V Rising review (PC): Survival games have never had this much bite

Enshrouded, Nightingale, Pacific Drive, and, of course, Palworld. 2024 has already been an absolutely packed year for survival games, and there’s even more on the horizon with big releases such as ARK 2, Dune: Awakening, and Light No Fire still to come. Honestly though, I don’t care about most of those games. I’ve bounced off of nearly every survival game I’ve ever played after more than a few hours of punching trees, and I had finally decided that the genre simply wasn’t for me. Well, the folks at Stunlock Studios have proven that simply isn’t true because their vampire survival game V Rising is easily one of my favorite releases of the year.

Once bitten, twice shy

I’d like to admit that my first impressions of V Rising were not great. Sure, the opening cutscene that establishes your role as a vampire who has awoken within an ancient crypt to regain your rightful place as the dark ruler of a fantasy land is an interesting, exciting, and unique idea in the world of video games, but I’m still starting the game by punching trees, aren’t I? Oh, run in fear, ye mortals! The local fanged feller with a brooding cloak has a handful of splinters!

However, I quickly learned that I shouldn’t have been lumping V Rising so unfavorably into the pile of survival games I’d spurned in the past. For starters, punching trees, mining stone and ore, or harvesting any resource gives you loads of materials. It doesn’t take long at all before you can craft better weapons, armor, and even the foundations for a personalized vampire fortress. It all moves from tutorial to full gameplay so quickly, intuitively, and seamlessly, in fact, that two hours of gameplay had gone by and I was completely absorbed and making grand plans of whether the stone gargoyles would look better outside my castle entrance or within the foyer.

A large part of why this works so well, is that V Rising has a fantastic understanding of pacing which is no small feat in an open world survival game. This is largely thanks to the game’s primary quests that always hover in the upper left corner. These are quests such as “craft a sword,” “use a spell for the first time,” or “enslave a human being with your creepy vampire powers.” They’re never overly complex, demanding, or pestering, but completing them gives you recipes and an idea of what to do next as you’re gently pushed along your quest of becoming the most powerful vampire to have ever lived. 

Sure, you can run off in any direction you want, but you’ll likely be beaten to a pulp by the first bear, giant spider, or vampire hunter you come across. Which, again, didn’t make me feel like an all-powerful vampire at first, but that’s entirely my fault for being an impatient gamer. The power crawl from lowly cadaver in emo clothing to spell-slinging, bloodsucking, vampire lord in emo clothing is easily my favorite part of the entire V Rising experience.

V Blood, sweat, and tears

While plenty of V Rising’s progression comes from completing quests, building your castle, and gathering resources, the best stuff comes from defeating enemies with V Blood. Hunting down and defeating V Blood targets is the only way you’ll be able to unlock new vampire abilities, magical spells, and even more powerful crafting recipes that will boost your progression through the game. Within the V Blood menu, you’ll find a tantalizingly huge list of fools that seem to think they can beat you along with details of what rewards you’ll receive for defeating them. This upgrade “hit list” and its rewards are split into different acts to even further cement how well-structured V Rising is as a survival game with a clear ending rather than a purposeless sandbox.

Hunting down targets with the promise of significant magical upgrades such as being able to shapeshift into a bear or summon hordes of the undead is fantastic fun on its own, but it’s all made even better by how diverse the V Blood targets are. Each one is essentially a boss fight, but an absurd amount of work was done to make each fight feel unique from one another. V Blood targets have completely unique movesets that evolve and ramp up over the course of the fight, and even some of the earliest encounters had me fighting pointy-tooth and nail for my life in a wonderfully frenetic ARPG battle.

I say ARPG, as those that have played Diablo or Path of Exile shouldn’t feel too unfamiliar with the combat in V Rising, but there’s parts that give more of a MOBA vibe in the best ways. You can hold any of your magic or weapon abilities before casting them to more carefully plan where they’ll land thanks to some appealingly designed UI, and there’s such a wide range of spells that you can truly customize your vampire to take on a specific role in battle that best suits you. This is especially great when playing in co-op with friends as you can turn on your heels to use a buffing spell on an ally in need at the last second rather than brainlessly spamming it for yourself the moment it’s off cooldown.

Truthfully, the combat in V Rising isn’t something that you can simply turn your brain off for. This won’t resonate with everyone, but, for me, I love that the game asks you to think a bit more than simply using your abilities until everything other than you is dead. Don’t let this sour you on the game, however, as you needn’t be a glutton for punishment like I am in order to enjoy it.

Polished to an almost mirror shine

V Rising has some phenomenal customization and accessibility options. You can shorten the amount of time that wretched ball of fire they call the sun is out, increase how many materials you can hold in a single stack, adjust your health and damage, adjust the amount of room your castle is allowed to take up, and plenty more. All of these options are great for those that want to make their V Rising experience as relaxed or brutally punishing as they like. If, for example, you want to focus exclusively on building the vampire castle of your dreams and you’re not too keen on combat, you can maximize your castle’s space limits while making yourself so powerful that you never need to worry about being bested by enemies again.

That plethora of game setting options is just one of many pieces that show how well Stunlock Studios did polishing V Rising during its time in early access. Even on my not-too-powerful computer, the game runs like a dream, it plays amazingly well on a controller, and I was never once confused about where to go, what to do, or how to get something done. Simultaneously, the game never felt as if it was holding my hand or keeping me from discovering its many vampiric secrets on my own. 

Even my biggest complaints about the game can be slightly rationalized away. For example, I’m not crazy about how much time you have to spend traversing the map on foot. Even with the wolf form that speeds things up considerably, you can be meandering for quite a while. However, while trekking from point A to point B, you can easily find resources you’ve been needing back at your castle and collecting them doesn’t take too long. Even better, you can happen upon a campsite, cave, merchant, or juicy neck to bite into that can lead to you discovering rarer resources such as gems for augmenting spells.

I’m also not crazy about weapons and armor having a durability system as it feels incredibly pointless. The durability decreases so slowly that you’ll likely have new, better gear before ever needing to do any repairs. This is even true for the weakest of gear. The gear durability system didn’t affect my gameplay or cause me to make any interesting decisions or choices as a result of its inclusion, so why even have it? Perhaps it’s a larger factor on harder difficulties, but weapon and armor durability is still not a fantastic mechanic in a game with so much ARPG formula in its system.

Really, my least favorite part of V Rising is how your entire power level changes based on what weapon is currently in your hand. The power level of your armor and equipped weapon work together to give you an overall power ranking, but if you even think about pressing one tiny button to switch from your axes to an even slightly weaker sword, you’ll find that you’re doing significantly less damage, enemies might suddenly have skulls next to their health bars implying they’re too tough for you, and you probably shouldn’t have tried to switch weapons at all.

This is enormously painful when fighting a tricky boss and deciding to briefly switch weapons to simply use a different weapon skill as your entire ability to withstand and deal damage takes a nosedive. Of course, you should probably just not switch the weapon and/or go into a fight properly equipped, but it feels odd that the pieces of your armor work together to increase your power level while only your currently equipped weapon does the same. Especially when the game’s opening moments establish that having more than one weapon is a highly advisable strategy. 

Final Verdict

I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me that one of my favorite games of the year would be a survival game, but V Rising is an absolute delight. Yes, some of the gear system is a bit fiddly, and you’re in for a lot of walking. However, with its wholly unique premise, sterling combat, and fantastically rewarding progression systems, V Rising has made it so I have to keep playing survival games in case any of them are ever this damn good again.

V Rising was reviewed on PC with a code provided by Stunlock Studios. It is also available on PlayStation 5.

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