The Blood of Dawnwalker Review Scores: What Critics Agree On & Where They Split

OpenCritic has The Blood of Dawnwalker at 85, with 93% of critics recommending it. Individual scores run from 9.5/10 to 3/5.

Both of those are true and they describe different games. Here is what the reviewers actually agree on, the one thing they flatly contradict each other about, and which aggregate number is worth less than it looks.

(The title is The Blood of Dawnwalker*, not “Blood of the Dawnwalker” — worth getting right in a piece about how it was received.)*

The scores

On a 100-point scale that is a 35-point spread, from 95 to 60. The median of these twelve is 83.

Aggregates:

• OpenCritic: 85 Top Critic Average, 93% of critics recommend, across 103 reviews.
• Metacritic: Xbox Series X/S 88, PC 84, PlayStation 5 83.
• User score: 8.2 on PS5, from 312 ratings.

A note on that Future plc column. We normally count outlets by parent company, because syndicated news dressed up as several sources is a real problem. It does not transfer here: Future owns both PC Gamer and GamesRadar+, which turned in the middle of the range and the bottom of it. For reviews, common ownership plainly does not mean a common verdict.

What every reviewer praises

Two things, consistently, and they are the same two things.

The day/night switch. You play Coen of Laslea, a Dawnwalker — vampire by night, human by day. IGN describes maintaining two entirely separate builds that auto-toggle when you change form: a vampire loadout built around feeding to restore health, a human one around high-risk spells. TheSixthAxis frames it tactically: take the fort now, or wait until dark when you are more dangerous.

Time as a currency. After the opening chapter you have 30 in-game days, each split into 16 segments — eight day, eight night. Almost every action costs some. So does levelling a skill.

IGN’s account of what that does is the clearest thing in any of the reviews:

No matter how hard you try, you won’t have enough hours to complete every side quest, buy every skill, or tie up every loose end — which means you’re forced to compromise, pick your battles, and make hard but impactful decisions almost constantly.

And the Witcher 3 lineage is visible. Rebel Wolves was founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, a director on The Witcher 3, and its leads came from The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. PC Gamer calls the result “one of the best blockbuster action RPGs I’ve played for years, probably since Elden Ring”.

Where they split

The combat divide is the real one, and the two complaints are opposites.

• IGN found the directional parry system had “a steep learning curve I suspect will be equally divisive” — the first handful of hours frustrating before it clicked.
• TheSixthAxis found it satisfying but “a bit messy at times”, and “too easy if you have a passing familiarity with parrying”.

Same system. One reviewer says too hard, the other says too easy. If you are trying to work out whether you will get on with this game, that is the most useful single fact in the review record — and it suggests the answer depends almost entirely on whether you have played something like For Honor before.

The time system draws the most specific complaints too, from the same people who praise the idea. TheSixthAxis objects that “killing three guards and destroying some barrels shouldn’t take almost half a day”, and dislikes skill upgrades costing time at all.

And the tone. PC Gamer’s 83 contains this: the game is “unrelentingly violent and bleak to the point of sometimes being unintentionally funny”. That sits inside a positive review, which is worth noticing before reading 83 as an unqualified endorsement.

Technical polish is raised by TheSixthAxis — NPCs missing from cutscenes, doors not opening for NPCs walking through them, duplicated character models, characters stuck in scenery, a fiddly camera. “Not constant, but they do happen regularly enough.” We read three reviews in full, so we cannot say how widely that is echoed.

The 30-day clock

This is the design decision everything else hangs off, so it is worth being precise about.

• The clock starts after the opening chapter.
• You get 30 days. Each day has 16 segments — eight of daylight, eight of night.
• Time only passes when you do things. You can stand still or explore indefinitely without spending any.
• Actions cost segments, including training skills.
• IGN’s worked example: talking into a prison camp for intel, then leaving a prisoner to rot because rescuing him cost three of the day’s sixteen segments.

That is 480 segments for the whole game, and reviewers are unanimous that you cannot spend them on everything. Whether that reads as pressure or as artificial is the thing to decide before buying.

The Metacritic platform trap

The best number Metacritic shows for this game is its least reliable one.

An 88 built from seven reviews is not the same object as an 83 built from 62, and anyone quoting “88 on Metacritic” is quoting the thinnest sample on the page. The PS5 figure is the one with the evidence behind it, and Metacritic records 89% of those reviews as positive and 11% as mixed.

Is it worth $70?

We cannot tell you, because we have not played it. What the review record does support is who is likely to get on with it.

Reasons the reviews point yes:

• You want another Witcher 3 from many of the same people. Nearly every reviewer makes that comparison, mostly approvingly.
• You like a systems constraint. The 30-day clock is the most distinctive thing here and the most consistently praised.
• You replay RPGs. Both the clock and the human/vampire split are reported to produce genuinely different runs.

Reasons the reviews point no:

• You are a completionist. Reviewers are explicit that you cannot do everything, and that this is deliberate rather than a balance problem.
• You bounce off directional parry systems. The most divisive element by some distance.
• You want relief from the tone. The bleakness is remarked on even by people who like it.
• You wait for patches. At least one reviewer reports regular minor faults at launch.

What we have not done

Played it. Everything above is an analysis of what other people wrote, and every judgement belongs to the outlet named next to it.

One thing we did do is check the aggregate numbers rather than copy them. Our first OpenCritic lookup returned a Top Critic Average of 69 — for a different game entirely, because the game id was wrong. The correct figure is 85. It is worth knowing how easily a page like this can carry a number from the wrong entry, including when it is written carefully.

The bottom line

A broadly well-received debut with a genuinely unusual central mechanic and a wide critical spread.

The 93% recommend figure and the 3/5 are describing the same game and they are both fair: almost everyone thinks it is good, and there is real disagreement about how good. If the 30-day clock sounds like the best idea you have heard this year, the reviews suggest you will love it. If it sounds like homework, they suggest you will not.

Scores from Wikipedia’s reception table, Metacritic and OpenCritic, checked entry by entry. Three reviews read in full: PC Gamer, IGN and TheSixthAxis. We have not played the game.