Vampires used to be horrifying, bloodthirsty monsters, but somewhere along the way they turned into brooding prettyboys that stalk schoolgirls. V Rising says 'no' to all of that nonsense.

Here, you are a proper vampire - a true villain. You burn in sunlight, you eat people, and you even put pineapple on your pizza! But being the bad guy does come with some great perks. You get a cool coffin to sleep in, a pile of magical weapons, and even a swarm of... um, 'interns' to do all of your busywork.

Video version of this review (~11 minutes)

And why would you want to do any of this? Well, for revenge of course. Eons ago, the dirty peasants tore you apart, destroyed your castle and peed on your carpet. And now that you're finally awake, it's time to send them the cleaning bill. Well... as soon as you're done making a brand new castle anyway. And maybe a new workshop since you could use a few weapons. And since you're already doing that, why not a little garden? Nobody has ever overdosed on healing potions.

But then you're probably going to be close to making iron weapons, and those are a lot better than the crappy copper ones, so maybe revenge can wait a little bit longer. Now repeat that for about 30 hours, and you have an exact description of my past week. I had so many things I needed to do, and instead I spent that time chasing old ladies across town so that I can steal their yarn. And you know what? No regrets! I look fabulous!

It's refreshing to be an unapologetic bad guy every once in a while

The many ways to torment a peasant

This cycle of madness starts off nice and simple. You pick a plot of land to build your castle, and then realize you need a lot more stone than you could ever imagine. So how do you solve that problem? Well, much like in real life - you head over to the nearby mine, whip out your favorite pair of revolvers, and then blast those rocks like they owe you money. Just make sure you don't hit the wrong ones, because sometimes the rocks wake up, and they're seldom happy to discuss your innovative new alarm system.

But surely you can't just shoot your way through all your problems? And that's correct, because V Rising also lets you stab, slice, maim, bash, whip, or even bear down on your enemies. And if that's not enough, there's also six schools of magic so you can even introduce some medieval schlub to the wonders of electricity.

Yet despite the many ways to torment the local peasantry, managing all of this is surprisingly simple since you only ever have to worry about six abilities at a time - two from your weapon, and four from your spell tree. Now you might be worried that such a tiny moveset would make the combat boring, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Each ability is fun to use and distinct from the rest, so mixing and matching them feels great. Even if you're in a group of three gunslingers, everyone can still be distinct.

There's a ton of spells to play around with, and they're all a blast

Power overwhelming

All that power does come at a price though. You might look like a badass Van Helsing cosplayer, but that armor is essentially made out of low grade, one-ply toilet paper - the kind that disintegrates the moment a drop of water touches it. So if you get slapped by a peasant that spent all of his money on steroids instead of soap, your face will look like the surface of the Moon.

Instead, I'd recommend dodging and parrying, or simply mastering the ancient, mystical arts of 'getting the hell out of the way'. Every single attack thrown your way is avoidable - literally every single one. The only catch is that your defensive abilities have cooldowns, so it's not as simple as playing DDR and mashing the right button at the right time. You actually have to pay attention to what the enemies are doing, learn their patterns, and use the right counter at the right time.

It's a hard thing to do, and I had my face used as a floor mop more times than I can count, but learning each unique boss fight is a very satisfying process. That cycle of being pathetic, then learning and improving, and finally sucking out the boss' blood through their posterior is beyond addicting. And it's one of the main reasons why I've gotten so into V Rising over this past week. This game really is something special.

Each boss is unique and quite challenging

The taste of blood

Unsurprisingly, blood is everything to you. It's your food, your source of power, you use it to decorate your house, you brew potions with it, and it's also a great source of entertainment as you get to stalk villages and judge people based on just how terrible their blood is.

You can chow down on rats or random bandits to keep yourself alive, but it's kind of like having a diet made exclusively out of gum you found on the bottom of a desk. A true connoisseur needs to seek out a fine vintage. Besides having a bit more flavor than just poverty and regret, higher quality blood also gives you additional powers based on who you snacked on.

If you eat Steroid McMuscles you'll be a lot better at swinging a giant hammer around, whereas if you eat a miner - and that's with an e - you'll be able to shoot rocks with even more gusto to get even more shinies out of them.

Different types of blood can have a massive impact on your playstyle

Secretly a castle-building game

And you'll definitely want those, because V Rising is actually one big ruse. You get suckered in thinking it's going to be a fast-paced action game with vampires, when in reality it's actually a castle building simulator. You might think that's a joke, and it is... but also not really.

It all starts off innocently enough. You'll need to build a couple of rooms to house your ever-growing assortment of crafting tables. A sawmill to get planks, a grinder to produce stone bricks, and a workbench to combine everything into useful items like weapons and armor. As you progress you'll have to use more and more complicated recipes, but it's never overwhelming since you're mostly working with the same few ingredients. Sure, the blood gets bloodier and the planks need extra work to make them plankier, but once you have a basic idea of how the crafting works it's fairly easy to stay in the loop.

However, all these items require bulky crafting stations that will quickly fill up your crypt with junk, so you're going to need to move to somewhere bigger and better. But unlike real life where such a thing is a fleeting dream, the world of V Rising is so infested with unnatural horrors that you can get some prime real estate on the cheap. All you have to do is politely ask the previous inhabitants to leave, and voila, you have a new base.

Suddenly you don't need to have a decrepit crafting shack in a random corner, or a 'garden' that consists of four plants you slammed into the ground around a random corner and then promptly forgot about. You can actually let your creations breathe, let each area have its own personality - and soon enough you'll find yourself obsessing about minute decorations because building stuff in V Rising is just so easy that you just don't have an excuse for an ugly base.

And that's the insidious part. You'll start building a jeweler's section because you want to add some extra effects onto your spells, and before you know it you've redecorated the central maze, added a new servant's quarters and... it's 4 AM and you're going to need to get ready for work soon.

Building something that looks cool is extremely easy

Vampires vs werewolves

You remember how back in the late 2000s the internet was ablaze with arguments about who's better: vampires or werewolves? Well, V Rising answers that question with another question - why not both?

So not only are you a blood-sucking monster, but you can also shapeshift into all sorts of forms - everything from a sneaky rat to a 'how do you do, fellow humans?' disguise. While I was initially excited for how these forms would shake up the gameplay, they mostly just ended up being quality-of-life perks you can toggle on and off whenever you need them. Handy, but I can't help but feel cheated I couldn't give bosses a bear-fisted beatdown.

This brings me to what is probably my only serious complaint about V Rising - you're really, really slow. Now, I get it - you've spent who knows how many years stuck in a coffin. Your legs are probably made entirely out of cramps at this point, but even so criss-crossing the map is a needlessly tedious process - even once you borrow a horse that controls like an old Resident Evil character.

There's teleport gates all over the place to give you the illusion that you can zip around the map, but you can't teleport while carrying anything of real value, so you're mostly going to roleplay the Fellowship of the Ring and go on cross-country hiking expeditions whenever you leave the base.

But, much like the Lord of the Rings movies, there’s a lot of beauty in the journey. V Rising's art style might be technologically simple, but it's full of little details and personality that give it a lot of charm. You might not appreciate this as the third group of rival vampires slams into your backside, but the visuals give the game a nice and cozy vibe, which is one of the main reasons I ended up spending so much time in my base. And definitely not the horde of succubi I picked up along the way.

She is, no joke, the team's main fisherman

Does V Rising hold up?

Three years down the line, does V Rising still hold up? And the answer is, unsurprisingly - yeah, absolutely. I've spent over 30 hours playing it this past week both solo and with a couple of friends, and I had a blast!

So if you're into survival-crafting games, and you don't mind losing entire weekends playing vampire Barbie and building fancy castles, then I can easily recommend it. Double that recommendation if you’ve got friends to dive in with you, because there's nothing funnier than watching three grown men argue about horse naming conventions!