The Blood of Dawnwalker: Why review scores are all over the place

At its core, The Blood of Dawnwalker is a fairly traditional story-driven RPG. Players take on the role of Coen, who can switch between his human and vampire forms, and explore a dark, Eastern European-inspired open world filled with quests, enemies and far-reaching decisions. The game comes from Rebel Wolves, a studio founded by former The Witcher 3 developers. Unsurprisingly, certain parallels to CD Projekt's successful series are hard to miss. However, Dawnwalker also brings its own ideas to the table with the ability to switch between human and vampire forms and an unusual time system.

The latter in particular is one of the game's defining features. Players have only 30 days in total to complete the story. However, time does not continuously tick down like a traditional countdown. Instead, certain actions such as quests, story missions or some character upgrades consume individual chunks of time. Players therefore have to weigh up which tasks to pursue and which they may want to skip. According to several reviewers, however, the system feels less stressful in practice than it initially sounds.

Critics are divided

Overall, reviews for The Blood of Dawnwalker are quite positive. With a score of 84 on Metacritic and 86 on OpenCritic, Rebel Wolves' debut ranks among the better-reviewed new RPGs of the year. What stands out, however, is just how far apart the individual scores are. Here are a few examples:

• MP1st – 10/10
• MonsterVine – 5/5
• Destructoid – 9.5/10
• IGN – 9/10
• PCGamesN – 90/100
• RPG Site – 9/10
• Push Square – 7/10
• GameRant – 6/10
• GamesRadar – 3/5

The story, worldbuilding and far-reaching choices are among the most frequently praised aspects. The unusual time system and combat are also largely well received. Among the most common criticisms, however, are the limited enemy variety, occasionally repetitive gameplay and technical rough edges, which are mentioned even in some of the highly positive reviews. These include minor bugs, performance drops, clunky animations, traversal issues and typical open-world quirks. For most reviewers, however, these shortcomings are not significant enough to substantially detract from the overall positive impression. GameRant, on the other hand, takes a considerably more critical view of the game's technical state and repetitive gameplay.

And this is where things get interesting. For the most part, reviewers actually agree on the game's strengths and weaknesses. What ultimately leads to the widely differing final scores is how much weight they give to each of them: Anyone who places a high value on an engaging story, far-reaching choices and an atmospheric game world, and can overlook technical rough edges and occasional repetition, is likely to find a lot to enjoy in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Fans of story-heavy RPGs such as The Witcher 3 are therefore clearly part of the target audience. Those who expect plenty of variety in enemies and open-world activities or are particularly sensitive to technical issues, on the other hand, are likely to notice the weaknesses much more.

All in all, The Blood of Dawnwalker probably won't appeal equally to every player. Instead, how much someone enjoys the game will largely depend on what they expect from an RPG. The differing review scores are therefore not necessarily contradictory – after all, critics are gamers too and naturally have different priorities.