The Blood of Dawnwalker

The dialogue and characters are very Witcher 3, they have depth and emotion and hidden motives. There is a subtle melancholy in characters that I really appreciate. Voice acting is great. Have yet to find a single voice that felt cheap, unprofessional or out of place. Combat is Witcher 3 + Kingdom Come Deliverance directionality, which I personally like. Music's exceptional. Performance is acceptable? There is like a 20 fps drop looking in certain directions that goes away after a few seconds, and it seems to change mouse sensitivity when that stutter happens, which is annoying. Cutscenes are locked to 30fps (or 60 with frame gen), which is weird and jarring but not catastrophic. Otherwise runs fine with upscaling, and frame gen is there if you have a high refresh rate monitor. It's not buttery smooth but it's far from Oblivion remastered, it runs well enough but with hiccups. Animation is fine, a bit floaty like motion capture that wasn't given to an animator to refine but still immersive, Every character i've met so far both major and minor is a walking grey palette of morality which I adore, immensely. Like the "good" guys do messed up stuff, and villains have sound logic and are easy to agree with. Controls feel unintuitive and maybe built with controller in mind? Like odd hotkeys like Z for combat abilities, but maybe they'll get better with more hours? Teleporting around with shadowstep feels very slippery, Coen doesn't seem to cling to edges like should. Personal Peeves: Game is very oversharpened and there's no setting in video to change that, but you can change it with an engine.ini tweak so hoping for a patch that exposes that setting ingame. Turning frame gen on shouldn't need a restart, i've never played a game that needed that. Also turning on frame gen shouldn't randomly set upscaling from FSR to XESS with a different quality level. Game options shouldn't require you to enter a save. The only save relevant setting in there is difficulty. The rest, including camera distance and accessibility should be in the main menu. HDR support would be appreciated, not even windows autoHDR works. Overall an 8/10. Easily my favourite game this year and very easy to fall in love with.

MASSIVE VISUAL BUGS OCCURING OUT IN THE OPEN WORLD ENTIRE SCREEN IS A GARBLED MESS HALF THE TIME WAIT FOR THIS TO BE PATCHED BEFORE BUYING YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED GAME IS INTERESTING SO FAR, BUT THIS BUG HAS HALTED ALL OF MY MOTIVATION TO CONTINUE PLAYING. STAND BY FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS

Not recommended in its current technical state. I paid full price for the PC version and I'm getting constant brightness / lighting flickering. The entire image repeatedly becomes brighter and darker, especially during dialogue, camera cuts and dark scenes, but it also happens during normal daytime gameplay. I've tested different graphics presets, disabled Frame Generation, V-Sync and post-processing effects, changed Post Processing from Ultra to High, and tried multiple other settings. Nothing fixes it. Other PC players are reporting the same kind of lighting/brightness flickering, including users with high-end GPUs. I shouldn't have to disable features of a high-end OLED display or downgrade my entire setup to work around a rendering bug in one game. The game itself may be good, but this technical issue makes it extremely uncomfortable to play. I'll change the review when Rebel Wolves fixes it.

Here is the thing, I like the game it has a lot of classic RPG stuff in it, I will keep trying to play it BUT and there are a few big ones: 1- The combat is REALLY REALLY BAD. There is a sluggish response time, you get trapped in invisible corners, you know by a small bush or something. If this happens, you cannot dodge. Blocking was a nice effort but it is woefully undercooked, you can block once, twice more and the enemy still comes at you with no regard for their own stamina or even the laws of physics. Leaping attacks. This is the worst. I could block and dodge and then, despite the enemy having been blocked and dodged does a normal attack from 10 feet away and they just leap or slide forward until they just hit you. It doesn't matter that you have just dodged away, You're screwed. The auto target thing ruins combat when you fight multiple enemies. No ranged attacks which is so crap, even the Witcher 3 corrected this with a simple mechanic. If your stamina runs out, you are screwed. It is the worst combat system of any game I have played, I am really sad about it. 2- Bugs and errors. Stuck in a loading screen whilst the game actually plays on behind it? Yep, that happens. Getting stuck behind an invisible wall. Hoho, get used to it. This game wasn't ready and even the prologue has these issues. 3- The time system. Thank goodness for modders because although it is an interesting idea, SO many players like to see the STORY, you know, know what happens, do stuff. This is because it's a game and we are having fun. It is NOT supposed to be like work where there are hard deadlines and pressure. Humans get that stuff all the time, it's not why we play games. Having a time element would be fun but without the mod, it is game killing. It's also stupid. I can stand for 10 real hours in a wood, no time advancement. I catch a pig in 30 seconds, my day is running out. It makes a mockery of how time actually works and actually inhibits the sense of a day night cycle. They COULD have made some missions (must be completed in daylight/night) and then just advanced time along a set trajectory, OR pick up a quest which has a timer on it but not, when with the cheap option. It has some great stuff but it is very far from the Witcher 3 which is the gold standard for this type of game. I love that they made this game but it is currently broken and needs some serious work.

Not Bad for Rebel Wolves fist official game release. Defiantly has hints of "Witcher DNA", in fact it reminds me of "Assassins of Kings" with some of its janky moves, But defiantly much better graphic's than The Witcher 2. I defiantly looking for more DawnWalker games and hope there's enough people into playing DawnWalker for Rebel Wolves to be around for many years.

Very solid game so far. If you enjoy the Witcher then you will love this game. I did run into some issues with playing on controller (Run/Walk bug, skipping tabs in menus, not registering A inputs for dialogue or menus) but this is something I suspect will be fixed pretty quickly and am fine playing on M&K until then (maybe even after). Some people don't seem to vibe with the combat but it mostly seems to be something you can interact with as much as you want to or can change settings for combat to get something not exactly like Witcher combat but a little closer. Looking forward to diving into more of this games story because the characters already seem interesting and have me pretty hooked.

Fantastic game for a Skyrim fan like me, 10/10!

nvm