Welcome! Today the game is an old and classic german game that was not only translated into english, but also spawned a series of sequels and even parody fangames ("Vampires Dawn II: What really happened!", "Vampires Deaf I & II", "Vampires Peal"). Really!

The game starts with a child listening to his grandpa that he's telling him a story about vampires. This is tale of Valnar, our alter ego in this game. Valnar is a normal human that soon finds himself involved in a dark story of murder and mystery, and later will become a vampire, as you probably expected (earning a series of powers and a cool pair of sunglasses!).



Valnar won't be alone for long since he soon will be joined by a couple of other vampires (the trio or vampires will be the equivalent of a classical jrpg party of adventurers) in his quest, but only his (so the player's) choices will define the outcome and the ending. Yes, because in Vampire's Dawn Valnar can be a monster or reject the vampire nature, and there are five (plus a special sixth one) endings to this story!

The setting of the game is a dark medieval worls. Expect many gritty details, buckets of blood (we're talking about vampires!), dead bodies, undead bodies, an execution and so on. There is some humor too, but the world is dark and creepy, populated by monsters (and you can be one of them if you want), and humans in some cases aren't better than them.



Graphically the game uses many different resources and edits. Despite coming from different sources these are well integrated and coherent, facesets have all the same style and the same is for the charsets (due to the dramatic nature I'd have used taller and less "cute" sprites and facesets, and this was in fact fixed in Vampires Dawn 2 Ancient Blood). The sprites of the attacking characters are especially nice, while what I liked a bit less was the simplicity of some maps, anyway there are lots of them, so they could not have been all perfect, I guess.

The gameplay is pretty great: you are a vampire so you will have cool powers that let you turn into a wolf or a bat, but you need blood. Blood is not Mp or Mana, no, you cannot earn it by resting but you must drain the enemies or feed on the population. Or, well, buy it! And you can also earn and use souls to empower your characters, and plan the next move from the halls of your castle. Yes, as a vampire you will get a castle as a base of operations!



There is combat, lots of it, but it feels really fast and simple, it's the usual rm2k3 atb combat, nothing new here, but it is a welcomed choice (a familiar system among new features and extra gimmicks). Besides this there are many mini games and optional quests that have to be discovered.

Exploration plays an important part in this game: thanks to the power to turn into a bat, our vampires don't need an airship to explore the world and find hidden secret locations!

Unfortunately this is also the cause of a little problem: the difficulty! It's suggested to grind since there are some difficulty spikes in some areas, and thanks to the ability to fly you may even find yourself in areas where enemies are too strong for the actual level.



Verdict
Vampires Dawn - Reign of Blood is the first episode of a great series. Even is the second game looks and is better than the first (and it is also available in english so I suggest to play that one too!), this first game is already a good entry and a classic game with many custom features and lots of content.

Vampires Dawn is an original series that focus not on heroes but on being a vampire, and is successful with its blend of classic gameplay and new features. The story of this first game may not be overly original but it offers hours of fun. It was very good at the time, and it is still good now. It's a classic quality game, try it, then, if you like what you played, try Vampires Dawn 2 - Ancient Blood. You won't be' disappointed!
This is good. And that means 4/5.