equipment. It’s a barrier that got higher and higher the harder the materials were to find. It’s not only the time it takes to collect all the raw material, but then all the time you have to wait until the specific material is manufactured. In the beginning, in fact, the trips will be endless and repetitive until we start unlocking teleports, fast travel, and transformations that allow us to move faster. This waste of time along with, for example, having to take out and save material according to what you need is one of the things that we liked the least. If all the materials inside the castle were counted as within the inventory it would speed things up a lot.
The construction, however, is very intuitive and simple. The walls are automatically put into position and it’s not at all cumbersome to build yourself a simple castle quickly in V Rising. However, it is not until we have the use of stone that rooms with roofs will be built. This is a fundamental part, because until this happens it is horrible to entertain yourself building because of the Sun. Because yes, indeed, if we are hit by the sun’s rays our health will be drastically reduced in seconds and only the shadows caused by pine trees or roofs (or the moon) will save us from this handicap in the first hours.
On the other hand, the stage and music are quite generic. We understand the need not to create an extravagant soundtrack so that it doesn’t get in the way of a game that lasts as many hours as V Rising, but it’s so subtle that we barely notice it. The same goes for its scenarios and the art used, where we don’t find anything remarkable beyond the design of certain final enemy areas. The most interesting thing about the world of V Rising is how enemies from different factions fight in constant struggle for their territory and being able to take advantage of that weakness. Even enemies with V blood will fight each other and we can take advantage of the fact that they are weak to absorb their precious blood.
CONCLUSION
In short, V-Rising is a title that fans of Diablo or any survival game will like. It repeats mechanics constantly, but it’s a flaw in this genre that is made up for by the feeling of constant progress. It’s a very accessible title initially and one that we recommend for anyone with an interest in the genre. It’s as easy to learn as it is to play, and it doesn’t overwhelm you with the sheer amount of content we have available if you’re willing to spend hours and hours collecting material and building the castle of your dreams.