V Rising – Preview

It’s not that often that in the oversaturated game market a game comes by that immediately catches our interest. In this case, however, we were fascinated by V Rising’s concept, where you are thrown into an online world, trying to regain your status at the top of the food chain. You will be playing as a nearly powerless vampire, trying to rebuild their empire, enslaving humans, fighting bosses, and of course, building a grand castle. We were lucky enough to get our hands on a preview build before the game’s Early Access debut, and we were very impressed.

While the game clearly has some lore, the game revolves simply around the fact that vampires have become a nearly extinct species. These dangerous human-like creatures were once feared, and they also had a lot of power. Now, however, you’re starting with absolutely nothing, and you’ll have to work your way up to the top once again. You need to battle strong human warriors, as well as other deadly creatures that lurk in the world of V Rising.

The game is viewed from an isometric point of view. With its rather dark visuals, some may immediately think of games such as Diablo III, while in fact, the game has its very own signature style. The game employs slightly more comic book-like visuals for its characters; while having slightly more realistic environments. The models already looked quite polished, and when you start building your castle, things start to look quite impressive. We very much enjoyed unlocking new items to place in our stronghold, be it functional ones, or those merely serving cosmetic purposes. Complementing all this was the overall high-quality sound design, which created the right atmosphere. The sound effects were perhaps a bit generic.

In V Rising, you’ll probably start off with quite a bit of exploring while you do your starting quests. By completing these early quests, you’ll unlock the ability to place a Castle Heart, which is the core of your castle. This Castle Heart requires blood from your many victims in order to actually protect your castle. If you neglect this, you might soon find your castle in ruins and looted by other players. In the beginning, you’ll only be able to construct some outer walls, but as you progress, you can unlock crafting stations, coffins for servants, a structure that allows you to teleport, and so on. There’s a fairly big variety when it comes to the structures you can build, and these often have multiple functions. That being said, to unlock new functions for some of your crafting stations, you’ll need to defeat certain bosses first to gain new crafting recipes.

Leveling up in this game doesn’t happen in the traditional way. Your level is dependent on your gear level, and your gear depends on how much you can craft. This means that you’ll actually have to put in an effort to explore the world and battle bosses for recipes, while also collecting enough resources. The game maintains a proper balance between these components, and when playing with friends, it’s often actually quite easy to have someone do some crafting in one of the castles, while the rest goes collecting resources. Bosses you’ll need to beat together, as to gain their powers and knowledge, all players must drain the defeated foe’s blood. These new powers can also include new shapeshifting skills to move around the world quicker.

Blood is important in this game, as it is a resource for base building, but siphoning blood from small enemies will also give you different powers. Keep in mind that the blood of an enemy will only remain inside your body for a short amount of time, so you’ll often have to drain other enemies of their blood. When doing so, you’ll once again change blood type depending on the enemy, and this may cause you to become slightly weaker or stronger. This is quite a fun system and it works quite well. Of course, being a vampire comes with a price, as this means you cannot venture outside freely when the sun is up. You’ll take a lot of damage when exposed to the sun, but the game does provide a bit of extra protection the further you progress.

Combat is also very important in V Rising, and it is slightly more skill-based than other games. As you move around with the WASD keys, you’ll have to properly dodge incoming attacks or walk into range to perform your own. On top of that, many skills require a manual aim, making it harder to actually hit your enemies. The latter does take some time to get used to. As you defeat more bosses, more skills will become available, which then allows you to customize your character a bit further. Here we also found the game to be the most enjoyable with friends.

The base-building aspect of the game is quite interesting. You can opt to build a castle on your own, and try to gain more and more power, but even in this portion of the game, it’s best to work together with your clan members. Your clan members can also build items in your base, access the premise, store items, or even rest and log out safely here. You can easily create a powerful stronghold if a few players pitch in, and then you can start expanding further by fleshing out your allies’ bases. Keep in mind, it’s best to actually form a clan with people you know, as these players will have access to everything in your castle, and thus someone you don’t know can actually steal all your resources.

We have only tried out the PVE experience, and we were unable to truly destroy other players’ castles because all players were active. We reckon that castles that have decayed too much due to inactivity can basically be removed. This threat is probably bigger when opting to play on PVP servers, but sadly, we didn’t have enough time to put this to the test.

Conclusion

We are under the impression we were able to explore quite a bit of what V Rising has to offer in its current state, and we can’t wait to see what the end product will look like. The game has a healthy mix of combat, exploring, and crafting, making it fun and accessible for most players. Combat is probably the trickiest component of the game, as it relies on skill shots and timing, but if you find yourself a good group to play with, this game is loads of fun. We will be revisiting this game in the near future, to see how it evolves.

Ibuki

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Aspiring ninja.

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