Vampires Dawn is the German RPG featuring exploration of the world and vampires' violent and sinister nature alike.
In it, you assume the role of Valnar, a young man, who must face both the murder of his wife and him being turned into a vampire in order to revive another's.
As such, you pursue finding your wife's murderer and accepting (or rejecting) the nature of a vampire.

I've played this game twice.
First as a mere child.. my first RPG maker game ever to be exact. The gore was a little bit unsettling, intriguing and amusing altogether, and it captured me through and through. There are so many great memories here. Good times. Here are some cool vampires indeed.

When I replayed it not too long ago, I faced the lacking orthography, the faults and the weakspots of the game, but could fully enjoy it no less. I did not play the English version, so I cannot give details regarding the translation.

Contrary to its sequal, the first vampires dawn is all about you being a violent, vicious sinister being .. if you so choose. And your companion being violent anyways.


Story

It's just a story .. told before a good night's sleep. Not one you should tell your kids to, though.
The intro and finishing touch is very nice. Storytelling always has a nice cozy feeling and the fittingly atmospheric and really neat music make it even better.
There are some great tracks throughout the game and they are all very well chosen.

It's about vampires .. and before we dive into playing one, we will see the history of them, why they're barely instinct and what they actually are. It presents a logic and a strength system for our vampire race which explains common traits as well as introduces new ones specific for this game and its sequel. It's violent, but always quite funny in an human-demeaning way.

The story focuses on our protagonist Valnar, despite there being two more main characters. They do play a huge part in how it pans out and how you interact with the world, however.
You will also notice relations to your background and have a possible continuation.

One feature some might enjoy - there are five different endings in the game, mainly depending on how often you've fled battles and how you treated other characters (+ one special ending). They will only effect the very end, and this to a great effect.

While it has some nice potential and flavor, there are some loose ideas thrown together and the story does not hold your hand. Story is not the focus, exploration is. It still is fairly enjoyable, especially early on and towards the end!

At some point you may lose track of where you need to go next, but you have a diary option and some visible on-map features to make it not too hard to find your ways.


Battle System

Semi-realistically, being a vampire is all about blood. Blood is not only your MP, you will go into an enraged state should you be running low on it. You're living on it, for fuck's sake!
Unless you suck off townsfolk or provide it in itemform, you will stay that way. Blood will not be recovered by resting. Why would it?

You are, however, able to suck it off certain enemies (living ones. with blood. skeletons do not count, sorry), have ways to "buy" it (a cruel world it is), and you can suck off townsfolk - more to that later.
It is also notable that living creatures only have so much blood you can suck off - some enemies will give more blood than others, may be able to sucked twice, but will eventually stop to give you any more blood even if you try.

Then there's souls. Blood is a great gift from living creatures, souls the one of dead.
It's a tiered system, so you will gather weak, normal and strong souls to work and play with (literally).

You can learn in the depths of your castle how to convert souls into soul stones to summon a battle aid (golems and such), to increase stats of your characters and to gamble. Yep, gamble. You can win part of the best possible armor, too.

You will also be able to learn new skills every few level according to your element. You will be able to choose one of your align elements and have 2 spells to choose from in that category - very few affect the gaming world rather than battle (changing day to night, or making it rain, for example).

Valnar has Light and Darkness as his respective elements and can thus choose one from 4 spells every few levels.
This allows some customization and makes for a good reason to visit back home now and then.

Battle is pretty straightforward and fast, has a couple of battle themes to choose from, and is mainly about blood-conservation and skillbuilding.
It's not overly complex, but it's one of the reasons I actually like the standard battles - they can be fast and they should be.

There are only two gripes - one, the difficulty spikes in an early stage. I would advise to grind a little bit during the "invasion" to have an easier
transition.
And two, the encounter rate being fairly high. It is not too much of a problem for the most part, but it will become a little bit tedious later on should you be aiming for a specific ending requiring you not to flee battle. Otherwise is fleeing a viable option to spend less time on that.

Vampire System

There are many great touches to the semi-realism of this world and the vampires, and towns are another one of those.

People are can be playthings in the hand of a vampire. In the night you can drain them off their blood or even turn them into items.
You can drain them trice before they perish, though. In which case the animation speed will indicate how much there is left.
However, they will disappear if you kill them forever.

You cannot lay hands on them outside if there's still daylight and you cannot do anything in a room without other people being there noticing, warriors will attack, too.
And yes, you can depopulate pretty much the entire world. Your loss.

There are many skills you can learn to change your form for a period of time - into a wolf or a bat - with which you can travel the entire world easily, which enables a great deal of exploration.
But beware: Don't land on the ocean. And if you do, better not be out of blood.

You can only save with save stones which you get plentiful, but which should not be wasted. There is a reusable crystal for NG+, though.


Your Castle

This might be considered a minor point, but your castle is awesome. It's huge and you will have a hard time finding your way at first, but you will go in so often (or do the optional paperchase) so that you find your way easily very soon.

You can rest here, learn spells, use your souls, collect silber from your mines (yep, there are mines to "free" and to summon workers for) and just have a jolly good time reading all those books. In a game where you explore all day, this base is a really nice thing. You even have some servants.
It's important, it feels important and it is yours.


Side Quests and Exploration

Exploration is where this game shines. If you like loot, you'll find hundreds of items everywhere. There are roughly 30 hidden locations throughout the world map (not counting those available on-map), some small, some huge, hidden passages in dungeons and more (you will learn a spell to spot those if you really need to check everything).
It's one of those games where you are rewarded for interacting with every and anything. I for one rather like that.

There is a good deal of bloody and even absurd humour here including repopulating a town you killed off yourself. There are generally many great touches to be seen.
You can chase after some thief throughout the whole world, play a couple of minigames at a carnival/funfair-kind of place, score points to exchange for some really nice stuff as well, hunt down ships, conquer some silver mines and more.
You can also increase your stats in shrines you find throughout the game if you so choose.

A problem this exploration faces is that once you can actually explore freely (once you obtain the bat-form), the difficulty spikes and you can possibly face enemies on the world map that are too strong for you if you explore early (they are bound to the island/continent you are on, so no bad luck involved).

However, aside from the world map, you will sense both boss-presence and enemy strength.
Meaning you will be notified by your vampiric senses whether enemies in this area are slightly stronger than yourself or far too strong (indicated by an orange or red demon head hovering at the side of your screen) or when a boss is in this very room/area (white-blackish face).
This makes exploration much much easier and better to do. It also makes it possible for you to save for a boss-battle - you may miss the opportunity otherwise to conserve save stones.

There are also a couple of sidequests, but since you won't be able to do all of them right away, it can be a little bit hard to keep them in mind. You can look them up in your diary of sorts (where you can trade some souls as well, change the walking speed and battle music as well, by the by) to refresh certain objectives. It's a little bit unorganized as they are just shown one after another, but it's there.


The Result

The danger of too many mechanics and aspects is that they can clutter and hinder your gameplay. This is not the case - most are fairly intuitive in their own right and they work well together.
There is a lot to do and even more to explore and find. You can drown in your lust for power or just play a humble friend of humans.

The music is very nice and atmospheric, the mapping is very decent as well.

But many aspects - especially the story - really deserve more polish, there are some difficulty spikes, many plotholes, but the general enjoyment is great.
(for all concerned about the plot, the sequel actually made a pretty good job of covering most of those holes)

A game from a time when vampires were actually cool. It shaped how I view and what I make of them.
It has a couple of flaws and only barely makes the fourth star, but it has so many details and touches that those interested should definitely give it a try.