Foreword: This isn't V-Rising but third person. It's not even close. My recommendation to the developers would be to pick a different name. Because literally everyone is going to compare this with V-Rising. Which quite frankly, is a better game. Even in early access, and I remember early access V-Rising. It was a better game. You've made your games name similar to a far superior game. People are going to look at this negatively.
Personally, Vampires: Bloodlord would do, just drop the rising. You've definitely taken a lot of... let's call it inspiration, from V-Rising. But your game isn't ever going to be on the same level if you keep going with this design philosophy. You don't have weapons, you don't have magic, you can't even change the settings on a world, so I kept running out of blood trying to keep the core from running empty. This is a really poor attempt.
I know in time this game will be better, because you do show a lot of great potential. But it'll never be on the same level as V-Rising. Do not compare yourself to that. Don't make others compare this game to that. That is a huge mistake and will lead to a lot of refunds. It already has lead to a lot of refunds, I've read from people on the steam community forums both here and on the V-Rising ones. As well as on a few video game oriented discord servers.
People are comparing the two and it's making your game look weak.
Notes I typed while playing, I might clean this up some day, believe it or not, I already did a bit.:
This takes decades to load. I decided to start typing and looking stuff up about the game while it was loading.
I should have put this on my SSD, because this will not work on an HDD very well, I just don't have space on my SSD and hardware is expensive these days.
I swapped between male and female a few times in the character creator, because I couldn't decide how I wanted to play the game for the first time.... It has now merged the two and I cannot get them to unmerge. I'm looking at a man with Scully's head. This is strange.
There's a lot of sliders, but unfortunately no randomisation button. Which I like to press a few times to get away from the default. That's not an option here.
All of the faces look... childlike. I've tried making him look older, but it did take a bit of effort to do this.
Skin colour has a lot of human options, but unlike V-Rising, you cannot be green or pink, or as I was going to choose, pale. You can be very white... but not pale. I wanted a pale grey sickly colour.... I'm making a vampire afterall.
No tattoos. Lame. Except later, when you're choosing the non disguise form, you get facepaint... So I guess when you're chowing down on some humans, you take time to paint your face? Silly.
You can have a space in your name, unlike V-Rising. That's a positive. You can also be masculine bodied but a lady, or vice versa. And have a female voice to a male body. For those who wish to do this. ^_^
Now. I finally get into the gameplay. As Lord Emrys Ardain... my Tainted Grail character.
Having just come out of Tainted Grail to play this... I am so far disappointed. It's a high bar of comparison. Your character has a brother, a dead one. Did you choose this? No. The game chose this. So you don't really choose your backstory. It explains a lot more backstory, befriended with humans, silver veil, blah blah I lost interest. Start the game already!
If I press WASD during the loading screen. I can hear myself walking around.... WTF? That's a weird one.
There's no magic that I can find... you cannot cast spells, there's also no weapon slots... I'm quickly losing interest, you mean I have to run around slapping things? Dude, the enemies have dropped swords. Pick them up you doofus.
No?
... Just gonna leave that sword there.
...
Okay then.
I fell into some smoke, the game made a noise so damn loud that I had to mute it and then turn the sound down. It was quite painful.... I nearly died while turning it down, as apparently this causes damage to you as well.
I checked the settings to see what's there, no option to turn off that awful noise. Guess I'm playing this game on mute. Subtitles it is.
You cannot turn off Screen Shake. This is extremely irritating, as this game likes to shake... a lot.
I turned off Nvidia's DLSS because I hate AI. It actually made the game look a little better, my vampire looks less like a 12 year old... Why is AI making vampires look... nevermind, I don't want to know.
I can pick up a pickaxe, but I can't use the bloody thing. It tells me to equip my servants... What servants?
Most abilities just aren't available yet. I'm looking through the skill tree, and the overwhelming majority of stuff just isn't in the game, at all.
Hypnosis? Nope. Crimson Bolt? That sounds like magic, but nope, not in the game... -_- Then if I want to read more, too bad, because half the screen is covered by the tooltip.... MOVE! I'm trying to read!
I found some more rocks to mine... with my bare hands... by slapping them.... HEAVY SCREEN SHAKING! Oh my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ god, I can't take this.
I picked up a rabbit to drink his blood, afterward he violently throws the rabbit on the ground, splat... I won't be doing that again, I quite like rabbits. If you run out of blood, starve, no more harming the rabbits, Emrys.
Upon finding a wooden door and not being able to interact with it or slap it open. I seem to have reached a dead end. Sigh.... back around I guess.
I find my brother, who I thought was dead, but if I had paid attention to the cutscene maybe I'd have found out he wasn't. He's condescending and has an annoying voice. He's filing his nails waiting for me to give up my blood.
Sigh... Fine. I can't kill him, I did try.
Music plays if you alt tab, voices do not... So alt tabbing to type more of this is annoying. I did say I'd mute the game and read the subtitles, so I shall. Unfortunately, problem 2, the game lags HEAVILY when you alt tab.
I'm now building a base, cutting down trees requires you to be standing in the exact right place and still for a bit.... Waiting, waiting, waiting, slap the tree.
I hate how I slap everything. Let me use tools. This looks stupid, like the developers were too lazy to program animations.
Desperate for blood, I found some chickens. Vampires need KFC to survive. Or so Emrys tells me. I'm not sure he's telling the truth.
I think I might be a ghost... or this specific house is a ghost, as I can walk clean through the doors like they are nothing. This doesn't happen with every door, hence why I think that specific house is a ghost. Nothing inside is interactable, be it the treasure chest, the bananas, the fireplace, the bed.... It's all as if it's not really there. I tried jumping on the bed, but alas, it was not bouncy.
I found a horse... I tried to mount it... no I climbed on top of it and stood on it. -_- I don't think horses are okay with this. So I got off. I cannot drink or kill the horse either. So I suspect the horses are just furniture.
I want to like this game, but in it's current condition... no... This isn't like a game in beta, this is like a game in alpha. To the point that the loading screens feel like they have a set time to load for and if your game loads faster and you can walk around and hear your footsteps, it doesn't matter, because it's still loading.
TL:DR
Pros: Spaces in names. I like that when you build buildings, you build each individual piece after laying down a blueprint. That's pretty cool. I can choose not to drink civilians. Stealth isn't completely terrible I guess.
Negatives: I can't type the negatives and keep it short enough to fit in a TLDR section. Basically, just don't buy this game yet, it's not ready for players to play it.
Thank you for reading or skipping to the end.
Whether or not you agree with me, have a lovely day. <3
